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Why fighting half the battle still loses the war

If you only wash your clothes and never dry them, they’ll get moldy and crusty. If you only dry them without washing, you’re basically baking the stink in. 

So why do we do the same thing with our health all the time? Many of us treat our health and fitness like doing half the process will get us all the way there.

Caveats off the bat: Anything is better than nothing—almost always. Going from doing nothing to doing something for your health will pretty much always be beneficial. 

But we shouldn’t stop there. If you’re only fighting half the battle, and don’t at least have intentions or plans (or even concepts of a plan) to fight the other half, you’re gonna lose. 

Wash AND dry, baby

Let me provide some examples to make this more concrete.

If you’re eating tons of protein but never resistance training, you’re drying your clothes without even washing them. You’re unlikely to see significant results this way. And on the flip side, if you’re resistance training but consuming paltry amounts of protein, you’re only fighting half the battle and leaving so much on the table.

If you’re crushing it in the gym, getting tons of steps in, and even eating clean, but you’re only getting four hours of crappy sleep every night, you’re only fighting half the battle. You won’t recover enough to put on muscle, you won’t be metabolically healthy enough to get or stay lean, and your diet will ultimately crash out as your out-of-whack hormones overpower your willpower and you succumb to tasty temptations.

If you eat super healthy on the weekdays but go completely buckwild and fall off the wagon every weekend, you’re stymying any progress you might’ve made. Rein in your splurges a bit so you don’t negate the progress your hard work 5 days a week deserves.

Here’s another one: If you’re drinking a gallon of water a day but fueling yourself with soda and fried foods the rest of the time, that’s like rinsing your laundry with fresh spring water and then drying it in a pile of mud. You can’t out-hydrate a terrible diet.

If you stretch religiously but never build strength, you’re like a door with well-oiled hinges but no lock. It moves beautifully, but can’t hold up under pressure. Mobility is great, but without strength in those ranges of motion, it’s just flexibility, and you’ll still be prone to pain and injury.

If you crush your workouts but never address chronic stress or mental burnout, you’re folding clean laundry while the washer is overflowing with another dirty load in the background. Life requires balance, and that means rest and recovery have to complement intensity and effort.

If you’re taking 20 supplements a day and maybe even downing protein shakes, but are consuming ultra-processed, high-sugar, high-fat, low-fiber junk for the majority of your meals, you’re fighting even less than half of this battle. That’s like taking a measly Tide pen to a filthy shirt and just foregoing washing and drying altogether.

If you’re hopping in a cold plunge every morning, sweating in a sauna every night, and biohacking your way to an “optimized” life, but skipping cardio, weight training, protein, and veggies, you’re totally missing the mark. 

And one last one: If you go all-out once a month and then skip healthy behaviors the rest of the time, that’s like washing all your clothes once a year. The effort might be intense, but it’s not enough to stay fresh. You’d be better off remaining consistent at a lower intensity than only doing things well in sporadic bursts and neglecting healthy habits the rest of the year.

When you commit, fully commit. Do it right.

It’s not that doing some of these things aren’t good for you. Remember, anything is better than nothing; some is better than none. But like washing and drying your clothes, some of the processes involved in improving your health and fitness just can’t be short-circuited. You need to fight the whole battle to reap the full benefits. 

Half the process gets you half (or less) of the results. Finish the job.

✅ 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: Take stock. Where are you “undoing” the progress you’re making by covering up good habits with bad ones?

Level 2: How can your current efforts to be healthier get a boost from other complementary habits? Do you need to add in more rest, better nutrition, or stress management to take your performance to the next level?

Level 3: Make all your efforts synergistic. The sum of all these habits stacked together can be greater than their parts individually.

✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Ultra-bad news: Americans still consume ultra-processed foods as a massive portion of their daily calories. Be better than the average person!

• Speaking of which: It probably goes without saying that french fries aren’t great for you. We didn’t need a study to prove that, but we got one.

That’s all for this week! Catch ya on the flippity-flip. If you liked today’s article, click the link below to copy and share with a friend!

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).