Fitness and health are the 100 little choice’s you make every day, not just time in the gym. It is not that hard, and it adds up to living a quality life, for as long as you can, reducing the risk of health issues dramatically. It also involves being a little different, which makes no sense to me, as it is the best way to be.
I was travelling recently and had cause to wait at the bottom of the stairs to the baggage area. I did a detailed survey and movement analysis of everyone coming down the exit area. One side was one flight of stairs, the other was an escalator. It was blatantly obvious that most people took the escalator. At least at a ratio of 22-1. That was a staggering result but not unexpected. I repeated this experiment at the next airport for the stairs up from security. Upstairs was worse, 25-1. The demographic of people was just a cross section of Australian life, and it included people in workout gear, people who obviously lift weights, but are strong enough to carry their own luggage, needing wheels to carry their headphones and books up the escalator. Sure, there was Mums, with bubs, old people and overweight people, who should really be doing extra laps of the stairs whenever they can, plus the people too important to get off their phones to walk a set of stairs.
There are people that need the escalator. If you factor them in, the ratio is still a massive 17-1. Some of the people who needed the stairs, should have been on them years ago, before they got too heavy to carry their own weight. People who need wheels to carry their 7kg of carry on, probably think they need the escalator because of their heavy luggage and the challenge of a stair walk without their Strava turned on and no Instagram to acknowledging their workout. People in muscle tops and workout clothes with wheeled luggage on the escalator are E-bike riders in lycra and serve no functional purpose in the world.
I also timed the efficiency and concluded that a 55-year-old man with a false knee and hip replacement can walk, both down and up, the stairs in equal or faster time than anyone on an escalator, with a 7kg backpack wearing me down.
The escalators do provide some respite from the long walk to check in, the gate, via the coffee shop, or back down to luggage collection after sitting for a few hours doing nothing. That few hundred-meter walk from the car or the plane is faced with a up or down choice – stairs or escalator. An easy or easier option. Most people then take the easiest option. Most people probably don’t even make a conscious choice, they just follow the sheep and they’re on the escalator.
Make the choice to walk the stairs every chance you get. It will separate you from the sheep, give you a little pride by doing something so simple and easy, and will contribute to further good choices and suddenly you are walking around at 80 and not moping around in a walking frame complaining about your knees. Even if you have sore knees now, the answer is to exercise not winge about them.
Not just on planes but in shopping centre, in an office building, despite the risk of being locked in the fire stairs. I always look for stairs first which is not easy in modern office buildings and high rises but the higher the building, the greater the challenge. I get the need for a lift in anything over 12 stories or if you’re on the clock or when I wear high heels.
What other choices are easy for you to make to live a longer quality life. These are not secrets, they are choices. You don’t need a religion or motivational speaker of life changing self-help book. You just need to slap yourself and pay attention to the need for a better choice.
- Do not own carry-on luggage that has wheels. If you buy your kids this or school bags with wheels, please give up being a parent now. Put your kids in foster care to save time with their need for future counselling about their mental weakness and sensitivity to name calling and entitlement.
- Do not own an E-bike unless you are over 75, have one leg or have had heart bi pass surgery. Do not buy your kids E-bikes and read my article; ‘E-bikes are not bikes’.
- Drink a glass of water every morning and before every meal.
- Eat less and realise that eating is very emotional. We live in an era of abundance and choice. You can order any meal, any time and get it delivered to your door in a flash or by drone. This doesn’t mean you should take the easy option. Eat fresh food you cook yourself and enjoy eating out as a pleasure 2-3 times a week at most. Weight control is as simple as eating less calories than you use or need, not entertaining yourself with every yummy looking muffin and excuse that you are hungry. It is always harder to cut back something you are so used to, because you think you need it when you have only developed the negative habit through a series of bad small choices and you now are comfortable with owning the bad habit. Like eating dessert or having a wine with every meal.
- Drink less alcohol. There are always choices here and you won’t be alienated because you don’t join into the social pressure of drinking. You will save enough money for a house deposit or overseas trip. You will live longer or at least last longer without liver failure and are far less likely to make stupid decisions. You never ever need to have more than 2 drinks socialising or winding down alone. More than that and you are just making up excuses. You are too weak to cut back and learn to enjoy life with less alcohol, a clearer mind and healthier body.
- A free self defence lesson for everyone here is to not drink so much your decisions are impaired! You will then make better decisions than when you are a pissed. Especially when out with mates, chatting people up and finding your way home safely. Best case, you only have to eat your arm off to sneak out but worse case, you get taken advantage of. You are more likely to get in a fight or commit a crime drunk as well. Dial it right back to not getting drunk and stay safer.
- Eat a balanced diet with multicolours and varied meals every day. Keep it as simple as you can accompanied by water or one drink at dinner.
- Bubbles make you fat. Sugar soft drinks with bubbles make your taste buds happy are full of chemicals and sugar and need to be limited to a few a week. Kids should never routinely drink soft drink – it is entertainment, hence a treat. Energy drinks are poison designed to make you addicted and give you false ups and enough downs to make you crave the drinks again.
- SM is addictive and the algorithms are smarter and stronger than you. Develop discipline to put your phone away, to have phone free activities or even days. Have rules like no phones at meals or on the table schedule when to check messages so unless you are expecting an emergency or waiting for a pick-up notification, you don’t need your phone to rule you and make you answer every message or email with every little ding that forces a craving in you like a crack addict. Your phone dings and makes you answer immediately because you are a ding bat and do not have enough self-control to not respond and get that little dopamine kick you are easily addicted to.
- Get out of bed and do something in the morning that is good for you, like a walk or run. Start the day with a good choice, you control before the day gets away from you.
- Choose skim milk or oat milk.
- Choose to have time to yourself every day. At least 40 minutes to read, walk, swim, meditate, whatever you are in too. Never let someone take it away from you.
- Never shop hungry.
- Don’t walk at lunch in shopping centres. Learn to separate need from want. You need a kidney transplant; you don’t want a kidney transplant. You want a pair of shoes, but you do need groceries.
- A sale is not a way to save money. Not shopping is the only way.
- You will eat what you put in your fridge! Don’t store chocolate or have a wine cellar if you want to be healthier.
- Choose not to do something because someone else is. That is proving that you are weak and driven by a need for acceptance more than a need to be the best person you can.
- Having a gym membership only works if you use it routinely with discipline.
- Chose to have friends that challenge you, question you, disagree with you and contribute to you. Not everyone that is friendly to you has your best interests at heart.
- Chose to cut people that make you feel bad or encourage you to make bad decisions or critic you if you don’t make the decisions they do.
- Learn from mistakes. Make different decisions when you fuck up or make a fool of yourself. The definition of stupidity is repeating the same behaviour expecting different outcomes.
- Have the strength to do self-analysis and grow from the challenges you face.
- If you can routinely deal with adversity by choice, you will be prepared for challenges life throws at you.
- Put money into your super. You will need it when your old!
You are who you are because of the hard choices not the easy choices but the easiest way to develop choice strength, is making little choices. Develop your self-control and you will be able to make better choices. Next time the plane lands and you are allowed to turn your phone on – how long can you hold off for? Until docking, until baggage, until the car? It is unlikely you have missed anything world shattering, enjoy the piece a little longer.
You only need to take the stairs to be on the path to health and enlightenment. It is that simple. You are your choices. You only need to be 5 % stronger and make the simple choices to live a healthy longer life. Practice those choice muscles in little lifts and the choices get easier to make. The and the burden of life is then easier to carry.
The most important step you take is the next one, so make it a step not a free ride.
