Good morning! First time coming to you from back in Arkansas since last Christmas. It’s good to be back home where the dogs run free and trucks are more abundant than sedans—but not cattle or chickens.

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🏞️ Your Environment & Who’s Around You

Your environment is affecting your lifestyle more than you realize. 

Take a look around you. Who do you live with? What’s your living situation like? Do you have exercise equipment, stairs, and walkable areas nearby? Or is your environment built only for comfort, ease, vehicles, and relaxation? Are there gyms and parks and activities nearby, or do you live in an exercise desert?

A healthy balance is important, and the home should be a place of rest and rejuvenation. But I’ve also found recently how important it is to set up your living environment to support the kind of habits and lifestyle you want to lead. 

I dog sit quite a bit as a side hustle. Because I work remotely, this often means traveling to and staying at other people’s houses, sometimes over a half hour away from my own apartment. 

When I’m out of my usual environment, the change in my activity is stark. Unless I am very intentional, my exercise and non-exercise activity can easily drastically decrease. The neighborhood might not be as walkable. My usual gyms aren’t just a three minute walk or 10 minute drive away anymore. If there’s no home exercise equipment, I’m even less likely to perform either resistance or cardio training. 

Even as someone who loves to exercise and makes a habit of doing so regularly, when I’m out of my typical environment, the obstacles to doing so can be significant.

This has opened my eyes to how much effort it can take certain individuals to exercise. Often, our modern societal defaults are not built for exercise; they’re built for comfort. It takes the average person a lot of time, energy, and effort to go out of their way to get the workout in.

Much of the lack of activity in sedentary adults isn’t necessarily due to laziness or lack of willpower. Being inactive is just the default when going out of your way to exercise is such a hassle. 

Easing the friction

All actions have a degree of friction required to take them. An object (or human) at rest tends to stay at rest unless acted upon by an outside force. 

This is why it’s so important to first become aware of your environmental “defaults” and then to take action to craft them if they’re not suiting the “ideal you” you want to be. 

• If your workout clothes are visible, your gym is just down the street, your schedule is regular, and your workout partner is counting on you to show up, the friction between you and the workout is low. 

• But change the environment, remove the accessible equipment, and ditch the accountability, and suddenly the cumulative friction to get up and go exercise can quickly seem insurmountable. 

While some aspects of our environment are out of our control, it’s important to shape what we do have control over to incentivize the lifestyle we want to live: in this case, hopefully that’s a healthy and active one. 

Here are some tips to modify your environment and increase your propensity toward an active lifestyle. Decrease the friction from couch to bench, from desk chair to treadmill:

• Consider what you do have. A pair of shoes may be all you need to get outside and find a place to walk, hike, or run. 

• Keep your workout clothes easily accessible and visible, not tucked away in drawers you never open. 

• Leave healthy snacks (fruits, nuts, etc.) out and visible, while placing the more indulgent treats in cabinets and out of sight. 

• Consider small, simple equipment, especially when traveling. A jump rope, resistance bands, etc. can minimize your excuses to skip the workout. 

• Get active with your loved ones. If an active lifestyle among your friends and family becomes the norm, suddenly you have new options for quality time and are less likely to get drawn into sedentary activities every day of the week. 

• Purchase pre-owned home exercise equipment. Consider a bike, walking pad, dumbbells, kettlebells, etc. As long as you don’t let the stationary bike become a clothes hanger, just seeing it there can remind you to use it. There’s nothing wrong with watching your favorite show while getting some light Zone 2 work in!

Regardless of the steps you take, any are better than none. Don’t be so hard on yourself for not following through with healthy habits when everything in your environment is stacked against you. If you can modify your environment to reduce the friction to exercise/eat healthy, you’ll be well on your way to the most important aspect: consistency!

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: Simply take stock and observe. What’s in your living environment that is either A. encouraging you to be inactive or B. making it harder for you to be active?

Level 2: Take a step to modify those factors. It doesn’t even have to be purchasing something; some simple reorganization or a conversation with a loved one can be all it takes to turn things around.

Level 3: Build your ideal environment for your ideal self. Display the workout equipment loud and proud. Pick the gym you have to pass on your way to/from work. Join a fitness club or make a commitment with a friend to train together for something!

This newsletter is brought to you by… me!

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✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Drop the skincare routine: Dr. Huberman delivered with this Bible of a skin health podcast! He covers all the topics. I reaffirmed some of my beliefs as well as learned a lot and changed my takes on some things!

• Going strong: Dr. Andy Galpin is dropping some great weekly podcasts in his first season of Perform, and I’m enjoying what I’m learning from them.

Have a lovely rest of your week and get pumped for the Olympics (which are somehow just over two weeks away). I know I am!

Please share this newsletter with a friend if you found it beneficial. It just may be the nudge they’ve been hoping for to talk about living a healthier life with you!

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).