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Ability > Body Comp

8/6/2020

Please stop. Body fat is ONE of five categorical measures of fitness. It is not THE greatest. It is not THE only. It is A metric.

Currently, I have three clients who look “in shape” to many people, but are incredibly weak, on the cusp of serious health crises, and when they’ve taken falls (for which they have a higher propensity), they get critically injured.

I spend almost zero minutes outside of the early morning on mobile devices or looking at social media. But in that limited time I see stories about overweight people doing athletic activity and getting body shamed about it. What?

I don’t think the layperson may understand this; but 100, 110 year old people with good cognition aren’t shredded with six packs. They’re smaller, sure. So being extremely overweight is a health risk. But why the heck would we give people a hard time about carrying some extra body fat, period, let alone WHILE they are involved in doing something great for themselves.

I run a lot of personal experiments; so I fluctuate on purpose 20-60lbs per year. I can. And I can do it safely. I do it to learn a variety of things about change psychology, metabolism, and frankly, I actually like science - the REAL application of science, that is, not the theoretical BS, sit-behind-a-screen-and-never-perform-a-single-experiment-kind-of-“science.” The truth is, there are certain things I’m far better at while heavier than when lighter. And while heavier (for me, this is like 245-285), there are calisthenics exercises I can still do that a more “in shape” person hasn’t a prayer to do.

So let’s stop with the negativity, especially that coming from abject ignorance and inexperience about what health and fitness actually is. I’ve had “fat” peers and clients who could absolutely dominate “in shape” fitness models and personalities in every single domain of exercise. The fastest sprinter in-person I’ve ever seen in my life was a guy who was 260lbs; and he absolutely crushed a 180lb “ripped” athlete. And from what I know about the VERY dark secrets of health and fitness personalities, a lot of heavier people will live happier, healthier, longer lives.

All that said, carrying extra weight AND having low to no athletic capacity is imprudent. But do we have to notify individuals personally? I think they get it.

Ability > Body Comp

Frustrated with The Scale? What About Water?

8/1/2020

People are up or down 3lbs and ready to quit or celebrate. I’ve fluctuated as much as 25lbs in a day: https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/lose-24lbs-in-24-hours.

Before you get discouraged or excited, you have to dwell on the inflammatory component and what this means with regard to hydration.

An often overlooked area of opportunity, hydration makes a big difference in life, not just whether we can reference the scale as any believable metric of progress. 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:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2908954/

To help you quantify, these differences in NORMAL hydration levels can mean I have somewhere between 125lbs and 190lbs of water in my body right now. That’s a 65lb difference, without any change in tissue composition. To be clear, I could be down or up 30lbs and have had NO CHANGE in my fat mass or muscle mass.

The funny thing you learn is that when you are genuinely getting leaner, you will tend to drink more water and eat A LOT more salt just to maintain normal blood pressure. In an anti-inflamed state, you’re trying to add fluid and minerals to a system which is shedding fat tissue weight. Most people do the opposite, shedding only water weight and often gaining body fat.

The Aged Brain Doesn't Have to Worsen

7/23/2020

Elderly grow just as many brain cells as youths:

http://www.cell.com/cell-ste…/fulltext/S1934-5909(18)30121-8

You’ve probably heard the factoid that only children grow new brain cells. It was never true, nor could it be true. In fact, as we age, there are increased neural network connections which allow certain skills to be acquired faster and certain problem-solving to be done more acutely. This is a well-known phenomenon in the arts, business, and military strategy, which has been increasingly bolstered by scientific findings in the past fifteen years.

We must differentiate what can be possible from what happens on average. The average people make no effort to preserve health, to learn new skills, to dramatically grow as they became elderly. Thus, on average, what we will observe when studying average people is that on average the brain will worsen. This can become confusing for even very intelligent experts in the field. They make a logical fallacy that average outcomes represent what MUST happen.

I've encountered this with some clinicians and their beliefs around diabetes. Since the average person is a lost cause, they reason that diabetes is irreversible. This isn't based on any biological fact or reality. It isn't based on a set of biochemical laws or rules. It is purely based on the observation that basic average people have basic average outcomes. When we reference mechanism, namely cell turnover and receptor upregulation, the grey-scale that is insulin resistance/glucose intolerance-insulin sensitivity/glucose tolerance, what we find is that "diabetes" is an arbitrary point on an ever-shifting gradient. Not only is it entirely reversible, one can reverse the reversal. This is a function of lowest-common-denominator thinking and behavior. Over forty years ago, based on biology, we knew lifestyle was the cure for diabetes. Now, overwhelming case studies have proven it conclusively. Keep in mind that those irrefutable truths haven't changed the minds of average people thinking about average outcomes based on average effort.

Likewise in neuroscience, there is no biological reason why new brain cell growth would cease. Most researchers have confirmed this, although we do see that age-related afflictions will inhibit brain cell growth: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-019-0375-9. This is contended by no one really. Rates change. Different health issues affect it. Averages are bleak. None of that tells us what is possible or impossible. And it doesn't take a lot of effort to discover stories about elderly people who learn new languages, new skills, new athletic abilities, new careers, new adaptations to technology.

If, however, we insist on limiting beliefs, if we insist that average is what MUST be, then we have done nothing more than create self-fulfilling prophecies. We begin with the expectation that our brain must fall apart. Lo and behold, we stop challenging it to grow. We coach ourselves down to our starting expectation. That's at odds with numerous case studies. That's at odds with neuroscience. That's at odds with biology. The older brain can keep growing, as long as we seek to be more than basic and average.

The Last Shall Be First, And The First Shall Be Last

7/16/2020

Most people would just as soon pass by this Biblical quote (Matthew 26:16) and never even notice it. Those who pause a little longer may see it as prophetic. But I’d argue it’s a timeless commentary on all of life. Any subject in which people think “first is best” has downside. And any area in which people think “last is worst” has upside. After all, the first leaf to sprout is often the first leaf to fall.

I never thought I’d be proud to be from a state which ranks dead last in the Union, but in April of 2020 Minnesota ranked below every single state and even our other territories (DC, Guam, Virgin Islands, maybe Puerto Rico when they complete enough tests) in Covid infections per million person populace: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/. Though things have changed in the past few months, the pandemic has remained remarkably better managed here than most other places. With an international airport smack dab in the middle of our most densely populated area, it’s a wonder actually. BUT, I was concerned in April that being the best could actually lead to getting complacent.

In fact, we all know it well in the rest of life. When people “arrive,” they don’t tend to improve. Being the best can actually be the worst. And on the flip side, being the worst can actually ignite a hunger in people.

We’re all familiar with underdog stories. But why do they stir something in our souls? I believe it’s because we know intuitively that people with nothing left to lose command a sort of superpower if they choose it. People who’ve actually hit rock bottom and risen up know that having nothing left to lose can turn you into a superhuman.

Think about people who have the most to lose. They live in constant fear of losing it all. Societally, we tend to look up at incredibly wealthy people; but many of them just sort of flounder. Multi-generational rich families have one single good story (or none) about the first person who established the family’s riches. And then all of the kids and grandkids live in that shadow, never taking substantive risks, and failing to achieve significance of their own making.

In fitness too, I’ve had a propensity to feel jealous of people who’ve been “fit” their whole lives. Lamenting my late-in-life commitment to consistent lifting, I’ve many times felt at a distinct disadvantage. But the other way to look at it is that I never got to take my health and fitness for granted. I had to earn each step with no running start.

To wit, when I began working in the fitness industry, the worst-off new members were former high level high school and collegiate athletes. At 50-years-old, all of these guys who’d been blithely fit were on 8 different medications. And without a team, peer pressure, and consistent scrimmages and games, they were lost.

But on the other hand, people who’d “always struggled with weight” could soar with their goals. They never had a team. They never succumbed to external pressures for athleticism. They never developed a dependency on matches to keep them active. These are some of the absolute best success stories out there. They don’t have a past they’re trying to get back to. On average, they are better at accepting the present.

Life is more complex than we want to think. Advantages have disadvantages. Privilege has downsides. Being the best can easily be the worst. And being the worst can teach you how to become the best.

Fall in Love with Uncertainty

7/16/2020

“I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.” - Socrates (attributed)

“Pride comes before destruction, and an arrogant spirit before a fall.” - Proverbs 16:18

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” - Mike Tyson

Reality is uncertain. Life is uncertain. It always was and always will be. So why do people yearn to have the delusion of certainty? I never understood what was so wrong with being uncertain in the first place. The greatest moments in history come from uncertainty. The ugliest ones come from certainty. People who cling to certainty destroy themselves and others. Just be adaptable. You don’t need to pretend like you have it figured out. You don’t have it figured out. And that’s okay. That’s actually preferable.

When we don’t know and we admit that we don’t know, isn’t that the only time we actually can learn? Wisdom is understanding and acknowledging that you don’t know, that you’re okay and secure in the uncertainty, and that you have the patience to wade through unclear times without pretending to have the answer.

Some 12 years ago, Stephen Colbert did a brilliant satire on how people will “know” a “truth” by looking it up in their gut: https://youtu.be/OBRKPoAPXEQ . We can see this every day. People are increasingly convinced of a “fact” without reading a single book, without interviewing a single expert, without conducting a single experiment. They just “know the truth” in their guts; and then maybe they add some “research” to back up their guts, by reading Internet forum posts on hoax websites and YouTube channels. It’s a curious coping mechanism for stress: latching onto make-believe certainty in order to avoid actually learning from a time of uncertainty.

Uncertainty is the only place where one can discover. How are you going to learn if you already know the answer? Study the scientists who worked to uncover the electromagnetic spectrum: https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/toolbox/history_multiwavelength1.html . Not one of them pretended to know about the totality of the electromagnetic spectrum EVEN AFTER STUDYING IT INTENSELY FOR YEARS. Yet you know the underpinnings of the entire global economies and political structures from a meme and a 10 minute conspiracy theory video? Ok.

Real researchers attain real breakthroughs by toiling for an entire life time in their blind spots, by confronting the unknown for decades, so that we might arrive at the current state of affairs with phones and computers and x-rays and MRIs and ultrasounds and sonar and lasers and barcodes. The list is endless. We take it for granted. Our lives are measurably better in many ways due to exploration in the uncertainty. They didn’t “figure it all out”, and certainly not in a few minutes of paranoid incoherent meanderings.

In health and fitness, I encounter this constantly. People want answers. Final answers. Certainty. They want a diagnosis, a prescription, and a guarantee. Those people flounder. They fail. They just want the answer. But there is no answer. Success is found in the struggle, in the battle, in wrestling with what “doesn’t make sense.” The truth is found is trudging through what’s difficult. You don’t sweat, bleed, claw, and pay for it? You don’t deserve it. No one cares that you “used to eat whatever I wanted and never got fat.” That’s not how things ARE. The past passed. Will you adapt to reality or will you cling to make-believe?

If you are in love with uncertainty, you are unbreakable. Every time the ground shifts, you’re underwhelmed. Every time there’s a zig where others expect a zag, you’re unflappable. Every time the landscape moves, you’re unimpressed. Fall in love with uncertainty, because there is where we become strongest. Be unsure. Be uncertain. Be ready to learn from one mess so that you are prepared for the next.

Sometimes all we have is next to nothing. Still use that.

7/16/2020

The journey of life is like sidewalk demolition. Some people start out with a jackhammer. Some people have a crew. Most of us are all alone with a rusty chisel and a worn out mallet.

But if we're determined to get through this thing, we better make do with what's available. It's not our fault that this is all we have. But it's still our responsibility to use these few tools for the task at hand.

Everyone is going to get dirty. Everyone's going to breath in some dust. Some are going to get hurt. Some will take more breaks than others. All will die in the process.

Coveting some other set of tools is only going to slow you down. The temptation from frustration will be there to use the chisel for harming others. Every time you put your eyes on someone else's work, you risk crushing your own hand with the mallet.

Just focus on working your own sidewalk with your own tools, because that's all anyone can do. This is what you have. Use it.

Non-Linear Process of Improvement

6/11/2020

Strength training is like retirement investment. Regular contributions reap huge rewards. I call it the compounded interest of physiology. Sometimes you can make bigger contributions. Sometimes you make smaller ones. Broad skill practice has broad return. Narrow focus has higher possible yield with higher risk. Regularity creates solid portfolios.

You have one temple. Though we can 3D print new organs for you, some respect should be taken with some sort of regularity.
That said, don’t expect to see linear growth even with linear contributions. Some days you’ll be underrested. Some days you’ll be distracted. Some days you don’t want to show up. Some days the DOW is down. Some days the S&P is up. Sometimes max strength is good for a PR. Sometimes low intensity endurance work is the order of the day. Sometimes commodities are peaked. Some days the dollar is down and aluminum futures are peaked.

There are so many different facets to what we call “fitness” and “health” that it’s immaterial how great you’re doing on any given day. It can’t be linear. The portfolio can’t always outperform. However, on average, as long as you make regular contributions, there will always be a reliable return over the long term.

Inflammatory Wake-Up Call

6/9/2020

The majority of studies on resistance training show acute and/or long term reduction of inflammation: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2933442/

At least two mechanisms within this are partially understood: myokine expression and interleukin-10. However, like any complex biological system, inflammation is complex. Each lifestyle behavior sends a signal. And resistance training, by itself, cannot completely overcome lack of sleep (pro-inflammatory), detrimental eating (pro-inflammatory), and overall stress mismanagement (also pro-inflammatory).

Nonetheless, a strong body is more resilient than a weak one... against everything. And when all of these factors are put together to balance inflammation, the status is no longer fear but readiness.

Eat Less. Live Longer.

6/9/2020

Many studies have echoed this sentiment; but now the underlying mechanisms are increasingly understood: https://www.salk.edu/news-release/eat-less-live-longer/. In the actual research paper, the authors noted that that caloric restriction “reversed” a lot of the processes which we refer to as aging: https://www.sciencedirect.com/…/arti…/pii/S0092867420301525…

Supercentenarian research has long shown that anyone over the age of 110 years of age eats small meals 1-2 times per day. National Geographic’s Blue Zones confirmed that there doesn’t even exist a single long-lived and outlier-healthy populace on Earth who eats lots of big meals.

In a conversation with a client the other day, I heard a phrase, “we had to have something, because, ya know, we gotta eat.” It kept ringing in my ears. “Gotta”? For adults? Multiple times every day? Where is the research supporting that?

People know I’ve fasted for six days in a row with improved blood profiles and metabolic markers. If they’ve been following me or Elev8 Wellness for any amount of time, they know many people who’ve done intelligent fasting to incredible beneficial outcomes. George Cahill had hundreds of studies on people performing 6 WEEK fasts. There are case studies on fasting for MORE THAN A CALENDAR YEAR: https://www.elev8wellness.com/…/just-a-reminder-you-could-a…

People keep trying to use epidemiological data to figure out what it is that makes SARS-CoV-2 fatal. So far, the only known cause is “inflammatory cellular infiltration” (ie - your own body rampantly laying down unnecessary tissue in the lungs) and the only linear connection on average is age. But what is age? Age is cumulative effects of inflammation. People are more inflamed as they age, by definition. People age as they are more inflamed, by definition.

I know people keep joking about weight gain during the pandemic. But that could very well be the opposite of a joking matter. Fast, if you can. Global shutdown or not, it’ll help us live longer.

“A calorie is not just a calorie.”- actual scientist (Not Influencer)

6/9/2020

Researchers published a study in Cell in January 2020 which showed that “WHEN we eat is just as important as WHAT we eat”: https://www.cell.com/current-biology/…/S0960-9822(19)31468-X. That is, the exact same number of calories has different (worse) outcomes when it’s doled out through continuous snacking instead of standardized meal times (less frequent meal times, which help better regulate dopamine and circadian rhythm). Again, the complexity of fat gain and loss signaling has more to do with endocrine and neurotransmitter cascades: https://news.virginia.edu/…/when-you-eat-might-be-important…

Complex systems confuse people. When a solution requires more than two if-then statements, you can see people get lost really quickly, leading to all kinds of crazy oversimplifications and distractions.

I run into this a lot with nutrition coaching and wellness strategy. At the outset, I tell everyone “you must manage stress,” because the body can gain additional fat in any caloric equation (including “burning more than ingested”) with mismanaged stress; and it can get leaner in any caloric equation (including “eating more calories than ingested”) with well managed stress. We have incontrovertible scientific evidence for both of these scenarios. In the first, sleep/weight loss studies have concluded definitively that there is no way to out-diet chronic stress: https://www.elev8wellness.com/…/chronic-stress-will-build-b…. The math doesn’t work. And for the second scenario, watch a child grow. My kids keep “eating more than they burn,” gaining more body mass and getting LEANER.

Everyone nods approvingly. They intellectually sort of grasp this. I repeatedly reinforce that this will be a lifelong journey. I consider a minimum effort of at least two years of high compliance the beginning of that process. Then, they proceed to mismanage stress and get frustrated that the calories-in/calories-out model is failing them at two-to-six months into 50-70% compliance. Um. Yep. I said that at the beginning. Manage stress. For. A. Long. Time.

Recently, I’ve also run into this difficulty in understanding complexity for the danger of rampant infection. People seem to think the debate is about how fatal it is, confusing this with “dangerous,” or how concerned we need to be. “Danger” is a complex series of systems, mostly unrelated to the fatality rate. It’s not just whether we agree the fatality rate is 0.5 percent or 4.0 percent. Both the deniers and the panickers get confused as soon as you try to walk them through the three if-then statements to explain. The inherent fatality rate isn’t the issue. It could be 0.1 percent. It could be 6.0 percent. That isn’t the issue. That was never the issue. The issue is that what we currently face is outrageously infectious (#1), 15-20% of people will require hospitalization (#2) and around 5% will require ICUs (#3), and we don’t have that capacity if even some of this happens at the same time (#4). So, if you don’t slow the infection, the hospitals WILL BE (not an opinion) overrun (#5 - oh drats: I lost everyone on #2), and all of the other reasons people go to the hospital or ICU (#6 - I realize that no one is paying attention now: but, just a reminder that all other injuries and diseases still exist) won’t be treated.

Unlike some peers of mine, I don’t believe everyone is too stupid to understand this. I think people are smart enough. I think humans can grasp ripple effects, exponential growth, compounded interest, statistical models, unintended consequences, and complex systems. I know they can. I just don’t think they want to. It’s harder than normal linear thinking. It requires more energy, not more intellect. And most importantly, it is equally unkind to sides.

I mean, I get it: there are things we all WANT to be true. I want calories-in/calories-out to be true. In fact, it is true as a hindsight description, just not as a foresight explanation. I too want economic trends to be pinned on one factor; but innumerable factors play a role. Complex reality doesn’t care what we want to be true.

It’s challenging to stay focused for three or more if-then statements. It’s mind-numbing to walk through the complexity of reality when that requires more than a single consideration. It’s easier to go, “if scary, then ‘fake news’.” Or, “if too hard to understand, then conspiracy.” Or, “if not highly fatal, then deny the danger.” Or, “if calories low, then lose weight.” Or, “if calories high, then gain weight.” Or, “if it can’t fit in a soundbyte/hashtag/logo, I don’t have time for it.” No. Complex systems require more than one if-then statement.

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