Warrior Fit Boot Camp Fitness Fun!

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

Last week, one of the world’s most popular shows finally made its way to Netflix:

LOST.

I’m excited for more people to discover this show. Because from 2004 to 2010, I tuned into ABC each week to find out what happened to the passengers of Oceanic Flight 815.

Although it didn’t quite land the plane (heyo!) with its final few seasons, few will take umbrage with my belief that one episode in particular was one of the best hours of TV I’ve ever seen:

Season 5’s: “The Constant.”

I won’t spoil it for anybody who hasn’t seen this episode, so I’ll just speak in generalities:

A character finds himself existing within two realities inside his mind, and he’s slipping further and further from real life. It’s only through his “constant,” his girlfriend, that he finds his way back from the brink.

I thought of “The Constant” a lot back in 2011 when ​I traveled around the world​.

For those 18 months, every part of my life was abject chaos: a different hostel every night, a different group of travelers every day, a different country every week or month, and a different place to eat for every meal.

While everything else around me was changing, my workouts became my constant. The thing that kept me sane, and grounded, was finding a place to do my ​playground workout​ every other day.

With LOST making its way to Netflix, I was reminded of The Constant again these past few weeks as my travel schedule picked back up.

These days, these are the “constant” things I prioritize through the ups and downs of life:

• 15-minutes of moving my body.
• 150 grams of protein + serving of fruits/vegetables.
• One hour focused on writing in the morning.

I know that no matter where I am, no matter what I have access to, if I prioritize these few things, I feel more grounded and strong and healthy, even if the rest of my schedule is a mess.

I’ve talked a lot about “self-care” lately, and how we often think the ​solution is external​ (buying bath bombs or a 90-minute massage), but the reality is often internal: establishing or accepting boundaries, exercise, etc.

What is “The Constant” in YOUR life?

I’d love to hear about your Constant.

When everything feels like a hurricane around you, what are the things you prioritize daily to keep you from floating off into outer space:

• A 10-minute conversation with your spouse?
• Going to the gym?
• Sitting for a quick meditation?
• Calling your mom?
• A 5-minute walk?

With the state of the world these days, or the state of your schedule, it’s easy to feel like we’re split between two realities.

Sometimes, when our ​identity is stolen from us​, our “constant” might need to change.

What are the things that keep you tethered to reality?

I’d really love to hear from you. Hit reply and share with me your constant!

-Steve

PS: Here’s a ​fun podcast about how LOST​ came together at the last minute.

The post What is “The Constant” in your life? first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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

Last week, Wells Fargo fired a bunch of their remote employees.

It turns out that these employees were “simulating keyboard activity” (with a program/device that automatically typed keys or jiggled their mouse when they weren’t at their computer).

Why?

Because that’s how these employees were evaluated:

Not by how many clients they brought in, nor how many relationships they fostered, but by how many hours they were active on their computers.

So that’s exactly what these employees gave them.

Remember, this is the same bank that told employees back in 2017: “Sign up as many clients to extra banking services as possible.”

The result?

Millions of unknowing customers had credit cards and savings accounts and brokerage accounts created illegally in their names, hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, and destroyed goodwill for Wells Fargo.

Why did both of these comically bad lapses in judgment happen?

Bloomberg’s ​Matt Levine​ said it well:

Two basic principles of management, and regulation, and life, are:

1. You get what you measure.
2. The thing that you measure will get gamed.

Really that’s just one principle: You get what you measure, but only exactly what you measure. There’s no guarantee that you’ll get the more general good thing that you thought you were approximately measuring.

If you want hard workers and measure hours worked, you’ll get a lot of workers surfing the internet until midnight.

I stumbled across this story last week, and immediately thought how this exact incentive-and-unexpected-results plays out everyday in our lives.

We download Duolingo to learn to converse with a native speaker in their language. Months later, we’re checking in daily so we don’t get yelled at by the Owl, we are desperate to keep our daily streak active…and we can only say “I found a blue ostrich at the library.”

We lie in bed, waiving our arm above our head like a madman, because our FitBit says we need 500 more steps to hit 10,000 for the day. (​Here’s the history of the 10k step rule​ by the way…)

I once “meditated” every single day for 6 months so that I could build my meditation streak in Headspace. Sometimes I would even open the app and just let the meditation play so I got credit for it, even though I wasn’t meditating…THE WHOLE REASON I HAD DOWNLOADED THE APP.

We tell ourselves that we want to “read more,” but then we track how many books we read. This incentivizes us to read books quickly (without retaining any of it), instead of tackling bigger challenges like War & Peace or rereading our favorite books to glean more lessons.

WHY do we want to read more? To learn stuff or to be entertained! The ​number of books, or WHICH books, doesn’t matter​:

Social media began as a way to connect with friends. These days, social media is big business and the only marketing tool for many creators. Because these companies track “time on app” and “attention”…social media is now a hellscape of outrage.

The most attention-grabbing content filters to the top: outrage inducing, factually incorrect, awful content designed to enrage and fear monger. Even most of my favorite wellness creators these days spend their time making reaction videos to the most vile wellness misinformation, because that’s the only type of content that gains any traction.

(No wonder so many people are avoiding the ​Dark Forest of the Internet​!).

All of these things weave a fascinating tapestry of how the human brain works, and just how good our brains are at taking a metric and learning the wrong lesson from that metric!

What are you measuring?

The majority of people visit NerdFitness.com to “lose weight.”

This is the one metric that everybody is used to tracking. Every ad talks about how to lose weight fast. They see the number on the scale and let that number determine how they feel about themselves that day.

This is the wrong metric to exclusively focus on:

We don’t really want to “lose weight.” What we want is to lose fat while keeping the muscle we have (or building muscle).

If our ONLY goal is weight loss, severe calorie restriction and endless cardio might result in a lower number on the scale. BUT! If we don’t change our relationship with food, and consume enough of the right macronutrients and micronutrients, we’ll end up feeling lethargic, starved, and miserable…and then gorge ourselves as soon as life gets in the way.

If we strength train while eating enough protein and in a caloric deficit, we’ll actually lose weight slower than if we just starved ourselves and did hours of cardio. BUT, we’ll be losing fat while maintaining muscle.

The scale should only be ONE part of how we ​evaluate our progress​:

After all, the number on the scale is going to ​fluctuate from day to day​:

• If we went out to dinner last night.
• if we ate too much salt yesterday.
• If we’re carrying extra water weight.
• If we’re on our period.
• any number of reasons.

So, once we know that what we choose to track is important, how do we use this to our advantage?

What to Track, What NOT to Track

Remember, that which gets measured gets improved, so let’s be smart about what we’re tracking.

We can ask, “What do I REALLY want to happen? Is this the right metric for that goal?”

• Trying to “eat better”: ​Track your protein intake ​and number of fruits/veggies eaten daily. If those are the first two things on your plate for each meal, your weight will start to shift without your focus on it.
• Trying to build a “​beach body​”? Great, let’s ​build some muscle​. Track your workouts, and write down exactly how many sets and reps. Then, do ONE more next time. The goal? Progressive overload for the win! Get stronger,
• Want to read more? Don’t track “books read,” which might result in you picking shorter books or speed reading, but instead track “time spent reading.” This can include audiobooks, rereading old books, whatever. Treat your reading list ​like a river, not a to-do list​!

Finally, there are many things we probably DON’T need to track, or we should be careful about when tracking.

There’s a whole community of biohackers who are prioritizing tracking the tiniest of details across a variety of metrics, many of which don’t matter, or might result in adverse outcomes.

Here’s something we get asked about a lot:

Unless you’re a diabetic and have been advised by a doctor, you do not need to wear a continuous glucose monitor. Temporary glucose spikes after eating a meal are perfectly normal.

(​This podcast​ from my friend Dr. Spencer Nadolsky does a good job explaining why you don’t need a glucose monitor unless you’re diabetic).

Here’s something I used to track but abandoned:

I used to track my sleep religiously with an Oura ring and AppleWatch, but then I would get anxious in the middle of the night and worry that I was ruining my “sleep score”…which negatively impacted the very activity I was trying to improve through tracking. These days, I worry far less about tracking “good sleep” and just do what I can to be in bed for 8ish hours, asleep or not.

And on a bigger, life philosophy question:

Be wary of how social media is warping the scorecard you’re using to track your progress in life! It’s really easy to get sucked into: “Work hard to make money to spend it on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t even like” Life success isn’t measured in the size of our house, or value of our car, or the number in our bank account.

Bringing it all together:

When it comes to personal development or health improvement, it helps to ask: “What am I optimizing for, and does that actually help me get the result I really want?”

We can then decide if we’re even playing with the right scorecard and keeping our focus on the right metric.

I’d love to hear from you: what’s a metric you USED to prioritize, but no longer track? And what’s the important metric that you’re choosing to prioritize these days?

Hit reply on this and let me know!

-Steve

The post Be Careful What You Measure first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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

A few weeks ago, I got a parking ticket.

I went to meet up with a group of friends at a bar in Nashville, and forgot to pay the $5 for parking at the parking terminal on my way in. After about 45 minutes, while sitting in the restaurant, I remembered.

Oh crap.

I ran out to my car, and sure enough, right there tucked under my windshield wiper was a small manilla envelope.

I sheepishly grabbed it, and saw a fine for $70 plus a processing fee.

My $7 hazy IPA suddenly got a lot more expensive.

I was also having a crap day.

So how did I respond?

I laughed.

Then, I went back into the restaurant and finished hanging out with my friends. Later that night I paid the parking ticket and then transferred the exact amount of the ticket from my “Absent Minded Fund” into my checking account.

(Yes, this used to be called my “idiot fund”, but I’m trying to have a nicer inner critic!)

This is a specific, separate savings account I keep that I contribute a small amount to every month, that is specifically for paying for the occasional mistake that I might make absentmindedly.

Sure, it would be great if I never made absent minded mistakes. And yep, it would be great if some of them were less financially punitive.

But also, this is life. Rather than beating myself up for something I clearly didn’t do on purpose, I can move on with my life.

The important part, just like the ​Ulysses Pact​ I wrote about previously, is that I could weather this storm because of my proactiveness in the past:

Making a decision during a moment of strength, to protect against a future moment of weakness.

I had a lot on my mind that night, and in a moment of weakness, I didn’t pay for parking. But because of Past Steve’s acceptance that “sh** happens!,” this didn’t affect me in the slightest.

And it has me thinking about this in terms of wellness too.

Emergency Workout Fund

I really enjoyed this post from ​Andrew Coates​:

I’ve recently written about what to do when ​you don’t like to work out​. We can help ourselves tremendously if we can make our workouts more physically or emotionally beneficial.

After all, something special can happen when we find ways to work out even on the days when we don’t feel like it.

We can prove to ourselves that we can do hard things. We prove to ourselves that we’re the type of person who can work out even without motivation. There’s a certain sense of pride and accomplishment that comes after too.

And not only that, but in this example, doing a workout when we don’t want to is like putting money into an “Emergency Workout Fund.”

We’re banking extra days off for when we really need them in the future.

I hope this gives you a little bit of a nudge to get that workout in today, even when you don’t feel like it.

Start putting workouts into the Emergency Workout fund! Future You will thank you. I promise.

-Steve

The post Do you have a Workout Emergency Fund? first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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

I don’t really like to exercise.

Okay, I kind of like picking up heavy weights and doing handstands.

But I certainly don’t love “cardio.”

Rather than nerd out about biomechanics, I’m more interested in anthropology and human behavior.

Rather than going to run a 5K, I’d rather sit on my couch and play Fallout 4 I (just watched the show, it’s fantastic.)

What I’m trying to say is I’m not a fitness nerd.

I’m a nerd who tries to be fit.

So if you’re somebody who also just doesn’t “like to exercise,” you are in good company.

I also have some amazing news for you.

Back in Time

I recently read ​Exercised​ by Daniel Lieberman, professor of anthropology at Harvard University.

Lieberman has spent large swaths of time studying and living with hunter-gatherer tribes all over the world, including the Tarahumara (who appear in the book Born to Run), the people of Pemja (Kenya), and the Hazda tribe of Tanzania.

Lieberman points out that most studies and research are conducted on very specific, narrow subset of humans:

WEIRD humans!

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.

Modern western society only makes up a tiny part of the total human experience.

Homo Sapiens have been around for 150,000-300,000+ years!

So, if our goal is to see “what most humans do,” we need to expand the variety of humans we observe, look way back in time, and observe human behavior outside of modern western culture.

Luckily, Lieberman has done exactly that, living with modern hunter-gatherer tribes and studying ancient cultures:

For generation after generation, our ancestors young and old woke up each morning thankful to be alive and with no choice but to spend several hours walking, digging, and doing other physical activities to survive to the next day.

Sometimes they also played or danced for enjoyment and social reasons.

Otherwise, they generally steered clear of nonessential physical activities that divert energy from the only thing evolution really cares about: reproduction.

For 99.99% of our existence as a species, we needed to conserve energy, not needlessly try and burn extra energy. Whenever we weren’t actively securing our survival, we were resting to conserve energy. This whole modern concept of trying to build excess muscle, or exercising to burn extra calories would be a foreign concept to our ancestors.

Food was always in short supply, which meant every day the bodily cycle for each human has to decide how to use each calorie consumed.

Because we had to burn precious calories to hunt or find our food, needlessly burning excess calories during the rest of the day just doesn’t make any sense to ancient humans, nor to modern hunter-gatherers.

So! Of course…

It makes sense you don’t want to exercise!

As Lieberman points out:

“We never evolved to exercise.

…exercise today is most commonly defined as voluntary physical activity undertaken for the sake of health and fitness.

But as such it is a recent phenomenon…

The mantra of this book is that nothing about the biology of exercise makes sense except in the light of evolution, and nothing about exercise as a behavior makes sense except in the light of anthropology.”

As Lieberman shares in the book, tribes like the Hazda certainly burn more calories than western office-workers, but only because they have to, and not dramatically so: “Typical hunter-gatherers are about as physically active as Americans or Europeans who include about an hour of exercise in their daily routine,” but don’t have abundant access to easily consumable energy the way the rest of us do.

This is where we encounter the “​Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis​”:

Differences in stressors between the environment in which humans evolved and the current environment are mismatches that can cause disease.

Up until 10,000 years ago, humans lived a nomadic lifestyle as hunter-gatherers, with different stressors from the ones that people experience nowadays in modern environments.

Note: this is NOT where I’ll tell you to start eating Paleo (​Paleo is a misguided diet​ that works because of math, not “ancestral” reasons).

I’m specifically talking about how our brains and bodies try and function in a modern environment. Edward Wilson said it best: “We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.”

Which means we need to ​start with acceptance​: Rather than beating ourselves up for struggling to build a voluntary exercise habit, we can accept we’re human.

We evolved to survive in scarcity, and now exist in a world of abundance.

Exercise is beneficial AND no longer “necessary”

Exercise is good for us.

Cardio is good for our heart and lungs. Exercise of any type can help create a calorie deficit, and reducing our body fat percentage can help reduce all-cause mortality. Building and maintaining muscle mass and strong bones is critical for our health as we get older. We also feel better after we exercise: thanks dopamine and serotonin and endorphins!

There are literally hundreds of benefits of exercise with regards to our health.

We all know this.

And yet we all think: “I know I should exercise more, but I can’t get myself to do it.”

Let’s set aside the fact right now that we’re all busy as hell, and taking extra time out of our day to exercise is a BIG ask for many (shout out to single parents working multiple jobs!). With that out of the way, why is it so hard for us to build a new exercise habit and stick with it?

Because we’re fighting against biology and our history.

For our day-to-day survival, we don’t need to exercise anymore:

• We used to have to find/hunt our food, now we can hit a button on our phone.
• We used to have to travel by foot everywhere, now we can drive a car.
• We used to have to stay active or die, but we can now survive for a long time even if we’re unhealthy and inactive.

And if exercise is no longer necessary for our survival…

The Only Two Reasons We Exercise

Unless we’re being chased by a wild boar or fell off a boat and need to swim to shore, none of us need to exercise today specifically to survive.

Then why does anybody exercise at all? As Lieberman categorizes it, we exercise for one of two reasons:

• It’s emotionally rewarding
• It’s physically rewarding

We can exercise because it’s emotionally rewarding: We might go for a run because of the dopamine hit, or because we are part of a socially active club. We might strength train because it feels empowering, or because we don’t want to feel lonely or lazy, or because it helps us process our anxiety or depression.

We can exercise because it’s physically rewarding. We might try to get better at pickleball because we’re competitive. Or we might exercise because we want to lose weight and fit into certain sized clothes, or because we don’t want to die of a heart attack at an early age like our dad.

In ALL of the examples above, we’re all having an internal debate with our lazy brains, who would rather conserve energy.

We have to convince ourselves “the benefits of this activity now outweigh the negatives, so I’m willing to take time out of my day to do it!”

Here’s how you can do exactly that.

How to Make Exercise More Rewarding

With “necessity” off the table, we need to find ways to make exercise emotionally rewarding, physically rewarding, or both.

Here are some thoughts to get you started.

Let’s start with making it more emotionally rewarding:

Socializing is a HUGE part of humanity, and includes things like camaraderie, positive social pressure, etc.

• Join a running club where the goal isn’t even “get better at running,” but because it’s your friends.
• Dance classes or martial arts classes in disciplines that seem fun to you.
• A kickball league or pickleball league for your apartment building.

We can also reframe how we think about exercise. Instead of just calories burned, what if we focused your exercise on “This makes me feel better.”

• Listen to your favorite podcasts while working out (​temptation bundling​).
• Treat your daily walk like a walking meditation.
• Running a 5K to raise money for a charitable cause.
• Your Big Why (to be a role model for your kids, to be around for your grandkids).

Can you find ways to make exercise feel physically rewarding? Yep, “look good naked” is still a viable motivator for many. Feel free to keep that as part of your reason for exercise! It’s certainly one of my reasons.

However, for many of our ​coaching clients​, their big shift to sustainable exercise happens when their mentality changes from “How much weight do I need to lose?” to “I wonder what my body is capable of!”

Instead of just weight loss, they have goals like:

• ​Get my first pull-up​
• ​Do a handstand​
• ​Run my first 5K ​

Alternatively, exercise can be physically rewarding when it doesn’t feel like exercise! Dancing, yoga, LARPING, hiking, walking. We’ve even written about ​40 ways to exercise without realizing it​. Movement can be fun.

You may also start to enjoy the physical sensations of exercising and feeling your body move. For many of ​our clients​, focusing on what their body is capable of doing and the feeling of moving their body can completely shift their associations with exercise from noxious to welcoming.

Finally, exercise can be physically rewarding when we find ways to make exercise secretly more “necessary.” Parking at the other end of the parking lot, adopting a cute pup that needs to be walked every day, taking the stairs, walking or biking instead of driving.

It all adds up!

Why I Personally Exercise

This book caused me to reflect on my personal reasons for working out.

I have a single workout folder in Evernote with 1975 notes in it, and my workouts over the last 11 years haven’t changed that much.

How do I get myself to do the same boring workout, 4 times a week, every week, for more than a decade, even though I don’t like to exercise?

It’s combination of all the methods above:

1. Genetic lottery (luck). I exercise because I’ve always exercised. I grew up being active, I played sports, I worked out in college, it’s now just something I do. ​I got lucky​.
2. Working out makes me feel good (emotionally and physically rewarding). When I exercise, I feel like I did something good for myself. Like showering and flossing my teeth, it’s part of my hygiene. I also sleep better and eat better on days when I exercise.
3. Exercise is the path to aesthetic self-confidence (physically rewarding). I might have more fun exercising in other ways, but I know strength training with heavy compound movements helps me look a certain way (like a guy who owns a fitness company)
4. Working out is my podcast-meditative time (emotionally rewarding). I know I have 1 hour where I can’t look at a screen. Which means I can listen to a fun podcast and exercise.
5. I go for meditative walks (emotionally rewarding). When I’m walking I can’t be looking at a screen. I’m also outside. I might listen to a walking meditation, or a podcast, or just force myself to actually be present with my thoughts on walks.
6. Exercise makes me better at golf (emotionally and physically rewarding). I like golf, and I know strength training will make me better at golf. And golf doesn’t feel like exercise, but it gets me out of the house, off my phone, hanging with my friends and walking 5+ miles every time I play.

Remember, it’s okay if you don’t want to exercise.

Exercise is no longer necessary for immediate survival and we didn’t evolve to want to exercise to burn excess calories. This is a modern, mismatched phenomenon.

We’re still monkeys on a rock, built for scarcity, but surrounded by abundance.

So if you can find a way to make exercise more physically rewarding or emotionally rewarding, you’re more likely to turn it into a routine you look forward to, rather than something you have to endure.

Good luck, fellow monkey on a rock!

-Steve

PS: If you hate treadmills, feel free to keep this fact from Exercised in your back pocket:

“Treadmill-like devices were first used by the Romans to turn winches and lift heavy objects, and then modified in 1818 by the Victorian inventor William Cubitt to punish prisoners and prevent idleness.

For more than a century, English convicts (among them Oscar Wilde) were condemned to trudge for hours a day on enormous steplike treadmills.”

The post What to do if you DON’T like to exercise: first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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

Today I’m going to teach you a valuable lesson about time from a giant tree.

No, not Groot.

Redwoods.

If you drive down the Avenue of the Giants in Northern California, you’ll find yourself weaving in and out of some of the most majestic, gigantic redwood trees you’ll ever see.

If you’re having trouble picturing this in your mind, think back to the Endor speeder chase scene in The Return of the Jedi. This scene was filmed near the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

And as you’re driving down the Avenue of the Giants, you’ll eventually stop at a nondescript gift shop along the side of the road, and this is where things get even crazier.

You’ll encounter a slice of a redwood tree standing on its side. This tree has a diameter of nine feet and was over 300 feet tall at the time of its felling, the length of a football field.

The first observation you’d make: “Sweet sassy molassy, this tree is gigantic.”

The next jaw dropping moment happens when you get closer and notice its concentric rings. As we all learned in grade school biology class, the rings of a tree can tell us the tree’s age: each ring represents a year and tells a story.

This is where the fun happens.

Scattered across this dissection of the tree are little name tags, identifying key moments in history, starting in the center and working its way outward. Photo here from ​Barry Swackhamer​:

1000AD: “Vikings Discover America.”

1096AD: “Oxford University Founded.”

1218AD: “Genghis Khan conquers Persia.”

This head-exploding trip through history continues, from the Ming Dynasty to the Renaissance to the Printing Press, Cortez conquering the Aztecs, Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Boston Tea Party, and so on, to the founding of the California National Parks System in 1927, and beyond.

Here you can see the entirety of modern history, separated by a few feet within tiny concentric rings inside a 1000+ year old tree.

It’s wild that from the perspective of a tree, just a few feet (1 meter) separate “Vikings reaching America,” and modern life 1000+ years later. Zoomed out, it’s wild to see how insignificant this time gap is:

Which brings me to today’s point.

We’ve got time wrong.

We humans are really good at worrying about what we can get accomplished today, what we ate for ONE meal, what’s important this week, or how much we can change in a month.

From the perspective of a 1000 year old tree, these time frames are comically short and insignificant.

If trees could laugh (like the Ents of Fangorn Forest), they would laugh at us.

This realization had me thinking about time and how to reframe the timeline on which I think about stuff.

As I talked about in a recent newsletter about the ​additive method for habit building​, I’m in the process of building a meditation habit.

And as I was reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book ​Wherever you Go, There You Are​, and this quote rattled my brain:

“It may take some time for concentration and mindfulness to become strong enough to hold such a wide range of objects in awareness without getting lost in them or attached to particular ones, or simply overwhelmed.

For most of us, it takes years and depends a good deal on your motivation and the intensity of your practice. So, at the beginning, you might want to stay with the breath, or use it as an anchor to bring you back when you are carried away.

Try it for a few years and see what happens.“

That final sentence completely shifted my expectations.

In the past, I would think “if I could just meditate for 30 days straight, THEN I’ll be really good at mindfulness”

This quote helped me realize I was thinking about this all wrong. I wasn’t going to have some magical epiphany when I reached enlightenment. I wasn’t going to “get there” in weeks or months. Instead, the only goal was to set aside time to sit with my awkward brain and focus on my breath. That’s it.

Suddenly, “trying it for a few years” had me thinking about this completely differently.

Here’s why this is important.

Extend your time horizon

Here are two of my favorite quotes about time:

Bill Gates: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

Daniel Hofstadter: “Hofstadter’s Law dictates it will always take longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

Everybody is in such a rush to see how many weeks or months it will take to get in shape. Or how long they need to go on a diet to lose the weight, and then they can go back to “normal eating.”

Reality plays out differently: things will always take longer than we want, so we should change how we think about it.

Instead of “how fast can I get there,” we should be thinking “what’s the least amount of work I can do today, to help me be in better shape a year from now?”

If we change our time horizon, paradoxically we often end up making more progress, more permanently.

If everything takes longer than expected, then we should probably pick reasonable goals, sustainable routines, and enjoyable activities that we won’t mind doing for a much longer period of time.

We talk about this a lot with our ​coaching clients​.

I even made this video a number of years ago: “​Think in terms of days and years, not weeks and months.​”

Here’s one final helpful reframing of time horizons:

Whenever I’m finding myself overwhelmed with making a certain decision…I ask myself “Will this matter 6 months from now? A year from now? A decade from now?” By extending my time horizon, it often helps me realize that the thing I’m agonizing over doesn’t matter nearly as much.

What’s one area of your life that you’re thinking about on a short term time scale, that would benefit from thinking on a far longer horizon?

• A short term crash diet, vs. long term reevaluation of your relationship with food
• An unsustainable workout program vs building a daily habit of movement.
• Agonizing over small decisions that won’t matter a month from now, let alone a year from now.

Extend your timeframe, and see if that changes how you think about things.

-Steve

The post What we get wrong about time first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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

Last week, I downloaded a new video game to play.

And 30 minutes later, I uninstalled the game. Not because I didn’t like the game, but specifically because I liked the game too much. The game is called Dave the Diver, where you are a SCUBA Diver/Sushi restaurant owner. You spend each day diving and catching fish, and then each evening serving sushi at the restaurant.

This game pressed every biological button my brain has for “efficiency.”

My brain told me I had to execute each dive as efficiently as possible. Each night at the restaurant meant I needed to receive a 100% customer satisfaction rating.

Of course, nothing would happen if I didn’t.

But this game + my brain equaled a recipe for addictive disaster. After 30 minutes I knew if I didn’t delete it, I would spend every possible minute playing the game, and every minute not playing would be spent thinking about how to get more efficient at the game.

Because I’m in the middle of writing a secret-book-shaped-project that I can’t talk about… I knew I needed to save Future Steve.

In other words, it was time to channel an ancient strategy for survival:

A “Ulysses Pact.”

What is a Ulysses Pact?

In Homer’s Odyssey, Ulysses (also known as “Odysseus”) is about to sail past a dangerous island of Sirens who sing beautiful music. This music is so beautiful that anybody who hears it loses all control, and will sail toward the island, crashing their boat on the rocks surrounding the island.

Luckily, our boy Uylsses has been advised by the witch Circe on the only way he and his men can survive. In Madelline Miller’s ​Circe​, she recounts the advice Circe gives the captain:

“[For] the Sirens, there you may use your tricks. Fill your men’s ears with wax, and leave your own free. If you tie yourself to the mast, you may be the first man to ever hear their song and tell the tale.”

As author Corey Doctorow points out in ​a recent newsletter​:

“Ulysses was strong enough to know that he would someday be weak. He expressed his strength by guarding against his weakness.

“When you take some possibility off the table during a moment of strength in recognition of some coming moment of weakness.”

In other words, sometimes giving up on yourself is the most courageous thing you can do. It asks you to accept your weaknesses, and make a strategic pre-planned decision to protect against them.

Ulysses Pacts In My Life

I am a comical disaster trapped in the body of an adult who pretends to be a functioning member of society. I am also my own boss, completely in control of my time. Yikes.

I struggle with impulse control. There are certain experiences that I am just incapable of doing “a little bit.” I also know that once I start an enjoyable activity, it will take over.

Which means it’s practically impossible for me to only do some things “just a little bit” and then say “okay that’s enough for today.”

After all, I know my brain isn’t equipped to handle the life of abundance we’re surrounded with: endless distraction, hedonistic enjoyment, unlimited food, etc.

E.O. Wilson said it best:

“The real problem of humanity is the following: We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.”

Rather than lament my lack of willpower when it comes to addictive technology, I ​practice acceptance​ and instead make willpower unnecessary.

Thus, my life is held together with spit, duct tape, and Ulysses Pacts:

• I have an app on my phone called Opal. It automatically activates at 7AM and blocks certain apps, websites, and all social media for most of the hours of the work day. I still pick up my phone 10-20 times per day and try to open those apps, and then I’m reminded to get back to work.
• I use a program on my computer called Focus. It automatically activates at 7AM and blocks practically ANYTHING fun or distracting on my computer until the end of the work day.
• I don’t keep snacks in my house. I love snacks. And once a bag is open, it gets eaten. But when I’m sitting on the couch watching TV (I just finished Fallout and loved it), and I’m craving a snack, there’s no decision to be made. I’m certainly not going to drive to the store.
• I don’t have any games on my phone. I know that I can’t control any impulses, especially for “gatcha” free games that encourage you to buy gems to level up.
• I am locked out of each social media app after 15 minutes every day. Social Media has been designed by behavioral scientists, with billions of dollars, to be as addictive as possible. So I don’t try to “use it just a little bit.” I simply don’t let myself use it for any longer than “a little bit” because I’m literally locked out.
• I don’t play multiplayer games. I have no regulation around “okay I’m done,” so I no longer play multiplayer games. I bet if I played World of Warcraft, you would never get another newsletter from me. Thus, I exclusively play single player games with a story or narrative.
• I automatically donate to two charities every month: ProPublica investigative journalism and the Nashville Food Kitchen. Both of these decisions were made ONCE, which means I never have to remember to donate, nor am I tempted to spend the money once it hits my account.
• Whenever I go to the doctor, dermatologist, or dentist, I always schedule my next appointment while I’m there. Because I know I’ll forget to do so months later, or I’ll tell myself I don’t need to go. Future Steve will not want to get his teeth cleaned or get bloodwork done.
• My workouts are pre-scheduled in my calendar. I would much rather not work out, but I know if I don’t plan for them in my calendar, something else far more fun (but less beneficial) will take their place.

The only reason you get this newsletter every week, and the only reason I get to the gym a few times per week (in addition to ​winning the genetic and environmental lottery​), is because of these Ulysses Pacts.

Here’s how you can use them in your own life.

You-lysses Pacts in Action

Returning to Corey Doctorow:

“Ulysses pacts aren’t perfect, but they are very important. At the very least, creating a Ulysses pact starts with acknowledging that you are fallible. That you can be tempted, and rationalize your way into taking bad action, even when you know better.

Becoming an adult is a process of learning that your strength comes from seeing your weaknesses and protecting yourself and the people who trust you from them.”

Let’s see how we can add some Ulysses Pacts to your life.

To create your own Ulysses Pact: look for opportunities to make a decision TODAY in a moment of strength, to safeguard yourself against an anticipated moment of weakness TOMORROW.

Even better, look for opportunities to make a decision once, and it prevents you from needing to use willpower to repeatedly do the right thing in the future.

A few more examples:

• Decide to not keep problematic foods in the house once, and you don’t have to spend all night, every night, deciding NOT to eat those foods.
• Decide to automatically donate to a cause you love once, and you don’t have to remember to not spend that money on something else and donate each month.
• Delete and/or block social media and time-wasting games on your phone once, and suddenly the decision to read a book or go for a walk rather than mindlessly scroll through TikTok or Instagram becomes much easier.

Remember, acknowledging and creating safeguards against our weaknesses isn’t a sign of giving up or weakness.

It’s a courageous sign of acceptance.

It’s also smart.

What are the Ulysses Pacts you use in your own life? Did this article inspire you to create one for yourself?

Reach out and let me know!

-Steve

The post Ulysses Pacts: STOP believing in yourself first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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

As part of my operation “Revisit the past 15 years of Nerd Fitness,” and after writing about our ​Never 2 in a Row Rule​, I updated one of the most popular posts and ideas I’ve ever put together:

​20 Seconds of Courage​.

What started as an obscure line from an obscure Matt Damon movie, We Bought a Zoo, has since become a rallying cry for the Nerd Fitness Rebellion, our community of nerds.

Feel free to ​read the full article​, but here’s the quote from the movie, where Matt Damon is recounting to his son how he used 20 seconds of courage to meet his wife:

You know, sometimes all you need is 20 seconds of insane courage, just literally 20 seconds of embarrassing bravery, and I promise you something great will come of it.

Our lives are made up of a ton of quick actions that often take far less than 20 seconds. Starting a conversation. Walking through a door to the gym. Deciding where to sit in a restaurant.

And because we’ve made so many of these decisions, there’s a ton of inertia and history that might make us think we’re incapable of change.

However, as Alan Watts points out, “you are under no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago.”

And as my friend Tim Urban from Wait But Why shares, the paths behind us might be closed, but we always have choices moving forward:

Use 20 Seconds of Courage to Do Hard Things

Brandon Sanderson gave a great virtual talk during the pandemic about doing hard things. He encourages us to adopt the following mentality rather than just “hope things will work out!”:

“I can do hard things. Doing hard things has intrinsic value, and they will make me a better person, even if I end up failing.”

And sometimes we might need to do a hard thing that’s scary. Whether it’s joining a gym or standing up for yourself at work, or finally setting boundaries with your family…

It’s okay if you’re scared, by the way.

Doing scary things is tough, and we’re wired to trust our fears and avoid scary scenarios, which has kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years as a species.

But doing hard things is usually a prerequisite for change, and our fear often doesn’t match the reality of the event itself.

As Seneca shares in his letter to Lucilius:

“There are more things, Lucilius, likely to frighten us than there are to crush us; we suffer more often in imagination than in reality.”

Which is where 20 seconds of courage comes in!

The 20 Seconds of Courage Challenge

I think this quote from Jerzy Gregorek paints an interesting picture:

“Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.”

Change can happen in an instant, and your life’s path can change as a result of any single decision you make.

Here’s how to participate:

• Pick something you want to do but have been too scared to attempt.
• Freak the F out before you do the thing.
• Muster up 20 seconds of courage and take that one action.
• Pee your pants after (optional).

And here are some prompts to get you started:

• Saying yes to something you’d normally say no to.
• Going to ​a part of the gym​ that you’re afraid of.
• Establishing boundaries with your family.
• Having an uncomfortable conversation.
• ​Talking to a complete stranger​.
• Taking more initiative at work.
• Signing up for a new class.
• Standing up for yourself.
• Leading an army of Transformers against the Decepticons.

Try it this week, and let me know how it turns out!

-Steve

The post The 20 Seconds of Courage Challenge first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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

I was talking with a friend recently who said he had hit a bit of a plateau.

We’ve all been there – that uncomfortable place where the scale stops moving, or the strength gainz slow down.

Heck, I’ve even written a whole article about ​busting through a plateau​.

As I’ve been revisiting the last 15 years of Nerd Fitness, I stumbled across an absolute doozy of an old video of me.

It’s baby Steve, from 11 years ago, sitting on a poop-brown couch (Why did I think this was the right color couch to buy?), with helmet hair.

I laughed as I watched this video, but I’m also proud of Past Me for putting this out in the world!

The “Never Two in a Row” Rule

The “Never 2 in a Row” Rule is simple:

• Follow up any “unhealthy” meal with a healthy one.
• If you miss a workout, do it THE NEXT DAY.

In other words, who cares if you “mess up” once? Just don’t “mess up” twice in a row. Because missing two in a row quickly becomes 3 or 5 or 10 or a lost year. But missing once? Fine! Just get right back on track.

Think of it this way: if you followed up every unhealthy meal with a healthy one, then at least 50% of your meals would be healthy! That’s a pretty dang good percent.

It can also help us avoid an “all-or-nothing” mindset.

Now, I wanted to update my philosophy around plateaus and this rule, so let’s get weird.

A plateau doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

A plateau is often frustrating, because we humans love progress.

Here’s the thing: when the alternative is “moving in the wrong direction,” a plateau IS progress, especially if you’re used to losing weight and then backsliding.

If we’re not losing weight, and we’re not gaining weight, then we’re eating roughly the same number of calories that our body burns daily. That’s it. This is neither good nor bad, it’s just math.

In other words, a plateau can be a really really good thing. It can mean you’ve chosen to just tread water for a bit, or you’re taking a strategic pause.

If you’re not getting stronger in the gym, there’s still a benefit to keeping your muscles warmed-up with a basic workout, even if it’s not an improvement over the past workout.

When life is a dumpster fire, a “plateau” can be a HUGE win.

Next, let’s talk about “Never two in a row,” and how I would update my language these days.

Healthy vs Unhealthy

In my video above, I say, “follow up an unhealthy meal with a healthy one.”

15 years later, I don’t love using the word “healthy” vs. “unhealthy,” because it assigns some morality to the foods we eat.

(I realize most of us know roughly what we mean by healthy, so I don’t eliminate the word completely from my vocab!)

Instead, let’s talk about a reframing of “healthy vs unhealthy”:

Sometimes, we eat fast food because our kids want to eat it (or because we’re traveling and it’s the only option at the airport). We don’t have to always optimize for weight loss or calories. Sometimes we optimize for convenience, or family, or sustenance.

This is neither morally good nor bad. It’s simply a meal we chose to eat.

If we have a goal that requires a calorie deficit, great! We can follow up a high-calorie meal with a lower-calorie meal. No morality or shame or judgment required. Just math and progress.

Because a “calorie” is just a unit of measure, not an indication of its quality!

This is how a professor famously lost weight on ​the “Twinkie Diet,”​ specifically to show the math of weight loss does come down to calories:

On his “convenience store diet,” he shed 27 pounds in two months.

For a class project, Haub limited himself to less than 1,800 calories a day. A man of Haub’s pre-dieting size usually consumes about 2,600 calories daily. So he followed a basic principle of weight loss: He consumed significantly fewer calories than he burned.

His body mass index went from 28.8, considered overweight, to 24.9, which is normal.

Two-thirds of his total intake came from junk food. He also took a multivitamin pill and drank a protein shake daily. And he ate vegetables, typically a can of green beans or three to four celery stalks.

As I talked about in my ​5 Beliefs I’ve Changed My Mind On​, I’ve cut way back on my fear mongering around certain foods – we beat ourselves up enough, and our weight is unbelievably complicated and nuanced.

So where does that leave us?

We are adults and we can make our own choices. We can choose to follow up a high calorie meal with a more nutrient dense, low calorie meal. We can mix and match.

It’s NOT all or nothing, and it’s not immoral to eat chips or ice cream. It is what it is!

In our ​“Guide to healthy eating,”​ we point out which foods are nutritionally-light and higher-calorie (processed foods, snack foods, candy, soda, etc.), and which foods are nutritionally-dense and lower-calorie (fruits and vegetables, lean protein, whole grains).

You can decide what “healthy” means to you, and what “unhealthy” means. You can also decide to switch your language to “higher calorie vs. lower calorie.”

And then apply the Never 2 in a Row Rule!

Missing a workout

Sometimes, we miss a workout.

This also doesn’t need to be a source of shame or guilt.

Nor does it mean “I suck and I’ll try again next year.”

It’s just a thing that happened.

Instead of saying “I didn’t have time to work out today,” which brings up feelings of guilt and shame and sadness….

Instead we can say, “Working out today was not a priority.” Strategic! Sure, we might need to do some compassionate inner work on why it wasn’t a priority, but sometimes it’s just because life was an absolute dumpster fire that day!

This past week, my workout schedule was thrown off, and I didn’t work out on my regular workout days.

It wasn’t because I didn’t have time to work out…but because working out wasn’t a priority for me…I had other things going on that were more important to me.

At the same time, I knew my mental health would benefit from me doing something, so I did my two half-assed workouts, went for a quick walk on the other days, and that’s it.

Never Two in a Row

To recap: If you miss a workout, who cares! Just do whatever you can to not miss two workouts in a row. This can help us from losing too much momentum.

If you eat a high-calorie meal, great! I hope it was delicious. Follow it up with a lower-calorie meal, hopefully one that’s satiating and nutritionally full.

All-or-nothing doesn’t work. And we don’t have to be perfect.

And if we overeat at one meal, adjust the next one.

If we miss a workout, get the next one.

Just, don’t miss two in a row, and you’ll be surprised how much progress you can make!

Even if that progress is a plateau…it’s better than going in the wrong direction.

-Steve

The post The “Never Two in a Row” Rule first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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

I bet you feel burned out right now.

Overworked, underpaid, anxious, stretched too thin.

All of those fun things!

I also bet you’re frustrated you can’t lose weight the way you’d hoped, you wish you had more energy to get your job done, and you wish you could be a better partner and parent.

You’re struggling, and you wish you could just get your sh** together.

Have no fear, self-care is here!

The solution to all of our problems can be found with your credit card: a better skin-care routine. A more optimized schedule. A new journal. $75 sushi delivery. A 2-hour massage. A vacation to a tropical island.

Treat. Yo. Self!

There’s just one question: does self-care actually help us the way we think?

Anne Helen Peterson would argue hell no!!

What is Faux Self-Care?

In her book, ​Can’t Even​, Peterson puts it perfectly:

“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.”

We’re all desperate for self-care, but we’re looking in all the wrong places. This is the junk-food version of self-care, and it’s leaving us empty and disappointed.

Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, psychiatrist and author of ​Real Self-Care​, presents a pretty damn compelling critique of consumptive self care too. As she explains, “faux self-care” usually comes in one of three alluring flavors:

• Escape: We just need a massage! Or a 10-day meditation retreat! Or a yoga class! Or a vacation to Bali! Or bottomless mimosas at brunch! Insidiously, “according to [wellness dogma], when you don’t find time for these ‘solutions,’ it’s your fault for not keeping up with one more task on your to-do list.”
• Achievement: We just need to dedicate ourselves even MORE to work! Or to work harder in the gym! Or make sure our kids are more successful! And then our problems will be solved. “Life can feel like a series of races, each of which must be won in order to prove our worth. In this context, faux self-care becomes another activity to excel at, an endeavor to be conquered just like everything else in life.”
• Optimization: We just need to be more optimized! More efficient! THEN we’ll solve burnout. This solution “promises us that someday we can reach a pinnacle of productivity and efficiency such that our life will finally feel like it’s fully under our control. But the problem is that we never actually arrive, because we haven’t been taught the critical step of identifying the principles.”

As Dr Lakshmin correctly points out, none of these self-care tactics or purchases are inherently bad. Heck most of these things are fun, might make us more successful or financially secure, and many can provide joy.

The problem is that none of them address the root cause of our burnout:

We think a Yoga retreat will provide us with the hard reset we need, but it doesn’t address the fact that we are overworked at work and do 95% of the caregiver load for our entire household.

We convince ourselves that if we were just a BIT more optimized or efficient or successful, then all of our problems would be solved.

We chase these strategies, and either feel guilty when we can’t execute them, or get depressed when they don’t magically fix everything.

So, what are we supposed to do instead?

If we’re actually going to take care of ourselves, it’s not going to come from an Instagram ad for scented candles or bath bombs.

The system is broken on the outside, which means the only meaningful work we can do is on the inside.

Let’s Talk about Well-Being

Why are we trying all these different self-care strategies? Simply put, we hope they will make us feel less bad, and more good.

Dr. Lakshmin explains two different approaches to well being:

1. Hedonic well-being focuses on the feeling states of happiness and pleasure (think of the 3 fake self-care coping mechanisms above).
2. Eudaimonic well-being emphasizes personal growth, acceptance of your authentic self, and connection to meaning.

Although there’s a time and place for Hedonic well-being (purely focusing on pleasure), long-term wellness is going to require way more of the second one.

I realize “Eudaimonic well-being” sounds a bit woo-woo, but it really just means “being honest about your needs, accepting your current life situation, and working within those boundaries without guilt.”

I have one more important term to throw at you: “Dialectical thinking,” which just means holding two conflicting thoughts in our head at the same time.

Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, said it best:

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.

Here’s how this works for us:

“The system is broken, the deck is stacked against me, my life is a mess” AND “working on myself is a worthy endeavor and I’m capable of making progress.”

So let’s get to work on these things with real self-care.

4 Principles of Real Self-care

In order to start making changes that stick, we need the right kind of self-care.

If faux-self care is prescribed from the outside (buying stuff), real self-care comes from within (doing work on ourselves).

If faux self-care is a noun describing an activity or product, real self-care is a verb describing our internal decision making process.

(This is just like changing our definition of ​hope from a noun to a verb​.”)

Dr. Lakshmin points out 4 rules for real self-care:

1. Learn to set boundaries with others (and yourself). “This often means balancing the needs of people close to you, like your partner’s preference or your children’s needs, with your own desires and needs. In this process, you must learn to stop being controlled by feelings of guilt, which are inevitable but can be managed.” This means developing the ability to say no (tough for us people pleasers). In other words, guilt shouldn’t be your compass for decision-making.
2. Turn up your Inner-Friend. Have a conversation with yourself the way you’d talk to a best friend who is struggling. Self-compassion for the win! “Practicing real self-care means looking honestly and unflinchingly at what you need (and what you want) and giving yourself permission to have it.” This means toning down the inner-critic and turning up the inner-friend. “This is hard, life is messy right now, and it’s okay to have needs.” This includes caregivers and moms!
3. Bring in what matters most to you. “Real self-care brings you closer to the most authentic version of yourself. It’s a process of getting to know yourself—your real self—including your core values, beliefs, and desires.” This could be through therapy, journaling, and conversations with friends. It requires uncomfortable work, and taking the time to process what’s actually happening in our lives. Remember, we’re already trapped in ​Pandora’s box with the monsters​ – cramming down our feelings doesn’t work.
4. Do what you can to enact change for others! Real self-care is about making yourself bigger and standing up for your needs. When you start to take care of yourself, it’s possible this can give support or courage to others too. If you have the capacity, this can include helping other people who are hurting, speaking up for yourself at work or in your relationships, and making decisions that align with your personal values.

I’ll conclude with the quote from Real Self-Care that jumped out at me:

“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.”

As a life-long conflict-avoidant people pleaser, this is something I certainly struggle with:

What can we do today?

“Okay Steve, where does this leave me? I’m still burned out and frustrated! HALP!”

I got you, my dear rebel friend. Along with having some grace for yourself and remembering that this stuff is hard, here are a few practical steps you can start to take today:

Step one: Start to dive into your personal values and needs as a human. Have an honest conversation with yourself whether or not you’ve actively enforced boundaries in your life that respect those values or needs. ​Acceptance of reality​ is required.

Step two: Give yourself compassion when you realize you haven’t put boundaries in place or stood up for your values or needs in the past. If you’ve never given yourself permission to include your own personal feelings, that’s okay. This stuff is hard!

Step three: Begin the process of putting boundaries in place in your life. This might include more conversations with friends, your partner, and/or therapy. It’s time to be your biggest advocate and be honest with what you’re willing to tolerate, what you need, and learn to say “no.” Start small. Remember guilt shouldn’t be a compass for the decisions you make!

So, treat yo’ self!… to self-compassion for having uncomfortable conversations, establishing boundaries, and speaking up for yourself!

And then you can go get a massage or buy expensive sushi.

-Steve

The post The Big Problem with Self-Care first appeared on Nerd Fitness.

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

In 2009, I was an enthusiastic, optimistic, and slightly (very) naive nerd who started NerdFitness.com to help other nerds level up their lives and live a tiny bit better.

Since then, I’ve done my best to build an identity as a lifelong learner who isn’t tied to a specific ideology or philosophy. This meant I got plenty of things right, and I also managed to get plenty of things wrong.

Certain views I held in the past were factually incorrect. While others were “correct,” but turned out to be ineffective and unhelpful.

As I continue my 15th year of Nerd Fitness, I wanted to revisit 5 viewpoints or philosophies I’ve changed my mind on.

I’m hoping this might give you permission and 20 Seconds of Courage to update your personal philosophy when presented with new facts or experiences.

(Steve’s Note: if any of these give you a viscerally negative reaction, take this as a learning experience! Reflect on why! More on this in the conclusion.)

5 core fitness beliefs I no longer have:

• “We all have the same 24 hours in the day.”
• “Going low carb is crucial for weight loss.”
• “Free weights are superior to weight machines.”
• “Diet Coke is bad for you.”
• “Obesity is due to lack of discipline.”

#1: “We all have the same 24 hours in the day.”

As a naive 25-year old single dude, this was probably the most cringe-worthy philosophy I held. I loved productivity/hustle culture.

I believed everybody had the same amount of time, everybody had the same opportunities, and successful, fit, organized people were simply those who were more disciplined and managed their time better than the rest of us.

Now, as I approach forty, I realize just how naive and unhelpful this perspective was.

Yes, a 25-year old single dude, a 45-year old mom working two jobs, and a person with chronic pain caring for an elderly parent technically “have the same 24 hours in the day.”

Of course single moms working two jobs, or people who also have to be full-time caregivers, don’t have the same opportunities or time to dedicate to themselves every day as a single 25 year old dude. There’s unbelievable privilege that comes with that perspective, and it’s really unhelpful to the majority of people these days.

I failed to recognize how instrumental ​luck and privilege have been for me​:

Rather than telling people it’s their fault for not being more disciplined, a far better starting point is acknowledging and accepting the truth: people have different starting points and different life situations.

We can then do our best to find a path through this broken system, as flawed humans, to carve out a tiny bit of progress and fulfillment each day.

#2: “Going low carb is crucial for weight loss.”

In 2009, I wrote the article on ​The Paleo Diet​.

It was read by tens of millions of people. I was invited to speak at Paleo Conferences. I got to be part of the cool kid club who eschewed conventional wisdom about nutrition. I found the answer to all of modern society’s health problems.

The problem was that I was wrong.

Many years ago, I read Marion Nestle’s ​Why Calories Count​. I learned about Metabolic Chambers. I discovered properly funded, properly tracked ​studies about carbs and fat​, which revealed the following:

“Strong data indicate that energy balance is not materially changed

during isocaloric substitution of dietary fats for carbohydrates.

Results from a number of sources refute both the theory and effectiveness of the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis. Instead, risk for obesity is primarily determined by total calorie intake.”

In other words, it’s not the “​carb-insulin hypothesis​.” It’s the fact that we’re eating too many calories without realizing it.

(This is why ​intermittent fasting​ can feel like effortless weight loss for some. It works, but not because of some fancy physiological adaptation or magic fat-burning protocol. It’s because it removes some of our daily opportunities to unconsciously overeat).

My nuanced take on nutrition in 2024:

A calorie IS a calorie, just like a mile is a mile or a pound is a pound. It’s a unit of measure. At the same time, what we eat can affect how much we eat, how full we feel, how much energy we have to complete our workouts, and more.

This is why so many people have found success on so many different types of diets. Because they found a set of guidelines that helped them maintain a caloric deficit, not because there was any magic in that specific protocol.

Personally, ​I got as lean as possible​ while eating a proportionally large amount of carbs and low fat. Here’s how I did it: I was meticulous with my calorie tracking, ensuring I consumed enough protein and was in a caloric deficit.

I bring all of this up to make a point:

By all means, feel free to go low carb! Or low fat! Some people will feel differently on a low carb diet or a low fat diet. It’s unique to each person and their particular situation. If you ​eat enough protein​ and consume the right calories for your goal, ​either can work for weight loss​.

Just remember weight loss comes down to behavior change, compliance, consistency, and math.

If you’re wondering, here’s the most consistent way we’ve found to do so: Eating less processed foods that are easy to overconsume, prioritizing nutrient-dense whole foods, and balancing your total energy intake. We cover all this in our ​guide to “healthy” eating​.

#3: “Free weights are superior to weight machines.”

I’m a huge fan of free weights, and I used to say “weight machines are bad compared to free weights.” It made me feel old-school and primal, and fit into the narrative of “modern society is terrible compared to old school” (aka Paleo + strength training).

There was a big problem with this perspective:

I was acting like a fitness gatekeeper:

“You aren’t training correctly unless you do it this way.”

This is how I feel about that perspective now:

I never reflected on the idea of how demotivating it would feel to hear a specific type of exercise isn’t good enough. Ugh. My job isn’t to give you the BEST or ONLY way to work out. It’s to help you overcome any hurdle, internal or external, that’s keeping you from exercise.

Luckily, I updated this perspective years ago.

As far as I’m concerned, ​any exercise is good exercise​. In fact: an exercise is only as good as its relevance towards any specific goal. Which means, for some goals (rehab, aesthetics, and even some strength training) there are times when machines are SUPERIOR to free weights.

Specific types of exercise can help for certain physique goals, but gatekeeping around what types of exercise is best isn’t helpful, especially when my job is to inspire beginners to get started!

I personally believe everybody, no matter their shape, gender, age, size, will improve their life by strength training. And for that reason, ANY kind of strength training is okay in my book.

If you’re ​new to a gym​, use wherever you feel most comfortable with – machines or free weights. Over time, you can try all of the different options out and see what floats your boat.

Strength training of any variety teaches your muscles how they should be getting stronger, and it gets you moving and building confidence.

#4: “Diet Coke is bad for you.”

As part of my Paleo past, I would have told you that non-calorie sweetened beverages were scientific monstrosities and bad for you.

Here’s really what happens when you drink a diet soda instead of its full-calorie alternative:

You consume fewer calories. That’s about it.

As this ​study points out​:

“There were no statistically significant associations of reported diet soda and NAS consumption with fasting insulin, fasting glucose, or incident diabetes.”

As this ​researched article​ from Precision Nutrition points out:

• Does diet soda cause us to want to eat MORE sugary foods? “The conclusion of those studies: Among those who consumed the high-intensity sweetener, the desire to eat sweet foods was slightly lower.”
• Does diet soda spike insulin and promote weight gain? “Overall, human studies show these insulin spikes are so small they’re hard to detect and very short-lived. Which makes it unlikely they impact weight loss at all, given what we know now.”
• Does diet soda cause health problems? Every governmental body that has reviewed [artificial sweeteners]—they’ve done it extensively in the United States, Australia, Europe, Japan, and Canada—concludes that when used in reasonable amounts, they’re not harmful.” (studies that show adverse effects are often done on rats, and in daily quantities no human consumes.)

Your perspective on whatever governmental body might influence how you feel about diet soda, so by all means, make your personal decision on this. You’re an adult, and you can choose what to eat and drink.

But here’s some zero-calorie food for thought:

Let’s start with some light cognitive dissonance: If you’re reading this and thinking, “things from nature are good, unnatural things are BAD!” I get it. I felt similarly.

There are major industries built around these “​Naturalistic fallacies​” and “​appeals to nature​:” modern life is bad, nature is good. (Weirdly, these people who appeal to nature often have processed “natural” supplements to sell us!)

What’s the actual science say? Everything is made from chemicals. Just because something is “natural” doesn’t mean it’s automatically healthy (hellooooo, hemlock!). And just because something is modern or “created” doesn’t mean it’s automatically unhealthy.

We can be smarter than this, and evaluate things with facts instead of our feelings.

Which can include diet soda.

And I do believe this requires nuance too.

In 2023, ​aspartame was classified as a 2b carcinogen​, which means “possibly carcinogenic to humans.”

I understand why this would give you pause, and could be a reason you choose to not consume beverages with aspartame. That’s 100% your call.

I’ll explain my thoughts on this below, but we must first take a quick detour:

Did you know what’s on the Type 1 list for carcinogens?

​Alcohol​!

In fact, the ​World Health Organization​ states:

“Alcohol causes at least seven types of cancer, including the most common cancer types, such as bowel cancer and female breast cancer. Ethanol (alcohol) causes cancer through biological mechanisms as the compound breaks down in the body, which means that any beverage containing alcohol, regardless of its price and quality, poses a risk of developing cancer.”

“We cannot talk about a so-called safe level of alcohol use. It doesn’t matter how much you drink – the risk to the drinker’s health starts from the first drop of any alcoholic beverage. The only thing that we can say for sure is that the more you drink, the more harmful it is – or, in other words, the less you drink, the safer it is.”

While aspartame is “possibly carcinogenic,” alcohol is definitely carcinogenic to humans.

Despite this, many of us still choose to consume alcohol (hopefully in moderation). Cured meats, including bacon (often described by wellness gurus as “nature’s candy”) is also on that Type 1 carcinogen list.

Remember this when you see a health influencer telling you diet coke is poison, followed by their “natural” margarita cocktail recipe. They are using the very same “appeal to nature” fallacy while cherry picking the things that fit their narrative.

So, where does this leave us?

Every day, we all have to choose what’s important to us, what we choose to optimize, what we consume and in what quantity, what indulgences we allow, and more.

And we all have different goals, and are in different life stages.

If you personally decide to NOT consume diet soda, or you’re allergic to a specific non-calorie sweetener, great!

If you decide that drinking Diet Coke provides you with some daily joy, who am I to take that from you?

My nuanced perspective on diet soda, as of April 2024:

Life is a series of trade-offs.

Is drinking water better than diet soda? Possibly!

Is diet soda better than full calorie soda, especially for weight loss (which ​reduces risk for all-cause mortality​)? Most likely!

For many people who struggle with obesity-related health conditions, reducing calories is an important step for their health, and doing so by switching to diet soda might be the most successful strategy for them right now.

Should people consume diet beverages in moderation, like pretty much everything else in life? Probably!

Is it possible new studies and information will change my perspective on this? Of course.

#5: “Obesity is due to lack of discipline.”

Obesity is a complex topic that I’ve changed my perspective on pretty dramatically.

Let me start with a quick caveat:

Yes, data shows that maintaining a healthy weight significantly decreases risks for a plethora of diseases and health conditions.

At the same time, many people have no plans or desire to lose weight. Great! Everybody deserves the opportunity to live the life they want, with the goals they choose, free of public shame or guilt as a result. So, people who shame others or make fun of them for their size or any physical attribute can go pound sand.

With that said…

I want to focus on people who are trying to lose weight for any reason (aesthetic, health, or performance)…and are struggling to find success.

I used to believe they simply needed more discipline and structure to eat fewer calories. (See #1 for how naive this perspective is)

15 years later, I now know there’s something far greater at work here, at a deeply physiological and psychological level.

We humans have prehistoric bodies and brains, equipped to survive in times of scarcity, and yet most of us live in an scenario of overabundance. We’re all surrounded by readily available hyperpalatable foods, we have social relationships structured around food, we have biological and historical relationships with food, and we have individual genetic differences in hunger.

Which brings me to one of the fascinating things about recent weight loss medicine research (GLP-1 Agonists like Wegovy or Ozempic). Although more studies are coming out regularly, and our understanding of these drugs continues to evolve, one of the primary factors they seem to alter is “food noise.” For many, having thoughts of food all day every day is a fact of life.

And these drugs seem to allow many to finally quiet that noise and allow them to eat fewer calories without the typical physiological response of “we need to eat more!”

I reserve the right to change my opinion as more research and studies come out, but I believe my philosophy is consistent across all areas including weight loss medication or surgery: Here at Nerd Fitness, I want to help people live better and find whatever joy they can with their limited time in the Arcade of Life.

And many people are trying to lose weight and get healthier. The path they get there will be varied:

• For some, reducing caloric intake and strength training is enough to change habits and get healthy.
• For others, they might use weight loss medication or surgery as a tool to alter their behavior.

Does weight loss medication and surgery have side-effects? Yep! Are those side-effects going to be the same for everybody? Nope. Are those side-effects worth the tradeoff for the consistent reduction of body weight? For many (but not all), the answer to that is a resounding YES.

Each human is different. Each path to health and happiness thus should be different too.

You might be asking, “Why don’t people just get more disciplined and eat less instead of ‘cheating’ with weight loss drugs?”

That question isn’t helpful (and is a symptom of #1 above!) The better question is:

“Which tools are available to help each individual person get healthier?”

For many, it’s education around calories and making slightly healthier choices. For some, it’s weight loss medicine and therapy. For others, it’s all of the above.

We’re most interested in the end result (a healthy, happy life), and we’re open to the infinite paths to get there.

Final Thought: I reserve the right to be wrong.

If any of the above gave you a visceral response, reflecting on why is a great place to start.

It’s important to interrogate our own beliefs regularly, and ask if we’re falling into dogmatic cheerleading for “our team,” or if we’re doing the hard work to understand why we think what we think.

Nuance is in short supply on the internet, and we’re bombarded regularly with people who love to provide black-or-white explanations to all the world’s problems. Be wary of people who say they have it ALL figured out, and know exactly who the villains (or scapegoats) and heroes (or superfoods) are.

We can do better, and this is my attempt at trying to do better too.

After all, life is a series of tradeoffs.

We make choices every day, and we’re not always optimizing for the same thing. What works for one person might not work for the next person, and that doesn’t mean one person’s choices are morally superior, because we’re all playing a different game with a different scorecard.

Alan Watts once said:

“You are under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.”

I’m personally glad I’m not under any obligation to be who I was 15 years ago, because I’ve learned a lot and lived a lot of life between then and now.

I reserve the right to update my nuanced perspective on all the above, and I encourage you to do the same.

Build your identity around “I want to learn more,” and update your personal philosophy as you live more life.

I’ll be over here, picking up heavy weights, enjoying carbs, going for walks, drinking a diet Ginger Ale, occasionally enjoying a bourbon on the rocks, and not judging others for how they choose to live.

-Steve

The post 5 fitness beliefs I’ve changed my mind on: first appeared on Nerd Fitness.