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LenDentonThrive Letter #34

Welcome to the LenDentonThrive Letter! My mission is to help 50+ Guys Get Lighter and Leaner, Get Stronger, and Live Longer. We do that by building our ThriveLife!

In this edition, we’re going to be talking about the building blocks of your ThriveLife. I’m going to show you how making some simple choices can put you in the fast lane to your own ThriveLife.

This is Part 5 of my 6-part series to help you build your own custom-tuned ThriveLife in 2024. Here’s where we’ve been so far:

• In Part 1, I explained what the ThriveLife is, and why you need your own personal ThriveLife.

• In Part 2, I laid the foundation for your ThriveLife with ThriveLife Principles 1 & 2.

• In Part 3, I showed you how to fuel your ThriveLife by Eating Smarter, which is ThriveLife Principle #3.

• In Part 4, I showed you how to Move Smarter by adding fat-killing exercise to your ThriveLife. That’s Principle #4.

Let’s dive right in!

Creating A Lifestyle

Everybody has a lifestyle.

We’re all living the lifestyle that we’ve created, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Our lifestyles are a composite of the decisions that we’ve made over time. Our lifestyles are expressions of our behavior.

What are lifestyles made of? The building blocks of our lifestyles are our daily practices - things that we do day after day.

If you’re living a healthy lifestyle, it’s because your daily habits and practices are healthy. Conversely, if you have an unhealthy lifestyle, it’s because your daily practices are predominantly unhealthy.

Here’s some good news! You get to choose your daily practices! And, those choices will determine your lifestyle.

I spend a lot of time talking and writing about the ThriveLife. It’s a lifestyle specifically built to help Over-50 Guys get lighter and leaner, get stronger, and live longer!

What’s the ThriveLife made of?

You guessed it - healthy daily practices! The best daily practices are built on solid, science-based principles like the ThriveLife Principles. So far, I’ve shared the first four principles as I noted in the intro above. Figure 1 below shows you how principles and practices are the solid foundation for building your ThriveLife.

To further illustrate this idea of building a lifestyle on daily practices, I’ll share a personal example of my daily practices with you.

My Daily Practices

I started my personal ThriveLife journey on January 1, 2014. On that day, I was the heaviest I’ve ever been. My cholesterol was almost 300. Two weeks earlier, my doctor told me that I was a poster child for a heart attack or stroke.

The only things I knew on that day were that I needed to improve my diet and start getting some exercise. I had a new Fitbit Zip, and I decided that I was going to get 10,000 steps a day because I’d read it on the Internet.

On July 4, 2014, my weight was down 70 pounds and my cholesterol was around 200. This was all because I’d found a set of daily practices that helped me to build a healthy lifestyle.

I had found my ThriveLife fast lane.

I began my ThriveLife journey with 4 daily practices. Here’s a quick overview of each one:

#1-Daily Weigh-in Ritual - I weigh every day…first thing in the morning… before any food or drink. This is powerful in 2 ways. First, we are working to modify our behavior, and this practice allowed me to link today’s weight to yesterday’s activities. Second, recording this in an app created a weight loss graph that I looked at every day. This engages our minds at a subconscious level to make the curve bend in the right direction. I recommend that every guy do this practice.

#2-Daily Steps - When I began, I had a leg that prevented me from running or lifting. All I could do was walk. So, I walked 10,000 steps a day. I became a Fitbit Fanatic. To make that fit into my schedule, I walked early in the morning before breakfast or going to work. I didn’t realize it at that time, but I was doing fasting Zone 2 cardio. This is the best fat-burning cardio you can do.

#3-Eating Smarter - The weight loss battle is won in the kitchen, not the gym! I knew that I needed to change my diet. There was so much confusion about the best nutrition strategy, but I found a solution that worked for me. I simply eliminated sugars and high-glycemic foods. I stopped eating six foods (sugar, white flour, white rice, white potatoes, corn, and high fructose corn syrup). And then, I ate whatever else I wanted. I ate more than before and still lost weight. I’m still doing this today! Don’t diet. Eat smarter!

#4-Daily Food Plan - I spent 5-6 minutes every day thinking about my schedule and how I’d be eating that day. For instance, did I have a client lunch at an unfamiliar restaurant? Doing this allowed me to plan ahead so I seldom found myself in a situation with bad food choices. I usually did my planning while I was walking, so it didn’t cost me any additional time out of my day.

That’s it. These four simple daily practices led me to my initial ThriveLife success. Over the years, I’ve experimented with additional daily practices, but these were the basics. They are still part of my ThriveLife for a simple reason - they work for me.

You’ll find your own daily practices as you begin your ThriveLife journey.

In Closing

We are all living the lifestyle that’s built on our current daily practices. If you want to live a healthy life, choose healthy daily practices.

But, if you want to build a healthy lifestyle, choose healthy daily practices that you can do for the rest of your life! That’s the path to the ThriveLife fast lane!

Over the last five weeks, I’ve explained what the ThriveLife is. I’ve described the four key ThriveLife principles you need to begin your Thrivelife. And, in this edition, I’ve explained how those principles can become the building blocks we use to build our own customized version of the ThriveLife.

As the new year approaches, I hope you’ll choose systems over goals. Rather than just making another resolution to get into better shape in the new year, I hope you’ll choose to build your ThriveLife in 2024.

You’re worth it!

Merry Christmas! I wish you and your family great fellowship and joy during this holiday season.

See you next week!

Len

I write this newsletter hoping to make a positive impact on the lives of Over-50 Guys and and their families. If you found this information useful, please consider subscribing to receive new editions each week.

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