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You Stick with The Wrong Choice Because... Science

12/4/2018

Think about the amount of time, energy, and effort someone has put into his or her unhealthy behaviors and lifestyle. It's generally a lifetime, hundreds of thousands or even millions or tens of millions of dollars, and the entirety of his or her being. Objectively and relatively, that is A LOT of investing. Thus, people proffer nonsense equivocations about changing their lives: "I can't afford the time or the money for this gym membership, healthy food, workout, coaching, etc." That isn't really what's going on, because it is a pittance in comparison to the years or decades spent on becoming and persisting in unhealthiness. The fractional costs involved in becoming more fit or healthy are non-comparable to the immense expenses involved in getting and staying unhealthy. We all know it. What's really going on is that people have to substantiate their terrible lifestyle decisions (even while they knowingly are in the wrong) to feebly keep the ego somewhat in tact (so as to not have a complete nervous breakdown) by persisting in their bad choices and prior familiar unhealthy investments.

Sunk Cost Fallacy plays a strong role when people resist beneficial lifestyle change, new scientific discoveries, and just general life management. Apparently, it's built way down into the mammal brain. It's being studied all the time:

https://www.med.umn.edu/news-events/sticking-wrong-choice

The Challenge You Face Today Is Chapter One of Your Hero's Story

12/3/2018

18 MINUTE PLANK
Crohn's >>> fit
Housebound >>> outdoorsy
Fearful >>> fearless

I work with clients whose challenges are sometimes so great that they make most onlookers feel inspired or ashamed:
"If that person can do it, so can I."
"If that person can do it, what's wrong with me?"

There's no way to capture well the journey someone like this has travelled. At one point, she was lying face up in a hospital bed, awaiting the inevitable end. Her colon had burst, and she should've died. The distrust of her body which she gained from that inexperience is something IG can't capture.

But here she is now, rocking out an 18 MINUTE PLANK! There is absolutely nothing in her backstory which would let you predict her current abilities. The depths she's faced couldn't foretell the heights she's reached, whether with this or how she's become an Olympic Team Leader, and a sports ambassador/diplomat.
The difficulties people face do not prevent a heroic finale.

#insta #instagram #instafit #crohns #celiac #chronic #autoimmune #disease #guthealth #elev8wellness #fitness #health #wellness #overcome #coaching #mindset #hope #belief #septic #thrive #medicine #drug #neardeath #therapy #recovery #olympics #Olympic #plank #record

This Answer to Anti-Aging Was Unknown In Science Until 2008

12/2/2018

The Myokine - scientifically unknown until 2008

Resistance training remodels the immune system and cardiac architecture. The anti-inflammatory/health benefit of developing strength and skeletal muscle is only beginning to be unraveled.
I've long-suspected that there is more to muscle and strength training than "burning calories." But the simpleton calories-in/calories-out descriptions are still proffered as explanations.

If calories explain all, how do I have 50 more pounds of muscle and 15 fewer pounds of bodyfat than I did when I was 17? Did I eat more than I burned to gain the muscle, or less than I burned to lose the fat?
Furthermore, why do I have less hip/IT-band/shin pain now at a heavier body weight than when I was 17 years old? I've consistently loaded all structures with more resistance in the past 5 years than when I was in persistent orthopedic pain.

The myokine explains it.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myokine

Exercise Is The Cure for Aging

12/1/2018

I have long warned about getting fixated on “weight.” Generally, though body “weight” tends to go up as people age, their lean tissue (bone, muscle, tendons, ligaments, connective fascia, brain matter, etc.) goes down. It atrophies. And one day, when it’s atrophied enough, we finally notice it and call it sarcopenia, osteoporosis, “bad knees,” “bad shoulders,” “bad back,” “dementia,” “Alzheimer’s,” etc. Those conditions were brewing a long time ago. But we refused to acknowledge them until they crossed a threshold of extreme dysfunction; and then we throw our hands up in exasperation: “this was NEVER a problem before; I guess it’s just part of getting older.” Nope. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Even modest consistent training reverses that trend, according to this study:

https://www.the-scientist.com/…/how-muscles-age--and-how-ex…

Maybe... Just Don't Eat?

11/30/2018

People: “What should I eat before exercise?”
Gurus: “BCAAs, meals, carbs, etc.”
Science: “nothing, plus maybe caffeine and salt.”

For the average person who wants to breakdown body fat, it’s non-controversial: insulin low plus epinephrine releases stored fat to be used in the citric acid cycle.
What does that mean? You have to have glucose low enough, be fasted enough, and then be excited/moving enough, or there is no biological mechanism for lipolysis. This is not opinion.

Seriously, Just Keep Going, Especially When You're Ready to Quit

11/29/2018

This study showed that continuing to exercise lowered risks of heart disease even if the participants didn't find their superficial goals being accomplished.

Persist. Your life depends on it. I've seen people over the years quit making effort because their body composition doesn't change enough EVEN THOUGH their biomarkers for disease risk have improved or held steady in a safe range. They quit the fitness or nutritional effort because they don't feel they lose enough body fat fast enough, but only to find a few years later their risk of diabetes, cancers and cardiovascular disease skyrocketing out of control.

Don't let perfect become the enemy of good. And in this case don't let superficial looks become the enemy of your health.
https://www.purdue.edu/…/if-at-first-your-diet-fails,-try-a…

Strength Training Better Than "Cardio" for Heart Health

11/28/2018

Lifting weights has a greater correlation with reduction of cardiovascular risk than activities like walking, running and/or cycling. You want to be healthy? Figure out a weekly practice which builds strength.

Clearly we need a revision of terms, as the types of activities we typically label "cardio" are not as beneficial to heart health as "strength training." And what I am calling "strength training" confers broader benefit than strength.

This research didn't fare much better with the word choice of "dynamic activity" in reference to walking while housing all of weight lifting under "static activity." But their finding is nonetheless useful.
https://www.acc.org/…/research-shows-static-physical-activi…

DNA/Genetics Don't Dictate Longevity (or much else, for that matter)

11/24/2018

DNA has minimal and maybe no impact on how long you live. In this 400 million person study, genetics may at best account for 7 percent or less impact on longevity. "Heredity made me do it" is no more sophisticated than any other fatalistic or deterministic sentiment through history. And this landmark study can hopefully put it to rest once and for all.

https://www.google.com/…/www.medicalnew…/articles/amp/323611

As I've written about before (here, here, here, here, and here), what we keep discovering is that everything other than DNA/genetics is more causal for most health and fitness markers. The long-hoped-for "cracking of the code" with the human genome has been a continual bugbear for fatalists and the people who predicted that mapping genome would unlock all of human health and wellness. As we peel back the scientific layers, we find that the way we live directs our symbionts and epigenome in a way that is far more profound than the heredity. Forthcoming discoveries in proteome and membranome are only going to further demote the heredity herring which distracted us for so long.

Prediabetes Reversed in 3 Weeks

10/29/2018

In three weeks this client went from consistent 110+ glucose readings to consistent 70s and 80s. As you can see here, at the beginning of testing, he would get afternoon/evening readings of 140 and up. Now, after eating, he averages below 86. He’s so reversed the trend that within an hour of drinking orange juice (liquid sugar) he’s down to 80.The leading cause of blindness and limb loss in the United States is still insulin resistance and glucose intolerance: two statuses which are reversible in a matter of days. Sadly people still think of diabetes as a disease we’ve caught, rather than an arbitrary point on a grey scale which we shift everyday.

It's not easy. But it's quite simple: get your average blood glucose below 86 if you want to get healthier and fitter. Test before eating and after eating. If your pre-meal test is above 85, you're going to have a slightly more difficult journey ahead of you. Anything that moves that number up is suspect. I should also add that insulin is THE sodium retention pump; thus, as insulin collapses you lose the mechanism for high blood pressure.
Resistance training is the only activity which reliably disposes of glucose independent of insulin. Carbohydrate restriction is the only behavior which reliably reduces the body's capacity to maintain elevated averages of glucose (yes, perceived stress can still induce the liver to dump sugar into the blood; but this capacity eventually runs dry in an environment of dietary carbohydrate restriction).

I Just Ran A Marathon Without Training; And I feel Great! (part 2)

10/11/2018

Did you know that the only way to get a lot faster is to go slower? You have to train low intensity in order to perform high intensity. It's counter-intuitive, which is why people tend to top out really rapidly with distance running speed (and I would argue most skills in life). You see so few people improve year after year. And there are biological laws which govern this; so there is no "bucking the trend." It's a matter of immutable biochemistry.

In 1980 Mark Sisson had one of the top 5 American marathon times. After retiring and discontinuing training, he had a shocking improvement in his sustained running performance. He didn't know the terminology at the time. But what he had unwittingly done was "base" training. Exercise physiology has become a lot more sophisticated in the past 35 years. Thus, even laypeople can actually go and get a metabolic efficiency test performed to find their unique base, anaerobic threshold, VO2 max, and more.

Essentially, what most people do is go out and do something that is too hard. They then proceed to attempt outdoing that already-too-intense effort. Through pain tolerance, people will continue "progressing" for a while. However, what is actually happening is that you are increasingly getting INEFFICIENT and LESS fit. One day, you find that you can no longer muster the mental wherewithal to continue this fool's errand. And you quit.

Even in just the five long runs I did prior to this marathon, I noticed that even really proficient runners on the lakes are clueless about IMPROVEMENT. Everyone's face is just in pain. They are going too fast. They are out of breath. They are suffering. And, ironically, though most weigh 30 to 110 pounds less than me, my feet are silent and theirs are LOUD. People train hard. But they train dumb. Therefore, even if they are running faster than ever, they haven't actually improved athletic capacity. They just are more tolerant of pain.

I'm all for doing hard things. Callous the mind. Be tough. But just punishing yourself is the idiot's way of fitness. And the road is littered with failure. The only "successes" on that road are survival stories of sampling bias. No one kept getting better because of that tough-guy methodology. They survived IN SPITE of it.

There's a much better way. Go slow. Check the ego.

See. Here's the thing. There are energy systems which dictate how this will work. And we can't just toughen our minds past the biochemistry. The inarguable science is that an individual's maximal output ends at 15 seconds. The next-to maximal output ends at 45 seconds. After that, we are in aerobic energy systems, making aerobic enzymes, cleaving energy from fatty acids, ketones, lipids, breaking down adipocytes and stored fat. If you are going to do anything for 30 minutes, 2 hours, 10 hours, you are training precisely incorrectly if you are in pain. Pain is trying to take a max output past 15 seconds or a near-max past 45 seconds. BY DEFINITION, this is a physical impossibility. That's why most people's training is nonsense.

I've explained this to endurance athlete clients with varying outcomes. Most don't listen. They end up training at a non-sustainable intensity, vacillating between a speed that is just inside the 45 second lactate effort and a speed that is just outside of it into the aerobic effort. Those non-listeners get the same lack of results, because they are still failing to train at a low enough intensity to IMPROVE efficiency. They're still going into pain. And they hit a wall.

Many aspiring youth athletes also don't make good progress for the same reason. Their coaches are totally clueless about how biochemistry works and how to actually train for improvement. Less-conditioned youth athletes tend to stay deconditioned, because nobody seems to know that the only way they'll improve is if you STOP PUSHING them. They have to actually train even slower than they currently go in order to reduce stress, progress metabolic efficiency, and thereafter become a more advanced athlete. Technically, the least athletic youth sports participants actually train substantially harder than their more athletic peers. And this results in a reduction in their athleticism. In fact, in Spark, Dr. John J. Ratey's book on exercise and it's positive impact on brain function, he includes an example of this. The Naperville school district began to incorporate heart rate monitoring in their programs. One of the coaches had a reality check one day when he watched a girl in gym class come in dead last, even slowing down in the last stretch while everyone positively cheered her on to push. He felt disappointed. But then, when he checked the data, it turned out that that girl had actually held the highest average heart rate of ALL the students. And, during the period of time he had thought she was slowing down because she was perhaps "giving up," it turned out that she actually was pushing even harder, and her heart rate spiked higher than any of the other students had EVER taken their heart rates. She pushed harder than everyone, by A LOT.

More athletic youths are training so far underneath their pain thresholds and ability that their bodies can recover, adapt and become more efficient. Less athletic youths never train at an easy enough intensity to progress. Since no one knows this, we keep pushing the poor kids too hard, and they actually become LESS fit. Thus, there's a massive bifurcation that occurs over time, only reinforced by archaic beliefs about some kids being "gifted" or "genetically gifted." Actually, we just have to stop making less-conditioned youths train past their redlines; and they'd soon outperform their initially-more-athletic counterparts and peers.

For the very few who do listen, results are incredible. I have one client who HATED this. But he finally relented and religiously trained at 120bpm for 5 full months. At the end, he was so efficient that his sustained effort aerobic work produced more watts than his 5-month-previous sprints. Imagine that. Imagine if you could go harder and faster than your current sprint speed BUT that it were a relaxed pace for you.

So, you can either be very scientific and technical about this (get your zones tested, monitor heart rate and train exactly accordingly) or you can lightly monitor it or you can be a bit more intuitive. OR you can continue ineffectively training foolishly. I won't get into the high level testing. I recommend it if people are interested. It's nice to know. However, even Sisson skips this step with some elite athletes. He just has them keep heart rate under 120 or 130 beats. You NEVER go into pain. Over time your body becomes increasingly efficient. So you can go faster WHILE staying under 120 beats, meaning output increases as perceived exertion DECREASES. This is smart training. What happens with a lot of his athletes is that to stay under 120 beats, they have to keep 12-15 minute mile paces at the beginning. But as they religiously adhere to the heart rate directive, soon they are going 10 minute miles, STILL under 120bpm. He's now got some people running in the 6s. Think about that. Imagine running a 6 minute mile while feeling like most people feel when they're walking or sitting. This outcome CANNOT be achieved by training in pain, pushing it, or playing tough guy. You have to check the ego and work the process.

But then there's an even more intuitive way. Breathe exclusively through the nose and keep asking yourself, "can I keep this pace for 36 hours?" This is what I did. The first run I did 11 miles. I didn't really worry about pace except to go slow and be relaxed and unstressed. Then I did 14. Same thing. Then 20. Then 26. Then, I was aiming to do 30 and push pace a little to see what I'm capable of, but my hands started freezing at mile 17. For the marathon, I knew that I could complete it without issue IF I were to adhere to this ego check. In fact, I feel confident I could've completed an ultra-marathon in the same manner.

I did not train for this; so I did not get to benefit from the increased efficiency one would glean over long-term adherence. That said, I can imagine a novice utilizing this technique for 6-12 months and completing his or her first marathon in the sub-4 hour range. Yes. They will have to put in the time investment for this slow burn to gift them more efficiency. But it pays off. Advanced runners may not be able to check ego. However, for those who can, it's easily imaginable to get sub-3 if they rigorously play this out. It may take 12-24 months, since you do have a number of physiological adaptations which can't be expedited (and this will also be contingent on nutrition, to be discussed next). Maybe more importantly, because we humans are impatient, the biggest challenge to this is the paradigm-challenge: REDUCE training intensity in order to PROGRESS performance. It is at odds with conventional thinking. But the best things come to those who wait.

Stay tuned for Part 3...

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