Fitness Literacy

My mission is to help further education in health and fitness - fitness literacy, if you will. The reasons for this are expansive. Firstly, most popular influencers or fitness celebrities are quite inexperienced and under or uneducated altogether. Secondly, official bodies of authority in the health sciences get a lot of things wrong. Thirdly, there are a lot of vested interests who have a substantial gain from your indoctrination. Fourthly, we have these various cultural sensibilities which prevent productive health and fitness behaviors. There are more. But these suffice as the top ones.

All would be well. But people don’t really want to learn. So, the primary barrier to success in my mission is trying to help reinvigorate the learning muscle in people. I try to reignite the excitement of education itself: ebullience.

Step one is an ego check. More often than not, I find that adults have shut off the desire to hear. There’s this caustic belief: “No one, unless they appear to agree heartily with my worldview, could possibly have anything to offer.” That’s rough-going. Thus, I hear people debate theoretical tax RATES instead of taxes as incentive for outcomes. Ok. You have no interest in learning economics. Cool. People will insist that a 600,000 dollar loan at 4.25% for 30 years is less than an 800,000 dollar loan at 0% for 25. Ok. You are financially illiterate. Cool. People will think they have to do incredibly long and tedious exercise efforts, avoid heavy lifting, eat less, etc. Ok. You are health and fitness illiterate. Cool.

It’s ok to not know. Really. Check your ego. It’s cool. We will all still accept you even when you say, “I don’t have the answer.” Moreover, the moment you check your ego, you might actually learn something.

I don’t have THE answer. But I have shown definitively that most explanatory models in fitness are garbage. During my own 6 day fast, my metabolic rate went UP:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BqpJhnnFB8j/?hl=en

Calories-in/calories-out is a true but nonsense predictor. I’ve been leaner while eating 300 grams of dietary fat per day and no cardio than eating less than 30 grams per day while running 60 miles per week. My cholesterol IMPROVED while eating a diet extremely high in saturated fats. I have the tests. I share the studies. I explain the mechanisms.

Meanwhile, the average American follows the common guidelines: the calorie hypothesis, the directives to eat whole grains and drink milk, avoid salt and fat, etc. Yet, what are the average American health and fitness outcomes? It doesn’t take a genius or someone pouring over scientific studies to figure out that the popular and common advice in health and fitness is dead wrong. Look around. Not solely at the CDC stats. Just, literally, look with your eyes at the people in your environment.
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But again, this requires ego check. Can you subdue your pride enough to learn? It doesn’t matter what information is made available if you won’t cross this vital threshold. However, if you do cross it, you might become not just fitness literate, but literate and competent in all kinds of areas of study.