How to Create a Life of Sustainable Health and Movement You Enjoy

When I moved to New York City in 2016, I got deep into fitness to improve my acting prospects, thinking I had to look a certain way to be commercially viable. At the same time, I was auditioning like crazy and working all sorts of survival jobs.

Eventually, I found a sense of community at the gym and became a fitness instructor and personal trainer. In 2020, when everything went virtual, I realized that I could combine my personal training clients and my social media community into an online fitness community. It was a natural shift into my inclusive online fitness program, Pridefit. 

As an actor and entrepreneur, I know how challenging it can be to achieve work-life balance, especially with fitness as a priority. So here are a few tips – along with some video exercises – I’m sharing to help small-business owners achieve the physical and mental well-being needed to run and grow a company. 

 I want you to be proud of how your body looks. But it's not the driving goal. The driving goal is sustainable health, and finding movement that you enjoy for the rest of your life.

—Sam Leicht, founder, Pridefit

1. Even just a few exercises a day can pay off in the long run.

I always remind people: A little is so much more than nothing. We often have an all-or-nothing mentality with fitness, but consistency matters much more than having the perfect workout. It doesn’t need to be an hour long - it just needs to be. 

If you can be consistent and schedule even a five- to ten-minute workout or walk, you are the type of person who is exercising or moving your body daily. That’s what we’re looking for when it comes to sustainable health. And if you can work out in the morning, you will have a higher likelihood of actually accomplishing that scheduled workout. If you miss a day, don’t let that affect your momentum. Just keep moving forward.

The book Atomic Habits by James Clear is a huge motivator for how I speak to my clients. He says that one of the best ways to accomplish a habit is to identify as the type of person who does that habit. Carol Dweck’s book Mindset has also been huge for me as an artist, entrepreneur, and athlete; especially its reminder that skills are learnable, and you can always grow your skill set with practice.

2. You’re never too busy to find motivation and carve out time to work out.

While it can be tempting to ignore your physical health because you’re busy, there are solutions. Here’s the most important and simple tool to encourage a successful outcome with workouts and nutrition: Set aside five to ten minutes each week to plan out what you will do. 

Research has shown that a group of study participants encouraged to plan the next day’s fruit and vegetable intake the night before increased produce consumption by around 25 percent. 

This five to ten minutes, maybe on a Sunday, of writing specific actions and times on your calendar can make all the difference. 

If you live in a place with group fitness classes, that might mean signing up and paying in advance for your classes for the week. If you don’t go, there’s a chance of losing money—something quite motivating for entrepreneurs! You can also ask a workout buddy or personal trainer to help hold you accountable and designate meals that you’ll eat in or out. Without fail, this planning process leads to a better outcome each week for myself and my clients. 

Another big takeaway: Much of what works will feel too simple. Because of all the noise in the health community, you might think that simple solutions can’t possibly work. But I find that 90 percent of our positive outcomes come from simple actions.

3. Be patient—meaningful results take time.

“Results” in the form of client progress photos or weigh-ins can be low-hanging fruit for marketing a fitness program. It’s a great way to get people in the door, showing these incredible 60-day transformations. I don’t follow fitness trends or quick fixes, and unless advised to by a doctor, I encourage my clients not to use a scale.

I'm not saying that we can't be proud of losing weight. That’s part of the meaning of “Pridefit”—I want you to be proud of how your body looks. But it's not the driving goal. The driving goal is sustainable health, and finding movement that you enjoy for the rest of your life. Once we do that and find consistency, we lose weight. We have our aesthetic goals achieved, and that's just the cherry on top.

The transformations we see with Pridefit tend to be nuanced over time and incredibly powerful. One of our clients has multiple sclerosis and when she started, her daily workouts were incredibly challenging for her to complete. She would not give up. She did absolutely everything she could to work out to the best of her ability, even if that was only ten percent of our scripted workout, every single day. Recently in our Slack community channel for Pridefit, she wrote that exercise has allowed her more control over her MS symptoms. She still has flare-ups sometimes and skills that she’s honing. But working out and moving her body has changed her life so much for the better. 

As told to Cara Cannella.

A version of this article was originally published on August 15, 2022