An equilibrium in your lifestyle is the key to health, longevity and high productivity. The three “factors” that play a major role here are:

• Diet
• Exercise and
• Sleep

Each has its own balance point. For example, a balanced diet must have the right amount of total calories (depending on your weight and energy expenditure), vitamins, carbs, fibre, unsaturated fats and protein. A balanced sleep should be not too long and not too short. It should always be at the same time of the day and be relaxing enough to “charge your batteries” for the following day. And so on.

They also have a common balance point. Once one of the factors gets out of balance it provokes disequilibrium of the common balance that can deteriorate the balance of the other factors. It is like a team working together where everyone depends somehow on the actions of the other team players. And when a key member has problems, the team’s productivity falls dramatically. The same happens with your body.
Lets see how they affect each other:

Sleep imbalance:

Influence on diet: A University of Chicago team led by Eve Van Cauter investigated how your diet is affected by sleep deprivation. The subjects that slept only 4 hours during several weeks showed increased levels of cortisol (also known as junk-food hormone) and increased their daily caloric intake by 1,000 calories. The subjects’ insulin and blood sugar levels resembled the impaired glucose tolerance of prediabetics, an indication that they were no longer properly processing carbohydrates.
Studies have also linked sleep deprivation to an increased incidence of obesity. (Source: Wikipedia)

Influence on exercise: Tiredness is enemy No.1 of exercise. And it can be a real issue for those who need a lot of motivation in order to workout. I consider myself a person of a great willpower. But when I don’t get my 6.5-7 hours of sleep it costs me a lot to do a workout on the following day. This state of fatigue could also lead to a burnout or complete loss of interest.

Overall health problems: Harvard’s Medical School research showed an increased level of stress hormones in those who didn’t get enough sleep at night. An increased level of stress hormones like cortisol is believed to be one of the main reasons for hypertension, heart attacks and even cancer.

Diet imbalance:

Influence on sleep: Your body has to work in order to digest all the food you ate. If you eat right before bedtime or if you eat too much in the evening your body will have to dig half of the night instead of relaxing. This could lead to fatigue next day or even insomnia during the night. Additionally keep in mind that some foods can provoke restlessness and should not be taken during the evening time. This includes coffee, black and green tea, chocolate and others.

Influence on exercise: A big meal or a meal high in simple sugars makes you tired due to high release of insulin. It’s a fact. Therefore it has the same effect as sleep deprivation. Moreover, a very disproportionate diet won’t provide you with the right amount of proteins and/or carbs you need for the exercise to have the best effect.

Overall health problems: You are in danger of becoming overweight/obese with all the related diseases like high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes. As a matter of fact over 95% of diseases reaching from cold to cancer can be prevented with the right diet.

Exercise imbalance:

Influence on sleep: Have you ever noticed that going for a walk in the evening makes your sleep deeper and better than when you sit all day at home? When you muscles have worked constantly they are more ready to relax at night, which makes your sleep more pleasant. Sitting all day on the couch or at work stiffens your muscles. This is mostly not consciously perceivable, but makes it much more difficult to relax at night.

Even a short 15 minutes stretching routine before bedtime can help to relax and sleep better. Some say that you shouldn’t do exercises 2 hours before sleep. But recent studies showed that exercising right before sleep doesn’t provoke any irregular sleep patterns. In other words, it doesn’t matter when you exercise, especially when it’s a “soft” exercise like stretching.

Influence on diet: Lack of exercise makes it much more difficult (if not impossible) to achieve your goals. Please read my last post about it.

Overall health problems: These are quite obvious. And the endless list of the health problems derived from lack of exercise is beyond the scope of this post.

Health cannot be achieved by doing right one thing only. It is rather like a teamwork of many factors you have to take care of. Quick fixes are useless. It requires some time management skills and persistence. But the payoff is definitely worth it.

Live strong!

Here are some extremely funny exercise and sports videos. Most of them about the evil treadmills. Enjoy!

Treadmill retard - never try it at home

Treadmill bear - animated video. A bear on a treadmill.

Treadmill accident - Beware of your treadmill. It may be very bloodthirsty!

Jackass - The Treadmill - the only unlimited thing is the stupidity of people

“Refurbished” health and fitness video of the 60’s. Nice

During the last two months I was thinking about the whole concept of fitness and what it actually meant. The dictionary defines fitness as “health and physical condition”. Thus being fit is having a good physical condition and being “healthy”.

Then what does “health” stand for? Health can be physical or mental and health of your mind has effect on the health of your body and vice-versa. They are inter-dependent and therefore not separable. Therefore fitness is not only a physical, but also a mental state.

And this is not the end. There are lots of other factors that influence your health and fitness everyday: people, work, time, etc. cause positive or negative effects like stress, changes in mood and in functions of your body.
I said some time ago that fitness is an act of balance as everything in our lives. The fact is  that it can be applied to other plains in your life that may or may not have direct relation with the condition of your physical body, but influence in some way each other.

This led me to conclusion that BodyTweaking had to deal with topics beyond mere exercise and food. It shouldn’t cover just physical fitness, but the whole range of being healthy. It should wrap everything in everydays’ life and answer the question: “How to live to stay healthy?“.

Our policy of spending your resources (i.e. time and money) wisely stays the same.

Smart living for health and fitness. Stay tuned.