Want to learn how to be healthier and live a more primal lifestyle? Here are nine of Mark Sisson’s best quotes about optimal healthy living that anyone can be inspired by.
1. “If you have a habit of disrespecting consistent sleep time habits, you create momentum in the wrong direction and will struggle to achieve basic health and fitness goals.”
Ever hear the expression, “You can sleep when you’re dead?” Well, you won’t be doing much living – not healthfully anyway – if you continuously neglect sleep. If you don’t get enough sleep, you won’t be able to have enough energy left over to do all the other things necessary for living a primal lifestyle, such as working out and preparing good home cooked meals. Make sleep a priority. Even if you do not think it will impact your day tomorrow, it most certainly will.
2. “Once you’re sensitized to the negative effects of unhealthy choices, it gets easier to turn down what used to seem impossible to resist.”
The best thing you can do to start training yourself to make smarter choices about your health is to pay attention to how poor health habits negatively impact you. The more aware you are of the ways poor choices can harm you, the less likely you are to make those kinds of choices. The next step, of course, is to replace those unhealthy habits with healthier ones.
3. “The profound psychological benefits of play are integral to healthy cultures, communities, and individuals, including a direct relationship to work productivity.”
You are never, ever too busy to put down what you are doing and engage in a fun activity that has nothing to do with work. You are never too busy to make time for your hobbies, your friends and the things and people you love the most. You should always make time for play, even if you do not think you have enough time for it. You do. In fact, the more often you make time for play in between work, the more productive you will be.
4. “Those who think they have not time for bodily exercise will sooner or later have to find time for illness.”
Exercise is essential in order to lead a healthy, primal lifestyle. This is true whether you want to believe it or not. Humans did not evolve to sit in chairs all day long. If you continue to use lack of time as an excuse for not being able to get up and move, you are going to severely and negatively impact your health and your life. Do whatever it takes to get yourself exercising, or you aren’t going to like the results.
5. “Calm, quiet, dark evenings, and consistent bed and wake times are critical factors for high quality sleep.”
It is possible to get enough sleep and still have poor sleeping habits, believe it or not. In order to get your body into a rhythm so it cn function more effectively throughout the day, improve your sleeping habits as soon as possible. Developing good bedtime and sleeping habits will help you be healthier in the long term. Go to bed and wake up around the same time every day, even on weekends. Do not look at any screens for at least an hour before you go to sleep. Let your brain start to wind down before you climb into bed.
6. “I don’t eat a single bite of food that I don’t absolutely love.”
There is no rule in the legitimate health scene that says you are required to eat foods you do not enjoy. If you do not like salad, stop forcing yourself to eat salad. There are plenty of other ways to eat more spinach. The whole point of healthy eating as part of your primal lifestyle is to find a way to make healthy eating work for you. Eat what you enjoy and stop complaining about your salad.
7. “Mostly, your success depends on how diligent you are in keeping dietary insulin levels low.”
This mindset is all about self control. When we eat too much, our insulin level skyrocket. Most of us, biologically, can bring that insulin level back down again, but if we let it fluctuate too much, problems like pre-diabetes set in. Simply put, if you can’t control what you eat, you aren’t going to be very successful in any area of your life, because your level of self control is nowhere near where it should be. If you can control your intake, you can control anything you need to control in order to ensure success in your life.
8. “Rather than strive to ‘lose weight,’ most people would be better off striving to lose only fat and to build or maintain muscle.”
Sometimes we approach adopting healthier habits with the wrong kind of mindset. We focus too much on what we need to lose instead of thinking more logically about what we should be gaining. Instead of losing weight, think about building muscle. Instead of cutting out junk food, think about adding more fruits and vegetables into your diet. This gives you a more positive outlook on your health and associated healthy habits.
9. “Pursue new challenges, such as music, language, hobbies, or adventures that stimulate your brain and allow you to depart from your daily routine. This will keep you refreshed and energized for your core daily responsibilities and economic contribution.”
One of the best ways to stay energized and productive no matter how busy you are is to always make sure you are constantly challenging your brain with various activities that don’t have anything to do with work or normal responsibilities. Stimulating your brain is important as you move through the various tasks throughout days, weeks, months and years. Find hobbies and projects that will allow you to be more creative and think critically on your own time.
Your primal lifestyle is not as far away as you think. Shift your habits and add in new ones, and you will be able to see results in no time at all.
