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

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What's in store for today:

• 19 questions from my annual review that can change your life.
• 3 of the best health insights from 2024 that you can apply to your fitness advantage.
• My best piece of fitness advice from 10 years of training and coaching 100's of self-driven humans and working out from the past 14 years.

Next week, I'm taking off from writing to be present with my family.

Working more isn't always the best answer.

While it's not the best business model, I prefer calm and peace over overachieving and anxiety.

It took me years to get here and I'm still learning.

But work and money can never replace some things in life.

Another thing I enjoy about this time of year is the space and time it gives me to think.

It's one of my commitments to myself in the upcoming year.

The average person thinks or reflects 1x a day or less.

The high performer reflects once an hour.

The more you can steer the ship of your life in the direction you want to go, the faster you'll see results.

2024 has been an impactful year for me and my family.

I've become a father.

I've healed.

I've learned to let go.

I've been more adaptable.

And I've failed countless times in different projects and endeavors.

It's all part of the learning process.

It's what keeps me going.

Not to achieve or do more.

But to learn and understand more.

Our life on this planet is a blink of an eye in the grand scheme of the universe.

Our life, a thousand years from now, will be a flashing thought in our descendant's memories.

Maybe we'll be on another planet (or galaxy).

Maybe we'll have evolved into a new species.

Maybe we'll get free from this matrix.

Or maybe we'll descend into chaos and regress backward.

Who knows.

What you do today is what matters most.

Your life may be a snapshot but it still matters.

You can have a positive impact in this quick life.

Why not make it worth something?

Happy holidays and happy New Year's [FIRST NAME GOES HERE].

Lesson: Your life is short. Make it count for something.

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Here's Your 1-3-1 Friday:

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1.) 19 questions that can change your life

Life moves on regardless.

Life moves on whether or not we take action.

Life moves on whether or not we are consistent.

And life moves on whether or not we're committed.

This year has taught me a lot about myself.

I raised my standards this year.

It also reminded me that focus is important especially when things get busy.

I also learned that TIME OFF is just as crucial as TIME ON when working and moving toward goals.

Time for introspection, reflection, and solitude are healthy activities (although modern society does not value these things).

I also learned to fall more in love with daily activities, including writing, reading, walking, and spending time.

As a chronic overachiever, slowing down has been a true gift for me.

To take my foot off the pedal and relax.

The questions below come from my annual review (these are part of our VFR Curriculum so this is a special end-of-year gift for you):

Here's my end-of-year annual review:

• Reflect on the primary goals you set for yourself in the past year. Evaluate how well you did on these goals.
• What were your three most significant accomplishments? Identify the key factors that contributed to these successes. (new knowledge, network power, focused effort, etc.)
• What were your three most significant challenges? Describe what helped you overcome them and the lessons you learned from this experience.
• What were the most intelligent decisions you took?
• What were your worst decisions of the year?
• Which risks did you take, and how did they pay off?
• What were the most significant lessons that you learned?
• What are the things you have discovered about yourself?
• Who were the people that influenced you the most? Whom did you influence the most?
• Reflecting on the past year, what has become possible for you now that wasn't possible a year ago?

Before moving to plan the next year:

• Forgive. I forgive (myself, others, situations, etc.) ...
• Let go. I let go of...
• Express gratitude. I am grateful for...
• Imagine your ideal life and write down your vision. What is my perfect life vision? What do I truly desire? What's my vision of 'Heaven on Earth' for the life I want to live and the person I want to be?

Imagining your next year, complete the following sentences:

• Next year, I advise myself to...
• Next year, I will not procrastinate anymore on…
• Next year will be special for me because…
• Next year, I'll love these three things about myself…
• By the end of the following year, I will be…

Part of what I've found helpful in this process is giving yourself space.

Don't rush the reflective journey.

Instead, take some time.

Slow down.

Give yourself space to reflect.

And acknowledge your growth and progress.

Part of maturing as a human being is slowing down.

Slow down to speed up later.

2.) 3 biggest health insights from 2024

This year changed my life.

If I could sum it up into 3 main categories I would place them in these 3 buckets:

#1 Sleep

#2 Stress

#3 Nutrition

Each bucket is a lever that you can pull for your fitness.

While I wanted to add movement, exercise, and others in the 3 buckets above, if you ONLY mastered the 3 categories above, you would still drop body fat and get lean sustainably.

Sleep is your foundation.

It's what allows you to function and perform at the highest level.

I've spoken about sleep here and here if you want to dive deeper into sleep optimizations and routines.

Sleep is the basis for optimal health.

Skimp on sleep and you skip on your health.

Sleep fuels everything.

Next up on the lineup is stress.

The average human doesn't deal with mental or emotional stress well.

It's why people binge eat, don't workout, or treat themselves poorly.

Their relationship with stress and their total 'allostatic' load is too high.

It's the straw that broke the camel's back.

Creating healthy practices that allow you to convert stress into relaxation is a non-negotiable in this modern world.

Silent meditation (zazen), Qi Gong, and grounding are a few that have helped countless clients that I've worked with.

But there's no right or wrong path here.

Reading can release stress.

But so can emotional eating.

The key is to bring self-awareness to your stressors.

Then, consciously transform them into relaxation.

Energy cannot be created or destroyed.

It can only be transferred.

Stress doesn't disappear when you practice relaxation methods.

It transforms.

This blew my mind the first time I realized this.

You don't get rid of stress.

You transform it.

Finally, nutrition is the final puzzle piece that unlocks radical health.

You are what you eat.

What you put into your body, you eventually become.

Food is just energy.

It's energy that can fuel or derail your life.

Plants, in particular, have some of the highest forms of bioavailable energy.

When you fuel your health with plants, you change your life.

I've seen this in my life.

I've also seen this in 100's clients I've worked with over the past 8 years.

It's a game-changer.

So yes, there are macro and calories.

I speak about these more in-depth here and here.

But there's also quality of food.

There's eating in the right amounts at the right speed.

There's books and texts written about plant-based nutrition.

But it doesn't need to be difficult.

My plant-flex nutrition philosophy can be summed up in 2 sentences.

Nutrition is the last piece of this 3 part health puzzle.

These are the 3 health insights I'm leaving 2024 with (albeit at a deeper level).

Health isn't always about learning something new.

It's sometimes about going deeper and understanding more.

To your best plant-fueled health.

3.) Timeless fitness advice in under 125 words

Going into next year, I'm ready to tackle some big health and fitness goals.

2024, in a way, was a step back for my fitness.

I focused heavily on my health (more than any other year) and made tremendous health gains.

2025 will be a continuation of this for my health.

But it's also a launching pad to regain my former strength and muscle levels.

I was fine taking some hits with my fitness to reclaim certain areas of my health.

But I'm excited about having my health and fitness foundations firmly in place going into 2025.

So as a final closeout as we end the year, here's my 125-word fitness advice, that I would have given myself 8 years ago if I were just starting on my fitness journey.

Dear Gabriel,

Life is short and time is limited.

Fitness is a life maximizer and health is the x-factor.

They go hand in hand for high performance and high-quality living.

Health is made of multiple categories including mental, emotional, social, environmental, spiritual, sleep, and stress.

Fitness is developed through strength, endurance, nutrition, and dedication.

Both can be summarized in the following 3 sentences:

Be still. Listen to yourself. Sleep well. Eat less but eat more plants. Move and stand more. Lift weights and run. Notice how you feel while giving yourself grace.

Focus on consistency over perfection. Dedicate your life to a purpose. Design a health environment. Eat meals with others. Lead by example. Drink filtered water.

That's all.

Now, go take action.

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1 Action Step

Take 30 minutes to reflect on your year. How did it go? What did you learn?

Use the annual review questions above to help guide your reflection process.

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One Quote To Finish Your Week Strong

The family gets here in a few hours.

Hosting for the next 7 days.

If you've been a reader of the HPV letters for a while, thank you.

This is my life's work.

I'm glad I can share this with you each week.

Thanks for being here,