Kevin Hart is right! It is a lifestyle.
Consistency, consistently, compounds. Or so my Garmin watch shows me, now.
I'm not a giant Kevin Hart fan, per se. I think he's funny enough and enjoy when he does his shtick with the Rock. So I'm not usually hanging on his words enough to make him the header of a blog post.
BUT, a while back he appeared on one of my favorite series on social — BodyByMark. Mark Langowski is a gym and wellness consultant, but his channel has him stopping people on the street to ask about their workout routines: What do they do? How often? What are their best lifts? Do they take supplements? Drink alcohol?
He routinely begins with some version of "You're ripped, you're cut, you're jacked—how do you do it?" He mostly talks to very regular people on the street: police officers, moms, college kids, street vendors. Not necessarily celebrities. But here he is with Kevin Hart:
Kevin Hart explains he's an early riser who likes HIIT workouts and intermittent fasting. He can do 30 pull-ups. About his routine, he drops this gem: "Six days a week; seven days cardio. 365. It's a lifestyle."
I watched that video months ago when it first came out, but it stays with me deeply.
"It's a lifestyle."
The internet is awash in smart self-improvement content. There's great stuff everywhere, and there's no shortage of smart content about behavior change—James Clear's great 3-2-1 approach to changing your atomic habits to lead to big change.
I appreciate it all and have been constantly tapping into it as I've changed my own behavior to get healthier and tame my long COVID. But hearing a jacked person—Kevin Hart in this random instance—just so casually drop "It's a lifestyle" perfectly captures how routine, yet hard-earned, yet frictionless it all has to be to reach your goals. Any goals. It's not magic. It can be any program or approach. But it has to become part of your lifestyle.
It has now been 52 weeks since I put on a Garmin watch. I had started working out regularly a few weeks earlier, on the fourth anniversary of waking up from my COVID coma. But it took me a while to pick the right hardware companion. Throughout the year, I've tracked daily, weekly, and monthly progress. I've learned to look at steps, HR recovery time, variety of activities, sleep, etc. All helpful. But nothing more than just making sure it stays consistent and that I keep showing up.
Because it's a lifestyle... now.
