health tip: stop running away from your gainz
If you’re choosing cardio over weights, you’re literally running away from your gainz…
There are 4 metabolic ward studies — the gold standard of research — showing statistically significant reductions in resting metabolic rate when overweight subjects performed endurance exercise equivalent to a 300-600 caloric burn per day, for multiple weeks. In other words, when overweight humans do more than an hour of endurance exercise — otherwise known as steady-state cardio — daily, their resting metabolism declines an average of 5-15%.
This isn’t to say that exercise isn’t beneficial but their are better ways if you are trying to lose weight, such as sprinting or resistance training. Both of which will help to build muscle and INCREASE resting metabolic rates.
77. pillars of health
With all the noise coming from the media’s glorification of the impending mythical antidote, we seem to be losing touch with what was necessary for humanity to achieve a level of health that allowed us to arrive at this pivotal moment in history. Contented with the fact that Big Pharma will have an answer to the consequences a lifetime of indulging in desires will ultimately bring, most people no longer value the fundamental principles of health. The main message being delivered is that your health no longer needs to be your responsibility. It’s tragic. Unfortunately, I can’t save everyone, yet, for those that choose to take responsibility for their health, I want to share my fundamental pillars of health.
Wholesome Nutrition - What you need to eat will largely come down to your individual goals. It is important to understand that there is no perfect diet for all people. We all need to find what works best for us. A good place to start is to look at how your ancestors ate. Try to recreate it with the freshest, least processed, locally sourced, and most nutrient dense products you can find. Eat both veggies and vegetarians for the best health.
Functional Movement - Movement is more than exercise. It is the acquisition of strength to do what you need to do on a daily basis, and the mobility that grants you the ease to get in and out of necessary positions. The easiest way to improve your functional movement, without a gym, is to sit on the floor while you watch TV instead of the couch. You’ll constantly need to move and shift positions which will stretch different muscles, and then you will need to use those to get up, which over time, can improve strength.
Sleep Optimization - Sleep is underrated. Prioritizing rest and recovery is key to optimizing health. Without it we are unlikely to think, act, move, perform, or make decisions to the best of our abilities. The body thrives on consistency so follow a schedule. As the sun starts to set and bedtime gets closer, turn off unnecessary entertainment and dim the lights to mirror the outside environment.
Stress Management - While stress is necessary for adaptation and growth, if it becomes chronic, as in today’s society, there can be negative consequences, like a suppressed immune system. Knowing that you control how you react in any situation — that you choose, how anything affects you — will allow you to approach life differently. If you choose to take responsibility for your actions in all situations, you will have less stress and more time to appreciate the things you enjoy.
Digestive Health - You are not what you eat, but what you can absorb. The bacteria in our gut outnumber the cells in our body by a factor of 10. Their health can impact not only our nutritional input, but also our mood and immune health as well. The only way to improve your digestive health is to find a diet that works for you. If you’re not consistently shitting a 4 on the Bristol Stool Scale, you’ll need to change some aspect of your diet or lifestyle.
Efficient Detoxification - There is no such thing as a “pure” lifestyle in the 21st century. We have to be vigilant with what food and products we put in, on, or around our bodies because a majority of them have chemicals that aren’t tested by the FDA, as they trust companies to “self regulate.” Start with looking at the ingredients of everything you use and compare them to the EWG.org database, replace the most toxin ones. Oh and juice cleanses are bullshit. You need a certain amount of amino acids to efficiently detoxify, which are woefully deficient in fruit.
Resilient Mindset - Mindset is the most powerful thing we have. It is able to have a positive influence on our world and manifest change in ways we never thought possible. Stop focusing on the negative messages you hear all day and instead practice gratitude. Start a grateful journal today to change where your focus lies. Get a pen and paper, and write down 3 things you’re grateful for today. Repeat this everyday.
Community of Support - We are tribal animals. We were never meant to exist in solitude. To thrive, we need to find an environment with like-minded people in pursuance of similar goals, where we can connect with those who challenge us, as well as support our decisions to grow. I invite you to be a part of my tribe.
Maybe I missed the memo, but I don’t think these are being talked about by any mainstream source as a way to achieve a better quality of life. I’m assuming because they require taking responsibility for your own health and that’s not a money-maker for pharmaceutical companies. Regardless, they are what I have used to transform my own life as well as those I have worked with. It may take a little bit of effort, but they are the foundational principles of health that can save you from a reliance on the “sick care” system.
66. life is too easy
Life is too easy. We’re all suffering from a deficit of physical challenge, exposure, and adversity. Modern life simply isn’t hard enough to promote optimal health. We sit too much. Move too little. Spend too much time indoors. And graze on “food” far too frequently. Our lives have become so easy that it’s detrimental.
We no longer need to hunt, gather, expose ourselves to the outdoors, fight or flee to survive, and rarely are we ever truly starving. Virtually everything our ancestors struggled for is now readily accessible to us. We’ve taken complete advantage of our ingenuity, and shifted away from the necessity to actively survive. Our bodies are inadequately challenged and our health is paying the price. The environment we built to serve our desires for comfort is failing to challenge our original programming past down from our ancestors. The stressors that made our species thrive are no longer applicable. We basically live in a zoo of our own creation.
If we wish to optimize our health we’re going to have to get out of the zoo and back into the jungle. This isn’t to say that we need to go live in a tree, but that we need to reintroduce ourselves to a little bit of discomfort. Everyone from Ancestral Health enthusiasts to Exercise Scientists understand that challenging the body in almost any form makes us stronger individuals — both in body and mind. We need to add some adversity back into our lives. Physically challenge our bodies by engaging in activities that push us to move in different ways. Expose ourselves to some of the elements by sweating in the sun or catching a chill from the ocean. In a sense, adversity nourishes the resiliency we once had, and without it, we will surely lose. It may be unpleasant to get started, but in the long run we’ll be better off.
mind and body
Most people think of their body as only a vehicle, distinctly separate from the mind, passively carrying them through life, only needing the intervention of a doctor-mechanic to fix what’s broken, or at least temper the symptoms of suffering with a prescription to dull any physical discomfort and allow them to continue with their mental effort. But one cannot work optimally without the other. An alchemy exists between the mind and body that allows us to operate at a higher level if both are respected. It affects the quality of our thought, as much as the way we walk, talk, and act. The union of muscles and intellect create an indefatigable spirit that makes us a more complete human than if we were to develop one area at the expense of another. For example, if you combine athletic talent with great intelligence, you’ll have greater depth than anyone who is only familiar with half of that experience.
prepare for the unexpected
Unexpected events are inevitable, just look around. When they happen, people are always shocked. Afterwards, they say they knew this was going to happen, and try to explain the events away by some fanciful Monday morning quarterbacking. Yet, in searching for a plan to move forward, to be more resilient, they make the mistake of preparing for events that already happened. The thought process becomes “how do we fix the thing we just death with” instead of preparing for the impossible thing coming next.
You can apply the same concept to fitness.
The very definition of fitness is being well adapted to a certain skill or environment. If you’re a runner, you run well. If you yoga, you bend well. If you lift, you pick heavy things up well. With enough practice you can acquire a level fitness to excel within your chosen category. However, running further, stretching longer, or lifting heavier, only makes you better at what you know, it doesn’t prepare you for what you don’t. And, because unexpected events are inevitable, we need not limit ourselves to one exercise, skill, movement pattern, or thought process.
Think about it like this… You step awkwardly on some uneven terrain on your run, and pull a muscle — maybe a bit of strength training could have helped. You bend over to pick up your child, and tweak your back — maybe a yoga class would have improved your movement quality. Or, you get winded walking down the snack isle — maybe it’s time for some cardio, among other things.
The point is, things are going to happen. The more varied your training and thought processes, the more resilient you will be. Find something you love, and let that be the foundation, but don’t let it limit you from discovering the benefits other modalities can bring into your life.
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My foundation is strength training. I incorporate “movement” or “mobility” days into my lifting scheduler so that I am able to move well in and out of the gym (for anyone that wants to know what that looks like send me a message or comment). Additionally, I will admit I not a fan of cardio anymore, but I do manage to get 15-20k steps a day while outside in the sun. This mix has allowed me to look, feel, and performance better than I ever had in the past. I take the same approach to other aspect of health as well. Don’t limit yourself. Be harder to kill!
from what the body looks like to what it can do
We need to change the narrative from what our body looks like to what it can do. When we say we want to get fit, what we really mean is that we want to look good naked. There’s no reason we can’t excel at both, but we need to be honest with ourselves. Mistakenly putting aesthetics before function makes exercise joyless. It serves as punishment for who we’ve allowed ourselves to become. It’s an unhealthy relationship, fraught with anxiety, only carried out because we think we look fat.
We scroll through instagram for inspiration from perfect looking people for tips to lose belly fat or build a butt, as if aesthetics are all that matter. We have it all backwards. We need to embrace the joy and freedom of moving well. It shouldn’t always be about working out on behalf of your abdominals muscles. They should be working for you by moving with purpose.
healthspan > lifespan
As a society we’re living longer, but at what cost. There are more years to our life, but less life in our years. We need to understand that there is a difference between lifespan and healthspan. Lifespan is how many years you’re able to accumulate, whereas healthspan is how long you’re able to live with vibrant health and without limitations.
One way to achieve a significant healthspan is to focus on acquiring and maintaining muscle mass as you age.
Muscle is the organ of longevity. It provides you with the strength to do the things you want — walk, hike, climb, lift weights, swim, bike, and get up off the ground when you fall or better yet, save you from falling. It is largely responsible for your metabolic rate — the more muscle mass you’re able to maintain throughout your life the greater amount of calories you’re able to burn at rest, and because of this there is a greater likelihood of staving off the metabolic pathologies of obesity, Type 2 Diabetes, Alzheimer’s (Type 3 Diabetes), and cardiovascular disease. And, lastly, muscle serves as a reservoir of amino acids that the body can utilized to repair the body in times of need — e.g., when you’re laid up in the hospital.
None of this is meant to say that you need to look like a body builder to live a long and vibrant life. The point is that we need to change the conversation. It has always been about adiposity and losing weight. Never has it been about the importance of muscle. The problem with this, is that when you go on a diet in an effort to lose weight, yes you burn some fat but you’re actually losing muscle at the same time (unless you’re actively resistance training concurrently). By making the conversation fat centric and only focused on losing, we are exacerbating the problem of muscle loss.
There are only two way to stimulate muscle building, the first is prioritizing dietary protein (which is a big deal). Eating high quality protein OF ANIMAL ORIGIN will be the best option from a nutritional perspective. Adversely trying to achieve the same protein intake via plant sources is calorically devastating because you need 2 to 5 times more to elicit the same response for muscle building — e.g., 6 cups of Quinoa at 1300 calories holds the same amount of protein as 8oz of Chicken Breast at 300 calories. And that is not even going into the difference in amino acid profiles between the two (we’ll save that for another time).
The other way to stimulate muscle building is actually using your muscles. While, I am way less strict than I used to be, I think it would benefit everyone to incorporate some type of resistance training into their life. You can never go wrong with learning how to properly deadlift, squat, pull-up and overhead press. But at the end of the day, find something you love to do and keep doing it. Your body will thank you down the road for not forgetting about your muscles.
Stay strong.
don’t be a cashew nut…
Once upon a time, getting a job seemed like a good idea. Years of schooling, projects, promises, and finally graduation. You couldn’t wait until the moment when you finally had your own office so you could sit down and make the money you desired. Days turn to weeks, months turn to years, the work is never finished, so there you are, sitting in the same spot. Your eyes are tired, your back aches, and the last of your muscle tone packed up and left when you bought that ergonomic chair.
The early summer sun shines bright through the window. You mind wanders… it would be nice to enjoy this weather. However, it may as well be winter, as your body can’t tell the difference in seasons because the office temperature remains at 72° all year round. The computer screams… it’s glow catching your inattention. Placated only by the promise of your undivided attention. And, so you remain trapped by endless toil, hunched over your computer, curled up like a cashew nut.
Too many hours of mental strain, stillness, stagnation age you prematurely. As time passes, you feel your body’s energy growing stale. Your body, left sinking in that chair, inert and forgotten, yearns to be free, to go out, to move, to play. Every minute that goes by, your mood gets worse, until that moment you remember you have a spine!
Not all hope is lost. Your fate is not sealed by a domineering computer with a control problem. You fervently rise with the grace of a rusty Tin man. The glowing screen scowls, spitting its profane dialup language in your direction, ordering you to return to work. But the sounds emanating from your joints during their defiant liberation are enough to silence the machine.
You’re gone…
The hours that follow are filled with movement — squatting, running, climbing, pushing, pulling, picking heavy things up and putting them down. You rewild what has been tamed. You reunite with your barbaric nature. You remember you’re a healthy homosapien, with raw, untethered, powerful energy flowing through your veins. You’re more than just a brain, who’s sole purpose is to input data into an electronic box. You are muscles, tendons, nerves and tissue, meant to move. You feel the joy of vitality returning at last.
You may be wondering what the point of this is??
Well, besides the fact that I am trying to illustrate a story, symbolic of the relationship we all have with repetitive and sedentary lives, it’s about bringing the body and movement to the forefront. The body does not work supremely without the mind, likewise the mind can’t work optimally without the body. Movement is paramount to health and longevity. Every culture that came before us has had to come to terms with the physical dimension of existence. We are the first culture that outsources movement. Our beliefs and attitudes about our body and its need to move have affected our lives profoundly.
In the immortal words of the great Pharoahe Monch… “GET THE FUCK UP.”