This five-minute guide is going to show you how you can transform your body, improve your health and start waking up with tons of energy every single morning. Sounds like a lot to fit into five minutes, right? Well it would be, if only it wasn’t so simple to do all that. You see, it all boils down to one very simple fact.
We were born to run. And when we run, our bodies go through changes that make us more muscular, leaner, more energetic, happier and healthier in just about every way. So to start seeing improvements in pretty much every area of your life, all you need to do is to start running.
Well, that’s not entirely true because you also need to keep running. You see, a lot of people figure this out and then they decide to give running a try. The problem, is that they give it a go and then quickly decide it’s not for them because they get tired out too easily, because it feels hard on their joints, or because they find it boring.
So this book is going to show you how to start running in a way that allows you to keep running. But before we get to that, let’s rewind one moment and look at the claim that running can drastically improve your health in a little more detail…
Why Running is the Best Thing You Can do to Lose Weight and Improve Your Health
When I said that we were ‘born to run’, I wasn’t just looking for sound bites. That really is true and it makes a lot of sense when you look at the evidence. You see, in the wild we would have had to run in order to track our prey.
We weren’t the fastest animals on the planet or the strongest but we were the smartest and we were the most resilient. In other words, we could keep running to the point where our prey tired out. And when our prey got away, we could use our cunning to track them.
Most of us still use our brains a fair amount and this is very good for us too. But the vast majority of us have lost the ability to run for long periods of time and instead we spend 8-10 hours a day sitting at a desk, hunched over.
We barely move and our heart never has to work. This means that it becomes weak and tired and it means that all the calories we pack on by eating just don’t go anywhere. They just sit around our gut and make us increasingly unhealthy.
Imagine if you took a wolf and then kept it locked up in a small, dark room. How do you think its health would fair? Well, that’s exactly what you’re doing to yourself! But when you start running, your body starts to wake up again. The first thing that happens is that you start burning calories. And running burns a lot of calories. Probably more calories than any other form of exercise in fact! If you run for 40-60 minutes, you can expect to burn anything from 500-1,000 calories.
That’s a lot and it’s actually enough that one or even two of your meals ‘won’t count’ in terms of weight gain. Like I said, it’s a huge difference. That alone is enough to suddenly make a big difference to the amount of calories you’re left over with at the end of a week.
And if you run twice in a week, then the effect will be even more pronounced, helping you to slim down very quickly indeed. And there are plenty of ways you can make this number even higher, or control precisely where your body gets those calories from – we’ll look at all this in the full ebook. But that’s not even the impressive bit yet (I bet you thought it was!).
The impressive bit is that running also transforms your body and your metabolism so that you’ll burn more calories and build more muscle even at rest. It will even reduce stress, improve brain power and just generally make you healthier and happier in every way.
One of the big changes that running makes to your body, is that it enlarges the left ventricle in your heart. This happens as the heart pumps blood around the body (and other forms of exercise, such as HIIT, aren’t able to do this).
This eventually means that your heart will be able to mobilize more blood around your body with less effort and fewer beats. The result of that, is that you will be able to deliver more oxygen and more nutrients to every part of your body without your heartrate being that high.
This in turn means that you’ll see better health and you’ll even feel more awake and alert as your brain is filled with more oxygen. Better yet though, a lower heartrate is correlated with lower levels of cortisol – the stress hormone.
That means that having a lower resting heartrate (RHR), will allow you to feel less stressed and generally more relaxed and at ease all the time as you go through your day. Of course your likelihood of developing heart disease goes down a lot (and this is helped by the reduced body fat).
Oh and you’ll sleep MUCH better as a result of this too. I mean, you’ll sleep like a baby. You’ll get to sleep faster and your sleep will be much deeper, helping you to reinforce memories, to repair wounds and to build muscle. And that’s still not it.
Because running also improves your VO2 max too, meaning you’ll be able to get more oxygen into your system. And it improves the efficiency of your mitochondria, which means that your cells become more energy efficient. That means you’ll get more energy from a smaller amount of food, so you’ll have to eat less and you’ll create fewer cancer-causing by-products.
It also means you’ll burn through more energy all the time, so that your body stays that much leaner and more defined by default. Still not enough? Then how about the fact that running also increases muscle mass in your legs. This in turn improves your metabolism even more because muscle is ‘metabolically active’. That means that your body will burn fat just to maintain the muscle. And your lower body will look awesome (so will your abs and shoulders).
So yeah, running really does change everything. And it makes sense. After all, we were born to run.
How to Start Running and Stick to It
That’s a lot of love right there for running but it was important that we share it. Why? Because hopefully it has helped you to realize just how good running really is for you. As a result, you’ll be that much more likely to stick at it. Let’s put it another way: have you ever seen someone who runs regularly, eats normally and isn’t in great shape? No, didn’t think so. You see it really is easy.
Except it’s not because a lot of people struggle to stick with it. So now the question is why does this happen and how can you be the one to buck the trend? And the first thing to remember is just how tired and out of shape you are. Assuming you are a typical, average adult, it’s safe to conclude that you probably don’t run much at the moment. In fact, you probably spend most of your time in a supine position or sitting position.
You’re either working at a computer, or lazing on the couch. But it’s not restful for the most part. Rather, it is very stressful.
You probably have 100 things you need to do, you probably have people shouting at you at work and you probably have financial problems, relationship problems and more issues. By the time you get home from work, you’re exhausted. And your body aches. And you might be a little depressed. And now you need to cook, clean and call the bank! So if you think you can start a new exercise regime that involves running 10 miles twice a week, or working out at the gym 5 nights a week, then you’ve got another thing coming.
Energy is a finite quantity and you can’t just ignore the fact that you’re tired and hope it will go away… it won’t! Instead, you need to take this into account and you need to focus first on building your energy back up. Only then can you start to improve your health in other ways and take up exercise regimes like running.
And if you plan on heading outside and hitting it hard, then it only stands to reason that you’re going to find it painful, tiring, boring and off-putting. So instead, I want you to take an entirely different approach. For now, your goal is not to lose weight.
Your goal is not to ‘change your life’. That doesn’t’ happen overnight. A much smaller and safer first step is just to try and ‘learn to run’ and to learn to like running. So when you step outside for your first run and your foot hits the tarmac, you aren’t thinking about how many calories you can burn, how fast you should be going or how to push yourself. Instead, you should just be focussing on enjoying the experience. Run gently, run slowly, and look around.
Take in the environment, take your time and you just experience running. Once you get too tired, just come home. It won’t feel like you’ve done anything but trust me – this will still have bee quite intensive if you currently aren’t exercising regularly at all. It has done something. When you come back to it next week, you’ll find it just that little bit easier.
And when you come back to it the week after that, it will be just a little easier again. Over time, you’ll start building up more of a tolerance and you’ll start to actually enjoy running and only then can you start to gradually push yourself a little harder. It might seem like a subtle difference but it makes all the difference. Meanwhile, make sure to invest in a few items that will also help make a difference. One is the right shoes. The right shoes should absorb some impact, they should adapt to your specific running gait and they should make the ride generally much comfier.
A gentle run shouldn’t be painful, so if it is, you just haven’t found the right shoes yet. In the full book, we talk about how to choose the right shoes and how to adapt your running style. The other thing you absolutely should invest in is some kind of running watch or fitness tracker. These liberate you and allow you to run wherever you want and without any pre-set path or plan. That makes a big difference because it means you can now actually explore as you run.
What’s more, these watches will record a lot of data as you go, which in turn means that you can see yourself gradually improve and you can push yourself while you’re out on that run. You can see your average page, your average split and all those other metrics improve gradually over time. This makes running that much more fun and that much more rewarding, which is why it’s a highly recommended investment.
And in time, as you improve, you can start to use it for things like tempo runs and even HIIT. As you get better and better, you’ll see there is a whole world of opportunity out there. In the full book, we look at all these more advanced techniques, show you how to track your progress, provide a bulletproof plan for losing weight and even discuss subjects like marathon training. So if you agree with us and you feel that humans really were born to run – then check it out.
You’ll discover the simplest and most enjoyable way to improve your health and get the body you always wanted!
