No matter what school of thought, what nutritional program, what training split, if there isn’t an obvious and quantifiable stimulus rendered in RECENT history (and again, and again, and again), then there cannot be an expectation of progression outcome.
People will tell me stories about how they lost weight once upon a time from running, juicing vegetables, fill-in-the-blank here. Cool story, basic bro/bra. You went from low stimulus to high stimulus. Try not being so basic. Three days after you’re running 5 miles every morning (I am NOT recommending this, btw) and starving yourself via green juicing every morning your body has established that schema as your maintenance baseline. What’s the NEW stimulus RELATIVE to that average? In fact, even for the above-basic bro out there, when you proffer evidence of going all the way up to 6 miles per day, can you show me all other variables remain the same? That is, the 20% increase in duration you’re so proud of - does that actually amount to a 20% stimulus increase? Did the pace remain the same or faster? Did the food intake remain the same or decrease (which almost never happens, since your body is trying to increase hunger to make up for the extra duration)? Almost assuredly, no. And THAT is why progress eludes you. Instead, set a very low baseline across the board. From this, we can predictably render a RELATIVE-to-recent-baseline stimulus in perpetuity. The spring of 2007 I lost 70lbs in 5 months never doing more than 16 minutes of “cardio” on a RECUMBENT bike. No injuries. No tendinitis. No burnout. No lack of motivation or willpower issues (it’s only 16 after all, and on a recumbent bike for crying out loud) for 5 months. No repetitive pounding from walking or running. Even if I were experiencing hip or back pain from other issues, I could always hop on a bike and OUTDO my prior 16 minute performance. There’s no getting away from the principle of progressive stimulus. You’re better off embracing it by finding a starting point low enough to continuously, reliably, predictably outperform for 3-6 consecutive months.
0 Comments
This powerhouse @smiles_taylor showcases his hard work. The young man has been training; and it shows in this TWICE-his-body-weight lift. His simple message speaks volumes: I have CP, CP doesn’t have me! In all our challenges and afflictions, do WE have THEM, or do THEY have US? Choose. Thank you, young man, for your wisdom, for your drive, for your inspirational effort that is so great we might take it as an indictment on our own readiness to spin tales of disempowerment. Did you know that you can be below 55% hydration and feel like you're overhydrated (peeing all the time)? Humans can have over 75% hydration levels. Think about this. A 250lb person can be about 125lbs of water or 200lbs of water. A 75lb difference. That's around 9 gallons. Your intuition, however, is run off of relative changes in recent history. So if you've been persistently and consistently dehydrated for a long time, you wouldn't even know it.
An often overlooked area of opportunity, some serious health concerns arise at even really low single digit percentage decreases in hydration. When people are feeling anxiety, lethargy, etc., in some cases it may simply be a persistent dehydration. Studies show that infants are at or above 75% hydration and the elderly and infirm are at or below 55%. Thinking that thirst or intuition will inform good water management in the body is folly. Here's a great paper examining the variance found in tissue and implications with only minor shifts in relative hydration (a couple percentage points): https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908954/ For those aiming to make some nutritional changes, I have an observation/tip/thought you may find helpful.
I haven’t heard many stories about people signing up for college for a single day, testing out military training for a couple days, “seeing how it goes” with their career for a few hours, or genuinely saying “I think it’s time to put this newborn up for adoption.” For the most part, we just get it that these are AT LEAST medium-to-long-term commitments, requiring a physical move, new housing, new schedule, consistent transit, unrelenting responsibility. Yet, frequently I hear people tell me how they ran out of “good” food after a few days of “trying out” this new dietary practice. If you can acknowledge that a lifetime of behaviors has brought you to a place which is going to require lifestyle revision, why plot out only a couple days of beneficial nutrition? I believe it’s because the preconscious and unconscious portions of the brain are fully committed to not altering behavior. If someone told you she was going to take the Bar Exam next month, but has outings and vacations planned for the next three weeks, you might question her resolve/honesty. If you planned on completing a university program in another state/country, it could be questionable if you only booked a one-night hotel stay there. Similarly, if you are looking to change how you eat, you may want to obligate yourself to as long a change as possible. I’m as big of an advocate for fresh food as any of my peers in the fitness industry. But I’m also a pragmatist and a realist. At some point, availability and convenience drive outcomes. Depending on someone’s starting point, food co-ops and farmers market trips every three days isn’t practical. Stock up. Or sign up for some home delivery food prep service. The human penchant for hating food waste will win over. If you procure a pile of food stuffs or commit to a service over the long haul, you have a much higher probability of success. A 3-month stockpile of supplements, meal replacement bars/powders, a full freezer, and a full cupboard may not represent IDEAL food. But this is where you must not allow perfection to become the enemy of the good, especially at the beginning of the journey. True change is extremely dependent on familiarity of patterns, operant and classical conditioning, and defaults. Create an environment wherein you can’t help but follow-through with some regularity for weeks or months at a time. Otherwise, yes, you’ll be stuck in the trap of “my willpower ran out,” “I didn’t have another option,” or “I know what to do; I just don’t do it.” My son wasn’t making this distinction. I took out the chess board, 8 brown pawns and 1 cream pawn. I placed them out of his sight.
Me: reach in; grab one pawn - what’s the most PROBABLE outcome? E: well, it could be the cream one. Me: it’s possible; but it’s not probable. E: *takes out brown pawn* Me: now what is most LIKELY the next one? E: it could be the cream one. Me: it could be; but it probably won’t be. We continued the exercise until it was evident to him the very dramatic difference between possibility and probability. Then we got into defined probabilistic assessment (i.e. - 50/50; 1:3; 75%; etc.). Throughout the week, he continued to make observations about probability versus possibility as we drove around town, or as we looked for items in the house, or as he pondered the events to come on a following day. As I watched him build this understanding, it started to dawn on me that many adults don’t understand the stark difference between the two. I read it and hear it in people’s word choice all the time: - So-and-so WILL NEVER change - I CAN’T do X - that group of people ALWAYS... We like to be logically lazy. When something is improbable, we just round down to IMPOSSIBLE. When we want something to be true, no matter how unlikely, though possible, we round up to DEFINITELY. It leaves people in a gambling mentality or a prejudicial mindset. More importantly, failing to make this distinction leaves you without the answer of HOW TO change something. It obligates you to certain outcomes. If something is DIFFICULT, but you approach it as IMPOSSIBLE, there’s a good chance you can no longer effect change. Problem solving IS the targeted reduction of improbability. So, when you run into something very improbable, try thinking, “how can I reduce the improbability?” rather than “I give up; this system is impossible; these people are impossible.” It may leave you with a few more tools in your kit to deal with your health and fitness. It may leave you with a few more tools in your kit to deal with people who have a different worldview. There are always more than two options. The belief that there are only two is generally working against most of our self-interests or collective interests for that matter. We see it in debates, politics, food choices, you name it. Just because there appear to be two options presented to us, or presented to the simpler portions of our minds, that has no bearing whatsoever on the actual number of options or possibilities.
Your life is simple and easy, right? I laugh out loud too when someone implies that about me or my life. We humans like simple. However, I think we can all agree (if we aren’t currently in the act of trying to be inimical and debate one another) that few systems in life are actually simple. Most are very complicated. Everything affects everything else. And every time we drill down to some fundamental truth, we find it sits atop a variable system underneath. Once upon a time, the smartest among us thought of a biological cell as an amorphous blob that sort of magically made all this “life” stuff happen. Now, we know there is a universe of carefully designed landscapes and sophisticated machines within the cell. Within those machines are also complex systems of protein signaling, architecture, computing. The ancient Greeks theorized an “atom” (literally meaning non-divisible) from just the thought experiment that as you divide any structure, you’ll eventually reach pay-dirt: something which cannot be further broken down - a sort of base building block. As chemists and physicists have dug deeper, we found subatomic particles. But this wasn’t the end. Their architecture sits atop quarks, bosons, fermions. And so it may go forever. Thus it is with health and fitness. It’s not so much that any one single behavior is always and forever “good” or “bad.” To be fair and honest, we must acknowledge that it is much more variegated than that. Some things are productive for one person at one time based on one perspective. The same thing may be unproductive for the same person at another time from another perspective. The false dichotomy is a societal cancer. I see it eat away at people’s mental and physical health. If someone disagrees with me today, they are not forever and always an enemy. If one person takes a specific viewpoint, it doesn’t mean there is only the opposite viewpoint. There are more political and philosophical positions than TWO. Life has more than just villains and heroes. And in health and fitness, there is much more gray area than all-in versus all-out. Don’t succumb to the simple mind which believes you must either be a fit-fanatic or a lazy-layabout. There is a universe of complexity between and beneath them. Research repeatedly shows that tiny investments in personal health add up. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by thinking in terms of “on” or “off” with regard to healthiness. There are people with six packs who are as broken as a human can be in all other measurements. And there are strong, active folks who carry some extra body fat. Get over the weigh ins. Get over the “good” vs “bad.” Watch your false dichotomies. I once had a client say, “honestly, I envy what you have: the way you’ve set up your life, your business, the time you have with your family and how it flows through the week, week to week - I wish I had what you have.” He was dead serious and the most opened-up I’d ever seen him. I was speechless. He was a good guy. He has a family. He’s “arrived” in the sense that he was successful by every worldly variable, a young high-level executive, highly respected professionally, extremely connected, endowed with a substantial trust fund from inter-generational wealth, the money, the houses, the trips, the cars, the watches, the clothes, the typical what-you-think-of Americana has-it-all. Yesterday my wife and kids and I were driving home together and my son said, “I don’t need to make any more wishes.” My wife and I said, “why’s that?” My son said, “because I already have my greatest wish: that I see my whole family every day - no matter how bad a day, it’s a good day as long as I see you guys.” There are a lot of distractions in life. There are a lot of things we strive for and think we want. But so many of those things other people obtain only to find an emptiness in their hearts. If you can really look around - and I mean REALLY look around - you will find you need not make any more wishes. In college I had a mentor with whom I constantly disagreed. We had totally disparate world views, politics, beliefs. But we respectfully engaged in discussion. And we had a mutual awe for one another’s dedication.
One day my mentor lost one of his parents. He showed up for class the same day and the next day. He made funeral preparations. And he continued to work. His life never ground to a halt. I feared asking him about this for a long time. Finally, after months, I couldn’t resist any longer. We had wrapped up a private meeting; and as he got up to leave, I said, “sir, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you for a while.” He gestured for me to go ahead. I said, “you’ve talked so lovingly about your parents; they were clearly the world to you - why didn’t you take time off when you lost them?” He choked up a bit, which I’d never seen. The man is steel. I’ll never forget. He said, “you’ve really got me behind the 8 ball.” I said that of course it’s none of my business and he needn’t answer. He collected himself and proceeded anyway: “We can be sad and get nothing done. Or we can be sad and get everything done. The mistake people make is thinking they’ll be able to get around to something one day. But there’s no guarantee any of us will get to live through the very day we’re in right now.” An 89 year old man plays around with 405lb deadlifts. And he weighs 147lbs. Many thanks to Joe Stockinger for showing us the possibilities and World’s Strongest Fan on YouTube for sharing this with the world.
The Kinesiology Department at the University of Maryland just published findings showing that after age 50 if you take a break from exercise you will suffer brain deterioration consequences (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnagi.2016.00184/full). We tend to associate our own youth with our sharpest thinking or greatest physical prowess. But there was a reason those two things went together; and it didn’t have anything to do with age so much as what behaviors we tend to perform at different ages. People whose physical activity is intense and regular are as athletic or cognitively sharp as youths or MORESO. The passage of time does add up. But you also have a vote. Cast it. In a row. To break into something you want or break out of something you don’t.
Three consecutive encounters with anything begin to lay down foundations of new neural patterns. In neuroscience, people’s brain imaging changes after 3 to 21 consecutive days (which is the figure with which most of us are familiar). The Behaviorists of the 20th century showed us that three consecutive new/altered encounters can do quite a bit. As such, it shows up in most clinical research on how animals feel or behave, and if/how we can make changes: three days of; three efforts at; three feedings; three stimuli; three fill-in-the-blank-here. This goes for angry people becoming less angry (lookup hug studies), addiction alterations, depressed people becoming more positive, inactive people becoming active, and so forth. In all of the George Cahill research on starvation and metabolism, he found distinct changes (beneficial ones) in the physical biomarkers on or just after the third day in a row. In the nutrition science world, we know well the switch that gets flipped with nutritional ketosis on or just after the third day. There is a testable state change which favors fat burning after a three day effort at it. Everyone is familiar with entering a new class or workplace, and how by the third day sociological laws govern who our peer or friend set becomes. Generally, by the fourth day of the same class, your brain has determined with whom you exchange greetings, if you’ll engage with an instructor or not, what types of questions you will and won’t ask, etc. You’re probably thinking “three is enough?” Well, no, not to keep everything going. The longer the better. But I am saying you owe yourself the opportunity to try AT LEAST three, because often we have one experience and we’re all set. You’ve heard of “first impressions.” On social media, you’ve probably noticed that after you disagrees with someone once, you won’t even agree with someone when they’re supportive of you. I see all the time people saying that if you don’t align perfectly with them on one belief, they’ll cease interacting with you forever. Our minds are ready to forge a perpetual finality based on minimal data. Behaviorism ascended in the field of psychology in order to try to make it or at least a branch of it into a rigorous science. Observe behavior. Take note of patterns. Simple. Then alter patterns in order to create new behaviors, and we find new and reliable outcomes. This Behaviorist approach seemed to come at odds with introspection, the inner space, repressed memories, and lots of other pieces of psychology which were/are great for expression and artistic outcomes, but lack any sort of dependability or scientific repeatability. But some have seen a way to make it a both/and proposition, rather than an either/or debate. Regardless of where you want to cast your lot, there’s something intrinsically powerful about 3 consecutive encounters. It comes up in religious literature, in phobia studies (both development of and recovery from), in immunity cascades against infection, in post-surgical healing, and I’m sure many, many other systems. Is it magic? No. It’s some sort of physical and chemical property which rears it’s head in all of biology. I’ve seen it as THE variable which makes or breaks long term success. It’s as if people must face and “overcome” three consecutive parties, holidays, illnesses, holidays, weekends, weeks, months or years, in order to get the deep brain to be familiar with, comfortable with, and begin to get skillful at the new way of living. I used to take clients who came to me with short-term goals. Then I realized this basically dictates that their baseline of fitness will never exceed the period of my coaching. People get “in-shape” for an event, only to find they completely fall off afterward. The reality is that they needed to proceed through that AND the next two events in order to coax the mind. As such, I’ve had a few people with whom I can’t work any longer, because they refuse to find a sustainable maintenance program. 99% of the people who have the most impressive short term transformations have lackluster long term progress. You see, there is no higher correlation with intelligent decisions among more “rational” people. Vices feature as high or higher among high IQs. We do what is familiar, not what is sensible. We get motivated. We logically review a perfectly reasonable way forward. We turn it into goals or New Years resolutions. And within about 5 seconds, our brain defaults to the prior patterns. You’ve already seen this in debates. People can be confronted with a hurricane of counter-evidence, and 99 out of a 100 times won’t budge. Do people really have difficulty quitting drugs or emotional self-sabotage because they haven’t yet encountered a convincing enough argument in favor or living better? Come on. Let’s stop with the pretense. You already know a lot of changes which would improve your life. YOU have made the intellectual and emotional connection with a different way forward. I can’t change that. No one can. And that isn’t the issue. We can circle back to paradigm shifts when people are humble and ready. But for now, HOW do YOU do what it is YOU already determined YOU’D like to do but aren’t doing? Make it through three consecutive days, three consecutive encounters with your triggers, three consecutive interfaces with the things that trip you up. Just focus on that. Three consecutive days of making no excuses. Three consecutive days of whatever it is. When you “fail,” try again, three times in a row. Fall down three times. Get up three times. Face a desire to quit without quitting three consecutive times. Get up early three days in a row. Go to bed early three days in a row. Forgive someone three times in a row. Go three weekends in a row where you overcome some self-sabotaging behaviors. Go three months in a row for foreign language or instrument practice. Be understanding of people with whom you disagree three years in a row. Whatever it is, just try three in a row. Be honest with yourself three times in a row. Say you’ll do it and follow through three times in a row. |
Elev8 Wellness
|