“What is the secret to staying in shape”?

I have to admit, I was caught a bit off guard by that question coming from a water softener salesman that had stopped by my house. I had avoided the awkward “I’m not interested” conversation by telling him I was renting (BTW, I’ve found out that is a great way to avoid a lot of awkward door-to-door sales conversations) but before he moved on he threw that question my way.

While I’m not the biggest guy around I do look pretty fit and I guess my gray hairs suggested I had some wisdom in that area so the young man in front of me wanted to know if I had any secrets for him. Of course, if you have been following my stuff you know that there aren’t any “secrets” but for a lot of people the fitness world is a confusing place and so I was more than happy to share a few insights with him.

My first bit of advice was to “start early and don’t stop”. This is similar to the advice that the best way to get lean is to not get fat in the first place – it is much harder to work out of a hole than it is to maintain where you are at.

And while this is the best advice I have for staying in shape, I know that for some people it isn’t as applicable because they missed out on the first part. A lot of people wake up one day wondering where the person they see in the mirror came from – one day you’re young, eating like crap and still looking pretty fit and the next you’re 20+ pounds overweight and having trouble making it up a flight of stairs without getting winded.

Obviously it doesn’t happen overnight but the slow creep that happens makes it seem that way. If you find yourself in this situation then the advice still applies, just in a different way.

The sooner you start to address the problem – and yes, being overweight is a problem no matter what the popular “body positivity” death cult tells us – the easier it will be to overcome. As we get older the deck gets stacked against us more and more, making it harder to create big changes.

And maintaining your fitness is much easier than building it no matter when you start. So if you are already in shape then don’t get lazy and take it for granted. If you aren’t in shape then start working on that problem today because it just gets harder to deal with the older you get.

The next thing he asked me was if I had any advice about nutrition. 

My answer was to “eat 80% good stuff and 20% fun stuff”. This may vary slightly depending on what if you need to lose a significant amount of fat but even then, the ratio only changes to 90% good stuff and 10% fun stuff.

The point is that you don’t have to be 100% strict with your diet, you just need to make sure that the bulk of it falls into the “good” category. Most people fall into one of two extremes.

The first one is trying to be perfect and then falling competently off the wagon if they mess up a little bit. The second one is eating a lot of bad stuff and then trying to supplement it with some good stuff and wondering why “diet and exercise don’t work for me”.

The secret to nutrition is to find a happy medium where you are able to focus on eating good stuff and not letting everything fall apart when you have some fun stuff. This can either be planned “cheat meals” or just having some flexibility in your diet for when circumstances conspire against you.

My last piece of advice was to have something you do outside of the gym that motivates you to work out. For us that thing is mountain biking but it could be anything that gets you moving and requires you to stay fit to maximally enjoy.

Working out just to look good gets a bit old after a while – at least for me it does – and without something else to train for it can be tough to stay motivated. Having a hobby that you love and are motivated to train for can make all the difference in the world when it comes time to choose between working out and watching Netflix.

So, in a nutshell, the secret to staying fit is…

1. Start as soon as you can and stay consistent as you get older.
2. Eat 80-90% good stuff and allow yourself 20-10% fun stuff.
3. Have something you train for to keep you motivated.

Of course, each of these things has a million details you can drill down into but for most people those details are less relevant than you may think. Being consistent over the long run is really the only thing that works every time. And while that doesn’t make for cool posts on social media it does make for good results, which is really what you want.

So if you are already following this advice then keep it up, you’re on the right path. And if you aren’t following it yet then hopefully you see that it doesn’t have to be complicated, just start today with what you can do and build on that momentum without getting discouraged if things don’t go perfect.

Until next time…

Ride Strong,

James Wilson