The Eights

This past weekend I went to a seminar with Kelly and Juliette Starrett of The Ready State, and the authors of the excellent book Built to Move. In their quest to get more people moving and taking care of their bodies, they have this idea of The Eights. It’s full of reasonable numbers to hit each day to give people a tool to take care of their health . Instead of adding yet another thing to do, this list can work for however you like to eat or set up your day, so long as you strive for these numbers.

Here they are:

8000 steps per day - in their book, they cite that most of the benefits from extra walking show up around 7500 steps per day. Remember, 10,000 as the gold standard is just made up because it’s a nice round number!

800g of fruits and vegetables. This comes from the 800g Challenge, and is a nice way without any restrictions or special diet rules to get more micronutrients.

8 Hours of rest. Ideally this is 8 hours of sleep, but in an effort to be approachable for everyone, they’re changing their language to 8 hours of rest, cause if you can’t sleep, resting is the next best thing. They say aim for 8 hours in bed at a minimum, and if you want to get 8 full hours of sleep, you best spend 9 hours in bed.

.8g of protein per pound of bodyweight. Protein is important to build and maintain your muscle mass, which is incredibly important as we age! Once again, they’re not saying this number is the end all be all for each and every one of us, but we should be striving to get more protein each day.

Justin Miner

@justinminergain