Ideas in the Wild: Gavin Sinclair and Ryan Copleston Are Helping Couch Potatoes and Fitness Fanatics Alike Improve Their Wellbeing

More people than ever before are struggling with chronic disease and relying on medications to manage it. But there’s a science-based program that enables us to achieve optimal health without the need for drugs by harnessing the innate intelligence of our own bodies.

In The Simple Science of Wellness, chiropractors Gavin Sinclair and Ryan Copleston explore how small, incremental changes in movement, nutrition, and mindfulness will result in massive, long-term improvements in our physiology and mental state. Their FIT 5–40–5 plan is designed to maximize our intelligent body’s intrinsic ability to move naturally toward optimum health, helping us become stronger, sharper, and more energetic, whether we’re couch potatoes or fitness fanatics. I recently caught up with the duo to learn more about their new book.

What made you decide to write the book? What was the exact moment when you realized these ideas needed to get out there?

We were running our FIT 5–40–5 program for patients in our clinic gym and the participation was very high and the mix of interested clients was exactly what we were hoping to achieve. After having worked with thousands of patients over the years, we could see the trends in lifestyle beliefs and behaviors that we thought we could shift if we worked directly with them.

Having established trust with our patients over time, we felt that would help us in gaining their commitment to the FIT 5–40–5 program. As we worked through the program with multiple groups, we found ourselves repeating the message and answering the same questions.

We created a workbook, revised the workbook, then revised it again before it was almost becoming a book. One day, we were chatting with an 88-year-old client who came to us as a referral. He was doing his second challenge. He told us he thought his days of exercising were done 30 years ago, but he feels better now than 20 years ago and only wished he realized he had this ability back then. I can’t put the impact this moment had on us into words.

It was a lightbulb moment. These ideas are out there. However, it’s how we’re communicating and delivering the ideas in such a manageable format that is what made this special.

What’s the biggest lesson you learned going through the journey you share in the book?

The biggest lesson I’ve learned is to never assume someone is not interested in committing to better health. It is very easy to look at someone’s lifestyle and assume they just don’t care and simply aren’t interested in being a better version of themselves.

We were blessed with so many people coming through our door that we may have previously assumed they simply weren’t interested. Within months and sometimes even weeks, these same people were so grateful for the guidance for the transformations they were experiencing. We realized so many people were wanting to make a change but just didn’t know how to achieve a better life. It cemented our belief and understanding that small changes made consistently over time could help even those people with the hardest living lifestyles.

What has this lesson done for you?

The lessons we have learned throughout this process have just made us better people. Becoming more aware of people’s circumstances, concerns, and dreams is often lost because we are so busy with our own lives. This process was not just eye-opening.

It was a full-blown awakening of the world around us. It gave us so much opportunity to reflect on what we thought to be true and what was in fact true. We have both taken our skills as chiropractors abroad to help in underprivileged areas. That “need” was always easy to see because of the stark contrast to how we live in the developed world.

However, there are so many people within 10 miles of our homes that can benefit from some form of help and guidance. The more open we’ve become as a result of running our FIT 5–40–5 program, the more people we attract into our lives that are looking for what we have to offer.