If metabolic health is mental health, it stands to reason that dialed in nutrition and some physical activity should be the first line of defense against most cases of stress, anxiety, and perhaps, many depression cases.
Mental wellness and physiological effects can usually be felt quickly.
This includes energy levels, mental clarity, and reduction in emotional variability.
This is not medical advice, of course, but there is no downside to eating real food, not being sedentary…
As well as catching some sun rays in your skin, natural light in your eyes and fresh air in your lungs.
Mind and body are one connected system.
It’s not like a car where you wrench the bumper or windshield and the engine stays intact.
There is no good, agreed-upon definition of what it means to be heathy.
In my view it’s simply:
• Good body composition
• Normal or optimal range in your routine blood work, without medication
• Mood and emotional stability outside of extreme events
• High enough energy… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…
Let’s deconstruct these:
Good body composition means more than the number in the scale.
It’s the degree to which you are lean and muscular.
Routine blood work (and we should include liver health here) means:
•Triglycerides/HDL ratio under 2
•A1C, fasting glucose and fasting insulin in the normal range
•Ferritin under 100
•No fatty liver (NAFLD)
A common training misconception for newbies is expecting bodyweight exercises to be easy.
Reality is, push-ups, dips, chin ups, and especially pull ups are more difficult to perform in good form than machine or free weight exercises.
I would go as far as saying a purely calisthenics workout is likely to discourage someone overweight or obese.
It’s a lot wiser to start by creating resistance with machines, free weights, resistance bands or something like a total gym device.
The same goes for longer bouts of cardio vs. a well formulated resistance training workout.
If you’ve been sedentary and haven’t been working out, going for a jog is not especially useful compared to 10 minutes of strength training, adapted to your experience level.