The Realities of Modern Fitness and Nutrition

You can wake up, log onto social media, and within an hour find a dozen new routines and just as many new diets to try. The exercises always change, and the next best food is always looming. You’ll start a routine and stick to it for a week, maybe two, before a new one grabs your attention. You’ll buy fruits and vegetables that spoil before you find the time to eat them between your dinners out. You’re trying, but the wheels keep spinning, and your health and fitness don’t improve. You look and feel the same, or worse. This is modern fitness and nutrition for the average beginner.

Social Media Changed Fitness

The advent of social media has allowed anyone, anywhere, to provide their novel take on any subject. This can be both a blessing and a curse, depending on the subject's importance. When it comes to fitness and nutrition, the variety of solutions to the same problems opens up a world of flexibility in achieving your goals. You could ask any fit person online, or in person, what routine or diet you should follow, and you would get vastly differing answers. If there are so many paths to success, why does it seem like you never see the results that they do?

The answer is simple, once you know it—a hidden driving force is behind your success or failure.

Seven Core Principles for Success

There are seven core principles that contribute to every effective workout routine and diet. These principles are the essence of fitness, and without them, you will only ever achieve a portion of the gains you deserve. The principles are:

1. Find a Routine That Fits Your Life

2. Use Compound Exercises

3. Progressive Overload

4. Calories In - Calories Out

5. Eat a Variety of Unprocessed, Whole Foods

6. Eat a Reasonable Amount of Protein and Fat

7. Improve Your Mentality

These principles are expanded on at lucidfitness.com and will be further discussed in future newsletters, but today, we are focusing on why these principles are important and why your success with fitness and nutrition depends on them: They work.

The Principles Work, but You’ll Have to Work Too

Each of the principles signifies significant adjustments to your life that establish the building blocks of a healthy lifestyle. Trying to follow a routine that you cannot consistently act on will lead to spinning your wheels and giving up. Using a routine that doesn't consist of primarily compound exercises will slow your results. Failing to apply progressive overload to your workouts will lead to plateaus. Eating too much or too little can hinder your weight goals. Eating a majority of processed food will drain your energy and your progress. Not eating enough protein and fats will diminish your strength and muscle gains. Worst of all, your mind will suffer, and you may eventually quit.

On the other hand, when applying the principles, you will see that each principle positively feeds into the others. Consistently working out increases your desire to eat right and improves your mood. Eating the right amount of nutritious, whole foods enhances your workouts and sharpens your mind. Working on your mentality upgrades all aspects of your life. The reality is, though—it is hard.

You should let it be hard for the right reasons. If you’re going to go to the gym every week, make it count and apply the seven principles that make a difference. Focusing your attention on 95% of the fitness and nutrition information you see on the internet will contribute only minimally to your actual progress. However, if you focus on the seven principles, you will reach a level where you realize gains and can begin to apply your own novel solutions to your fitness and nutrition.

The Secret is That There is No Secret

What you’ve read so far is the “secret”.

All the people you see providing custom routines and diets got to where they are because they consciously or unconsciously followed these seven core principles. It led them to success. They use that success to frame their personal experience and apply their own novelty layer on top for the less experienced to follow. The problem is, when the full seven principles are not laid out properly, beginners are destined to fail because the building blocks have not been set in preparation for the novelty layer being applied.

Knowledge is Power, Now Apply it

So, instead of scrolling endlessly looking for the next best tip, you’ll find a routine that is primarily compound exercises, and you can consistently follow every week. Then you’ll apply progressive overload while you do it. You’ll calculate the right amount of calories you need, and you’ll eat that much in whole foods, with a focus on quality protein and healthy fats. You’ll forge a mindset that includes the willpower to act, the consistency to change, and the discipline to persist. This is when you’ll see true gains.

You’ll notice that there is not a specific exercise, specific food, special movement, particular timing, specific number of reps, sets, or speed mentioned. All of the variables you see presented and debated that fall outside of the core principles contribute to the smallest fraction of your actual gains. That is why everyone has a different opinion on these trivial variables—because they don’t impact your success a whole lot, but they allow for novelty. If they were required to get gains, there would be a lot less to argue about.

Consistently apply progressive overload to compound exercises within a fitness routine that fits your life, and eat the right amount of nutritious, whole foods for a sufficient duration to realize gains.

It can be hard but doesn’t need to be complicated.

Thank you all for reading. I appreciate everyone who is supporting this journey to provide clarity.

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