Alexandersmap

    Category: Fitness

    • 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.

    • Myths and Pretty Stories

      “Like the elite of ancient Egypt, most people in most cultures dedicate their lives to building pyramids. Only the names, shapes and sizes of these pyramids change from one culture to the other. They may take the form, for example, of a suburban cottage with a swimming pool and an evergreen lawn, or a gleaming penthouse with an enviable view. Few question the myths that cause us to desire the pyramid in the first place.” – Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

      We all build pretty stories, latch on to myths that align us with a currency, political party, and what we chase in our short time on earth. Since I reached “responsible” adulthood I’ve been servant to my pyramid in New Hampshire, my second pyramid, thank you. I’ve done my part to keep both the economy and humankind going by getting married and having two children, a boy and a girl, to keep the party going after I someday check out.

      Sapiens challenges long-standing assumptions we have about our place in the world: how we got here, what we believe, what we’ve destroyed in the process of getting here and what is being destroyed now as a result of the myths and pretty stories we collectively tell ourselves. And that’s the part that I’ve been thinking about lately. We’ve all seen what collective belief in a myth can do on September 11, 2001 and on January 6, 2021. There’s a very dark side of humanity that emerges when subscribing to certain myths. And there’s a swell of resistance that rises up when confronted with myths that don’t fit our own view of the world.

      It may come as no surprise to any reader of this blog that I’m a romanticist, chasing experiences in this short life. And yet like many of my fellow romanticists I’ve also built a pyramid. And keep adding smaller pyramids around it to make this life more… comfortable? Luxurious? Sure. But every myth has a price, and to function in this society your story needs to align with the larger story of paying mortgages and car payments and working to fund it all.

      We humans are complicated, aren’t we? Life is about the pretty stories we tell ourselves. About where we are and where we’re going. We all tell ourselves and others these stories. I tell myself that I’m chasing washboard abs, but still managed to have a third taco last night. Now I’m planning a long walk and yard work to make up for the three tacos. Washboard abs are just another pretty story I tell myself if I don’t align my habits with the larger goal.

      As an American I grew up believing certain things about our Rights as citizens. We buy into the belief that all men and women are created equal. Over time you learn this is a myth, we aren’t at all equal. Some are dealt tougher hands than others. Some drink the Kool-Aid of scarcity and fear and react to that with aggression and hate. In sharp contrast, may of us subscribe to something bigger. A belief in each other and a better future.

      “Well, big wheels roll through fields where sunlight streams
      Oh, meet me in a land of hope and dreams”
      – Bruce Springsteen, Land of Hope and Dreams

      Inevitably there’s friction and chafing when one person’s myths run into another’s opposing myths. We live in a dangerous time, and a lot depends on how the pendulum swings during our watch. Like Springsteen I’m an eternal optimist, but recognize that’s just the way we frame our pretty stories. Like washboard abs and too many tacos, sometimes pretty stories and reality don’t align and you’ve got to recognize that and commit to changing the story.

      We all have to work for the pyramids we are building towards the sky. It’s fair to question whether we’re building the right pyramid in the first place. Isn’t it?

    • Wiggle Your Way Out

      “Hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, they danced by the light of the moon.”
      – Edward Lear

      The moments I feel euphoric are when I’m outside of myself. Dancing, rowing, celebrating life with others, walking in the clouds or swimming below the surface. I think this is common for all humans, we’re most miserable when we’re bottled up and feeling the pressure. Pop that cork and pour out the worst of it. For there is life to be lived.

      When the world weighs you down, wiggle your way out. Move. Dance your way free of the madness. Walk until you forget what you’re walking away from. Climb so high that you lose sight of the troubles you left far below.

      Simple, right?

      The world is more complicated than that, of course. But state changes happen when we engage the body in the conversation, not just the mind. We get so focused on the challenges that we forget to move. That kind of conversation is a bit too one-sided.

      The world could use a collective wiggle. All of us out there in celebration of our short dance together. Imagine the stories. Imagine the joyful euphoria. Dancing by the light of the moon, hand in hand.

    • The Magical Hours

      Water patterns reflect on the tree trunks, illuminating the bark and lichen in a dance of morning light. The wave patterns slowly fade as my bathing suit air dries in the early warmth. Birds and chipmunks fill the air with a soundtrack of their greatest hits. It’s going to be a scorcher today, they seemed to agree.

      The house wren that moved into the bluebird house dominates the conversation, but the chipmunks have a lot to say too. Until I stand up and abruptly reset the agenda from banter to assessing the new guy. In the sudden hush I catch the sound of a woodpecker, unseen, seeking a meal in a tree somewhere in the woods. The bass tone indicates deep work.

      It’s such a short time, these magical hours spent in outdoor spaces when everything in the world just seems perfect. No bugs, no pollen, no shoes, no problems. That these days exist at all is a blessing. I imagine this is why people live in Southern California, where every day is this kind of perfect. Here we take what we can get while it’s here, and boy do we love it when it’s here.

      Early mornings are reserved for the knowing few. I catch a glimpse of a neighbor out watering potted plants as I do the same with my own. We nod a greeting to each other and return to the work at hand.

      The garden isn’t the same as Mother Nature. Magic doesn’t just happen in a garden, you’ve got to put the work in. These are the days when you’re rewarded (or punished) for the work invested in a yard and garden. Harvest is still weeks or months away for the vegetables, but we’re entering peak season for the flowers.

      How do you know when you’ve reached a peak? When the world aligns in moments of wonder? When everything just seems to click for you? Or do you have to wait until you’ve declined from your peak, when things aren’t going as well and you see, maybe for the first time, just how good that moment was?

      I’m past peak when it comes to athletic performance, but haven’t yet peaked in my learning. If fitness is the flowers in your garden, learning and mental development is the fruits and vegetables, often taking until the very end of the season to fully develop. Like flowers your fitness level doesn’t have to stop midway through your season, and like vegetables you can find enlightenment well before the end of your season.

      There are no hard and fast rules in life or gardening, but there are seasons to honor and work to do in each. In each day there are moments available to appreciate the blessings that have come your way. Those magical hours that seem to fly by so quickly when life seems just about perfect in every way.

    • 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.

    • Links in a Chain

      The latest outdoor workout was renting a chainsaw and cutting up oak and maple tree logs into smaller bits that I will eventually split on some cold winter day. Or perhaps it will be someone else doing the splitting and enjoying the fruits of this labor. Yesterday I was just a link in the chain between tree and fire.

      The thing is, I don’t particularly care if I’m the one burning the wood. I’ll savor it should it be me, but the whole point was to embrace the task of taking a pile of logs and transforming them into a neat pile of firewood. To complete the task at hand was all that mattered. Chopping up firewood on a warm day is a workout, has an element of danger, and requires focused concentration on the elements of the work that can badly injure you. Done well, it’s a joyful expression of being alive.

      “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.” – Zen Kōan

      I finished the task and see the next one in line, awaiting my applied labor. And all of this is both satisfying and futile. The projects are endless, the output of money is constant, and the rewards are never guaranteed. But we do what we must to keep things going.

      The noise of the chainsaw doesn’t fully drown out the call of the road, the call of the mountains, or the call of the ocean. I’m fully aware of what I trade off in experience for this one. But I’m at peace with my choices. The work must be done. And what are we but links in a chain?

    • 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.