Alexandersmap

    Category: Health

    • Everything, Left Alone

      We want the stillness and confidence
      of age, the space between self and all the objects of the world
      honoured and defined, the possibility that everything
      left alone can ripen of its own accord
      – David Whyte, Living Together

      I’d like to think that I’ve arrived at this stage in my life where I can just let things be. To allow nature to take its course, for things to sort themselves out, to let everything left alone ripen of its own accord. I should think that’s too bold a statement, the arrogance of youth still pulsing in my middle-aged body.

      We see it mostly with our children. In wanting to control the pace of their lives, to see them land well when they fly – to see the flight itself aim straight and true towards a logical place a few notches above where we ourselves have flown. For we’re in such a hurry to get them there, wanting the very best for them. You can’t rush the ripening, you tell yourself, and keep your unsolicited advice deep inside, waiting for an invitation to weigh in.

      You learn to wait in the wings, ready to lend a hand, just playing the parent or friend card. Maybe it’s the gardener in me, knowing you’ve got to let things grow, more often than not finding yourself in wonder at the progression as things surpass your expectations. Sure, you curse the occasional rabbit or groundhog that ruins your dreams of a perfect season, but on the whole things work themselves out in the end (letting things be doesn’t mean you don’t have to fight for what you believe in: install a fence when you need to).

      I’m not in any hurry to reach old age, but I know (if I’m lucky) that it’s not all that far away. A few decades, maybe, to make what I might of this life project. This work in progress. Imperfect. Incomplete. But in progress just the same. Seeing this in yourself lends a measure of understanding and empathy for the journey everyone else is on. For the possibility that they’re grinding away at.

      Everything left alone can ripen on its own accord. This is the way of the world. Just remember that I’ll be here if you need me.

    • Pulling Dietary Levers

      “I guess I just encourage people to be much more attuned to all of the tools, right? So caloric restriction, dietary restriction, time restriction, right? You’ve probably heard me go on and on about my framework, the three levers; always pull one, sometimes pull two, occasionally pull three, never pull none.

      So time restriction… restricting when you eat, but otherwise not restricting how much or what. Dietary restriction is restricting some of the content in what you eat. So not eating carbs, not eating wheat, not eating meat… not eating sugar. Those are all forms of dietary restriction. And then caloric restriction is restricting the amount.

      And so if you are never pulling one of those levers, which means you are eating anything you want, any time, how much, whatever, that’s called the Standard American Diet (SAD)…. We’ve been running a very good natural experiment on that for the last fifty years and the data are in. So it turns out that less than… 10% of the population are genetically robust enough to tolerate the SAD… But for the rest of us the 90% of us schmucks… the SAD is lethal. And so you’ve got to come up with a way to escape the gravitational pull of the SAD.” – Dr. Peter Attia, on The Tim Ferriss Show

      We all know this at a certain level, don’t we? We’ve all seen what the standard American diet does to those who eat it. But escaping the gravitational pull of it is the trick. What I love about this statement by Attia is how he lays it all out there, simplifying it to three basic levers. Always pull at least one, sometimes two or all three. And never none.

      Chart your food consumption over the last week and ask yourself, how many days did I pull none of the levers? For most of us, it’s most days. Notice there’s nothing in here about exercise either. We tend to think that exercising cancels out the crap we eat. That might help burn off the calories, but doesn’t account for whatever that crap is doing to your body as it circulates through your system.

      When it comes to things like diet I like simplicity. Doing a no carb diet is a pain in the ass when you travel a lot, so maybe you don’t pull that particular lever and opt for intermittent fasting or limiting the number of calories you consume that day is the better way. Pull one to three levers in a day and see how it transforms your body over time. With discipline and work we might just reach escape velocity. Pull a couple of levers and get in at least an hour of moving to drop the SAD from your days. I’m happy just thinking about that.

    • Living Ratios

      “The secret to living well and longer is: eat half, walk double, laugh triple and love without measure.” -Tibetan Proverb

      “We’ve become conditioned to breathe too much, just as we’ve been conditioned to eat too much. With some effort and training, however, breathing less can become an unconscious habit.” – James Nestor, Breath

      My three taco dinner informed. Overindulgence in meals, especially dinner, leaves us sluggish. I literally felt like a slug lying in bed trying to get to sleep with a full stomach. Who needs that? My reaction was to eat less the next day. I skipped two meals, breakfast and lunch, and ate moderately at dinner the next night.

      Like many people, I’ve wrestled with consistently applying the commonly accepted ratios for a better life: Spend less, save more. Eat less, exercise more. Awake 16 hours, asleep for 8. The logic is easy to grasp for each principle, if hard to execute without discipline. Still, we all agree that these are ratios to aspire to. But breathe less? It seems counterintuitive. Until you consider resting heart rate:

      “Mammals with the lowest resting heart rates live the longest. And it’s no coincidence that these are consistently the same mammals that breathe the slowest. The only way to retain a slow resting heart rate is with slow breaths.” – James Nestor, Breath

      We all have the opportunity to fully embrace change in our lives. To (cue the buzzword) pivot towards something more sustainable. Training the mind and body to accept the natural order of things. And with this in mind I’m working on my ratios. Portion control, if you will, for the core life functions of eating, exercise, rest, breathing, laughter, learning and interactions with others.

      Control is an important modifier here. Not jumping into reckless exercise that creates injury, nor eliminating things from your life that are essential. Living well is not an all or nothing affair, it’s structuring your life around foundational behaviors. We won’t live forever, but we can live better, healthier and more (cue the next buzzword) vibrant lives, and hopefully for a bit longer than the norm.

      I know preaching about exercise and fitness principles and dropping a couple of buzzwords into a blog post don’t create meaningful change. Consistent action applied over time creates meaningful change. But all change begins somewhere. Sometimes it’s triggered by something as simple as a Tibetan quote and one too many tacos.

    • Breaking from the Routine

      “If you wanna fly you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” – Toni Morrison

      It’s simple, really. You decide what to be and go be it. But then the excuses begin. The commitments. The stuff to do. The comfortable routines that drag you back to reality (the reality you choose) and keep you right where you were yesterday and where you’ll be tomorrow.

      Habits are a path to fitness, wealth, knowledge and power. But habits are also a path to sloth, financial stress, mindless binge watching and low agency. The choice, friends, is ours.

      Do you really want to fly? Then break away from the things that hold you down (Morrison put it more succinctly). That might be stuff, mortgages, and relationships, or it might simply be habits. More likely it’s a combination of both.

      There are very legitimate reasons for not traveling right now. But no reason not to explore. To get up early and ride or walk to places nearby that you’ve never seen before. Burning calories and firing up the imagination.

      The pandemic either jolted you free of the routines that held you back or boxed you more tightly in. The fitness world exploded last year even as it imploded. You couldn’t get a bike or kayak or pair of snowshoes to save your life. But you could walk out the door and keep walking until you reached your goal. You don’t need stuff to fly. You need courage to break away.

      I picked up one of the barbell plates stacked neatly on the weight rack and walked around with it for a while. It was exactly the weight that I wanted to lose. Exactly what I was already carrying around with me with the excuses for not losing it. It was a wake-up call. A reminder of what I’ve drifted away from lately. Of what I’d drifted to.

      If you want to fly, you can’t be weighed down with shit. This applies equally well to anything that matters: reaching peak fitness, accumulating knowledge, reaching peak earning power, and efficiently exploring the world.

      I put that weight plate back on the rack and then walked around without it, looking at the accumulation of stuff in the house, thinking about the accumulation of obligations… and recognized that the routine was quietly killing me. Something had to change. Someone has to change. And I took the first small step.

    • The Cushy Life

      My job used to require mobility – go out and meet people in unique places, drive a lot but also walk a lot. Like many of you, for the last year I’ve sat in a chair working in my home office. After several months of Zoom and Teams meetings my tailbone started to hurt from sitting too much, so I made a point of standing more (with a sit/stand desk). But then I found that the ankle I’d injured hiking last summer would start to ache more. Alas, it seems I’d reached the gimpy stage of life.

      Fortunately there’s a cottage industry for such things. Ergonomic products designed to allow humans to do things their bodies were not designed to do, such as sit in front of a computer screen all bloody day. And so I became one of the millions of consumers of ergonomic cushions.

      First up was the ankle, with a visit to an orthopedic doctor who promptly diagnosed me with flat feet and a sprained ankle. I’d known about one of those (the easy stuff even I can figure out), but well into adulthood the other was a revelation. New orthotics were prescribed, and not the kind you buy in the display racks at your favorite pharmacy. No, these were custom fit, wait two weeks to get ’em orthotics. And months later the ankle is like new again, the arches never ache and I’m ready to walk the Appalachian Trail.

      The business of that tailbone was an easy fix too. A gel pad with a notch on the back end eliminated the pressure point that my fancy chair created. Combined with being able to stand for long periods without the ankle screaming at me and suddenly the whole thing is in the rearview mirror (no pun intended).

      It occurred to me that the relative softness of life today that created these cushions for our feet and bottom is to blame for the entire thing. We aren’t moving as much, we eat more than we should and the parts of our bodies that aren’t designed for it are breaking down more. Sure, I had flat feet before, but I was fit enough that it was never an issue. But stick me in a chair and look what happens.

      Don’t get me wrong, I love the orthotics and the seat pad. But I miss the days when I never would have thought to use them. My life became cushy. And that softness just doesn’t feel right. Softness isn’t sustainable. Hard bodies last longer.

      Fortunately, there’s an fix for that too.

    • The Sleeping Compass

      You go through life thinking you’ve got things pretty well figured out (while knowing deep down that nobody does), and suddenly you trip over something you never thought of before. That’s the beauty of travel and expanded reading – you discover things that challenge the way you think. When you consume the same information every day that shell you crawl into gets pretty thick. ’tis better to get out and swim in new currents to see where it takes you.

      Many people know of Feng Shui and Vastu Shastra and this business of designing your dwelling to optimize living. Honestly, this isn’t an area where I’ve applied significant mental capacity. But lately I’ve read a bit more about Vastu Shastra and the direction you sleep in. Generally I spend about as much time figuring out which direction to sleep in as it takes to see where the headboard is. Perhaps I should have thought about it a little more.

      There are sleep compass headings developed over billions of lifetimes. The ideal sleep position for restful, restorative sleep is south. Those seeking knowledge should point east. If you’re seeking success, point west. And north? That seems to be reserved for the walking dead. Like sticking your head in a freezer.

      It seems I’ve been sleeping with my head pointing towards the west for the last 22 years. This is much better than my previous home, where I slept with my head pointing north. I’m sure glad we got out of there! Would my life have turned out differently had I simply stuck the headboard on the south-facing wall? Has facing west made that much of a difference in my success? What might have been?

      The thing is, I’m not sure I’m going to start moving the furniture around in the bedroom, or bringing a compass with me when I start staying in hotels again, but I see the merit of knowing where you are and how you’re positioned. I do believe the next overnight hiking trip might involve a quick consultation with the compass before setting up the tent and sleeping pad. After a long day of hiking a restful, restorative sleep would be most welcome.

      Living a fully optimized life begins with evaluating the best practices of our billions of fellow humans and seeing what works for you. That last bit, seeing what works for you, requires an open mind and the willingness to try something new. Maybe pointing your sleepy head to the south is worth a try.

    • Delightfully Awkward

      We all remember that awkward phase of wearing a mask in public for the first time last year, as the pandemic was forcing our hand and people slowly woke up to the reality of the danger of COVID-19. The first time I walked into a box store before they required masks on everyone I heard someone talking on their phone, irritated, saying “Everyone is wearing a mask” as he looked squarely at me. As you might have guessed, he wasn’t. Awkward.

      Walking into stores and meeting people I knew before the pandemic for the first time when we were all masked was also a bit awkward. But then it became commonplace. You just wore the damned mask. Not for your own safety but for your regard for others. Those outliers who didn’t wear them were the odd ducks, not us.

      Fast forward to now, and where do we stand? Pockets of this world are in a COVID crisis, other pockets are vaccinated and cases are declining. And now the CDC says you can go out without a mask on if you’re vaccinated. So what’s a vaccinated mask-wearer to do? I haven’t had a cold in over a year. Do I embrace the winds of chance and unmask?

      I suppose I will, slowly at first, but more and more. But the mask thing got weird again, just as we were hitting our masked stride. Awkward.

      I walked into a butcher shop to buy some overpriced meat. I mean 3x what it was a year ago overpriced, and half the people in there were masked and half were unmasked. I’m fully vaccinated and technically don’t have to wear it anymore if I don’t want to. But I’d already put it on to walk in the store – take it off now? I should think not.

      I remembered in the moment why I’d put it on the first time last year. It’s not for me, it’s for those around me. And the people in that store don’t know if I’m vaccinated or not, they just know that I respected them enough to wear a mask for just a bit longer. Or they think I’m a masked nut job, but really, who cares what they think?

      Tomorrow will sort itself out. There will be more awkward moments of mask uncertainty. For this, friends, is what the light at the end of the tunnel looks like.

      Delightfully awkward.

    • Making Antibodies

      It turns out the second Pfizer shot beat me up a bit. Between the 20th hour and the 36th hour seems to have been my scheduled antibody manufacturing time. It began with chills, moved to aches, then lightheadedness. And then it sort of went away for a time. It turns out the vaccine was resting up to double down on the wave of suck. Suddenly I couldn’t get warm, then couldn’t stay cool. My body started aching down my right side (where I got the shot) to my lower back.

      And I’d have done it all over again in a second. If the vaccine beat me up like this I have no doubt the virus would have been 10x worse. Which is an admission this tough guy isn’t comfortable making.

      The takeaway is to get your vaccine whenever you’re on deck. Because I’d love to have you stick around for awhile. Because we have celebrations and travel and some version of normal waiting for us.

      So make some antibodies. It might not be as fun as making pizza or love, but it’s a good way to help get us back to where we all want to be. We’re almost there.