I’m someone who typically has low energy levels and suffers from all kinds of fairly mild maladies (bad allergies, frequent headaches, orthopedic pain from fairly innocuous activities, etc), and most of the recommendations I see for how to improve this are either silly (juice cleanse!) or serious medical interventions (spend thousands of dollars on allergy shots, sleep studies, imaging, etc). I’ve tried many of the sillier interventions over the years (with the expected lack of results), and I’ve seen many other people in similar situations do the same.
As a result, I’m curious if you have any thoughts on what the most effective diet/lifestyle/training interventions are for improving short term wellness and quality of life. I’ve seen lots of recommendations from evidence-based practitioners for how to improve performance or long-term health, but not much about how to simply feel better in the short term. My hope is that if someone like me focuses on things that will have the greatest benefit to short term quality of life, they would be better equipped to make the changes necessary to improve longevity and achieve specific performance goals in the future.
Any thoughts or resources you can offer would be greatly appreciated!
Training regularly (and ideally meeting U.S. Physical Activity Guidelines),
Maintaining a healthy body weight and composition (i.e., increasing lean body mass and reducing body fat levels to below the waist circumference cutoffs we recommend)
Consuming an appropriate amount of total calories for #2, while also meeting our protein and fiber recommendations.
Aiming to maximize sleep quality and sleeping for a sufficient duration (which may in fact require you to undergo a sleep study, since you mentioned it)
Avoiding smoking/drug use and excessive alcohol use
Maintaining a healthy social life and engaging in meaningful/fulfilling activities/work
For the purposes of general health and other specific outcomes, we also agree with the age- and sex-specific recommendations by the USPSTF: Prevention TaskForce Search
I would also recommend you follow our educational content on pain in order to improve your ability to manage with those issues, since pain is a natural part of life that we all must deal with.
Thank you for the detailed response. Would it be reasonable to assume that, until I get those points nailed down, I should not worry too much about other details of my diet (carbs vs fats, fruit/vegetable intake, meal frequency/timing, etc.)?
Carbs vs. fats primarily come down to personal preferences, UNLESS there are other medical conditions present that might influence our recommendations (e.g., insulin resistance/diabetes, dyslipidemia, or cardiovascular disease, among others).
We recommend consuming fruits & vegetables, particularly as whole food sources of dietary fiber.
Correct, meal frequency/timing is a minor detail that we do not recommend most people (i.e., non-elite athletes) concern themselves with.
Do you have any recommendations for how to prioritize these various items? For example, I find that training consistency often trades off against sleep, calorie intake trades off against getting a lot of protein/fruit/vegetables, and maintaining a social life trades off against basically everything. I recognize that this doesn’t have to be the case, and many people do all of these things at the same time, but I’ve personally found that trying make too many interventions generally results in failure with all of them. I’m curious if you have any suggestions for which of these items to focus on first in order to increase the likelihood of adherence and success. I’m thinking of things like:
“You should focus on getting your training in above all else, even if it means missing some sleep or putting strain on social relationships”
or
“Structure your diet in such a way that you get your waist circumference below the recommended cutoff ASAP, even at the cost of reduced protein intake or not eating many vegetables”
My hope would be that, once I have a handle on the highest priority items, I will be healthier and in a better position to continue tackling the other interventions. Alternatively, if you think this is a completely misguided approach, please let me know.