A long, fulfilling life requires work and constant tending to your physical and metabolic health. If we are shooting to live through our 80’s with optimal health and independence, we should be investing in our fitness and nutrition every decade.

We are frequently told that if you cut calories, you will lose weight. While this is true, we should ask what type of weight are we losing? Is it fat mass, muscle tissue, water, inflammation? I recently heard Dr. Don Layman give a synopsis of a study his lab conducted back in 2005 about this question.

Protein is a magical tool for living a healthy, functional life. It is essential for muscle growth, muscle preservation during fat loss, and maintaining a strong metabolism. Most people have never considered their protein intake and almost no one consumes enough.

Mobility is the ability to move a joint through full range of motion with control and strength. You may think you’re fine because you can touch your toes, but can you complete a full air squat? Or are you limited by mobility?

One of the best parts of coaching is watching new members start in Shift, then progress to Scaled, and work towards full RX workouts as they get fitter and stronger.

With 2026 on the horizon, I want to outline a few ways you can advance in your health, fitness, and athletic ability based on our Rx, Scaled, and Shift model. So let’s take a look:

Fall kicks off the countdown to the big 3 holiday season: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years. For my health-conscious people, it is also a time of great navigation and juggling of family traditions, social gatherings, travel, and treating yourself without going overboard. Every year, I remind myself of a few considerations to help navigate this wonderful, yet stressful time to enjoy the big 3 and maintain my health commitments.

We create the strongest hedge against chronic, metabolic disease and maximize our fitness training through the food we eat. We try to keep it simple and straight forward…

Protein intake is a significantly overlooked asset for many people starting a weight-loss or health optimization endeavor. They may peak into the debate of low-fat diets vs. low carbohydrate diets, but protein is the third macronutrient that gets left behind.

Hormones are signaling molecules that control and regulate every biological process in your body. They also impact behavior based on the signaling programmed. From conception to death, nothing happens in your body without the influence of a hormone regulating the process.

We have a metabolically sick nation. 16% of adults have diabetes.1 48% of adults have high blood pressure.225% of adults have hypertriglyceridemia.3 While only 24% meet the U.S. national guidelines for physical activity.4

I am going to lay out this title clear and simple, then fill in the blanks. Walking is a behavior of daily life that has become obsolete in the last century.

The simple fact is that something profoundly magical happens when you pair constantly varied, functional movement performed across broad times and modal domains with a diet of meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. You produce elite fitness, elite health, and the strongest hedge against chronic disease imaginable (diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, cancer, sarcopenia, osteoporosis, orthopedic injury, etc.).

The squat is the perfect expression of movement. It is a dance of muscle activation, joint capacity, balance, and body control. If you have a great squat, you probably live an active life with very little orthopedic issues and some level of fitness. Conversely, someone that cannot squat probably experiences daily orthopedic frustrations, limited mobility, and lacks athletic ability.

February is American Heart Month. Most people do not care but they should. Heart disease (cardiovascular disease) is the leading cause of death in the United States and accounts for 1 in 5 deaths in the U.S. annually.

A problem when discussing heart disease is the difficultly relating to the perceived susceptibility and how lifestyle choices build the pathway to disease. It is hard to get a 25-45 year old to care about heart health when it doesn’t impact their life today and they do not see the pathway of day to day lifestyle choices towards heart disease.

We often focus on habits to improve our health. We decide to eat more fruit, walk more daily, and get more sleep with our fingers crossed that we’ll lose weight, improve our health, and feel better. How exactly do these behaviors move the needle on our health? They directly influence the rise and fall of hormone levels in the body.