Focus on the Major Lifestyle Changes, Not the Small Rocks...

When starting out on your health & fitness journey, there are a heck of a lot of nuances. Lots of little difference makers; some simple to implement, some extremely complicated. All these different changes that you hear, read, learn and are spoken to about (or preached to about!) can be completely over the top for the average person or just way too much technical information to absorb, way to quickly.

For those that are new to this change of lifestyle, there are many things that need to be addressed; but unfortunately, beginners tend to be bombarded with a whole heap of science-driven facts and changes to implement, when quite frankly... they just don't need to be given attention to yet. For the beginner, big lifestyle changes that need to be initially addressed/improved upon include: eating habits, daily movement (becoming less-sedentary), prioritizing sleep, understanding how caloric intake works within the body, determining your own caloric intake, understanding the importance of protein and basic & foundational resistance training programming/workouts.

What the beginner DOESN'T need to know is the real nitty-gritty, scientific, small changes that are really only useful to the experienced person. Things like feeding windows, reverse dieting, extreme workout programing, good/bad oils, caloric undulation etc.

Whilst these things may help, they really are for the person that is advanced in their journey and strongly dialed-in on their training, nutrition, sleep, fitness levels etc. The big implementations I just mentioned should always be the primary focus, these are the big rocks. Once you have cleared the big rocks out of the way of your path, then you can focus on and start chipping away at the smaller rocks, for complete lifestyle optimization. But until then, there really is no point trying to clear the smaller rocks until you get the bigger ones out of the way first, which are covering the smaller ones anyway.

This also goes for supplementation. Whilst Protein and Creatine are honestly something that everyone should at least have on hand, readily available if required (or even fish oil & vitamin D if you are deficient); for the most part, supplementation also falls into the category of "small rocks". You can take all the supplements in the world if you want... but they aren't going to do a damn thing for you if all these other big rocks aren't dialed in. Actually, in most cases, supplementation falls to the bottom of the list, behind a lot of the other "smaller rocks" in all honesty. This however does depend on the type of supplement, of course.

So there you have it! Focus on the big things, the big lifestyle changes. Make them a part of your everyday life, ensure that they are sustainable long term... then you can focus on the other things, if you see fit.