This is the boring truth for health and fitness: It’s very easy to be top quintile in health and fitness by putting in very little effort. The only requirement is that you do it mostly consistently for a lot of years.
The people cycling between fad diets or doing bouts of extreme Crossift every several years until they get injured or lose motivation have a much harder time with health and fitness, despite putting a lot more pain and effort in during their bursts of activity.
One of my high school friends was always a little overweight and out of shape. Later he thinned out and got into decent shape. Everyone asked him what his secret was, but most people were disappointed with his answer: He said he stopped buying junk food and drink when he went grocery shopping and he started walking a little bit every day.
Everyone assumed he was on some intense diet or getting sweaty at the gym 4X per week. Instead, he was just consistent with good but low effort choices.
EDIT: This was pre-Ozempic. I’m sure today everyone would assume GLP-1 drugs.
A small amount of exercise daily, along with giving up sweetened drinks was successful for me (and for my friends who asked how I lost weight and kept it off).
In my opinion, how consistently you exercise is more important than how much you exercise, as you will naturally increase your endurance over time.
Learning to cook your own food from scratch is also an effective way to get excess sugar out of your diet.
I would say that portioning is super important as well. It is very easy if you don’t have calibrated brain to binge eat huge quantities of food while distracted.
Example you have an extra large bag of chips and you watch a show, likely you will finish before realizing. But if you just put in front of you a small plate of chips, you will likely not stand up to refill it while watching your show.
Add a bit of friction to eating more food. Brains are remarkably lazy.
> Everyone asked him what his secret was, but most people were disappointed with his answer
The comedian Jimmy Carr has a saying about this; Everyone's jealous of what you got, they're not jealous of how you got it. (NB: I've heard him say this, not sure if he originated it.)
The people cycling between fad diets or doing bouts of extreme Crossift every several years until they get injured or lose motivation have a much harder time with health and fitness, despite putting a lot more pain and effort in during their bursts of activity.
One of my high school friends was always a little overweight and out of shape. Later he thinned out and got into decent shape. Everyone asked him what his secret was, but most people were disappointed with his answer: He said he stopped buying junk food and drink when he went grocery shopping and he started walking a little bit every day.
Everyone assumed he was on some intense diet or getting sweaty at the gym 4X per week. Instead, he was just consistent with good but low effort choices.
EDIT: This was pre-Ozempic. I’m sure today everyone would assume GLP-1 drugs.