This week: “my device says I’m 30% bodyfat.”

This is coming from a client who lost 120lbs of fat and went from sedentary to squatting nigh 500lbs over the course of 3 years. The device is not even remotely close to an approximation, even if we were exceedingly forgiving.

A few weeks prior: “my device showed my VO2 max.”

This came from a different client whose device is a wristband.

Device companies, please just stop lying. If your device has no way to measure different tissues and cell types in the body, please shut the F$&@ up about body comp. If your device doesn’t directly measure oxygen exchange, please shut the F$&@ up about VO2. If your device doesn’t monitor heart rate variability, don’t opine on stress and recovery. If your device doesn’t weigh my food, stop lying about my food. Device companies, just stop lying. Just stay in your lane. Please.

Leave measurements to the appropriate measuring tools. If I pointed to my yardstick or ruler to tell you the kilograms of your hard drive, you’d probably look at me sideways. And rightly so. If I pointed to my food scale to tell you how many terabytes are left in your cloud storage, you’d probably just dismiss it. But for some reason, when a venture capitalist hires some keyboard warriors to generate fitness device software, everybody starts bowing to the golden calf and critical thinking goes on hiatus.

Just leave wellness expertise to actual wellness experts. It’s probably best to ignore digital bots and not place our physiological metrics in the hands of app programmers, no matter how good their computer science degrees are.

I don't use my analog scale to portend the future of digital technologies. Don't use your virtual reality pretense to diagnose actual real live physical phenomena. I get it. There are cases where experts slightly overstep their purview, mistakenly. Then there is what's going on with device companies: they are just straight up lying in order to make it appear like the device has more functions to sell you on.

I'm not even harping on how fitness devices have worsened American health and fitness outcomes. Since their launch, severe obesity DOUBLED (https://www.elev8wellness.com/wellblog_best_nutrition_training_coaching_experts/a-very-very-uncomfortable-truth). That's right. With the advent and popularization of digital fitness, health and fitness got worse at a faster rate than all of prior human history. Life expectancy took its first decline in a century. 

But we shouldn't be surprised. The primary sales effort of fitness device companies is lies; so why would productive outcomes even be a part of their business models?

A life of weakness where one has allowed fitness and strength to deteriorate is difficult.

It could be a simple 5-20 minutes without equipment. It could be weight lifting for frail 96-year-olds: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/2342214/. These frail 90-somethings had 50% speed improvements in walking. They had strength and balance improvements, with just a simple 8 week lifting program.

We overcomplicate things, thinking we need 2 hours of strenuous depletion to get anywhere. We buy into the aging mythologies, the victim narratives, the “can’t” word choice. We obsess over scales. We hand over this prudent activity to “fanatics” alone. And as a consequence we opt to do little or nothing at all.

Strengthening keeps you capable. Lack of strengthening ensures you become incapable.

Lifting doesn’t have to be overwhelming. It just has to be. Without it, we find that organs, the brain, and the skeleton will deteriorate.

Improving strength is for all. It doesn’t belong to bodybuilders and athletes alone. It’s not flagrant exhibitionism. It’s conservative life insurance.

Fitness, strictly defined, is capacity. It’s not looks. Don’t let capacity get handed over to superficiality. Capacity isn’t superficial. Training capacity isn’t superfluous. It’s as or more important than saving for retirement, choosing the right health insurance coverage, and putting in the effort for your career. All of those actions we take with the well-founded belief there will be a future return on investment, which, in turn, gives us the capacity to do other things.

Somehow, basic maintenance of our temple has become de-prioritized such that it’s bookended as excessive leisure, despite the fact that “busy” people spend 10-20 times more time on entertainment. If we were to take just 2% of the time we spend on watching shows, games, etc., and allocate it toward a practice of strengthening, we could make a substantial impact on the health crisis in the developed world.
But we have to start with disabusing everyone of the false belief that strengthening is difficult or impossible or “for those types of people”. Strength is a skill. Practice however you can. That’s it. Really.
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Take one minute for some bridges and squats. If the motivation strikes you, learn deadlift. Practice. That’s it. Keep it simple. Be consistent. Don’t get weak. Get less weak. That’s it. Really.

There are four chemical and biological truths to understand regarding how red meat cures heart disease:


1.) TMAO is a protective metabolite
2.) We make more when we experience more stress IN ORDER TO PROTECT US
3.) L-Carnitine is necessary for human life/makes TMAO; ergo, we will intuit to eat more IN ORDER TO PROTECT US
4.) Red meat is the L-Carnitine super food (contains the highest concentration)


TMAO is a healthy protective metabolite which combats several negative effects in the body. Without it, we would die. Primarily, we make it from the essential nutrient choline and a building block for healthy cell membranes called phosphatidylcholine. As an organism experiences increases in stressors or pressures, it makes more TMAO: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trimethylamine_N-oxide. We see this in a linear relationship in marine life. The greater the depth at which the creature lives in the ocean, the more TMAO it must produce to protect itself. Literally, there is more pressure on the animal. In order to make more TMAO to offset the effects of the great depth, obviously, the organism must eat more of the precursors which its body will use to make the TMAO.


Another pathway for TMAO synthesis is L-Carnitine, a beneficial amino acid derived from lysine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnitine . L-Carnitine is used not only to make this life-saving TMAO, but also as a transport molecule to burn fat. As such, L-Carnitine DEficiency makes it very difficult to manage healthy energy balance in the body.


L-Carnitine consumption reduces all-cause mortality by 27%, irregular heart rhythm by 65%, and cardiac-related chest pain by 40%: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/23597877/. There is some L-Carnitine in avocados and beans, more in dairy, fish and chicken, and the most in red meat. The role of L-Carnitine in plant life is currently less-understood; but researchers are working on it: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/326084307_Physiology_of_L-carnitine_in_plants_in_light_of_the_knowledge_in_animals_and_microorganisms.


To be clear, when stress happens, the animal makes more TMAO. When the animal makes more TMAO, the animal will make/require more of the precursors which make the TMAO. In response, the animal will increase levels of L-Carnitine in tissue. Consequently, if it can, the animal will eat more foods which contain L-Carnitine.


OR…


You could flip logic upside down, throw away critical thinking, forget the proven biology, and propose that the causal relationship works like this:


For NO reason, an animal eats BAD foods which contain EVIL L-Carnitine, which forces the body to make DESTRUCTIVE TMAO, which CAUSES heart disease. Lol. There are actual paid scientists who’ve been proposing this for about 8 years. Clearly, they should’ve taken some courses in formal logic and critical thinking.


The precisely wrong way to look at these biochemical facts is to observe an overstressed animal, note that the animal defends itself by making more life-saving compounds, and then conclude that the compounds cause or create the stress, and THEN conclude that the foods the animal eats in order to protect itself cause the stress. That is faulty upside-down logic which ignores the known biological truths.


We can all see and agree that people who are experiencing too much stress will make more TMAO to offset the stress. But if we ignore the science and critical thinking, we can begin to believe that TMAO is the CAUSE of the stress. As we begin to confuse ourselves, it’s then very easy to conclude that L-Carnitine is BAD. As long as we forget the role of TMAO and L-Carnitine, we can use our ignorance to call them both BAD. And then it’s not a big jump to conclude that the L-Carnitine superfood (red meat) is also BAD.


Taking the same faulty logic, we would just as soon conclude that it’s the TMAO, and not the depth, that CAUSES a marine creature to experience more pressure. Stupidity.


It’s no longer sufficient to remind people that correlation doesn’t equal causation. We’ve come to a point where experts are paid to say the causal arrow is pointed the wrong direction entirely.

But each is productive or counter/unproductive toward a goal or purpose.
This is an essential truth. Using terms like “good” and “bad” toward eating is self-defeating, because it begins with a moral framework which invites us to vilify or heroize ourselves through nutrition. That’s the wrong approach. We are neither food heroes nor food villains. Rather, we are in a state of productivity or counter/un-productivity. We are in a state of empowerment or disempowerment. We are not made evil nor righteous through foods. But we utilize them to move toward or away from certain outcomes.

It’s not hair-splitting overture. A youth athlete who is very active and struggling to maintain or gain strength and size requires certain nutritional intake. She will need to be SUPER-sufficient (in excess) on a lot of different markers. That which is productive for her is almost precisely counterproductive for a rapid fat loss client. They may both need enough protein, fiber, vitamin and mineral intake. However, one must OVERdo on average; the other must UNDERdo on average. No food is inherently and always contextlessly good or bad for these two. Type, dosage, and timing of food matters, but in different ways for different goals in different people at different times.

Yes. There are some more-or-less universally true “goodnesses” we might seek in nutrition: nutrient density; unprocessed; sustainability considerations. But even these are slippery slopes toward excessive moralizing.

Is spinach good? What about for those allergic to it? What about canned? What about pesticide content? What about oxalic acid content? What about for people whose blood content of iron is already too high? What about when it has E. Coli? What if it causes the person GI irritation? What if the large farm which produces it uses more fossil fuel for their operation than your local beef farmer? What if the tiny plastic and tin cans for each 4 ounce serving of spinach produce millions of tons more waste material per pound of food than the 3lb pack of beef or the 400lbs bulk quarter cow purchased directly from a local farm?

“Good” or “bad” is too high of a marker. It’s too much for the human brain. It’s too grand. It’s too contentious. And it is folly. It reinforces lies which are tempting: WE are GOOD people; THEY are BAD people. And it’s also precisely why it fails. Always. The insistence on RIGHT or WRONG with regard to food and lifestyle is so egregiously and blatantly wrong. It entirely misses the important question: is this PROductive?

In repeated experiments, my blood chemistry worsens with plant-based eating. I wish I would’ve known this as a teen trying to understand my skin complexion. Now, it’s rather clear (no pun intended). Additionally, I’ve learned that my inflammatory markers worsen with a lot of plant food. My protective cholesterol drops. My non-protective rises. Conversely, when I emphasize animal-based nutrition, skin clears, energy improves, vitality benefits, and my lab values on blood draws optimize. Every. Single. Time. For 17 years.

Notice what I don’t say. I don’t say primal or paleo is GOOD. I don’t say plant-based eating is BAD. Those types of proclamations are woefully inadequate. The individual tolerates or thrives on vastly different approaches. Again, one question rings out: is it productive?

Is it? Is the food PROducing a desired outcome? Is it improving your prospects?
A practical line of thinking like this will never be popular, because it doesn’t capitalize on provocation. It sidesteps the guilt-shame spiral. It lionizes no one. It belittles no one. It just simply keeps returning us to the same pragmatism: is this PROductive?

People eating unproductively have a habit of telling us all how much “healthy and good food” they eat. Instead of focusing on the outcome, they’re intent on moralizing food, looking for a pat on the back or a moment of shame. This is entirely off the mark. Who cares about how “good” or “healthy” a food theoretically is, if it’s counterproductive in practical outcome? Steven Weinberg once quipped, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil - that takes religion." His note here would be well-taken applied to many things, especially nutrition. A food religion is what it takes for a “good eater” to have “bad outcomes.” A lot of people intently believe they’re eating GOOD food, despite no improvement in outcomes. That takes food religion, food dogma, food ideology, food politics.
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We could just leave the moralizing aside altogether and merely emphasize productivity. In that framework, there is no good or bad food. There is merely one question: is this PROducing the desired outcome?

In the human adult there is as little as 200 grams (in a tiny adult) all the way up to 500+ (in an average/larger adult) of glycogen: https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?s=n&v=1&id=110214

This is readily-accessible energy in tissue. There is a longer explanation regarding the citric acid cycle and ATPs. But let’s just be conservative and say you need to deplete these 2,000+ calories of energy BEFORE your body has any good reason to burn stored fat.

Keep in mind that, meanwhile, your liver will continue shuttling sugar into your blood stream in a nearly-never-ending supply: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4050641/. In the Cahill studies, we find that starved individuals continue making positive energy adaptations while IN STARVATION for 6 weeks: https://thehealthsciencesacademy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/Fuel-Metabolism-in-Starvation_ReviewArticleTIMM2008-9Lazar-1.pdf. Never forget that since the 1970s we have had a case study of a successful 382 day fast: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2495396/.
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The average person who loses weight never even touches body fat. They just keep bobbling around in the same glucose/glycogen figure, burning off healthy tissue and getting weaker. Sure. They get lighter. But can they run faster, lift more, and improve capability? If not, “weight loss” was primarily NOT FAT.

When referencing these known biological figures, it’s unclear that anyone will touch a significant portion of body fat until they’ve dramatically altered metabolic signaling. Although it CAN be done while eating a decent amount of food, especially if the person is doing a lot of intense exercise (ie - some sort of sprints and/or heavy lifting), we can plainly see that moderate food reduction and moderate activity will likely only burn off muscle and bone tissue while still preserving body fat. It results in lighter but weaker/fatter outcomes.

Thus, sadly, we have to clear out the glycogen to a degree that we OBLIGATE fat loss. This isn’t a hoping. This isn’t trying. This is FORCING the outcome of fat loss. And once we have forced the body to burn stored fat, we have to be very careful about coaxing it back into sugar-reliance. While still wanting to lose fat, the amount of food obviously must stay low, and perhaps more importantly the TYPE of food must err on the side of not-rapidly-refilling glycogen stores; otherwise, we simply return to the initial state of never-burning-stored-fat. This is the classic yo-yo. In fact, before someone is down about 40lbs, I’m unconvinced they’ve burned one ounce of body fat. The glycogen’s accompanying fluid and inflammatory bloat can easily account for 15-30lbs in most Americans. Weight loss numbers in this range are generally not fat loss at all, but the up and down of partial glycogen removal and replacement.

From a theoretical stand point, the best option for people is going to be close to a total fast for 3-10 days, guaranteeing some degree of obligatory fat burn, followed immediately by strictly greens, fats, proteins, and nearly zero starch/sugar. This means that if you want to keep the fat-burning train moving, even moderate fruit intake and natural sugars like honey are counterproductive. They will thrust you right back into sugar-reliance, giving the body NO REASON to touch stored fat.

Once you’re leanER than you want to be, have at it with the fruit and natural sugars. Even learn to integrate ACTUAL moderation of treats. But if treats keep coming in every 3-10 days or more frequently, the body just goes right back to square one for most people. Glycogen is so consistently full that there exists NO REASON why the body would lose fat. It’s not genetics. It’s not heredity. It’s not a crappy metabolism. It’s that you never clear glycogen enough to convince your body it SHOULD use fat.
There is a stress management consideration, an athletic consideration, and more. But as far as flipping the fat loss switch for most people, this is a good first landscape to ponder. Clear glycogen and keep it cleared.

This 63 year old woman who weighs 137lbs just deadlifted 264lbs in a drug tested competition. The average American woman in her 20s, 30s and 40s prays to God she could be under 138 pounds. Hell, the average American woman would commit murder to get under 180.

ONLY heavy weight lifting will get you to your goals. There are women I know who kept their prediabetes at bay when they were regularly lifting weights. Several of them gave up heavy lifting and dove headlong into full-blown diabetes. As far as I can tell, when they stopped training intensely, they immediately lost 20lbs of muscle/lean tissue and replaced it with that much fat.

But we hear these women tell us that if they start lifting weights, magic fairytale creatures will add mountains of muscle onto their already-bulky frames. So they stick to 5lb dumbbells, walks, and yard work, hoping it will whittle off the 50-150 excess pounds of adipose tissue. It doesn’t. It won’t. It can't. There's no evidence for such a fantasy. There's not even one success story of long-term improvement by avoiding weight lifting. 

Meanwhile, we professional coaches watch 98lb girls throw 200lbs overhead, squat heavy, and lift HARD. We observe women who start their fitness journeys between 200 and 400lbs of body weight plummet down to the 130s when they start picking up heavy weights several days per week. We all catch a news headline about a 63 year old who’s 137lbs and deadlifts 264lbs.

Bulky? NOT LIFTING makes you bulky. NOT LIFTING is precisely what makes you bulky. NOT LIFTING is all that makes you bulky.

The powerful exhale is essentially unknown to laypeople and even decent coaches. But it’s one of the most potent skills and athletic-performance-improving techniques which exists. The rigor of exercise, the discomfort washing through the body is an accumulation of CO2. It is not lack of O2. Put an oximeter on a person who’s gasping for breath and you find they’re still in the high 90s percentage-wise. Oxygen is mostly going to manage itself subconsciously/preconsciously. But the removal of cell waste/carbon dioxide could use a boost.

I’ve been recertifying my CPR for almost two decades. Over that time, and if I’m to understand the evolution prior, a number of recommendations have changed. On the whole, however, the trend has increasingly affirmed compressions and AEDs, NOT breaths. Why? Because the blood has 5-7 minutes of oxygen in it already, even in a non-responsive compromised person. Getting more O2 into the system is NOT as important as you think.

When we turn our attention to non-resuscitation, such as workouts, sports, exercise, we find people totally ignorant to cardio-respiratory science. They talk about the inhale. They talk about drawing in. They do not even have a clue that the exhale is the key.
People can improve performance THAT DAY when they learn that the pain is too much CO2. Blow OUT the pain. Drive OUT the discomfort. Your oximetry is already 98-100%. Nothing is going to improve with more energy lost to the inhale, especially if you aren’t removing enough volume from the lungs during expiration. Technically, what usually happens with emphasis on the inhale is that the exhale gets shallower, removing less and less CO2 while the person’s stress skyrockets, panicking, thinking they’re running out of oxygen.

In fact, anyone in youth athletics can watch this acutely time and time again. The slower athletes get slower, because the coaches don’t actually know how to train the youth to LOWER their stress. Breathing gets worse. The youth, no matter how driven, keeps trying to improve through pain tolerance, only to watch the faster athletes get significantly faster.

Likewise in adults, people will try to train “harder” through pain tolerance, which is actually an abrupt worsening of cardiorespiratory capacity. Breathing worsens. Progress halts or reverses.

Instead, people must be pushed only at a degree where they can get the CO2 out, restabilizing the system for more progress. Faster youth athletes are rewarded with more rest time, which recovers them, such that they may build more speed. The others are punished into worsening outcomes. Adults making their foray into late-in-life fitness also make this mistake. Mindlessly, they just push, gasping and choking if need be, only to get a fraction of the benefit. Getting the CO2 out isn’t even a thought, isn’t even a blip on the radar.
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Getting calm and restabilizing the system is the very keystone for improvement. This hinges dearly on the capacity to get CO2 OUT. You’ll get the O2 in automatically. Weak little puffs of air on exhale won’t ever get it done. It’s the most potent breathing technique which exists; and no one is teaching it.