Finding What Works for You | Fitness | Fitness as Nutrient Partitioning | Nutrition | Nutrition Science | Smart Practices | The Value of Good Nutrition
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- Close the Gap | Finding What Works for You | Nutrition | Nutrition Science | The Value of Good Nutrition
The 15-minute lunch break
Often the most laborious work is the most neglected and underestimated. When it comes to nutrition, my experience tells me that most of us focus on the things that we have little or none control over. We fool ourselves thinking we can eat a given number of grams of carbohydrates, or the total number of calories, or a specific window of time. Yet, the things that are entirely under our control, like how we eat and how much attention we pay to the actual act of eating, we neglect. The video this week presents a simple idea, if you want to call it a hack so that it sounds sexier, go ahead. It is an excellent complement to the blog post from two weeks ago. It also contains all the right numbers and science behind it.
You are born to be good at shit
The focus of the whole month of January will be "The Basics." We get so caught up in the fancy stuff. We are always looking for sophisticated solutions for simple problems. Yet, the basics are where it's at. Today's video is about how we love being good at shit and how to do that. You know, basic stuff. Watch it and let me know how it goes!
Exercise is a stressor not a stress relief
Exercise has a purpose in your life. It can give you so much. It can provide your daily moment of zen. And yet, it is still a stressor. Stress is not bad. It is just our body's response to stimuli. This realization can guide your exercise routine for the better.
Food is Dead
Let me start by saying something controversial: there is no such thing as a “healthy meal,” not really. I guess you could eat a very healthy live animal and that would be a healthy meal. But I don’t see that happening often. Food is not “healthy.” Food is more or less nutritious, food is more or less calorie-dense, and food is more or less tasty. But let’s be real: most of the food we eat is dead or dying. In the best case, the food you eat was alive moments ago, (oysters anyone?) however in most cases your food has passed through several industrial processes that stripped its original glorious biology -think Pop Tarts. This might seem like an annoying linguistic distinction that only a nerd cares about. And it most definitely is, but hey! hold on, there is a useful point to be made: the thing that is healthy or unhealthy is you, not your food. Your health is your responsibility, and yours alone. A snickers bar after lunch is not going to make you unhealthy. But a daily Snickers bar after lunch might. A Snickers bar on Monday and then a Coke on Tuesday, plus those delicious donuts Janice from accounting brought to the meeting on Wednesday (because she does not give a fuck), that bag of chips that somehow made its way down your gullet on Thursday afternoon while you were rushing to meet that deadline, and finally that half of a pizza Friday night, plus the tortilla chips and pork belly tacos you ate after you got drunk on Saturday--all this combined WILL make you unhealthy. Repeated actions are what makes you unhealthy; it is your habitual behaviors that improve or harm your health. But ice cream is not “unhealthy” or “healthy.” As matter of fact, that Saturday ice cream you always have with your kids might be the best habit you have. If that Saturday ice cream is what allows you to eat more nutritious and balanced meals consistently the rest of the week, if it allows you to avoid all that junk that Janice keeps bringing to Wednesday’s meetings and the Friday pizza and beer binge, and if it allows you to spend some quality time with your kids, that Saturday ice cream (despite being full of sugar) is totally making you better and healthier in the long term. Enjoy!
Eating in the car
My job as a fitness coach is to help people create the habits necessary to achieve their goals. Most of the time those habits go very much against traditional cultural practices, sometimes they go against my trainee’s very identity. This means there can be a great deal of resistance involved in changing habits. When I ask people to eat veggies for breakfast they usually look at me as if I were completely insane.
EXPERIENCE ≠ CAPACITY ≠ MATURITY
We are always trying to apply the things we learn in training to life outside the gym. In this video we go in the opposite direction. It is all about becoming a mature athlete.
