Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

I remember racing up the down escalator in Macy’s at the Cape Cod Mall.

My mom, calmly riding the Up escalator like a regular human, would say I was going to hurt myself (possible) or I was making a scene (correct) or interrupting the people trying to get down the escalation (also correct).

Sometimes I would be able to get to the top, exhausted and out of breath, while my mom would arrive at the same time laughing at how hard I had to work.

Spend enough time in an airport (or travel with young kids), and within a few minutes you’ll see kids trying to run on a People Mover moving in the other direction. Exhaustion for them, entertainment for us.

See where I’m going with this?

My friend Mark Manson put the following in ​his newsletter​ this week:

“All the grit, persistence, and motivation in the world won’t do you any good if you’re working on the wrong thing. In fact, it will do the opposite.”

Which brings me to today’s question…

Where are you running UP the DOWN escalator?

Earlier this year, I remember having a conversation with Coach Matt from Team NF about ​coaching clients​ who succeed and who struggle.

• Those who find success: they identify the escalator moving in the right direction, and work hard to get on that one. Each step actually magnifies their efforts.
• Those who struggle: they continue to spend their energy, willpower, and effort on changes that don’t move the needle.

I bet you’ve had moments where you wondered if all the effort was ACTUALLY worth it, or why progress seemed harder than normal.

Here are a few examples of trying to run up the down escalator:

• Spending lots of money on expensive supplements (not prescribed by a medical professional).
• Switching to organic, gluten free, or low carb keto snacks based solely on the latest trend.
• Trying complicated diets that don’t actually reduce how much food you eat.
• Doing exercise you hate exclusively for weight loss reasons.

Running (and anything else considered cardio) is great for heart and lung health. But running and cardio is ​far less effective for weight loss​ than we think (unless we ALSO adjust our nutrition strategy too).

My guess is you want to look more “toned,” which means you don’t just want to “lose weight,” but rather keep the muscle you have and lose the fat on top of it.

If these are our goals, then putting on our focus on the right escalator is key.

Here are examples of walking up the up escalator:

• Finding ways to ​eat fewer calories​ without feeling restricted.
• Prioritizing ​strength training​ a few times per week.
• Making “​more protein​” a focus for each meal.
• Being okay with ​accepting all the tools available​ for health.

Show me somebody that eats mostly protein, fruits and vegetables, and strength trains (with progressive overload) for 30 minutes a few times per week, and I’ll show you somebody who is moving UP the right escalator.

Here’s the thing: ​humans aren’t wired to love exercise​. We’re also not designed to thrive in a world in which high calorie, nutritionally-empty delicious foods are always available.

Which means if we’re going to spend valuable brain power and energy on doing something, we might as well pick the right things to trick ourselves into doing.

Yep, there’s a whole “life vs behavior” change component to this too (which I covered in a previous newsletter about ​Manageable vs Meaningful​). But deciding “how quickly do I want to implement these meaningful steps” is a better question to be asking than “Why am I not making progress despite working so hard?”

Get off the wrong escalator, and get on the right one.

Might as well put that effort to good use!

-Steve

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The post Wasted Effort first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

Have you ever heard of “Blue Zones”?

These pockets of the world are known for having citizens who live exceptionally long, healthy lives.

Some of these locations may sound familiar:

Okinawa, Japan (home of Mr. Miyagi from Karate Kid!). Sardinia, Italy. Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica. Icaria, Greece.

These locations have a higher percentage of people who live longer due to their local-whole foods diet, high vegetable consumption, low instances of disease, rich social interactions, low stress, and plenty of physical activity.

Books, documentaries, and countless news articles have championed these societies, and millions upon millions of health conscious individuals have modeled their lifestyles after how these people live.

There’s just one problem with this amazing story.

It’s not actually true.

The First Ig Nobel Prize in Demography

Last month, Dr. Saul Justin Newman was awarded the first “Ig Nobel Prize” in Demography.

These awards are given out annually for scientific research that “makes people laugh, then think.”

For this particular award, Newman was recognized for debunking pretty much all of the findings of any study relating to the Blue Zones.

Here’s what Dr. Newman discovered:

“The highest rates of achieving extreme old age are predicted by high poverty, the lack of birth certificates, and fewer 90-year-olds.

Poverty and pressure to commit pension fraud were shown to be excellent indicators of reaching ages 100+ in a way that is ‘the opposite of rational expectations.’”

It turns out that most of the “very old, healthy” individuals in these blue zones were simply a result of ​very poorly kept records, pension fraud, and outright lying​.

Let’s take a look at what actually happens on Okinawa:

“Despite vegetables and sweet potatoes being promoted as key components of the Okinawan ‘Blue Zone’ diets, according to the Japanese government, Okinawans eat the least vegetables and sweet potatoes in Japan and have the highest body mass index.”

Ooooof. So, what the heck do we do now!?

Beware anecdotal narratives that make dramatic promises

Spend enough time on social media, and you’ll stumble across people telling you to only eat meat, eliminate carbs completely, how “this one supplement saved their life,” or that doing XYZ cured their illness, and so on.

These anecdotal stories, especially when they have a villain, a victim and a heroic tale about overcoming adversity, are unbelievably powerful. They’re also often used to sell you a solution in a pill or powder form.

The good news is we data that is being constantly refined by science.

We don’t actually need to know what the people of Okinawa eat, nor do we need to study the daily habits of a particular community in Costa Rica.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a good whimsical tale about the habits of a far off land too, but it still comes back to reality and science!

And we can remember that we need to do what’s best for our particular situation. That might include ​therapy​, it might include ​weight loss medication​, it might include just focusing on sleep right now!

That’s up for us to decide, and we can do so confidently. Not because it’s what happens in Costa Rica or Greece, but simply because it’s what’s best for us.

Here are some of the ways in which we can positively impact our lifespan and/or healthspan.

• Eating the correct number of calories for our goal weight. (Obesity is one of the highest correlated indicators for increased ​all-cause mortality​).
• Diets that consist primarily of ​lean protein, whole foods, vegetables, and fruit​.
• Reducing smoking, drinking of alcohol, and some processed foods (​known carcinogens​).
• ​Strength training​ for muscle synthesis, balance, bone density.
• A ​strong social network​: friends and family.
• Regular ​physical activity​ (even walking!).

Yep, some of these things are part of the “Blue Zone Diet”… just without the sensationalism and pension fraud.

And many of them might be outside of our control!

For example, ​social determinants of health​ (financial stability, access to health care, education, our neighborhood) are strongly correlated with all-cause mortality, and many of these things might be unavailable to large portions of the population.

Life is Messy

I don’t bring all this up to tell you to avoid a Blue Zone diet.

Heck, you could do a lot worse than eating a Mediterranean diet! Of course you’ll most likely lose weight and feel healthier if you eat mostly fresh fish, whole foods, and vegetables.

I bring all this up to remind you that life is messy.

A long healthy life is a combination of dozens interconnected things (like those listed above), thousands of decisions made over our lifetime, plus stuff like genetics, society, and luck! What works for one person might not work for the next person, and there’s no “one diet fits all” solution to our problems.

We could get hit by a bus tomorrow, get a cancer diagnosis despite “doing everything right,” or experience a ​freak accident that changes everything​ next week.

So, rather than chasing immortality through sensationalized anecdotes, or getting swept up in the latest Social Media trend…

We can keep our focus on the stuff that we feel pretty damn confident will make us better off tomorrow than we are today.

Like the things on that list above! Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go do some push-ups, eat a vegetable, and take a quick walk while calling a friend.

-Steve

P.S. Hat tip to my friend Jodi Ettenberg, whose heartbreakingly powerful story about acceptance I linked above. It was ​her newsletter​ that led me to this article!

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The post Beware the Story, Embrace the Science first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

It’s been a while since I’ve felt this uncomfortable.

I had an empty afternoon last week and saw Speak No Evil (​trailer here​), a horror/suspense film about a family who goes to visit another couple they met on vacation.

And shockingly, things don’t go as expected.

If you saw the ​“Dinner Party” episode of The Office​ where Jim and Pam go to Michael and Jan’s house for the most uncomfortable house party ever, and thought to yourself…

“What if this was a 2-hour horror movie instead?”

…that’s essentially the plot of Speak No Evil.

This movie is based on a 2022 European film of the same name, so naturally I had to watch that too. And boy, that version was even bleaker and more shocking.

This movie has some really cutting commentary on relationships, masculinity, and even parenting…

But here’s why Speak No Evil made me so uncomfortable:

This movie asks, “How many of our own boundaries are we willing to cross to keep the peace and not hurt somebody’s feelings?”

I always joke about ​how much of a conflict-avoidant people pleaser​ I am, which means this movie shook me to my core:

Which brings me to the point of today’s newsletter!

Guilt and Overcommitting

My father was raised Episcopalian (a form of Christianity), while my mother was raised Catholic. My mom always joked that the Episcopalian faith was “like Catholicism, but without the guilt!”

So we went to Episcopalian church as kids.

And despite this, I managed to get all the Catholic guilt!

I will bend over backwards to keep the peace. I’ll do whatever I can to not offend. I’ll overcommit, I’ll put myself in really frustrating situations, simply because I don’t know how to set healthy boundaries.

Long story short, I would NOT have done well in Speak No Evil.

I used to think this was just me being nice, but I came to realize that it was something different.

I was being disrespectful to myself and my own wellbeing!

Over the years, I’ve learned to establish and enforce healthier boundaries. Not just to protect myself from others, but to protect myself…from myself.

I have a hunch there are quite a few people who are reading this newsletter who are also people-pleasers, struggling with burnout, and feeling overcommitted right now.

If that’s you, I have a truth that’s hard to hear.

The Solution to Burnout isn’t a Yoga Retreat

When we feel burned out, too busy, and overwhelmed, we think the solution resides in a very specific form of self-care:

• Escape: We just need a massage or a “digital detox” or retreat.
• Achievement: We just need to work harder in the gym!
• Optimization: If only we had a more optimized schedule!

The problem is that all of these solutions treat the symptom, not the root cause.

As pointed out in Anne-Helen Peterson’s ​Can’t Even​:

“You don’t fix burnout by going on vacation. You don’t fix it through “life hacks,” like inbox zero, or by using a meditation app for five minutes in the morning, or doing Sunday meal prep for the entire family, or starting a bullet journal. You don’t fix it by reading a book on how to “unfu*k yourself.”

You don’t fix it with vacation, or an adult coloring book, or “anxiety baking,” or the Pomodoro Technique, or overnight f***ing oats.”

As I share in my essay on ​the problems with Self-Care​, the solution isn’t found in a Yoga studio or on a deserted beach, nor is it found in a journal or meditation app.

The solution requires us to have an uncomfortable conversation with ourselves.

We need to put on our own oxygen mask first before we can help others.

Boundaries Protect Against Burnout

Us people pleasers spend most of our time keeping the peace and catering to everybody else’s needs, very rarely considering our own.

This is usually how we find ourselves overcommitted, unable to do the things we want/need to do, and potentially feeling resentful of our generosity being taken for granted.

The problem?

It’s not somebody else’s responsibility to establish our boundaries.

It’s on us to establish them, explain them, and protect them.

This is where boundaries come in.

Boundaries are healthy because they allow us to actually consider our needs too. Something I never considered for a long time. I bet there are a lot of amazing moms and dads on this newsletter list who also haven’t considered their own needs in a long time.

This doesn’t mean we need to suddenly become “I AM THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS,” but rather, it means we need to address the fact that our feelings and needs are valid, and we need to take care of ourselves if we’re also going to take care of others.

As Dr. Lakshmin points out in ​Real Self-Care​:

“To practice real self-care, you must be willing to make yourself vulnerable – whether that means having uncomfortable conversations to set boundaries or making the clear and deliberate choice to prioritize one aspect of your life over another.”

Here is your challenge for the day:

Say NO to one thing you are currently saying YES to out of obligation or guilt.

Establish this boundary for your own wellbeing and mental health.

Yep, this will require you to rely on those around you, and maybe even *GASP* potentially disappoint somebody!

Especially if they’re used to you saying yes to everything all the time.

I promise you, their reaction isn’t your responsibility to manage.

One final reminder I had to internalize: “No” is a complete sentence.

We can’t time-travel, which means the only solution to burnout is to put fewer things on our plate.

This requires us to develop boundaries to protect ourselves…from ourselves.

I’d love to hear what boundary you establish, so hit reply and let me know!

-Steve

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The post Boundaries: the Cure for Burnout? first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

Originally posted at: http://www.nerdfitness.com/

I stumbled across ​a reddit thread​ that really grabbed my attention.

Somebody asked “What was the ‘one thing’ that finally made weight loss work for you?”

And this question had 5,400 replies (and counting).

Some of the answers involved environmental changes or changing how they prepared their food:

“Pouring snacks into little ramekins to eat them. Suddenly I ate a normal amount of snacks.”

“I meal prepped my typical amount of food and instead of putting it in 2 containers, I spread it evenly in 4 containers. I forced myself to only eat 1 container per meal and tricked my brain into thinking it was my normal amount.”

Others changed what they ate:

“Found a salad I actually really like. Sounds dumb, but I’d never craved a salad before, and having one I actually really liked meant I strung together a solid few weeks of eating a lot of lettuce – it snowballed from there, because I actually felt good and then started craving feeling good.”

Some had a more holistic approach that involved reevaluating their relationship with food, hunger, and discomfort:

“Realizing it’s a lifestyle change NOT a diet.”

“Embrace the suffering. Expect that you’ll be breathing hard and uncomfortable when you’re doing cardio, expect that you’ll be sore after you lift, and expect that you’ll be hungry when you’re restricting your intake.”

Others used apps to track their calorie intake, which made them realize just how much they were eating:

“Using an app to track everything I ate. I realized a lot of “healthy” things I was eating, in the quantities I was eating them, were a lot more calories than I thought. Just cutting down on certain foods did the trick.”

And some succeeded thanks to an initial push with medication:

“Saw a doctor about my type 2 diabetes. I weighed over 300 lbs and also had coronary artery disease. I qualified for diabetes medication that also helps control appetite. Started tracking calories and exercising.”

“Semaglutide”

Some prioritized physical activity instead of focusing on food:

“Finding a hobby. I was binge eating because I was bored. Coming home from work to sit on the couch would make it way easier to eat like sh*t… now I just go and do something I like so I won’t find distraction in eating.”

“Walking. Validation that I’d lost 45 lb in 7 months by just walking every night around my neighborhood. It was free and low impact, I walked rain or shine even through snow storms. Now I have a treadmill and walk indoors but the feeling is still as great as it was in the beginning.”

As we look through this list, reading thousands of comments of people thinking back on the ‘one thing’ that changed their life, and just how different many of them are, we can draw some fascinating conclusions.

3 Short Lessons We Can Learn

LESSON 1: “Success is moving from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” -Winston Churchill.

The toughest part of getting healthy is not losing hope when some strategy you try doesn’t work out. I bet for each person who shared their answer above, they tried dozens of different strategies to try and get fit. Hell, I bet they tried most of the things that worked for other people, until they found the one that worked for them.

What we can learn from this: “Hope is the ​warrior emotion that lays waste to cynicism​,” and it’s okay to have hope that each failed attempt means that’s one less strategy to need to try in the future.

For example, if you’ve tried Keto 5 times before and you can’t stick with it, congrats! You found the diet that doesn’t work for you.

If you can keep that ​‘beta test’ mentality​ of “I’m going to see if it works for me,” you might just find the first domino to fall for your journey!

LESSON 2: Beware the Charlatan.

Spend enough time on social media, and you’ll eventually encounter health and wellness charlatans. These are the folks who tell you they alone have the one solution to all your problems. They often have a villain for all of the world’s evil (“its sugar! It’s carbs! It’s X ingredient!”).

And sure enough, once they’ve fear mongered and scared the crap out of you, they provide hope to you with their expensive unregulated supplement or foolproof system.

As you see in the examples above, there’s no “one size fits all” solution to this stuff. Every human is a unique weirdo with different baggage and triggers and traumas and experiences that make certain solutions a homerun and other solutions will be a nonstarter.

You can read more about how to spot and avoid charlatans in my past essay here: “​How to not go crazy on the internet​.”

Which brings me to my third point!

LESSON THREE: All stories of getting fit have 3 boring commonalities!

Although all of these “one thing” solutions to getting in shape are different, they all do have a few similarities.

The good news? None of these things are revolutionary, proprietary, or fancy.

Getting fit down to literally 3 things:

• Eating the correct number of calories for your goal weight
• Getting some form of physical movement
• Making these two things part of a lifelong lifestyle adjustment.

Weight loss isn’t magic. It’s math and behavior change.

As I cover in my ​weight loss guide​, science is settled on this.

Any diet can work, if it puts us into a caloric deficit. We have ​coaching clients​ who are vegan, others who go Keto, some who count calories and others who do intermittent fasting.

Our ability to turn dietary changes into a lifestyle we can live with is how we find success, and that looks different for everybody.

Speaking of lifestyle changes, most of the answers above also involve finding ways to make exercise a regular part of life.

Remember: it’s okay that you don’t LOVE to exercise. We’re not designed to love exercise! Especially if it’s an activity we don’t actually enjoy! We’re designed to survive in times of scarcity, NOT thrive in times of unlimited abundance.

So how do we make exercise part of our lifestyle?

We need to find ways to ​make exercise fun, beneficial, or necessary​:

• Fun: join a walking/running club with friends, try ​temptation bundling​.
• Beneficial: fall in love with ​getting stronger​ and more confident and how much better you feel after exercise.
• Necessary: pre-pay for a trainer, park at the end of the parking lot, bike to work.

Remember that hope is the warrior emotion.

We humans are unbelievably adaptable creatures who are capable of change.

Keep trying different strategies, beware the charlatans, and don’t forget the basics!

And pretty soon one day, you too could be sharing the first domino to fall that changed things for you.

-Steve

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