The article below is an excerpt from my newsletter: Well Enough with Harry Bullmore. To get my latest thoughts on fitness and wellbeing pop your email address into the box above to get the newsletter direct to your inbox.
Fear is a powerful motivator. Unfortunately, some fitness folks have cottoned on and now use it to drive people to their website, social media pages, or services.
“STOP doing this if you want a flat tummy.” “Eating this ONE FOOD is giving you cellulite.” Sound familiar? This week’s newsletter headline is a tongue-in-cheek nod to this approach.
On this topic, a Well Enough reader recently told me it was hard to find helpful health information amid a quagmire of conflicting advice online. This reminded me of a handy tip for spotting misinformation, shared with me by Everything Fat Loss author Ben Carpenter: “The biggest red flag for me is one person making it sound like the thing they are telling you is revolutionary. But in health and fitness, the things that we know work aren’t revolutionary.
In this week’s newsletter, I’ll try to highlight the non-revolutionary acts that genuinely benefit your health.
A couple of years ago I happened upon two 1950s exercise booklets produced by the Royal Canadian Air Force – the female-focused XBX plan and male-oriented 5BX plan.
I flicked through, expecting to find a series of antiquated exercises and messages. But though the booklet isn’t an easy read, filled with charts and figures, the rationale behind most of the advice remains watertight – and, dare I say it, better than many modern equivalents.
“Live to be fit and be fit to live,” the XBX plan states. It encourages daily movement through 12-minute bodyweight workouts, prescribes progressive exercises that start gently then gradually ramp up in line with your improving fitness levels, and it works your body through all three planes of motion to maintain mobility. There’s very little not to like.
This also happens to be the workout Helen Mirren has used “off and on my whole life” because “it just very gently gets you fit”. As strength coach Paddy James once told me, “success leaves clues,” and Mirren’s 60-year career would send Scooby-Doo into overdrive.
I also spoke to experienced sports physiotherapist Alex Morrell this week about all things back pain. His advice didn’t involve miracle cures or transformative products – just strengthening the surrounding muscles, improving a few lifestyle factors and de-stressing through breathwork: 10 breaths through the nose; five seconds in, five seconds out.
“People overlook the importance of nutrition, hydration, sleep and other lifestyle factors that you take for granted, but they underpin everything,” Morrell tells me.
“If you think about an athlete, coaches will try to optimise everything they do for better performance and recovery. Getting out of pain is a process of improving performance.”
If you can improve your sleep, diet and stress levels, even incrementally, Morrell says you will create a greater buffer against injury by building a more resilient body – inside and out.
And finally this week, I dived into the topic of supplements: another area where people are often promised something just shy of a Dorian Gray portrait in their attic.
Speaking to experts, the overriding message was that there isn’t one universal vitamin, mineral or pill that will transform anyone’s health for the better, as much as certain social media videos try to persuade you otherwise.
There are some that are more widely applicable than others, such as omega-3 if you don’t eat much oily fish, vitamin B12 for vegans and vitamin D for Brits – for weather-based reasons, I’m sure you can guess.
But the supplements that actually benefit you will depend on your individual circumstances. For example, what you eat, your lifestyle and your ability to absorb certain nutrients. They should also be a last resort of sorts.
Vassiliki Sinopoulou, a clinical dietitian and lecturer at the University of Lancashire, suggests looking at ways to improve your sleep patterns, manage your diet and stay calm before spending heavily on supplements – there’s a theme here.
Amie Leckie, a nutritional therapist with Heart Research UK, also prescribes a “food first approach” to hitting your daily nutritional quotas. If you are suffering symptoms of nutrient deficiency such as fatigue, she recommends a visit to the GP and a blood test for further insights.
“Supplement companies are there to make money, so they’re going to tell you their supplement is the best, but Mother Nature knows best,” Leckie concludes. “I’m not anti-supplement – I use them daily. But what I use is based on tests and specific needs I know I have.”
To wrap up my ramblings: if something sounds too good to be true or is clearly designed to scare you, I would strongly recommend questioning it.
For long-term results, try to make small, sustainable and positive changes to your consistent behaviours. And hey, if you have a spare 12 minutes, why not try training like Helen Mirren?
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