Disclaimer: I hope everybody reading this has done a puzzle or two in their time, or if you haven’t then I hope you’re familiar with the concept of puzzles – If you don’t fall into either of those categories then this analogy probably won’t make sense.  Alright, let’s go!

Imagine if you will a puzzle that only contains 50 pieces. This is going to be a breeze! But, the whole thing is one solid color. That, and the pieces are not the unique jigsaw types, they’re perfect squares with three of the sides having a tab or hole and one side is totally flat. Now if you’re like me, you always start with the edge pieces first, then start working on similar colors/areas on the inside. On this puzzle though, it’s going to be very difficult to determine which ones are the edges and what’s the inside pieces. Now our 50 piece, easy peasy puzzle is going to be a painstakingly arduous trial and error test of each piece. You’re going to get close to finishing and end up having to disassemble portions or completely restart. It’s going to take some time and effort and in all honestly, when your finished it’s not going to be this flashy, beautiful mosaic; it’s one solid color in the shape of a square. Boring.

This is very similar to a solid healthy lifestyle. 3 easy pieces: Eat right, Sleep right, Exercise. Getting these three in the proper amounts, the right order, and in good quality is tough. Really tough. In many cases, people will spend their entire lives in a never ending science experiment of tweaking and tailoring these pieces to try and find a better combination. Too many times people are in searching for the next great exercise program, or a new, cutting edge diet that’s going to fix all their problems if they just follow the rules. Or better yet, folks want their doctor to prescribe them a literal “magic pill” that’ll help them lose weight, sleep better, feel full of energy everyday… when their magic pill has been right in front of them the whole time. Eat right, Sleep right, Exercise. And when we do start to line everything up properly, that’s when we’ll start to notice all those other improvements; you’ll shed some pounds, you’ll have more energy throughout the day, your moods improve… But when some asks you how you’re making this magic happen and you tell them “I been watching what I eat, getting better sleep and started exercising.”, you’re essentially showing them a square, one colored puzzle with boring pieces. It’s not flashy and on the surface level it almost seems too simple; it can’t work if it’s that easy! Oh, but it can, and it does!

So if you need help dialing in your diet, bettering your beauty sleep or easing your exercise woes, come check us out at CrossFit Minot and we’ll give you the tools to crush puzzles for many years to come! (The tools are, again, Eat right, Sleep right, Exercise.)

 

– Jerad

Joke time: “I was going in for a small surgery and asked the Anesthesiologist if I could hit the gas button myself. She said, ‘Go ahead, knock yourself out.'”

“The doctor told me I have acute appendicitis, and I said, ‘Compared to who?'”