Welcome to 1-3-1 Fridays, my weekly newsletter, where I reveal evidence-based strategies to get lean, strong, and create optimal health.

You'll receive one personal health insight, three actionable tips, and one concrete action step. Let's dive in.

Here's what's new this week:

•  ​Ep 13: From trauma to transformation, restorative breathing, and raw vegan | Bryan Mirabella​ (Podcast)

Closed doors this Monday for our new test pilot group. Excited to get everyone up and running over the next few weeks.

Probably running another spring fitness challenge (30 days) mid-March.

Just wrapping up our challenge this Monday, and had a blast with everyone working hard to start the year strong.

Onwards and upwards!

What's in store for today:

• Why research says about the tempo (speed) that you should lift at, and why TUT might be overrated.
• Do less but better when it comes to your habits, workouts, and meals (and the simple way to do this).
• Health is hard. So is being unhealthy. How my perspective has shifted and can change yours in 2 minutes.

My anniversary is coming up in 2 weeks.

One thing I've been thinking about is how much we've traveled together the past 6 years.

Over the past 8 years, we traveled even more, but I'll focus on the past 6 because we were already living together.

Over the past 6 years, we've lived in:

• New York
• Utah
• Washington State
• Connecticut
• North Carolina
• South Carolina

We've also visited:

• Hawaii
• Estonia
• Puerto Rico
• Poland (4x)
• Greece
• Colorado (countless times)
• Los Angeles
• New York (countless times)
• Arizona (3x)
• A bunch of random places I don't remember right now

The reason why I'm sharing this is two-fold:

• To share that health is portable, not location-dependent
• To empower you to follow your passions with your health

Health isn't location-dependent.

As a former bodybuilder, I would have disagreed with this statement 6 years ago.

But with experience comes lessons.

With lessons come insights.

Insights applied = wisdom.

Health is universal to all of us.

It doesn't take much to achieve high levels of health and, later on, fitness.

But it does take the right levers.

When you pull the right levers in health & fitness, the right results follow.

When you don't, the outcomes you don't want happen.

The law of cause and effect permeates everything we do.

Or as they say in physics: 'For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction'.

The past eight years with my wife Anna have been a fun adventure. She moved here from Europe, and we’ve traveled all over the world together.

In the past 6 years, we’ve traveled extensively across 2 continents. We’ve worked to keep our health, nutrition, and fitness systems in place, though not always perfectly.

We've done it while helping 100s of career-driven folks like you do the same, powered by plants, exercise, and psychology.

It hasn't been perfect.

Doesn't need to be. Shouldn't be. Would take the fun of living away.

Instead, pull the right levers in the right order. Then, experience the effects of your causes.

Life can be fun and healthy - at the same time.

Lesson: Do the right things in health, and good things happen.

Here's Your 1-3-1 Friday: 

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1.) What research says about TUT

TUT, or time under tension, is a simple concept in fitness:

Control the speed at which you lift your weights.

Lifting weights slowly, especially during the eccentric phase—when you lower the weight—may boost muscle protein synthesis. This can lead to greater muscle growth.

But does this claim hold up?

According to Dr. Eric Helms, one of the world's experts on muscle building and body transformation, TUT can help.

It's just not that important for 95% of us.

The reason why?

There are much more important concepts in fitness to focus on when you're working out.

Things like:

• Consistency (aka stick to the plan)
• Volume and intensity per workout
• Training frequency
• Recovery and sleep
• Nutrition and eating enough food (or less if needed)
• And here at the bottom: TUT

So TUT can make a difference for advanced lifters.

Helms created the Muscle and Strength Pyramid to help you visualize the correct priority order for your fitness actions.

About 95% of people haven't consistently mastered the first three levels.

They often get stuck chasing details like exercise selection or time under tension (TUT) for years.

And as you can see above, tempo is the cherry on the cake.

If you haven't mastered the prior 5 levels, tempo should be the last thing on your mind.

The unlikable truth is that boring creates great bodies.

Boring creates wealthy people, too.

It does the same for healthy people.

Stick to the basics, and you’ll get in better shape than 95% of those who try to lose weight each year. Most people fall back into their old habits by April.

As a final note on TUT: there are 2 areas, I'd suggest using TUT outside of fitness gains:

• When recovering from an injury, TUT can be very helpful for rehab exercises, extending the time a muscle has to work.
• When learning a new exercise, so your central nervous system has more time to ingrain the movement.

Outside of this, TUT is just another shiny object syndrome.

When you're lifting heavy shit and putting it down, you'll move at the right speed for you.

Do less, better.

2.) Do less but better in health

You can go 10,000 directions in health.

That doesn't mean all of them are great.

Nor does it mean you should pursue all of them.

It does mean that health has evolved to the point of extreme overwhelm.

With that overwhelm comes inaction. Inaction emerges from feeling paralyzed by too many options.

Try scrolling on Netflix or Amazon movies for 5 minutes.

5 minutes can turn into 20 very quickly as you struggle to choose a show or movie you'd like.

Your cognitive load (your mental bandwidth) can only handle so much.

There was a famous experiment in which jams were sold outside a store.

In the first part of the experiment, there were only 3 types of jams to choose from.

Sales went through the roof.

The second part of the experiment had 7-8 jams outside the store.

Sales tanked.

Researchers weren't expecting this. They thought the more choices we had, the more likely we were to buy.

Wrong. Humans need less to make decisions.

Give us more, and we're like a deer caught in the headlights.

So the lesson here is simple:

Do less things in your health & fitness but do them better.

Here's a short list of actions to focus on:

• Tracking your food (internally or externally)
• Hitting weights 3-4x a weight
• Eating 5+ servings of fruits & veg daily
• Eat wfpb 80% of your week
• 1/3 of a plate with plant protein (for fitness results)
• 5 minutes in silence or nature

Yeah, you can do more. You can always do more.

But this is an example list of core actions that move the big rocks in my life and our clients'.

Find your big rocks. Create your shortlist. And live from there.

Do less, better.

3.) Choose your hard

Today's letter synced up nicely with 2 topics I've been sitting with more recently.

The first is about doing less, covered above.

The second is about choosing my path in life.

Life is interesting. As we get more comfortable, we often start to feel more uncomfortable over time.

Watch movies every night, and you will feel comfortable temporarily, but your mind and body will atrophy over time (long-term discomfort).

Meditate in silence and exercise daily. You might feel uncomfortable at first, but you’ll feel more comfortable over time.

We move towards pleasure and away from pain.

That’s not our natural instinct, but it is a common archetype in human consciousness.

Jung called this the Tyrant archetype.

The Tyrant loves comfort, luxury, and pleasures.

It doesn't bring about true internal development.

So choose your hard.

You can choose a life that's hard. This life involves lifting weights, eating well, and learning about yourself in the process.

Over time, your prior 'hard' becomes easy for you, and you have a new baseline to live from.

Or you can choose a life that's full of short-term, fleeting pleasures like junk food, a sedentary lifestyle, and watching media all day long.

Neither is right nor wrong. Or better or worse. Good and bad are just human constructs we use to make sense of the place we live in.

But there is positive or negative. Like the law of cause and effect, every cause (action) will have its reaction.

So choose your hard.

For me, even after 15 years of lifting weights, I've begun to realize the never-ending journey I'm on.

This isn't a one-and-done kinda thing. It's not a 4-week challenge or a 4-month program.

It's not even a 4-year thing.

Choosing my hard means that I get to choose every morning what kind of life I live.

What kind of example do I want to leave for my son, my family, and most importantly, myself?

Who I want to be remembered as.

I don't believe that humans are driven by pleasure and move away from pain.

That's what archetypes (unconscious patterns) do.

I believe humans naturally move towards growth and learning.

Watch a child under 5 play.

Some truths can't be hidden.

So choose your hard; it can change your life.

1 Action Step

Choose one health or fitness behavior to improve (not do more). Do less, better.

One Quote To Finish Your Week Strong

Snow is gone.

Sun is out.

Car is fixed. Life is good.

As promised, get leaner on plants in under 5 minutes.

Till next week,

Whenever you're ready, there's 3 ways I can help you:

1. Connect with me on ​Facebook ​and ​Instagram ​and let's be friends.
2.  ​Join our free Facebook Group​. Get free trainings on how to get lean and strong with plants.
3. Want to drop body fat and build lean muscle in a fraction of the time with ease? ​Apply for Accelerator 1:1 coaching.​