MB #056: Top 5 Actions For Better Health, Biblical Masculinity Cookies

Read Time: ~5 Minutes

Hey friends,

Welcome to The Mission Briefing, a weekly newsletter where I provide actionable insights, food for thought, curated recommendations, and more.

Today at a glance:

• Food for thought: Extraordinary

• Quote: Biblical masculinity cookies

• Health tips: 5 habits for health

• Book: Puritan Hope

• Social Media: Dangerous men + Children missionaries

🧠 Food For Thought:

Extraordinary results are a matter of repeating ordinary actions over a long period of time. Start first with ordinary.

Extra-ordinary effort is just a little extra over your ordinary.

Pair consistency in the ordinary, with the regular slight increase in effort, and you’ll look back in 10 years, blown away by how far you’ve come.

✍️ Quote Of The Week:

💪 Health & Fitness Tips:

I just got another body fat percentage scan recently. It came back at 8% body fat, which is pretty close to normal and regular for me. I don’t say this with any kind of posture or brag (because I know many dads and have clients who are in the same position), so bear with me as I share the point.

We just moved across the country, had our rhythms and routines completely thrown out of whack, got super sick for about 5 weeks, had 3 straight weeks where I didn’t work out at all, and so much more.

Why was I able to maintain body fat, weight, health, etc?

Simplicity, habit, and consistency.

Here are 5 anchor-habits/habit categories for staying healthy and fit:

1/ Read the Bible and Pray. This doesn’t have to be complicated. Pick a minimum amount to set as your bar and work your way up as you’re able to stay consistent over months and months. For me, this started 5 years ago with a daily verse in the Bible app. Today my bare minimum is 1 chapter/day. Often 3 chapters. That didn’t happen overnight. The same goes for prayer. Start with 5 minutes, set a timer, and go. Expand as you can.

2/ Do 25 pushups a day. This is super basic but creates a rhythm of exercise daily that is helpful at reinforcing your identity as a person who exercises. The great thing about this rhythm is you can do it any time of the day, any place, in any clothes, in any setting, while sick, etc. Forget to do them for the day? Sneak into an empty conference room at work and knock them out in less than 90 seconds. Usually, when you’re doing pushups daily it’s likely for that to extend into other exercise. For me, I aim to lift weights ~30 minutes, 3x/week. When you have everything else ordered properly, you don’t need more than that.

3/ Two meals per day comprised of whole foods. Whole foods are single-ingredient foods like a carrot, for instance, compared to processed foods like a cracker or chips. Generally speaking, if it’s home-cooked and made from things that are fresh and expire quickly, you’re probably heading in the right direction. Don’t overcomplicate your food otherwise, when life throws you curve balls, you’ll get derailed. I prefer fasting through breakfast, eating a basic lunch like some burger patties + fruit, and then eating whatever my wife makes for dinner for the family which is generally an animal-based/paleo type of meal.

4/ Sleeeeeep. One of the most underrated elements of health is 7.5-8.5 hours of sleep. I talk to men all the time who struggle to get this under control. They consistently hover around 6.5 hours a night and fail to kill the bad habits that consistently oppose them in their pursuit of an extra hour or so of sleep. Did you know that in one study they gave 2 groups of people the same food and the same caloric intake each day and the group that slept over 8 hours each day lost more weight than the other group? A man who does everything perfectly in his life could still struggle with fat loss or pursuit of strength because of poor sleep.

5/ Relationships. Each morning my wife and I get up at 5 am to read the Word together before the kids wake up and we chat every night after the kids go to bed. Our family has designed our evenings intentionally so that each night 7x/wk we can eat dinner together around the table. This is also our family Bible time. Once per week, we send a text to another family to get together. Each Saturday sabbath one of our boys gets a 1-on-1 date with either myself or my wife (we rotate). Without healthy relational rhythms or intentional time for community, you’ll have declining mental health which will cascade into declining spiritual and physical health as well.

📚 Book Recommendation:

Puritan Hope - This book was a required reading for a course I took on eschatology but I found it to be a profoundly enlightening, encouraging, and hope-filled book. The biographical detail mixed with an exposition of scripture was really helpful. It addressed questions like: Must the prospects for succeeding generations be darker than those of today? Can we even expect any period of history to intervene before the Advent of Christ? How can readiness for Christ's coming be consistent with the belief that revivals are yet to be given to the Church?

📱 Social Media Favorites:

1/ A good man is a dangerous man. 

2/ Sending your kids to school “to be missionaries”? Ooof. 

PS. When you’re ready, there are 2 ways I can help more:

1/ Grab our 90-day Tactical Fit Guide. Drop tons of body fat. Get "strong like ox". Transform your health. Improve your faith. Lead your family. Impact your community.

2/ Apply for our premium coaching experience My insight-driven coaching approach is designed to dig deep into the underlying junk that has been holding you back from a vibrant life of freedom.