Health and Fitness Information – What is it Good For?

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

Posted by johnbarban in Health
Tags: Fitness, Health |8 Comments

8 Responses to “Health and Fitness Information – What is it Good For?”

  1. James Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 2:51 pm

    I don’t think its very useful. Health and fitness from what I’ve read from you and Brad Pilon is if anything very simple. Health is vague and if you wish to define it you just end up with blood pressure and other health markers. In which case eating less is the one thing that will effect all of them. I used to have high blood pressure from when I thought that you needed to eat huge amounts of calories and get at least a gram of protein per pound of body weight. Then I ran out of money and started eating a near vegan diet. My blood pressure went down a bit but I still tried to at least get lots of calories. Now I just eat what I want but a lot less and my blood pressure is for once normal and my heart rate has gone down quite a bit. Not to mention how much money I now save now that I don’t have to eat those disgusting rounds of boneless skinless chicken breasts. As for fitness it is also a very vague term. Differing depending on your goals. No matter what they are stressing yourself in whatever direction you want to go is all you have to do. And the farther you go in your goal the more stress you will need and the more time you will need to recover. That is about it. So I don’t see the point in devoting much time and energy into “researching” this topic as it is a very simple topic. Its something you do not think about. Difficult but simple.

  2. Six Pack Abs Blog Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 4:07 pm

    I agree that if you don’t implement anything and you’re unwilling to do the work, no knowledge will ever help you.

    But I’d also have to say with extremely primitive fitness knowledge most people have NO amount of hard work will ever help them either.

    For example:

    How many guys do you see on treadmills, ellipticals, etc thinking that doing this type of low intensity cardio will make them lose weight? If they just work harder at this, they’ll just burn a tiny bit more calories…and will eventually get discouraged and give up.

    Another example:

    How many overfat guys do you see doing sit-ups, crunches, or other direct ab exercises? These guys genuinely believe that they can spot-reduce the fat on their stomachs by doing 100 crunches a day or whatever. It doesn’t matter how hard they work to do more crunches…they will still always be covered by fat and they won’t even be building much ab muscle underneath that.

    This is why I decided to make my product with Mike focused on getting abs…there’s so much misinformation about that area of fitness which is why it’s so rare to see a guy with a six pack.

    So while I do agree that you should NEVER be reading more about fitness than you are doing (or even close), I also have to say that doing without the correct knowledge isn’t going to get you any results either.

    -Dan

  3. Dave Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 4:07 pm

    I asked Brad the same question on his blog, but I am wondering what your opinion is about HCG. They claim 30 pounds in 30 days. There seems to be a lot of research on it, but it just seems to good to be true.

  4. johnbarban Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 5:01 pm

    Dave,

    For starters HCG (human chorionic gonadotropin) is a drug not a supplement.

    Nothing on earth can cause you to gain 30 pounds of lean mass in 30 days unless it’s a whack load of steroids.

    You might also be able to gain 30lbs of bodyweight by overeating (mostly fat and water)

    JB

  5. pierre Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 5:02 pm

    At the end of day i just read and listen to John and Brad stuff,what revulitionary stuff may i be missing from other guys?nothing at all.The bottom line is that results comes from having the right info and these guys provied that the other part comes from putting the time and energy in our workouts and nutrition at the end is simple not easy but simple ans results just take time and patience.

  6. Dave Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 5:22 pm

    I am sorry John for not explaining better, it makes you lose pounds of fat. It is based off of research by Dr. Simeons. Basically eat 500 calories a day of specific food while taking the shots or there is a homeopathic drops version as well. It is suppose to cause your body to burn excess fat, but not the structural fat. Seems kind of like a scam. But I started it 5 days ago and have lost 9 pounds. FYI, I am 6’5″ and I was 276.

  7. FitXcel Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 5:47 pm

    I find that there’s plenty to learn, especially if you’re at all interested in lifting weights. Studies are always coming out and the way things are done changes. Maybe that’s good, maybe it’s bad. But at least people are trying. Also, there are so many different ways to exercise, or even do different lifts. Reading about it can help you “rediscover” certain exercises. Reading about some healthy foods might give you an idea for a new healthy, great-tasting recipe.

    That’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of misinformation floating around out there, but IMO, anything that gets people reading about health and fitness can only be a good thing. This is especially true in certain people that may lack a lot of motivation. Reading about it may spur them to better themselves.

    The bottom line is this: Even if people are trying to spot-reduce fat by doing crunches, at least they’re not sitting on their ass at home doing absolutely nothing.

    -Drew

  8. Robert Says:
    April 22nd, 2010 at 7:46 pm

    I’m a freak. So, I’m not for one second going to claim that others should do what I do when it comes to this stuff.

    That said, I think you phrased this topic very well when you said, “at least there will be a point where more information, more effort, more planning will have diminishing returns.”

    Amen.

    And to finish, I wholly agree, “30 mins of reading about what might be healthy will NEVER be as good for your health as a 30 min walk.”

Leave a Reply

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>