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Exercise is the ultimate habit hack. It provides you the opportunity to dive into your other bad habits and replace them with better ones.
In this post, we are going to go into Habit-Stacking, a strategy that if utilized, makes it significantly easier to optimize your health.
Let's get after it!
Habit-stacking is when you take various tasks and combine them together to build a routine.
For example, drinking water at the start of your morning before your coffee or Impulse will be a good habit to start. This is because water consumption in the morning habitually invites consistent water consumption and potentially, total calorie reduction.
Habit-Stacking allows you the opportunity to build positive habits together to create a chain reaction. While you can do this for various habit-building tasks, we are going to dive into exercise and nutrition.
According to a behavioral study done in 2012, people who tend to be more physically active reduce their overall fat intake. With this, I believe exercise is the ultimate habit hack. This is because exercise stacks other healthier habits along with it, causing a chain reaction.
When you start exercising, a few things stack up:
Essentially, exercise and proper nutrition continue to cause a chain reaction where we make better lifestyle choices overall. For example, we start drinking more water, reading more, going outside more, and so on.
In order to build habit stacks, we recommend the following:
You do not need to create huge changes to your diet just yet, just focus on the small things you can do. More veggies, more fruits, more protein, less junk food. Pretty soon you will replace your bad food habits with good ones.
Temptation Bundling is another strategy you can use to create better habits in your lifestyle. As mentioned in a previous post, we call this strategy "The Habit Sandwich".
A Habit Sandwich is when you take a task you WANT to do and combine it with something you NEED to do. For example, for every "bad meal" you have, replace the next meal with a "good one". Once you get the hand of this, for every "bad meal" you have, the next two meals will be a "good one". Keep doing this until you have consistent good habits around food.
Additionally, you can do this with a "cheat meal" or a "free meal". This is where we focus on eating well throughout the week and allow ourselves to indulge in one meal at the weekend.
You can also do this with exercise. If you're like me, you don't like mobility work. So while I warm up with my lifts, I do mobility work in between, extending my warm-up rest periods. This allows me to get my mobility work and get into my working sets.
Want to make this work? here's how:
With that, let me give you two practical examples you can utilize:
The programs I was able to stick with consistently were frequency-based training programs, like an Upper Body/Lower Body Split or Full-Body one. This is because it allowed me to train the muscle groups I liked frequently, along with the ones I didn't.
With these strategies, we hope that you can plan out more practical ways to improve your health and fitness goals. While we can give you the keys to success every day, it's up to you to build healthy habits so that you can accomplish your goals.
Sometimes success in health and fitness is determined by the dedication of consistent hours worked. If I spend more hours consistently working towards bettering myself with healthy habits, I will see significant changes months from now.
Any questions, comments, or insights? Throw them below, or email me at tony@reforgedperformance.com.
Until next time, Reforged Legion!
I have been reading quite a few articles surrounding depression and its connection to lifestyle habits.
In recent years, scientists have started to discover that depression is not just a "chemical imbalance".
It's much more complex than that, and a lot of evidence is pointing towards positive habits helping to alleviate or reduce the risk of depression.
Insomnia is a common sleep disorder that affects millions of people worldwide.
It is characterized by difficulty falling asleep, staying asleep, or both, despite the opportunity for adequate sleep.
This can lead to decreased energy levels, mood disturbances, decreased performance at work or school, and can negatively impact overall health and quality of life.
If you're tossing and turning at night, you're not alone.
In this post, we are going to go over the 5 natural ways to ease insomnia.
Let's dive in!
Magnesium is an essential mineral that plays a vital role in many bodily functions, including muscle and nerve function, blood sugar regulation, and bone health.
Despite its importance, many people do not get enough magnesium from their diets alone.
This is where supplements like magnesium glycinate can be helpful.
Magnesium glycinate is a highly bioavailable form of magnesium that is easily absorbed by the body and has several potential health benefits.
In this post, we'll explore the benefits of magnesium glycinate and why it may be a valuable addition to your overall health and wellness plan.
Let's dive in!