Sustainable Health and Fitness: My Tips for Long-Term Success
Sustainable health and fitness thrive on moderation and consistency.
Whether navigating festive seasons, frequent travel, or a demanding career, the strategies we’ll discuss will help you achieve fitness while juggling a busy professional life over the long term while not missing out on the other pleasures life has in store.
The Pillars of Enduring Fitness
Maintaining long-term health and fitness isn’t about extremes; it’s about constantly showing up, adapting, and about finding and sticking to what truly works most efficiently for your hectic schedule.
Over the years, I’ve found that sustainability in fitness is anchored in 3 core principles:
Wholesome, enjoyable nutrition,
Practical, time-efficient exercises, and
A mindset that values social connection and progress over perfection.
Here’s how these principles play a role in my daily life, and why they’re essential to my approach.
How I Eat to Stay Fit Year-Round
One of the biggest misconceptions is that healthy eating has to be restrictive or complicated. It’s actually more about wholesome nourishing foods, with room for some of what I sometimes call “pleasure food.”
Moderation Over Elimination: Instead of cutting out certain types of food, I believe in eating from all food groups. Yes, I include things like pumpkin pie, as you can see in the image above, but in portions and frequency that fit into my overall eating plan. In short, I don’t “do” diets.
Mindful Eating to Transform Your Relationship with Food: Listening to your body’s hunger and satiety cues can be a game-changer – not only helping you to avoid overeating, but also enhancing your appreciation of every bite. Here are three pro tips to help you master this practice for optimal satiety:
Don’t wait until you’re starving. Eating before you reach that “famished” state prevents overeating and helps you make better food choices – reducing the chances of you “gorging” yourself.
Slow down and savor. Chew each bite deliberately, noticing the textures, flavors, and even the aroma of your food. Eating slowly boosts satisfaction by giving your brain time to internalize and register the signals of fullness.
Pause between bites. Put your utensils down after every bite and pick them up only once you’ve fully chewed and swallowed. This simple habit helps you stay present, so enjoy your meal more mindfully.
Give these tips a try—your body (and taste buds) will thank you!
Simple, Effective Workouts
Fitness doesn’t have to be time-consuming or overly intense to be effective. My routine centers on workouts that fit into a busy schedule and keep me athletic and healthy.
Physical exercise should be sufficiently challenging to be effective. But you should also listen to your body: Pushing too hard and/or too often will lead to burnout or injury. Listen to your body and rest when necessary. Working out should be something you look forward to rather than dread.
Why I Choose a Sustainable Approach
Choosing a sustainable approach to health and fitness isn’t just about looking good; it’s about feeling good, too – so you can keep going. Quick-fix diets and maxi workout regimens may yield results in the short term, but they’re rarely possible to stick to over time. My approach prioritizes well-being over impulsivity-based “results” and embraces a gradual, realistic path to lasting fitness.
Sustainable Fitness Throughout the Festive Season: My Personal Strategy
Back to the main topic of this post: Sustainable health and fitness. With the festive season just around the corner, I want to emphasize my strategies for maintaining fitness – without sacrificing holiday enjoyment.
This period of the year comes with obvious health and fitness challenges, traps and pitfalls. Yearend parties, celebrations, more eating than usual, and definitely less exercising – at least these are the things that my audience usually does. Or doesn’t do. So it’s all too easy to become caught up in the whirlwind of overindulgence.
But rather than tell you what you should or could do, or what you should avoid etc. – I’m simply going to explain what I do and eat for sustainable fitness. If you’re familiar with my work, you’ll know I follow the Sensible Fitness Program (SFP). I pretty much do the same thing all year round.
A quick note before we proceed, particularly if you’re not acquainted with me: My program is largely antithetical to what the mainstream health and fitness industries promote.
Why? The answer is simple: Global statistics continue to show worsening health and fitness numbers – and a steady increase in obesity. In other words, conventional solutions are failing us.
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s the World Health Organization’s global status report on physical activity from 2022.
The clear standout warning is:
Regular physical activity is essential for both mental and physical health. Yet, more than 80% of adolescents and one in four adults globally fail to meet the recommended activity levels.
What Makes My Approach Unique?
Even though we have decades of proof, as a society – even with all the tools and facts at our fingertips – we continue choosing to avoid doing what makes us fitter and healthier.
To ensure I’ve never been part of the negative statistics, my fitness philosophy has always been rooted in what I call “sensible” principles: Consistency, Moderation, and Practicality.
How Is My Approach Different?
While mainstream health and fitness advice often promotes complex workouts or strict diets, global trends show that these conventional approaches aren’t solving the underlying problems. Obesity and physical inactivity are still on the rise, despite decades of advice. It's how I came to devising the Sensible Fitness Program (SFP) – a flexible, sustainable approach that has kept me fit year-round for over 20 years. It’s formulated to integrate into my busy professional lifestyle, not disrupt it. And it’s why I continue doing it.
Summarizing What Actually Works for Sustainable Fitness?
Coming full circle, my approach emphasizes 3 foundational components that, when applied consistently, deliver sustainable health: Enjoyable food, practical exercises, and a socially connected lifestyle.
Without these in a fitness program, do not expect lasting results. Long-term (or sustainable) health and fitness stems from consistency in the key daily choices you make – that add up to a significant impact on overall well-being.
Physical Exercise – My Core Routine
I keep things simple: 3 strength-training sessions and 3 cardio workouts per week. The routine is efficient, allowing me to balance fitness with other priorities. By focusing more on intensity rather than volume, I minimize workout time and maximize results.
The key here is practicality. A routine that fits seamlessly into your schedule is far more effective than a “perfect” workout that’s too demanding to maintain. Consistency over perfection is the real secret to success.
Avoiding Fitness Gimmicks and Fads
After finding out the hard way earlier in my life, I now know to steer clear of fitness gadgets or "shortcut" programs that promise miraculous results. True fitness requires genuine commitment, not shortcuts. I primarily train at home using basic, portable equipment, which allows me to stick to my routine even while traveling.
My essentials are a sturdy bar for pull-ups and chin-ups, resistance bands, dipping bars and a few other portable items. In short, I take my program with me on business travel and for the holidays.
Flexible Nutrition for Lasting Results
Regardless of what I’m doing or where I am, I always include my favorite meals!
I thought I'd lead with the best part ;) How do I do this and still manage to stay in shape?
Although the holiday season is a time of indulgence, it doesn’t mean you’re obliged to forego your fitness goals. I use an 80/20 approach: 80% wholesome, unprocessed foods, with the remaining 20% for the foods I love. This balance keeps me satisfied and makes it easier to stay on track. It’s more about the calories you consume than the food types.
Of course I include all 3 macronutrients: (fat, protein and carbohydrate). I find supplements to be largely ineffective, except for two: creatine and high-quality protein powder – really only required if you’re into elite-level training.
Bottom line: I consume real, nourishing and enjoyable food that supports my performance and fully satisfies my palate and appetite.
Protein and Supplement Myths
There’s a lot of hype around high-protein diets and supplements. Over the years, I’ve found that a moderate protein intake (around 0.75 grams per pound of body weight) is plenty sufficient. I mostly rely on real food, with minimal supplements.
A Few Key Science Facts
Weight gain happens when you take in more calories than you burn. You lose fat by eating less or exercising more, or the practical way – a combination of both. And by the way, the mirror and “how” your clothes fit are far better indicators than obsessing with the bathroom scale.
Newbies to fitness will actually see an initial weight gain. Why? Muscle weighs more than fat. And more muscle/muscle tone means more calories burned. Even at rest. You need to think fat loss instead of weight loss. Yo-yo dieters are experts at getting this wrong.
Starving yourself into shape without exercise is painful, tedious and unsustainable. You will have to reckon with continuous alarm signals to your brain, courtesy of leptin – commonly referred to as the satiety or starvation hormone. It helps inhibit hunger and regulate energy balance so that your body doesn't trigger a response when it doesn't need energy. Starving yourself of calories is neither healthy nor sustainable. You'll be messing with your metabolism and risking the possibility of disordered eating.
Deprivation: A Case for Common Sense in Eating
I’ve read tons of health and fitness articles in my time. One that I always remember – because I was flabbergasted – included this tip: “If it tastes too good, spit it out.”
Now, maybe you can fool yourself (and your psyche) for a while, but let me assure you that through this kind of slow-burn deprivation, primal instincts will strike when you least expect it – like on a day when you’re feeling a little low or out-of-sorts. And we all get those days! When that happens, your impulse control is sure to fail.
Let common sense and moderation be your guides.
In the end, a little indulgence won’t derail you – but deprivation just might.
Managing Festive Season Temptations
Rather than relying on deprivation, I say that the kind of self-control you want is one based on knowing you have permission to eat from all food groups, within reason – because you’re “on” your program and you’ve got that sensible eating plan in your back pocket.
I do this using intermittent fasting on most days. Mindful that I get to eat my preferred meals at dinner time means I comfortably manage to “behave” during the day in terms of adherence and compliance.
Indiscriminate eating usually tends to occur when people have no real eating approach and try to “wing” it. And it’s exactly why winging it ultimately leads to weight gain. It’s well documented that eating mostly high-carb foods thwarts satiety, stimulating the appetite, and increasing the probability that we will eat more.
This doesn’t happen when you have a sustainable and reliable eating plan, whether you incorporate intermittent fasting or not. Fat loss is easiest when you combine strength training, cardio and sensible eating. This is the only way to a sustainable solution.
By the same token, intense regular exercise isn’t a licence to eat indiscriminately. In other words, you can’t outrun a bad diet.
Festive season or otherwise, my approach remains largely the same.
The Takeaway – Find What Works for You
The best, most sustainable fitness program is one that seamlessly integrates into your life—enhancing it rather than disrupting it.
While my SFP approach works particularly well for busy professionals, there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. However, through consistent commitment, self-awareness, trial and error, and an unwavering belief in your potential, you can unlock a lifetime of health and vitality. You kind of have to want this “badly” enough.
Put simply, the best fitness program is the one you’ll stick with for the long haul.
Explore My Sustainable Fitness Program (SFP)
If my approach resonates with you, why not check out the Sensible Fitness Program? Formulated for real life, it focuses on building lasting habits—no extremes, no quick fixes. Just a balanced, practical approach that brings health, fitness, and enjoyment together.
