HEALTHY LIFESTYLE
Sun Tzu & The Art of Getting Your Ass In Shape
Ancient lessons for modern battlefields — the gym and kitchen
Sun Tzu: Ancient Chinese general, military strategist, and the fitness and diet Guru we didn’t know we needed.
Yes, The Art Of War is choc-a-bloc full of lessons we can apply to our own personal battles to get fitter, healthier, and keep the belly in check as we get older.
Aged 47, I’ve been trying to stay in shape for 30 years and have coached others to do so for the last 15, and I know that having the best workout and diet plan in the world isn’t enough to ‘win’ this battle.
We are guaranteed to lose and get nowhere fast, if we are unprepared to face the two enemies in our midst: an already-hectic life, and our own Inner Asshole.
So let’s see what Mr Tzu has to say…
#1 — “If he is superior in strength, evade him”
Don’t pick fights you know you can’t win.
For you and me that means avoiding things that we know will derail our best-laid plans to eat better and exercise more.
For example, we all have trigger foods that we struggle to control ourselves around. We even have trigger moods that cause us to seek out indulgences to cheer ourselves up or celebrate.
- If I’m stressed on a Tuesday and there is beer in the fridge, I’ll have a beer or two on a Tuesday night. Then my sleep suffers and motivation is low the next day.
- If there are sugary/salty snacks in the cupboard, and I’m bored, I can hear them calling to me as I wait for my coffee to brew — “Just a wee handful… go on…”.
I wish I had the cast-iron discipline to manage these triggers when I’m stressed or bored, but I don’t.
So I avoid the fight.
There’s no junk food and booze in the house until weekends. Then I go buy it, consume it by Sunday, and then there’s none left again. Then I can follow a healthier diet Monday-Friday.
#2 — “The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand”
Telling ourselves we’ll do our best to work out and eat ‘right’ this week never quite comes off, right?
Things come up. You don’t get around to it.
Next week though, next week is Go Time…
You need a plan. You need to make calculations. What. When. Where. How.
For me, this means Sundays involve sitting with a coffee and planning when my workouts will be, and what our meals will be (I do the grocery shopping and cooking).
I need to take into account my work schedule, random errands I have to run, and of course my unpaid, zero-benefits job as Dad Taxi to 3 teenage ingrates.
You see,
- If you know what you need to eat to follow your diet plan, you can shop accordingly so the stuff you need is there when you need it.
- If you schedule workouts they are harder to cancel, you’ve made an appointment with yourself that you want to keep.
If you fail to plan anything, hoping healthy meals and workouts somehow just magically happen, you’ll lose another week, blaming your busy life.
#3 — “There is no instance of a country having benefitted from prolonged warfare”
Immense amounts of effort and discipline shouldn’t be necessary to stick with your training or diet plans long-term.
You shouldn’t need to be in Battle Mode forever just to get in shape. It’ll be exhausting and you’ll admit defeat eventually.
Of course, the first couple of weeks of doing something new will feel like a lot of effort, a lot of change.
But if your program is doable and realistic, given what else you have going on in life, things should settle down and it all shouldn’t feel that hard to stick with anymore.
Progress should happen slowly but surely, but if that’s not happening for you, then stop. Take stock of why it’s so hard. Maybe what you’re doing requires you to:
- do too much food preparation;
- eat weird sh*t you don’t even like;
- work out too often, meaning you’re tired, sore, and busy all the time;
- exercise in a way you hate and will never enjoy.
You need to aim for something more sustainable, so you can stick with things for long enough to make progress.
You can’t stay at war with the practicalities of your program forever.
#4 — “One may know how to conquer without being able to do it”
Pre-internet we’d argue with a friend about the name of that actor who was in that thing we saw on DVD.
Now we just google it, or ask Siri, who confirms it was Freddie Prinze Jnr, OK Steve?! Ha. In your face.
Anyway, we have so much knowledge at our fingertips, we know from articles, tweets, podcasts, and videos exactly what to do to get in shape.
And yet obesity and inactivity levels increase by the year.
I had a 280lbs prospective client who came into my training studio for a consult. He explained to me in great detail, citing multiple studies, why an Intermittent Fasting approach was the best and easiest way to lose body fat consistently.
He knew what to do, had all the knowledge and facts, and yet…
Goethe said something similar to Sun Tzu on this point, and I like his quote so much I got a local graffiti artist to put it on my studio wall (see below):
So we should absolutely do our research into the various approaches to getting fitter and stronger or losing weight. We need to find something that suits our lifestyle, goals, and how we like to eat/exercise.
But you need to then DO something with all that info!
#5 — “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy not coming, but on our readiness to receive him”
The mistake I’ve made in the past when starting a fat loss plan, or some muscle-building program, was to get bogged down in the day-to-day details.
I had a spreadsheet of the exact times of specific meals, tracking calories and macronutrients.
I had 12 weeks of workouts all mapped out, with incremental changes each week, based on the previous workouts.
What I didn’t have was a plan for what to do when life or my Inner Asshole got in the way.
- What if I was running late and couldn’t eat the right thing?
- What if I ended up having takeout for dinner because I’d had a bad day, and pizza would solve all my problems? ;-)
- What if my knee was sore, so squats felt a bit iffy, and I skipped ‘Leg Day’?
- What if I canceled a workout because I wasn’t feeling it, the new season of Bridgerton was available (shut it), or I felt too tired?
Was the whole plan ruined if I hit hurdles like these? Should I scrap everything and go back to the drawing board? What was I supposed to do when I didn’t do the right thing?
I needed to keep working on the plan as best I could while trying to figure out why I was self-sabotaging things.
Plan for f*ck-ups. Expect challenges. Don’t assume everything will run smoothly — it won’t.
And how we react to bumps in the road will dictate whether we make progress or fall off the wagon for a couple of weeks again.
And last but not least…
#6 — “In battle, there are not more than two methods of attack: the direct and indirect”
I always tell clients I want to help them to get in shape… and then never see or hear from them again. In the nicest possible way.
What I mean is, I want them to get fitter, stronger, and slimmer in ways they feel they can stick to forever, eventually without my help.
Because here’s the thing, if you treat the whole thing as a short-term project (Lose Weight, Get Strong, Build Muscle, Lose The Belly) that you can stop after X weeks, then you CAN make great progress.
But it doesn’t ‘stick’.
This, for me, is the difference between a Direct and Indirect approach to getting in shape and winning the battle against weight gain and fitness loss as we get older.
Let me explain…
A Direct approach is normally a fixed timeframe and requires a ton of effort.
A 6-Week MegaMuscleBlast. A 12-Week Fat Torch-athon!
It involves a lot of effort on your part:
- lots of tough workouts
- lots of calorie restriction
- lots of broccoli
- absolutely zero wine, cake, or lying on the sofa
but it WILL work if you can focus 100% on sticking to the plan for the given length of time.
But what happens at the end of the 6 or 12 weeks?
Did you learn how to eat like a normal human while staying in control of your body weight? Do you have a healthy relationship with exercise, seeing it as something you look forward to long term?
In contrast, an Indirect approach to getting in shape has no end date
It’s about adopting a healthier lifestyle, and sustainable habits around exercise and better food choices. Yes, that does sound incredibly dull, and it doesn’t even have a catchy name. But it works long-term.
The Getting In Shape bit happens as a welcome side-effect of deciding to take better care of yourself:
- sleeping more, managing stress better;
- making healthy food choices more often than not;
- being more active in daily life AND fitting in a few challenging workouts each week.
With an Indirect approach, your progress in terms of weight loss or muscle gain is slower, BUT it doesn’t involve turning life upside down, doing anything hardcore, or anything you can’t wait to stop doing.
And in this way, your ‘battle’ to get and stay in shape is over for good.
You’ve won.
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