Tracking technology worsens prospects for the layperson. I started writing a very lengthy piece examining this phenomenon 4 years ago; and it’s such a dense subject I’ve yet to finish the first draft. Here is a short and concise article which covers one side of the psychology driving these ever-worsening outcomes: https://medium.com/@benhall_86389/is-your-fitbit-making-you-fat-most-likely-and-heres-why-a59cc290072
Basically, it comes down to the rates of obesity-increase align precisely with the rates of fitness tracking tech adoption. Since non-specialists don’t know how to use data, the device becomes a totem of affirmations, rather than a tool to create ever-sharpening strategy. Long story short: if you use a tracker to pat yourself on the back (rather than tease out data trends in order to create better planning), stop using it.
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By whom and when? And why should we care? Let me clear: I am not one to invoke the fallacy of “science has been wrong before” so much as remind people that a given proposition sits atop many unsettled variables.
There has been a crisis in science for a while. Essentially there are 3 critical problems plaguing any “scientific truth” we’d all like to be settled: 1.) little-to-no reproducibility 2.) falsified results 3.) consensus is overblown As to the first problem, it’s no small issue, since the scientific method requires reproducibility. Yet, 70% of scientists have failed to replicate test results: https://www.scientificamerican.com/…/is-there-a-reproducib…/ The majority of the time, no one can replicate an experiment whose results are driving societal beliefs. This is kind of a big deal. As to the second problem, 2% of scientists admit to fabricating test results, while around 15% admit to knowing others who have: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2685008/ Thus, the majority of the time there is no replication. And part of the time people are just falsifying data or fabricating results. This leads us to the third issue: consensus. As a mildly educated reader might have already surmised, the first two problems cast consensus into a wastebasket of uselessness. However, even if we completely ignored the first two problems, consensus has skeletons in its own closet. Namely, 1% of scientific authors represent over 41% of research papers and over 87% of the papers whose citations exceed 1000: https://www.researchgate.net/…/263776839_Estimates_of_the_C… Immediately you can see the consensus issue. If we survey pertinent published papers, we’re actually only getting the opinions of 1% of researchers. If we survey scientists directly, we are gathering insights from people who’ve been disproportionally informed/influenced by only 1% of authors. Therefore, getting to consensus as a valuable tool is a fallacy. Even if we could dig down into it, we would be confronted with the first two problems. And that’s to mention nothing of the typical human attraction to popularity. Popularity does not equate to rightness. This is why I encourage people to conduct science and study mechanisms. You can find all of the statistical and epidemiological support for a argument, and it is sitting atop three unstable pillars. But mechanisms and empiricism don’t care about those unstable pillars. Conducting experiments and studying mechanisms doesn’t get waded down in the lies of researchers, the popular trends, or the Pollyanna naivety which thinks that a finding must’ve been replicated. Test blood sugar. Fast. Run one single scientific experiment for crying out loud. Forget the “experts.” People have tried to weigh me down in debates over opinions. I don’t care about opinions. I don’t care if the whole panel of the American Heart Association believes it’s impossible to reverse heart disease. I don’t care what your guru said. I don’t care if the whole roster of contributors to the National Diabetics Committee believes you can’t reverse diabetes. Science doesn’t care about opinion. Propose a mechanism. Argue mechanisms. What is the biological mechanism supporting a health or fitness hypothesis? And even when there might be a proposed mechanism, let’s still run the experiment. Let’s try to reverse heart disease. Let’s try to reverse diabetes. Why would expert opinion or consensus lead us to stop seeking truth, stop conducting experiments, stop searching? Clients and friends ask me to make sense of how one day eggs were bad, then good, then bad, then good again. Or they ask why red meat was bad, then good, then bad, then good again. Nothing is bad or good. Let’s talk mechanisms. HOW is substance X beneficial or detrimental? Let’s discuss THAT. Then, let’s conduct science and see what happens. In my personal experiments, eating piles of egg yolks and three pounds of red meat per day, my cholesterol panel became OPTIMAL. I lost all visceral fat. My risk factors for disease evaporated. That’s a fairly final outcome; but I still wouldn’t consider it CONCLUDED. Inquiry is ongoing. Science is a big tent. Under it exists many scientifIC pursuits. “Scientific” must be differentiated from “science.” There are scientific pursuits which involve non-empirical and non-testable propositions. Those can never be “settled.” Unless we are talking a directly observable, replicable, verifiable and verified system, “settled” is anywhere between hyperbolic and purposely misleading. Trying to jump to the conclusion by slapping “consensus” on it is dishonest anti-intellectualism. Give me mechanisms. We’ve all had enough with the opinions. Lots of calcium doesn’t make bones more dense (70% of bone volume is protein, not minerals). But it does accumulate in plaques and other stroke risk abundance: https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/JAHA.117.005795
Just a reminder that the prominent scientific, medical, and nutritional opinions of 1950 were overturned a thousand times since. The benefits of calcium and milk, which the dairy cabal kept foisting on us through the 80s, was not only overblown, it was dead wrong. This is doubly infuriating when you research Vitamin D and discover that its role in the allocation of calcium was understood in the 1930s. If you still think you need piles of calcium and that’s good enough, you are quite literally working on a worldview that was outdated 90 years ago. As far as mechanism is concerned, calcium without accompanying vitamin D and K2 is not just worthless, it’s harmful. K2: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/3530901/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/22516724/ VitD: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2669834/ Research actually figured out the mechanism: https://www.google.com/…/www.medicalnew…/articles/amp/321407
We are always losing cells and building new ones. In a normal sleep-stress cycle, maybe 1% of those new cells become adipose tissue (ie - fat). But even ONE single bout of 48-hour elevated stress determined that MOST new cells became fat. If your sleep is crap and you don’t manage stress, there is no mathematical model which will get you leaner. You are replacing most cells with fat tissue. Burning more calories than you consume will merely result in rapid skeletal loss, not body composition improvement. Again, calories-in/calories-out and “only macros count” proponents, please explain how your paradigm is going to work here to overcome the hormonal signaling. Obviously, “work out more and eat less” isn’t going to change the fact that someone disproportionately grows almost exclusively fat cells when they replace cells. Just try to think this through for a minute. Imagine a heavily muscled and lean male athlete with great sleep and stress management. He's in an optimal position regarding cell turnover, wherein maybe 1% of new cells turn into fat. He may eat a lot of food, a sloppy diet at that, while maintaining a heavily-loaded strength practice, and he could easily get leaner. He might eat over 5,000 calories per day and only lift 4 days per week as he IMPROVES composition. 50 calories per day feed fat cells. 4,950 calories feed NOT-fat cells. Now imagine an obese female with volatile stress and mismanaged sleep, low muscle mass and aversion to heavy strength training. Even if she got her nutrition PERFECT, let's say at 1,650 calories while her daily expenditure is at or beyond 2,500 per day, she WILL get fatter. If only 51% of her new cells become fat cells, she'll get fatter. But with incredibly mismanaged sleep and chronic stress, and the lack of strength training, this could be as high as 90%. Maybe it is. Maybe it's 95%. Imagine it is. How in the hell is she every going to lose weight? The more calories she "burns" (this includes the production of new cells, genius) the fatter she'll get. Either way you look at it, either 842 or 2,375 calories are going to produce fat in her WHILE SHE IS IN A DEFICIT. Meanwhile only 808 or 125 calories are going to produce NOT-fat. For you advocates of calories-explain-all, show me how this math is going to work. Moreover, the male athlete increasingly gets into a better and better position with his health and fitness prospects. Thus, from a certain point of view, his journey keeps getting easier. The woman, on the other hand, is burning up lean tissue like crazy. Every single day she loses some muscle mass and/or bone tissue (along with ligaments, tendons, cartilage, and organ reserve). This only compounds her difficulties, since less skeletal muscle equals less signaling to offset the progenitor cell percentages. To be clear, if she started at only 51% of new cells becoming fat cells, as time passes (with less lean tissue and more fat tissue) that percent will go up. Her fat gain will continue accelerating, in fact, no matter how much cardio and dieting she does. This is again why simply referencing energy expenditure without knowledge of biology is bankrupt. In the mice, they gained twice as much weight simply by raising glucocorticoid levels. Chronic stress must be addressed directly. We can't skirt around it with calorie theories and activity trackers. Since at least 2012 this supplement has been proven in mouse models. The results are astonishing - 10% increase in muscle mass and 30% increase in strength: https://www.researchgate.net/…/228089564_Ursolic_Acid_Incre…
Given the outrageous activation of brown fat and increased energy expenditure, it’s probably a worthwhile experiment to run for the layperson. Apparently it clears fatty liver and excess energy stores in the body. The implications are tremendous. In humans, ursolic acid is already proven to have anti-cancer effect: https://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/content/60/9/2399. Unfortunately, there isn't much incentive to further explore human research for a compound this promising, given it would at least supplant some chemotherapy and the entire array of sarcopenia/osteoporosis drugs. Thus, you'd sooner catch swamp sludge grow into a sentient being than see official organizations which are influence by pharma give it a ringing endorsement. Is it the cure? We don't know yet. But it's worth a try. This includes those in their 20s and 30s. And that's not a joke or hyperbole. There are documented cases in youths. It’s not as rare as we’d hoped. And although we would tend to call it by another name when in a young person, this could well be a sobering moment of early detection. Read the symptoms: https://www.nia.nih.gov/h…/what-are-signs-alzheimers-disease
Oftentimes we miss the early detection of dementia and Alzheimer’s, because we are really only thinking of them as old person’s diseases (or someone ELSE’s diseases). But I have noticed a rapid rise in severe cognitive degeneration among a lot of younger people. This might be missed by friends and family or even considered a flighty personality trait. But it’s bigger than that. Given my profession, there are a lot of people who reach out to me. I am organized and document a lot. And I do my absolute best to follow-up with people. The vast majority of the time, most people don’t at all remember what they themselves said. I’m not talking about inconsequential side notes or a forgotten appointment. I’m talking about major revelatory deep emotional discourse that they themselves shared. It could be their stated reason for living, for training, the “why” for their efforts at personal growth. I’ll place a mention of it in my notes and on occasion reference it. Many people have literally no clue they ever said it. And again, I’m not talking about in a moment where they are distracted or overwhelmed with busyness. I’m talking about in an acute and targeted conversation, they have no memory of their own words, actions, thoughts. And this forgetfulness is indeed linear with age. This whole subject occurred to me when following up with a guy who has many times reached out to me for help. At first, I found it odd that he would kind of space out how HE had contacted ME. But over the past 10 years, I realized his absent-mindedness is accelerating. He genuinely has no recollection of many notable things he’s said, especially his many requests for me to help direct him. And it's not that he's self-centered or narcissistic. He genuinely doesn't remember. But it's not just him. I realize, when consulting my client notes, people are forgetting their whole lives. The propensity is widespread. It makes sense, since we in modern society have increases in other health-deteriorating factors. Brain health is largely reliant on the creation of BDNF from physical activity, the removal of waste products during sleep, and the reduction of neural inflammation influenced by sensible eating. Since people generally don’t sprint or lift weights, and on average they have impaired sleep, and on average they don’t eat anti-inflammatory nutrition, risk factors are climbing. Driven, confident, and incredibly intelligent people may be able to mask the symptoms better than less-driven, self-conscious, and less intelligent peers. But it’s something all of us need to take seriously. Some absent-minded moments are just daily fatigue. But years of that add up to something that amplifies deterioration. Be on the lookout. You may have early-onset Alzheimer’s. When you hookup fMRI you can actually use live feedback to train motivation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/30047755/
Personally, I don’t accept the conventional definition of motivation. It’s circular and self-refuting. There are actors and there are talkers. No one is always “motivated.” We build habits. We generate skills in accountability, reliability, and sense of duty. Even the once-great hope that we could pin “motivation” or aggression on a genetic determinant has been thrown in the ash heap of intriguing but misleading scientific tropes: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/…/code-rage-the-warri…/. That was quaint. The more productive question to ask is what WILL someone do. This relegates motivation to the space it should’ve long ago occupied: cute jargon. People, therefore, aren’t faced with a seemingly-impossible task of magically increasing “motivation” (whatever that is anyway). Instead, we accept their current level of drive and difficulties, and use intelligent strategy to meet people where they are. It could be 5 minutes. It could be one nutritional change. It could be daily gratitude journaling. All that matters is the person WILL do it. No try. No attempt. No sounds good. No exciting 6 week program. Just real and honest steps. And to boot, keep in mind that neuroscience is showing we can train this motivation thing if you really want that too. The moment you eat less, metabolic rate decreases: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/2204100/
This is why static programs produce zero continued results. If you just eat less, the body simply slows down to improve its chances of storing energy. There must be a progressive strategy, a week-over-week, day-over-day, season-over-season progression in stimulus. One stimulus (ie - eat less) provides one effect. One additional stimulus (ie - move more) provides one more effect. Done. No more effect. This creates a genuine bottleneck for people who want to make consistent progress in health and fitness. There must be a model in place wherein that person can objectively point to week 3 being greater stimulus than week 1, week 6 greater than 3, and so on. However, this often requires more time. Ultimately, limits present themselves, namely rest, recovery and sleep. And then, on that end of variables, we have another issue. Less sleep means increased fat storage, especially for certain demographics: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26538305/… Yet again, this is why I caution people about worshipping the calorie myth. I’ve known many compliant enthusiasts who are eating fewer calories than they burn only to discover they’re gaining fat. Eating less and exercising more doesn’t obligate the body to maintain muscle and bone tissue. And it doesn’t obligate the body to burn fat. You can burn lean tissue (the body prefers this, since it additionally lowers metabolic rate) and often will without major progressive strategy at play. Be careful. Because eat less usually means gain fat. Stretching and aerobics are nice. But they miss an enormous piece of the puzzle. Progressive resistance is the only way to combat the otherwise-inevitable bone loss (and other lean tissue loss): https://www.health.harvard.edu/…/strength-training-builds-m…
As far back as 2005 various evidence was pointing in the direction that skeletal muscle is part of the endocrine system. That is, people theorized that when you contract muscles hard against a resistance, many other processes unfold in the body with regard to hormones, immune function, and peptide signaling. In 2008 this was confirmed. More theorizing about its role in human health was proposed: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/18923185/ Over the past 11 years, more myokines have been confirmed. There are beneficial signals in the body which only occur when we use progressive resistance. This may be a newly-confirmed area of human biological sciences. But it is confirmed: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myokine Lifting weights is the cure. Most headlines from longevity science will strike you as outrageous, if you haven't been watching that sphere of research closely for a long time. They may seem far-fetched and out-of-reach. But make no mistake: biologists can control a number of factors which we take for granted as inevitable aging.
Recently, a study showed nearly 50% increase in lifespan with three drugs: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/…/fruit-flies-live-longer-combination…. People read the fine print and scoff because it was on fruit flies, not humans. But actually, read closer, and you find that the reason these drugs were even explored for the fruit flies is because we’ve first found them potent in human benefit and lifespan. I think it stands to reason that we contemplate the mechanisms at play. And in this research it’s pretty clear what the tripartite recipe was: positive emotion/mindset; anti-cancer effect; reduced hyper-immune over response. Will we live 50% longer? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe it'll only be 5%. That’s beside the point. The point is that if you create better emotional outcomes, reduce cancer proliferation, and engender optimal immune response, then life is better. These can be accomplished with a mindfulness practice, exercise, and grown-up eating decisions, by the way. It might’ve once seemed like a fiction. But through science, “fiction” is here. |
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