Resilient Seeker Coaching | Ross Raymond Nunamaker

I’ve written alot about the Vitals, Exercise, and Nutrition I track, so I’m not going to revisit that here. I do want to speak to the “Why?” The benefit of a good diet, exercise, and watching your vital signs.

I grew up in a home with a father who was a health and physical education teacher and a coach. He was best known as a wrestling coach, but throughout his career he also coached Track, Cross-Country and Golf.

Wrestling in particular tests you physically, mentally, and emotionally. Diet is critical because weight loss is a part of the sport. When working with high school age students trying to balance wrestling with their teen years, all three of these areas are magnified in importance for them. In short, it is a lot to handle for a young person.

 I had a good amount of knowledge around diet and exercise growing up, but it wasn’t until I had my own health issues that I began to fully grasp the significance of diet and exercise on my over-all well being. I then took courses from the National Association of Sports Medicine including Metabolic Makeover, Science of Fat Metabolism and Aligning Diet and Exercise. This allowed me to bring together my experience with contemporary theory and practice in sports medicine.

Nutrients to Diet

In recapping and helping others, I now believe the most important aspect is to understand that without giving your body the right amount and mix of nutrients, you put your mental, emotional and physical self at risk.

Diet is not solely to fuel the muscles. It supports all functions. Neurons drive brain activity by transmitting electrical and chemical signals and they require a tremendous amount of energy. It is understood that the brain is roughly 2% of body mass, but uses 20% of your energy.

The better optimized your mental capabilities become, the better you are able to manage your emotions and instincts.

The nutrients become the basis for the diet you follow. I’m not a fan of selecting a diet provider or plan and expecting positive results that would exceed what I could do myself following basic understandings of what I am trying to accomplish.

I’ve mentioned multiple times taking my doctor’s direction first. You should too. Get feedback, as specific as you can, but general works as well.

Then look at your bloodwork and see where improvements can be made.

Review daily recommended allowances per nutrients.

With this information, you can begin to build out the nutrients you want to focus on, how much of each you want on a daily basis, and then begin to determine how much you are currently receiving and how to close the gap to where you want to be.

Nutrition, then, leads to having a diet. Tracking both along with your exercise will give you data that demonstrates progress.

Exercise to Activity

I’ve come to believe exercise is the wrong word for what we should be tracking. Activity is a better term. Everyone is active even when they are at rest.

Activity then is the body using an amount of energy for something as measured by calories burned. This could be digestion, recovery as you sleep, thinking, walking, gardening, doing chores, playing games or exercising. 

It encompasses everything you do that requires energy derived from nutrients contained in your diet.

My first inclination to shift from exercise to activity was when I noticed most everyone I passed while walking, who was running, did not appear to be enjoying themself. 

The cyclist didn’t appear to be in as much pain or struggle, but they still appeared determined and serious. They also didn’t seem to be appreciating all the good things around them in the moment.

When I began cost was a consideration. I also knew I’d be very self conscious at a gym because I knew how out of shape I was.  For a one or two month membership cost I bought a set of adjustable dumbbells and created two twenty minute workouts. It lasted about a month and a half. I wasn’t that into it. I didn’t care that much to keep doing it. The dumbbells are accessible and I will probably go back to occasional lifting when I can’t get outside, but I can live without it.

I do invest in racquetball. I started playing again before covid and I tipped the scale at 199.8. There was a club nearby, I knew how to play, so I bought a starter racquet, glasses, and balls.

I was in worse shape than I thought, but I could go and hit by myself for $10 an hour. I eventually met people and got to play three times a week.

I like the pace of the game, reaction, planning and my Tuesday group is more a social guys night out. We play for an hour or so and get dinner after. This is pretty much all I play anymore as I balance it with walking and practice during the season.

My point is to not view your activity as an obligation as most people do with exercise. Do it because you enjoy it or the people you are doing it with.

I get lost in my thoughts in my walks. I may not be running a well paced 5k, but if I walk for ten to fifteen miles in the morning and then have my day ahead of me, I’ve done pretty good on my physical and mental side.

And I can give examples, anecdotes and studies to convince you it works, but when you start to track it for yourself and you see results that align with how you are feeling, you will keep doing it to the point you have to teach yourself to be okay with breaking routine, or as I’ll refer to it, using conditional routines.

So think of VEN as a personalised path to a better you that is measured and managed to integrate and improve what you are already doing and not upheaving your life to do what others are doing because someone said that is how to do it, without knowing you.

Lessons Learned

Nutrients drive diet to fuel all functions of your mind and body. Activity is critical to optimize your overall well-being. You don’t have to exercise, you do have to be active.

Questions for You

Do you enjoy following a diet? Or have you done so in the past and not had the success you wanted? Why? What didn’t work for you? Similarly, do you enjoy exercising for the act of exercising or do you get satisfaction from having done it, but don’t really enjoy it? Can you find ways to replace things you feel you have to do with things you want to do and get the same overall benefit or more?