How to Live a Long Healthy Life

I often get asked for the magic pill to living a healthy life, getting strong, looking good, and losing weight. Like I’ve said in earlier posts, there simply isn’t one. But if were to give an elevator pitch to what you need to do to live a long and healthy life while feeling good in your own skin here it is.

Elevator Pitch

Why Focus on these Pillars of Health?

First focus on improving your strength as getting stronger makes life that much easier. The stronger we are, the easier bodyweight movements become and daily activities are tackled with ease. Strength also builds lean muscle allowing us to maintain our weight, and walk around with less body fat.

Focusing on body composition will produce many health benefits as we all know of the dangers of high body fat percentages. This is done through a solid diet that focuses on balance macro and micronutrients as eating enough to sustain you body. Having a healthy body fat percentage will allow you to feel good, and walk around with confidence.

Mobility is often overlooked but if we have difficulty moving, our body will be in constant pain. Thus, it is crucial that we focus on developing quality tissue, and increased range of motion under control.

Improving your cardiovascular capacity ensures a healthy heart, as well as reducing the risk of lung cancer, type 2 diabetes, and other diseases.

A healthy body is often equated to a healthy mind and taking care of the 4 physical traits mentioned above will put you a step ahead of the game. However, with the amount of stimuli and stress we experience in today’s day, we need a bulletproof mindset. The major things in my opinion is loving others and living with gratefulness. If we love others we not only fulfill ourselves but also make others around us better. True love doesn’t expect anything in return, so love others without expectations. We can be treated unfairly, and bad things do happen but if we focus on simply appreciating the small things in life and being grateful for what we have, things won’t seem to bother us as much. It simply makes the small stuff insignificant, and it’s often the small stuff that plants it’s seed and tears us down.

The truth is, there’s no one right way. Do what makes you happy when building strength, choosing the right diet, mobilizing and improving your cardio. If you like powerlifting or olympic weightlifting, chose the method you enjoy the most. Don’t chose a diet because some expert says it’s the best one. Eat within logical parameters and enjoy food. If you’re into yoga do yoga, if you’re into a less organized approach, make mobility part of your warmup and cooldown. If you like running, run, if you don’t, try some high intensity workouts.  Depending on your body type and goals, some methods are better than others but what really matters is patience and consistency. So if you don’t enjoy what you’re doing, you simply won’t succeed.

If you have any questions, either general question or questions about this article, send them to bonaathletics@gmail.com and I’ll be happy to help.

Please LIKE, SHARE, AND APPLY,

Lift Heavy, Lift Often,

Silviu Bona