Finding What Works for You | Fitness | Fitness as Nutrient Partitioning | Nutrition | Nutrition Science | The Value of Good Nutrition
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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!
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.
Don't be lazy, have higher standards
I bet you are thinking I mean you should go out workout more and workout harder. Memories of all those times you said you would wake up and work out and you didn’t will run through your head. You might remember those workouts during which you were tired and you did not push as hard as you feel you should have, But nope, that is not what I mean. That is just your guilt. Your consistency on a given program is often not a laziness problem as much as an organizational problem. How hard you can push on a given workout is very seldom a willpower problem, as it is a self-regulation problem. I am not here to guilt trip you. Let me tell you what I DO mean.
What the F#@%$ck is Recovery?
So is napping recovery? Is stretching better than rolling? What do you mean I should not be sore. No pain, no gain, dude! Of course I want to sleep better and longer, but then at what time do I work out if I am effing sleeping 8 hours? Should I ice or not? Should I run on my recovery days or should I do yoga? Why is Francine talking to me about floating chambers, and why is Henrick massaging himself weirdly with that percussion drill.
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Recovery is a weird topic, full of crazy things, and a lot of sci-fi marketing. In other words, what the fuck is recovery?
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Watch the video to know more about it!The Thrive Zone
If you want to get better at your sport/discipline/exercise-routine, approach your training as a time to learn not a time to perform. This mindset shift is one of the most powerful tools in your arsenal. The moment you go to learn and not to perform is the moment you free yourself from chasing immediate results...
