Forget the "Rules" You've heard, make up your own.

The diet and fitness industry is hardly at a loss for words. Browsing the interwebs (or is it the world wide net…) will bring up thousands of pages of information, tips, and endless ‘must do’ and ‘never do’ lists.

Within 5 minutes of searching you could easily come up with dozens of ‘rules‘ of fitness and ways to live a ‘healthy’ lifestyle.

Almost all of them revolve around some sort of dietary intervention like changing the timing of a meal, or the composition of that meal.

After that you’ll get extensive lists of good and bad foods, supplements you should be taking, specific ways to workout, and specific times of day to workout etc…

At no point is the practicality of these recommendations considered, the story you hear is preached like a gospel and you may start feeling lousy about yourself if you can’t follow every recommendation you’ve heard.

The stress and guilt you might start feeling for not following these ‘rules’ could easily erase any health benefits you’re getting from doing what you can.

This is hardly a way to approach health and fitness.

Every little bit counts, and whatever you can do and whatever fits with your current lifestyle is just fine.

If you’ve heard that ‘cardio’ in the morning is best, but you can only do it in the evening, that’s just fine. Don’t let some magazine or website steal the positive emotional boost you get from exercising by telling you that you’re doing it at the wrong time of day.

If you lift weights but you don’t have the money or time for a post workout protein shake then don’t worry about it, you’re still going to build muscle and strength no matter what the web-o-sphere of self proclaimed experts say.

Protect what gets into your brain, because it's going to be hard to get it out.

The moral of today’s post is to be careful what you read and what you let get into your brain.

If you’re reading this blog you probably already do lots of healthy and positive things for your body on a daily basis, but if you read too much ‘info’ out there you might just end up forgetting what you’ve done that was good and stress about all the ‘rules’ of fitness you’re still not following.

Instead of following everyone else’s rules try making up a few things for yourself.

Try  to do one exercise ‘thing’ per day for your fitness, and one ‘nutrition/food’ thing per day.

Make it up just for you and it’s gotta fit your life.

I’d like to hear what you’re planning on doing if you don’t mind putting it in the comments section.

John

For the most part Carl is right. You’re going to die (but likely not from a knife attack). But the health and fitness industry seems to scare people into buying products and idea’s that essentially are promising a way to cheat death.

The concept of being ‘fit’ hasn’t really translated into people living much longer. In fact the only lifestyle intervention that has ever been proven to help extend life is simply caloric restriction.

In other words, eat less food.

That’s it.

Eating less food is the only thing you can do that has any scientific suggestion that it can help extend life, or at least help you avoid a premature death.

I’m not suggesting that exercising is a waste of time, but rather to realize what it can and can’t do.

Exercising can make you stronger, or better at a specific movement pattern or event (like running, or lifting or some sort of sport). It’ can also help with bone density, flexibility, stress relief and a host of other positive systemic benefits…BUT we have no proof or indication that it has any effect on longevity (independent of caloric restriction)

In other words, exercise and ‘fitness’ itself isn’t enough to affect your long term health if you don’t also combine it with some degree of calorie restriction or control.

John

When It Comes To Weight Loss You Don't Want to be an Outlier

I get a lot of questions about weight loss. Most of the questions don’t make much sense because the people who are asking are making a fundamental error in their thinking and that is:

They all think they’re different from everyone else.

They think weight loss in their specific case is much harder and that they are somehow an outlier thinking they are the one person who can’t lose weight with the traditional means of a caloric deficit.

9 times of out ten (and probably even more than that) these people are simply eating too much to lose weight.

By definition you would have to lose some amount of fat and weight if you were eating in a caloric deficit for more than a day or two. If you’re putting less matter in than is going out how could you possibly be at the same weight all the time?

Dieting for weight loss isn’t easy, and many people aren’t ready to take the necessary steps to make it happen. So instead of facing the fact that they’ve got more work to do they romanticize about being the one and only person who can’t lose weight because of some 1 in a million genetic anomaly that they’ve cooked up in their minds about themselves. This is both arrogant and disrespectful to those unfortunate people who DO have a legitimate genetic problem (as rare as it may be).

I’m sure there are the few unfortunate people who really do have some sort of genetic abnormality that makes them prone to weight gain, but for the vast majority of us it’s not a genetic issue. And if you did have such a problem you likely would already be diagnosed and be under medical supervision or on some sort of pharmaceutical therapy.

In other words, if you’re reading this you’re likely similar to everyone else and you just need to eat less. And that’s a good thing, it means the path to weight loss is simple, predictable and 100% achievable.

John

If you can't measure it, probably not worth mentioning it.

The health/fitness/weight loss/healthy lifestyle/wellness blah blah whatever you want to call it industry sells the concept of ‘healthy’ or a better life, or some kind of undefinable state of being as the prize and the goal. Words like vitality, energy, vigor, wellness and the like are used…what a load of BS…look at those words, they’re utterly meaningless.

When it comes to marketing ‘health’ there are some things that can be measured and some that can’t. The medical profession and most scientists stick with what is measurable including:

Blood Lipids and Cholestserol (this includes total cholesterol, HDL, LDL, Triglycerides etc)

Blood Glucose

Insulin

Heart Rate

Blood Pressure

Body Weight

% Body Fat

From there you can do more complex tests for other parameters but these are the major ones. If these values are in good standing then you’re about as healthy as any physician or scientist can measure.

However debates over what is ‘healthy’ typically don’t end with these types of measurements being presented, instead marketers, bloggers and readers will argue over the merits of a supplement or food or nutrient or diet style without:

A) Trying said supplement or food or diet on themselves

and most importantly:

B) Testing the results of using said supplement or food or diet

Sure some people will say “I used it and I felt great and had lots of energy” <– this is entirely unscientific and meaningless. After all I can ‘feel’ great after 6 beers, or really ‘energized’ after a cup of coffee, doesn’t mean either has anything to do with my overall health.

Describing results based on the way we ‘feel’ and how much ‘energy’ we have is not a useful or measurable end point, in fact it’s not even worth commenting on. If it were, then I would have to assume that these people have felt like crap for their entire life leading up to their adoption of this new supplement/diet/nutrition program that they are reporting these results on….not likely.

Measurable parameters are what matter. The rest is subjective opinions that can never been proven debated or disproven so they’re not really worth mentioning.

If someone is marketing you a supplement or health product or program based on how it makes you ‘feel’ you might want to think twice about it. If they can’t give a more detailed explanation of what you can expect then you shouldn’t expect anything at all.

John

Mr Incredible is superhuman, and it seems we all want to be just like him.

‘Health’ and ‘Fitness’ are meaningless terms by themselves. They only become meaningful when you take the time to give your own personal definition to them as it applies to you.

Many people will change the way they eat, exercise and live in an effort to be ‘healthier’ and ‘fit’, but how do you measure this?

One of the obvious answers is the look of your body. It’s reasonable to assume that a healthy body is a healthy looking body.

There are other metrics like blood markers of disease risk and physical ability to do work (running a distance for time etc)

But these don’t seem like an end in and of themselves but rather sign posts along the way.

I believe all of our health and fitness pursuits are simply an effort to cheat death and live as long as possible. After all would do an exercise that made you look better, and made you more fit, and reduced your risk of disease, but also shortened your life?

John

It's all about YOU

“That’s not good for YOU”

“That’s not healthy for YOU”

How often have you heard these two claims from someone who is neither a health professional or even in any sort of physical shape that you would consider desirable?

It’s is quite common for someone who is overweight or out of shape to comment on what is good or not good for YOU in many areas of health and fitness.

Picture this scenario:

You’re out with some friends, you’ve been doing really well on  Eat Stop Eat or some other weight loss program and you decide that tonight you’re going to have a few slices of pizza just because you can and you want to. Then someone else at the table says “eating all that pizza isn’t healthy for YOU”. I’m sure this scenario doesn’t sound out of the ordinary.

Now picture the same scenario and that same person saying “eating all of that pizza wouldn’t be healthy for me”.

Sounds a lot different doesn’t it! A lot less judgmental, and it sounds like that person would actually be taking responsibility for themselves instead of finger pointing and preaching to you.

This is a fundamental problem we face when other people who are casual consumers of health and fitness media start taking it upon themselves to tell you what they think is good for you. This allows them to sit in the background out of the spotlight and make you and your dietary and fitness habits the center of attention and scrutiny. This is both unfair and ignorant.

The next time this happens to you just flip the logic to aim the conversation back at them and say “thank you for sharing your opinion on what is healthy for me, but I’d really like to know what you think is healthy for YOU and what you’re doing about it”

…in most cases this should shut them up.

John

Drugs aren't bad, they're everywhere!

I was having a discussion today about the line between acceptable and unacceptable drugs on sports. I believe all sports should allow drugs and the athletes should disclose the exact drugs and dose they’re using so we could all get a realistic view of what it takes to compete at the highest levels.

This got me thinking about all the different drugs people consume on a daily basis, and then I kinda realized that almost all human consume some sort of drug very regularly.

The broad definition of a drug: A substance consumed that alters normal body function and is non essential for life.

With this definition you can easily come up with a list of drugs people consume daily, the two most obvious are caffeine and alcohol, but that is hardly where the list stops. I’ll throw a few more down to get the list going. I’ll need you to jump in here and add any that I’ve missed. (these can be any drug that is consumed on a fairly regular basis without a prescription)

Caffeine

Alcohol

Nicotine

NSAIDS (non steroidal anti inflammatories)

Excessive Sugar/salt/fat (you could easily make the argument that over consumption of these items is used as self medication)

Theobromine (active ingredient in chocolate similar to caffeine)

Marajuana

And this is just the common stuff that many people might be using. There obviously an enormous list of prescription drugs that a huge proportion of the population is using as well.

Almost everyone you will ever encounter will be a habitual user of at least one or two of the drugs mentioned above and then some. As we get older almost all of us will become prescription drug users as well.

So I’ve started the list, if there is something you can think of that I have missed please add it in the comments section.

John

You can't hold your breath to death, but you sure can starve to death.

Well this one takes the cake. I received an email about a man who claims that he has not eaten food or consumed water in 70 years. His claim is that he survives from some sort of supernatural life force and simply breathing is enough.

Believe it or not some people actually believe it’s possible to survive on nothing more than oxygen, it’s called ‘breatharianism’ and it’s about as wacko as it gets. Of course nobody will ever try this because they’d be dead within a few weeks. The specific article that was sent to me was pointing out how this particular man had gone 6 days without food without any adverse effects…this shouldn’t be a surprise as there is well documented cases of morbidly obese people fasting for weeks on end in order to drop weight.

I even did a 5 day fast a few months ago…it’s just not that big of a deal.

Breatharianism is the final stop on the continuum of craziness that starts with the good and bad food dichotomy.

It starts with a list of foods that are good and ones that are bad, then the bad foods list grows due to contamination of toxins (whatever the hell that means), genetic modification, veganism, raw foodism, fruitism, and so-on until there is nothing left to eat.

I’m not suggesting that all people who believe in a good and bad food paradigm will end up with the breatharian belief, but a case can be made for showing a common origin of the thought process behind both ideas.

It’s easy to find fault in almost any food if you examine it enough. No matter what food you choose there is a criteria that could end up labeling it as ‘bad’ and not worth eating. Taken to the absurd extreme this would leave you with nothing left to eat (as a breatharian would believe is a perfectly fine conclusion)

Reason and common sense just isn’t with some people.

John

What Do You Do When You're As Health And Fit As You Can Be?

Why do you suppose anyone reads about health and fitness? My guess is that they want to improve both their health and fitness (kind of obvious I know)

But there has to be a point where you simply cannot continue to make measurable improvements…or at least there will be a point where more information, more effort, more planning will have diminishing returns.

So how do you know when you’ve read enough and done enough?

Is it a life long thing that can only be measured when you’ve reached some longevity goal (living to over 100 perhaps)

Is it a strength goal or endurance goal? (this wouldn’t make much sense unless you also included age as a dependent variable…in other words, your strength at age 65 will be less than your strength at age 25)

Is it just to know more than other people?

Is it to have good markers of health as defined by various governing medical organizations? If so what do you do when all of this looks good and you are in so called ‘optimal health’. Do you actually try to be better than this? (I think some people in fact do try to be better than optimal by striving to be more and more ‘fit’)

In my opinion people read about this stuff because they want to believe that they can take an active role in their own health and fitness (which of course you can considering you will also define your own health and fitness)

But I think problems arise when people do to much reading and theorizing and not enough ‘doing’. Information gathering can easily become more stressful and lead to a deterioration of health and fitness rather than helping you improve it.

If you find that you read more about fitness than you do about fitness you need to get your priorities in line.

30 mins of reading about what might be healthy will NEVER be as good for your health as a 30 min walk.

You’ve only got so many minutes in your life, so you might as well get the most bang for your buck out of each one.

John

What Would You Eat?

Simple mental exercise for you today.

What would you eat if you knew the food choices you made wouldn’t adversely affect your weight or your health?

I’ll start: I would eat just about everything I am currently eating.

John