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Fitness and Money
Last week I had a fantastic opportunity. I was invited to talk to a bunch of 8th graders about fitness and lifestyle habits. It is COVID times so I did not get to speak to them directly as I would have preferred, but I still loved every minute of it. I always thought they taught us a lot of good stuff in school, but very little of the most basic: money, fitness, nutrition, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal relationships. The fact I had the chance to change that for a bunch of kids, even if in a tiny way, felt great!
Two great things came out of that talk. One of them is the post today. I usually feel ambivalent about my writings. I feel confident about this one. So much in fact that if you don't like it a lot and get something out of it, I will buy you a six-pack of your drink of choice. I am that bold!
The second thing is I got a new nickname. The 8th graders call me Dr. Muscles. I worked hard for my Ph.D. I worked hard for my muscles. I liked Obi Juan, but this one is not magic. I e
- Close the Gap | Fitness as Nutrient Partitioning | Mindset | Nutrition | Nutrition as Self-knowledge
F! Weight
eal change is slow and hard. It takes effort, and although it’s incredibly rewarding and edifying, it can be painful and frustrating at times. It can also feel very uncertain: “am I doing the right thing here? Am I headed in the right d
Just Chill, Commit to Mastery
No matter what skill you choose, you can visualize mastery. You can see it. Now imagine what it would take to get there... I bet that in your visualization that mastery does not happen in 6 months. In my mind’s eye I can see myself creating awful noises for quite some time before actually playing a tune. I imagine that if your thing was to master German, in your vision you can see yourself stumbling through words before you can actually write amazingly good emails. By the same token, I bet that if you imagine your teachers for that journey, you don’t see slicky guys selling you fast results or trying to trap you with hard sells and gimicky marketing. In that vision, mastery is a continuous, long, and difficult process of learning. It’s slow and tedious. This is why it’s so rare. (In other words, mastery is what Hollywood movies show in a super fast montage with the subscript “five years later”.)
- Finding What Works for You | Fitness | Fitness as Nutrient Partitioning | Nutrition | Nutrition Science | Smart Practices | The Value of Good Nutrition
Be the horse
If you had worked with me on nutrition or fitness, you most likely have heard me comparing you to a horse or a dog. Some people don't like it. Some look at me with a wtf face. It is simple though. I ask my athlete: "if you wanted to make this hypothetical horse into the fittest horse you could, how would that look? How does that compare to what you are doing to yourself?" It is one of my secret weapons.
WHY IS THE ASSAULT BIKE SO HARD? – PART III
The short answer is this: because it is designed to do so. In this video we finish the series understanding the mechanics and physiology of the air bike.
My Two Main Principles in Fitness and Nutrition
The Strong Story Hypothesis states that the mechanism that enables us to tell, understand, and recombine stories is what separates us, humans, from primates. In other words that storytelling is what makes our thinking brainz special. The exciting thing is that Patrick Winston, its author, was an engineer and a professor at MIT, not an anthropologist or a social sciences guy. For many years he was the head of the Artificial Intelligence Lab. So when he says that storytelling gives us an evolutionary advantage over primates, that is meaningful. He gets to this conclusion by asking the right question. You see, the AI field was always trying to answer the question: can computers reason like humans? Winston made another question, more elegant, more interesting. What makes humans different than primates? Why are we capable of more?
Touché!
Nothing like a good question asked at the right time. In the video below, I present to you the principles that guide my practice in fitness and nutrition. I show them in the form of questions too. I believe this is the most effective way to approach such a complex problem. When you feel sluggish and unproductive today, instead of heading to Facebook, get this video a watch and let me know what you think.
