Its not necessarily that they have a problem being healthy, all things considered I would prefer that too.
The problem is that it takes time and is boring. I don't care if it means I live a few years longer since I will be too old and infirm to be able to hack.
The aging and infirmity will come a lot quicker if you don't look out for your health. Being healthy might mean you live say 30 years longer, but that isn't just 30 more years of being infirm, it's say 20 more years of good hack-healthy years and 10 more infirm.
Besides, the energy benefits right now and the impact that has on how much you can hack is far more easily noticed than the potential lifespan differences.
As it happens it's a pretty popular subject. Hacker Diet (http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/) is a book written by Autodesk's Founder, there's a pretty active corner at Reddit (http://www.reddit.com/r/fitness), and this is definitely not the first post on the subject I've seen on HN.
I've never met a successful person who was an unmotivated lardass. Probably close to 2/3rds of the people who I've worked with that are in the top of their fields are crazy about cycling, marital arts, running, etc.
It just takes too much energy to go hard enough to achieve big things, I wouldn't even consider it practical if you don't have some degree of physical fitness.
We do. A lot. Because we're not sitting in our parent's basements eating pizza and chugging mountain dew, we're not hacking the gibson and we're not sweaty, unbathed, pimply losers.
We're motivated, we're not planning to die anytime soon, we're concerned with being able to do things, we're social, we're active and we're sick of the stereotypes.
I'm going to make a massive assumption that your sarcasm was intended to hide the fact that you yourself are ashamed of your fitness. You can't hide behind your profession, your job or your peers. You are the reason you are unfit, unhealthy, eat badly and don't exercise. There truly is no-one else to blame.
But since you're here I assume you have a desire to change the world somehow, so I truly hope you're able to get past any shame and fear you may feel and do something about your problem.
If a feeling of inadequacy is not the problem, they you need to socialize more with hackers... Being a slob in the basement went out the window with the Apple Lisa and Gen X having hair.
Looking at your comment, I can't understand why it got upvoted since you are just replacing one set of stereotypes with another, which may fit better with what society wants you to but is still a stereotype.
Now if you want that thats perfectly alright, but I at least only want to spend as little time as possible caring about my body and as little time as possible with normal people since both things are utterly boring.
> Now if you want that thats perfectly alright, but I at least only want to spend as little time as possible caring about my body and as little time as possible with normal people since both things are utterly boring.
You do have a point. Conformity is not the way. But, at the same time, I'm sad you feel those things are boring. Allow me to explain.
I used to be in your shoes, at least in the fitness aspect. I was a bit of a curmudgeon who'd figured life out at age 24 and decided that I'd be happy programming for, well, ever. That worked well until about age 27, when it started to wear thin. Deadlines, feature creep, a billion new technologies...who cares? It was losing its luster quickly. When I turned 28, I came down with carpal tunnel-like symptoms stemming from an overuse injury. I had to leave my job to give my body time to heal. I learned the hard way that I had to respect my body, and respect myself more.
The time I've put in on fitness has enhanced the rest of my life a disproportionate amount. I'm much smarter about what I eat, and I feel better, and I sleep so much better now. Because the sleep is higher quality, I don't need as much of it. I awaken ready to engage the day, rather than slinking through it. The secret of this is that the body was never meant to be disconnected from the mind. The two are engaged in an continual feedback loop whereby one is reinforcing the actions of the others with beliefs/chemicals. You just need to gently prod the two into better habits in order to feel better.
As for people, well, that's what life's all about.
I'm not sure I'm really qualified here :). I've beentrying to limit intake of processed substances as much as possible. For most of my life, they were the norm, and I'm slowly phasing them out. This took the form of not going out for lunch, trying to snack on fruit, drinking water in lieu of soda/coffee/juice as much as possible, and eating more veggies.
I'm still happy to eat out with friends, mind you.So I suppose you could say I became more aware of what I was eating, rather than remaining apathetic about it.
and if he linked it normally, chances are someone(maybe even you) would post, bitching that they don't want to read 10 pages of an article and to just link to the print page the next time.
Browsers should just not have auto-printing. How much time is saved by not having to press CTRL+P? Likewise, how much time is wasted because of unintentional print dialogs (like this one) and how much time is wasted in developing and maintaining such a feature?
Printing from browsers in general is a mess. Is there a printable version of the page? Is there a CSS stylesheet that changes the appearance for print? Do you use Ctrl-P, or is there some little "click here to print" button you have to find on the page to not have everything be messed up?
I didn't realize how complicated this was until I tried to explain it to my grandparents.
I get the logic and intent behind these kind of articles but at the same time they infuriate me, because this is the kind of crap that people read and use as yet-another-reason as to why they don't try to get fit.
Sure, machines aren't perfect, and they railroad your form, but it's better than nothing. I train on machines, _and_ with free weight, _and_ doing bodyweight / crossfit stuff. They all have their place.
There's no way I'd try to pull the rep max on a free barbell that I would on a smith machine, but it says nothing about how effective one or the other is.
It's like the whole internet self defense huff. A billion words written on the technicalities of all the different martial arts but most fights are won by punching the other guy repeatedly hard enough to stop him hitting you. Sure it's not perfect, but its taking action and it gets results.
You'd be almost guaranteed to fail the lift. Smith machines let you use higher weight because you don't have to spend energy stabilizing the barbell. With safety bars failing isn't a huge deal, it's just pointless.
Oh, he's talking about raw numbers. I guess in retrospect, that's obvious, but when I replied I thought he was saying he doesn't push himself as hard with free weights.
Yeah, can see how it read lol. There's no cage, just a smith machine at my local gym (and there's only two in town), so I do freeweight squats at home, then smith there, going for the max on each.
From anecdotal experience - the training plan he describes is something I did when I started out mountainbiking and ran straight into a probably best coach in vicinity.
My training program was a lot like the one described in the article - It was longer, but I was too lazy to do all of it - so I landed right where he suggests 3-4 times lifting weights a week. And boy did I get strong. But then I started fiddling out with trendy programs and fuxxored it all. :)
I guess that not using machines wont make such a difference, its more the training regime (reps, measuring your maximum, doing the pyramid). It's just that they are unnecessary.
So there are 3 things I have learned about fitness:
1. Your basic training / off season training should be exactly as described in this article.
2. Most people work out waaay too much.
3. If you are serious about your sport: do interval training twice a week (max).
That's it - that's all are there is. Everything else you can do your sport or whatever.
My gripe is about "getting fit" as in coming from baseline / nothing to being a reasonable human being. When I was pushing 310 pounds (as in ass weight, not bench weight), this is the kind of thing I would read and go, hey, yeah! Super clever mountain man training! That's the stuff, screw the gym, I'm all over this, I'm so pro!
Not a unique attitude at all. What got me down to the 200 mark though was just joining a gym, pushing out squats / deadlifts / presses (on machines for the first few months), utilizing the trainers, getting some buddies on board, eating less and getting the job done.
Average joe doesn't have room for gear at home, or the motivation to independently structured programs, or they just flat out get intimidated by hanging around training camps or gyms. I don't think there's room to discourage anything that has potential benefit for people.
Well I took the /print off the link because it kept crashing chrome, but apart from that we probably did. I'm talking about non-motivated, non-pro kind of people (see other response, I was 310 pounds and happily googling super fitness techniques while smashing cheeseburgers all night).
Overweight people don't need any reason to not turn up a gym or think they know better. Anything that provides benefit is better than nothing. If the entry barrier is signing up to a gym and having a trainer run you through a program, that's pretty low.
If it's finding obscure training venues with hardcore types and being broken down as a weakling (which yeah, works better than anything out there, and it's what I sign up for these days), then people won't touch it with a hundred foot pole.
Most uber-chunkers already feel like shit day in day out without coming up against further entry barriers or reams of information. Just find the closest venue or activity that will make you sweat and do it.
Smith machines are especially bad for squats because they will let you put up more weight than your back can really support. Same with the other squat replacement machines like hip sleds. Eventually, you will either crush your discs in the machine itself, or doing a regular squat with too much weight.
The article's conclusion: Lift big with classic lifts. Gain strength.
What I actually do: Take walks and do isometrics on convenient bars, poles, etc. Max power, 5-10 second holds, multiple angles. The better I am about those rules, the more progress I make. More effective than any gym I've ever been in.
I understand what you are saying...isometrics are awesome...I actually do them almost everyday and I swear by them. I also swear by dynamic tension flexing, which brings great results.
But don't confuse those results with the results from classic big lifts. Like I said, I do isometrics all the time, but squats, deadlifts, benchpress and pullups are going to develop your musculature in ways isometrics never could.
What I'm doing now is a class lift style of back squats, deadlifts and benchpress 5x5 program for strength. Progress 5 pounds each session (make sure you start very low so you can build up) and end the each session with a circuit of your choosing x 3 (I normally do something like BW to failure of pullups, pushups, dips, plank, bridge/mule kick, ...then break and do it all again). Total workout including warmup takes 45 minutes max (I warm up for about 20 minutes).
This will build tons of muscle and you will gain strength very quickly. Though, make sure you eat right (Paleo) and cut out the crappy foods like grains/glutens/sugars and you will see fantastic results (if you still eat grains and the like, you'll gain weight, but you likely won't lose any fat .... some people call this "shitty weight" akin to drinking 2 gallons of milk a day).
+1 for 5x5. I'm currently on the Texas Method and I'm love the volume on the squats and the deadlifts. I eat pre and post workout carbs though, to make sure I got enough energy (bulking phase right now). The fat you gain is easy to lose afterwards!
Prisoners are among the most fit people in the world, despite an absence of good machines, good diet, coaches, and instructional material.
If you want to be fit, start exercising--a nice way to get started is to truly understand that any kind of exercise is very much better than doing nothing.
I have read on various weight lifting forums that at least some prisoners smuggle in steroids, protein powders/bars and also steal extra food when they can. This would certainly lead them to getting into great shape if all they do is workout and get the needed supplements.
Also, I don't know about you, but I don't personally know anyone in jail, so other than perception that guys in jail are huge, I'm not really sure its true.
They also have incredible incentive to get in shape, and a ton of free time to kill, and tend to have problems with aggression. That adds up. And your own personal muscle mass and melee fighting capability is pretty much the only weapon the prison allows you to have.
Their diets are better than what my schools (any of them) served for lunch. Seriously. If that's all people ate, our prison population would be half what it is now, it'd simply kill at least half of them off within a few years.
When it comes to lifting the only real "fact" is that what works best varies from person to person. People with great genetics can do heavy volume lifting 5 or 6 days a week and make amazing gains. Meanwhile, others will struggle to make any progress even with a low volume 2 day a week routine because their body doesn't recover well.
Just go out there, experiment and see what works for you.
I have lifted weights for 15 years. But now I ditched the gym all together. Got bored with neon lights, the smell of sweat and watching fat people run on a treadmill ;)
1. Do something you like. This way you stick to it.
2. Don't overthink it, if you are just doing fitness for your health. There is not such thing like a perfect fat burning workout, etc.
3. My ideas don't count if you are an athlete who wants to improve on performance.
No go out and do something, dont read this crappy article
I have one bit of specialized weight training advice. We all spend entirely too much time in front of our computers, typically hunched or slouched back, deep in thought.
Ten years of doing this professionally led to shoulder/neck problems, culminating in a pinched nerve between my C6 and C7 vertebrae. It improved with physical therapy, but was never truly fixed, and has bothered me off and on for two years now, despite my adherence to the therapist's rubber band and stretching routine.
I heard through a relative about "Upper Cross Syndrome". Whether that's specifically what I have or not, I don't know, but the symptoms match quite well. Read about it, and you'll probably see that it perfectly describes so many tech people:
Exercise 6, "External rotation top to bottom" has literally changed my life, and it did so within the first week. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I maintain proper posture at the keyboard (and while walking around). I still get nerve issues if I spend too many days in a row at the computer, but I can't describe to you how much better I feel now than I did after physical therapy!
Thanks for the link. I recently injured my neck (c5-c6 and c6-c7), and the physical therapist has suggested a few exercises, but was unable to explain the purpose or benefit of them.
Get a stand up desk, or failing that create a makeshift one with cardboard boxes. I started doing that 9 months ago. Now all my back problems are gone. 10% of my company,or roughly 20 people, have since happily switched.
Ah, but I have congenital ankle problems which make standing or walking for long periods (or just the wrong movements over a short period) problematic. My life is a balancing act of pain risk. :-)
I find that maintaining the posture that my 8th grade typing teacher enforced is solving all of my neck issues. It's just difficult to maintain awareness of posture when I'm concentrating really deeply on a bit of code or documentation. Weight training helps me overcome the changes to my musculature that occurred from a lifetime of such computer use.
How about with a stand-up desk? Do you find yourself slacking off with regards to posture? Of course, it may not be a problem for you regardless, if your issues were more related to, say, lower back pain.
Incidentally, my sister, who is obese, wants to take your plan one step further by going to the treadmill desk. I'm told that there is no problem interacting with stationary desk items after a period of adjustment.
I sometimes wish we could delete the entire fitness industry from the world and replace it with a few lines of text, something like this: eat right, exercise, get adequate sleep, reduce stress, get variety, use natural motions, breathe deep, get yourself winded intentionally from time to time, when in doubt walk, etc. The vast majority of people probably never need to go near a fancy weight machine or even lift artificial weights of any kind. Just carrying out normal actions in the Earth's gravitational field, putting your body through all the natural ranges of motion it's capable of doing, is actually pretty darn adequate, and can build muscle and improve figure and physical capabilities. I believe most of the industry is not much more honest than a shyster trying to sell snake oil.
ie. go running. do jumping jacks. get your heart and lung going. push yourself beyond what your cardio system needs to do under normal/static conditions.
For what it's worth I've never heard what you describe called "winded". To me winded means getting the wind knocked out of you. I wonder if it is a regional thing.
Interesting. I always think Australia's as being pretty culturally homogeneous, but obviously that isn't really true when you look really closely. I am curious to know what part of .au did you grow up in / live in? I grew up in Tasmania, lived for 10 years in Melbourne, and the last 5 in south east Queensland.
In the northeast of the US, getting winded is breathing heavily from exertion. It implies reaching your max exertion point.
I would think the rest of the US uses it the same way, just based on talking with friends throughout the country. I'm not sure if our brethren to the north use it the same way.
They almost certainly don't mean "punched in the stomach hard enough to lose your breath for a moment", but rather "exercise (e.g. run) hard enough to lose your breath for a moment"
The fundamental business model of most gyms is to sign up as many members as possible, irrespective of whether those members then attend (that is why you have membership 'contracts', direct debits, etc...)
Hence, gyms are optimised for increasing sign-ups - not for getting you fit. So things look shiny, modern, relaxing, appealing to some imagined lifestyle. Then in reality you end up sitting on your couch eating crisps ('chips' Americans) and feeling guilty.
The only good thing to have come from the fitness industry, though, is to make gyms much more accessible for those of us who are either not male or not fitness-educated or not hanging around with the right crowd. Before nice shiny gyms came along, there was no way I (a woman) was walking into the garage type place that looks a bit like a minimum security prison yard. However, the problem now is that although gyms are accessible to everyone really, they are shit and the proper weights are still in the darkest mostly-large-males corner where it's still a bit intimidating to go to and bend over or lie down in the middle as the only female.
So there's a silver lining but there's still a cloud.
Just go to that dark corner. I'm a skinny guy (less skinny now), I was intimidated by that corner as well.
My observation: the vast majority of those "mostly-large-males" are extremely nice, even if they do sometimes make scary faces while lifting and look like Danny Trejo. If you pick the right gym (typically in lower class neighborhoods), they might even critique your form, which is incredibly valuable.
I'd strongly suggest not letting the fear of possible harassment deter you. Wait until it actually happens. Worst case, you complain to the front desk and homeboy gets out of his yearly contract 11 months early. (They usually have cameras everywhere, so it wouldn't even be a "he said, she said" issue.)
Most of the very large men have no need to harass random women - all they usually need to do is walk into a bar and say "hello". And I've never met a guy at the gym who would even be tolerant of such harassment, let alone participate.
tl;dr Fitness is too important to let a one-in-a-million bad event deter you. Statistically speaking, your biggest worries are poor fitness > harming yourself due to poor form/bad luck > getting harassed at the gym.
So don't go back. You could make the same argument about a lot of restaurants/bars/public places, etc.
Honestly, I know a lot of VERY big guys who lift a heck of a lot of weight. Without exception, every single one of them is the nicest, most even-tempered, welcoming fellow you could imagine. The stereotype of a angry, musclebound meathead is just that, a stereotype.
If you're really too scared, go find yourself the most convenient Crossfit gym and drop by for a free workout. You'll find that MOST Crossfit gyms are well over 60% female and that there are several women there that are leading a lot of the men in weightlifting and overall athleticism. I'm a guy and I've most definitely been shown up by a lot of the women at my particular box and I'm not alone.
Believe it or not, weightlifting/getting fit is going to make you VERY uncomfortable for non-trivial periods of time. You might as well get used to it. Seeing a whole cadre of women lifting heavy and doing it fearlessly might really do you a lot of good from a psychological perspective.
Greg Glassman always said that the biggest adaptation a Crossfitter experiences is between their ears.
Given he calls Crossfit sadistic it's ironic he's basically describing it. Free weights, core strength, a focus on overall fitness and all aspects thereof over abstract weight numbers. It's not complicated and plenty of people know it.
So true. I've only fairly recently gotten into crossfit, and although it is very hard, and very intense, everything he talks about the article is focused on, comes up in various crossfit workouts, as well as a hell of a lot more stuff that makes you so much more versitile than just strength. The thing i hate about crossfit is the "coach" thing, but that must be something I just dont get.
In Crossfit times and reps matter more than form. Just take a look at some gyms. The exercises and the philosophy behind is awesome, but the practical appliance is far from great.
There's an emphasis on improving scores and people get carried away for sure. But in the two boxes I've trained at there's a culture for good form and working on technique. "Honesty in motion, honesty in counting".
There are definitely boxes who focus on good form, which is great (and should be the norm), but I think due to the fact that the Level 1 cert is so easy to get, the quality suffers in some gyms.
Based on this claim I assume also that Crossfit invented the barbell, the bumper plate and gravity.
The sudden outburst of anecdotes about how your Crossfit gym rooly trooly emphasises form seems to have come after years of sustained criticism by strength coaches and Olympic weightlifting coaches.
It's as simple as this: nobody -- not me, not you, not your coach, not the pros -- nobody can pump out high rep Oly movements without steady and ultimately dangerous degradation in form. The force plate studies, the EEG studies, the eyeballing of experienced coaches demonstrate over and over and over that it is a flat out stupid idea to do snatches or cleans for reps.
And yet in Crossfit gyms everywhere, this idea of smashing out 20 clean & jerks still keeps getting circulated.
You cannot do this and learn to do the movements precisely enough. You will only train yourselves to do it messily. Under heavy weights you will fuck up and injure yourself.
Given that I love Oly lifting, I don't want people getting injured and then blaming the lifts, when they should be blaming a faulty training technique.
It's the timing aspect, and it's particularly an issue with squats. Even at lower weight, it's far to easy to get your knees pushed forward or your back arched when trying to pump through them as fast as possible.
I don't think anyone is saying that it's not possible, it's just much more likely that your average lifter is going to run into injury.
The problem is that the motions happen so fast that even at light weights you quickly deplete the central nervous system's ability to provide sharp signals. Ideally the signal conveyed to muscles looks like a square wave. However as repetitions mount, it becomes more and more to resemble noise, leading to sloppy form.
Repetition is the basis of learning, especially for complex movement. If you are doing 20 reps, and 15 of them have degraded form, what will you wind up learning?
And it doesn't help that the emphasis is doing the 20 reps in the minimum time possible, which discourages lifters from taking the time to set themselves in the correct position off the floor.
The weight is almost, but not quite, irrelevant to my main point. My main point is that the body learns what you make it do. If you continue to work through degraded form you will only learn to make the lifts sloppily. As you increase the weight (Crossfit calls this "scaling the workout" as if they were the first to think of changing the weight on the bar), you will only increase your risk of injury.
Every crossfit trainer I've met, trained with or by or read has emphasised form over how many reps, there might be sloppy gyms but that certainly hasn't been my experience.
having done crossfit and workouts similar to the ones planned in the article, i disagree.
crossfit does make use of some of the principles outlined in the article, yes. but you could say that about almost any workout scheme, including 20lb weights balancing on a bosu ball. there are bound to be some similarities.
crossfit is frenetic, with exercises that vary daily. this routine is advocating a more static set of consistent core exercises.
crossfit mixes up the styles of exercises pretty frequently -- some are strength, some are endurance, some are timed, etc.. again, this routine is more about slow, steady, consistent improvements on a single set of exercises.
crossfit is a single workout track that gets everyone "fit", while this routine is pointing out that you need to approach the exercises differently based on your personal goals.
Agreed. Over the years Crossfit has embraced the teachings and methods of coaches the author praises, including Mark Ripptoe and the Westside Barbell guys.
> Hyperbolic headlines are intensely irritating.
Jason Fried said yesterday: "Something I didn't know when I started writing for Inc: The authors don't write the headlines. The editors write the headlines and subheads."
It's funny because this kind of article always ends up recommending a simple, classic free weight program. Then you look at the gyms they refer to, and they've got people doing stuff like this:
GPP [1] is the sort of thing people add to their programs when they're already doing basic weight routines all the time and they want to see even more progress. You don't have to start dragging rocks on day 1.
If you really want to get fit, there's one easy thing you can do that actually works:
Take up a sport that gets you fit as a side effect.
I have two obsessions in life: Rock Climbing and Surfing. I'm pretty good at the first, and borderline hopeless at the other, but I'm committed to the point where I've arranged my life so that I can travel for months at a time to pursue one or the other each year.
When I'm working a contract to save up for the next trip, I'll find myself slowly fattening up on fish tacos and 12 hour days coding in a felt cube with only the occasional after work or weekend fix of rock or salt water. After a few months I'm decidedly soft, and quite a bit heavier. But put me on the beach in Thailand for 5 months and holy crap, what a difference.
It's like Fat Camp out there. There's so much fun climbing to be had right on the beach. Overhanging routes that work you into the sort of shape that lets you literally hand-over-hand your way out a horizontal roof by your fingertips as your feet dangle out in space. Without anybody forcing you, you spend your entire day working yourself silly, then you come back and eat rice. You can imagine what that does for your physique. It's like a convention of Men's Health cover models out there.
I come back to the world, and watch people going to the gym and clearly hating every minute of it. I can't understand why they would do that to themselves, when there's a climbing gym just a few miles away.
Also, don't eat boxed foods or foods that went through multiple stages of processing. In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan spells it out very well, but I'll just give you my simple definition: Eating healthy is as close to eating dirt without actually eating dirt. Produce, grain, cheese, 1/2 pound to a pound of meat a week[1], and whatever else Marion Nestle recommends[1.5].
Just imagine what primitive man would eat. He would spend most of his days eating what grew from the ground and when they finally hunted down meat, they would eat their catch as a group[2]. That doesn't mean you have to do exactly that, but try to keep your eating habits in sync with what it was originally adapted to consume not what hyper stimulates made you believe it wanted to consume[3].
Now don't go about forcing yourself to eat stuff you don't enjoy. In the same manner jasonkester engages in something he enjoys that have the "side effect" of being healthy (I still think these activities are something we were adapted to engage in the first place), find foods you find delicious but also happen to be something that isn't processed. I can assure you that there is plenty of "healthy" or "natural" foods out there that you would enjoy[4].
The difference here from malaria would be that our bodies evolved, adapting to the nutrients that we were getting. We're more efficient on them -- more capable of living 'natural' lives.
[Of course, whether a 'natural' life is desirable is debatable.]
Malaria, however, we attempted to evolve away from(sickle cell anemia).
That's precisely why the "nature intended us to" argument doesn't really work for me when I hear people trying to convince me to try the Paleo diet. Whatever the benefits might be (besides making the author of those books a good chunk of money), they can be garnered by other means. What I hate even more is when a few devotees of such diets go on a slant about vegetarianism/veganism etc. etc.
Not only that, but our "nature" has changed considerably since those times. Evolution has been far faster, likely 100 times faster the past several thousand years than it was before civilization. 15,000 years ago, nobody was lactose tolerant, nobody had blue eyes and who knows what else was different.
That isn't evolution, it is a diversification of our genetics. There are lots of things that many humans are intolerant to which would have probably been a really big weakness in the past.
Humans are no longer subject to natural selection. There needs to be significant culling pressure for real evolution to happen.
we most certainly change as a species. Something as simple as choosing who to reproduce with affects the distribution of genes that are passed on to the next generation.
A more obvious example of the sorts of changes we can still go through is sickle cell.
I'm sorry, but anyone who says this has failed to understand evolution.
Evolution is a slow process. But there is no reason to believe that it is going any slower today than it ever did in the past - we're just being selected for different things than in the past. (For instance carelessness about birth control.)
The fact that intelligence is shaping our future faster than evolution does not affect the fact that evolution is still proceeding at the current moment in our species.
No, he's wrong. Natural selection doesn't speed up or slow down, it just is. Each passing generation there are pressures put on the spreading of human genes, and those pressures are the manifestation of natural selection. Whether those pressures are different now than before, or whether they shape "the future" is irrelevant to the biological impact of natural selection.
Sure it does, in the sense that there are fewer selective pressures on us, and those pressures are weaker. Our intelligence is able to overcome many of the pressures our environment exerts on us.
Just to clarify, When I say "us" I mean the western world. True, industrial countries are having fewer kids, and thats an example of a new selective pressure. It's a result of a new environment we've created for ourselves. I'm sure there are many to go along with that. But the sheer number of (potential) selective pressures we've removed through technology doesn't compare: many diseases, muscle size, brain size, vitamin D synthesis (its put in everything now), body hair, skeletal structure, the list goes on. Our interaction with our environment is on such a fundamentally different level that there are many classes of environmental pressures that simply don't affect us anymore.
Think of it this way: we used to be directly reliant our the environment for survival, like animals are. But now, we process our environment to such an extent that small variations in it are overcome by our intellect. Those variations in the past would constantly be exerting selective pressure on us in many different directions. Those pressures are processed out now.
It is evolution, and it speeds up with higher populations. As for natural selection, consider that only small changes in allele frequencies add up quickly through the generations. Also, sexual selection is very much a force.
Natural selection is just one component of evolution. Genetic drift and, especially, artificial selection are certainly in full swing.
And anyway, I completely disagree that we're no longer subject to natural selection. We're always subject to natural selection. We're not immune to everything.
I went from being a vegetarian to the paleo diet (or, actually, the "primal" variant). I thought about making this really long, but instead, realize that primal/paleo people use the primitive human as a model, a "common sense" starting base, and then apply liberal amounts of scientific knowledge to get a working solution.
It has changed my life. When I follow the diet, it has been pretty impossible not to lose weight. That's with eating as many eggs, as much butter, and as much natural, delicious, other whole foods as I can stuff myself with.
Second this. I am as critical as anyone of the naturalistic fallacy, and don't generally subscribe to the idea that what worked for cavemen will work for me.
However, the metabolic science is there if you read it, and I can't argue with the profound effect switching to a diet based on meat, eggs and other sources of saturated fats has had on my body.
I eat as much as I want, whenever I want, I'm never really hungry any more, and I've been losing fat and gaining muscle without thinking about it at all. It's pretty incredible.
Us not readily acquiring the malaria virus is not due to evolution of our genes; we just don't live in the areas where the vector thrives. If you and I were bit by an infected mosquito, there's a very good chance either of us would die in a relatively short period of time. Although, there are some in Africa who do have fewer chances of acquiring it due to them being heterozygotes for sickle cell anemia.
Anyway, I'm not discounting the underlying concept of your comment; I'm just saying that malaria wasn't a particularly apt comparison.
I think the point is that we don't fight it "natually", we fight it with medicine and vaccines. We also have access to clean water which, if we did get malaria, would prevent us from dying from rapid dehydration(which in my understanding is the primary cause of death from malaria.) This is the argument against the caveman diets...
The primary reason we don't die from malaria is none of the above: it is mosquito abatement via intentional habitat destruction and copious use of effective pesticides. Large portions of the US used to be malaria country: not a spe mof it is now, and if there was a malaria outbreak in a US suburb we would wring our hands about the consequences for about five minutes and then dump enough chemicals on that subdivision to save an African country.
Medicine is a fine way to treat things like infectious disease, but our western use of it is particularly useless (and often harmful) at treating long term "lifestyle diseases" -- stuff like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Prevention is far more effective, and diets that consist mostly of "food as grown" with minimal processing and alteration are good prevention.
I disagree with your statement about dying in a short period of time if you catch malaria. I grew up in a country with a high malaria rate (Papua New Guinea). I caught malaria several times and didn't die. Malaria is a curable disease, all though it is evolving against the current cures.
It's definitely curable. My hypothetical was based on the assumption that treatment was not given to show that we actually have not evolved defenses against the virus.
> we just don't live in the areas where the vector thrives.
Actually, an awful lot of us do. I see those fucking Anopheles mosquitoes on a regular basis, especially if I venture a bit north from here.
> If you and I were bit by an infected mosquito, there's a very good chance either of us would die in a relatively short period of time.
Actually, out of the 225 million cases of malaria per year, there are only about 1 million deaths.
I'm not discounting the underlying concept of your comment; I haven't gotten malaria yet because of public-health measures like draining swamps, because of cypermethrin on the walls, because of DEET on my legs and head, because of sleeping under a mosquito net or in a room without entrances for mosquitoes, because of sleeping during the day, and because I have enough leisure time to swat the mosquitoes that do land on me.
I'm not arguing what "nature intended us to" do (the human body is more adaptable than what the advocates of the Paleo diet take into consideration). I'm referring more to certain people with health problems who eat mainly fast food or food from the box and barely eat an apple a week. I know a few people who are like this and they end up stressing themselves by sticking to some draconian diet to get healthy.
I'm saying there's no need to stick to some strict diet, just eat a wide variety of foods instead of just one subset. The whole "think like a primitive man thing" is just a helpful starting point to point you towards what kinds of food to look for, but I'm not advocating some strict following. I had three In and Out dinners this past week since I'm too short on time to hunt down a pigeon or pluck mysterious fruits from trees all day.
It's more that we're taking health risks by eating novel foods (things that weren't available as we evolved). There is a lot of evidence that insulin response is responsible for metabolic syndrome. There is also some evidence that the lectins in grains promote malabsorption of dietary nutrients.
Only time I'm satisfied with the 'nature intended us to' argument is some combination of walking/running. The way a good, smooth runner's body flows when they hit a fast jog screams to me "my skeletal and muscular structure was built for this!" Otherwise, yeah, as best I can tell adaptability is our only real designed-in-feature.
We're not as fast as most animals out there, but I don't think that means we didn't run a lot in prehistory.
I think that one of the weaknesses of Pollan's saying is how it can be interpreted by people who haven't read his other stuff. Taken literally, someone much younger than Pollan might think that Pollan advocates for broccoli to be boiled and smothered in Velveeta.
"Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these."
All those foods that you mentioned, a 19th century mom would recognize as food. Just not her kind of food.
The flip side to the caveman diet is that 1) it wasn't particularly planned. They eat what they could, when they could, and 2) There was a pretty major exercise component that went along with it, in that if they didn't hunt / fish / forage, they died of starvation.
The main issue with obesity is that people can easily afford to be obese and not too significantly impact their lives (aside from all health and social malaise of being overweight).
Eating how a caveman ate isn't a particularly bad diet, but misses out on the major aspect of a day filled with exercise.
Actually, people cannot afford to be obese. They are massively subsidized by others in terms of health care expenses. Healthy people and other taxpayers are footing the bill.
Numerous studies (See the first chapter of "Why we get Fat, by Taubes) have shown that Obesity is a disease of poverty. The food that keeps you lean (protein/fats) is expensive. Carbs are cheap. Poor people eat carbs. Rich people eat steak, chicken, fish. There is no significant research that shows adding exercise to an overweight person's lifestyle will significantly reduce their weight - typically just increases their appetite.
If obesity is a disease of poverty, then how come truly poor people (e.g., the poor in India or China) are skinny?
Lack of money for food is not a cause of obesity. If your goal is to obtain 2500 calories (assuming that is what you need to maintain a healthy weight) for a little money as possible, you will consume 2500 calories of carbs. You will not become obese. If you instead consume 3500 calories and become obese, you are wasting money on 1000 extra calories. You are not constrained by cost. You could instead reduce consumption by 1000 calories, and spend the money on increasing the quality of the remaining 2500 calories.
There is no significant research that shows adding exercise to an overweight person's lifestyle will significantly reduce their weight - typically just increases their appetite.
Increasing exercise and holding consumption constant will reduce body fat. One of many studies:
Do a google scholar search. The only difficulty is that you'll find so many studies which measure additional benefits to exercise that some of the studies measuring only effect on body fat will be buried. (I.e., the majority of the articles have conclusions like "exercise reduces body fat AND increases muscle mass", "exercise reduces body fat AND breast cancer", etc).
Rice and wheat are subsidized in India too. And unlike US poor, the poor in India can't afford to supplement it with a Big Mac, Fried Chicken or a Premium Southwest Salad.
They are skinny because they eat less. They cannot afford 2500 calories, so they consume 2000 calories (mostly rice or wheat, depending on region) and suffer adverse health as a result. They also get exercise working physical jobs rather than sitting at home and watching TV.
Of course, even if corn subsidies were unique, poverty still don't explain why the US poor waste money on 500-1000 extra calories. If they were optimizing for cost, they would eat only 2500 calories of cheap corn.
"and holding consumption constant" is the trick, ain't it? Works great if you want to lose a little weight later more than you want to eat another 500 calories now. Most people don't want that (me included, by revealed preference -- I'm over 300 lbs).
When people say that obesity goes with poverty, they're noting that virtually everyone eats until they are sated, and if you eat until you are sated with high-quality, expensive food, you will be far less likely to be overweight than if you eat until you are sated with low-quality, inexpensive food.
Exactly. Obesity goes with poverty because both are a result of a high discount rate.
High discount rate reduces the propensity for work (most poor don't work much, if at all), particularly work with a career path. Why work hard now just to have a middle class life in the future?
Similarly, a high discount rate cuts against a healthy lifestyle - why suffer through a run in the park and hunger right now, just for future health?
(Also explains correlation between poverty and: drugs, alchohol, unprotected sex, probably other pathologies I can't think of.)
High discount rate is the cause, everything else is an effect.
Of course, a high discount rate has nothing to do with the cheapness of carbs, fat and sugar relative to meat or veggies. Money is not the limiting factor. Willpower/preferences are.
No one is saying that poor people couldn't eat healthy if they wanted to more than they wanted to feel satisfied. They're saying that given two people with the same metabolic genes, exercise level, and discount rate, if one of these two people spends ten times as much on food as the other, they will be likely to be thinner. This is because being sated with more expensive food results in eating fewer calories and better nutritionally than being sated with less expensive food, and this point has everything to do with the cheapness of carbs, fat, and sugar (which taste good no matter how prepared, essentially) relative to well-prepared meat and veggies.
Are you (aside from your main point) saying that the calories in meat and vegetables come from elsewhere than carbohydrates and fats? There is lots of protein in lean meat, but protein is poisonous -- you can't depend on it alone for energy.
What you say is perfectly logical, but subtly flawed when it comes to the USA.
If you're poor, odds are that you're eating fast food. The primary cost of fast food is not the cost of the raw ingredients, it is the time and effort to make the fast food. Furthermore many of the customers there see large portions as a value. Therefore fast food places have found it worth their while to offer large portions at a low price, and to inflate those portions with the cheapest foods that they can - french fries and soft drinks.
As long as fast food places do that, there is no real cost difference between 2500 calories and 3500 calories. Given how addictive most people find food that is high in sugar, fat and salt (which describes soft drink + fries), people tend to finish the portions that they are given. That will make you obese fairly fast, even if you don't "supersize" your portions.
Food banks often offer similar foods to fast food places because it is cheap and what their clientele is used to. This causes similar consequences. So in the USA even if you have no money at all, it is easy to get fat.
If there were cheap, convenient places to eat that made you pay according to calories and were willing to give realistic but smaller portions for significantly lower prices, then your reasoning would be absolutely correct in the USA.
Now you can argue that the underlying cause that makes this possible is that the country is rich enough that we can afford to be wasteful even on poor people. This is absolutely correct. But for practical purposes that detail doesn't matter. If you personally have little money and live in the USA, it is really easy to become fat.
An incidental note on exercise. Exercise burns calories. Obviously. However it takes very little extra food to offset the calorie expenditure from moderate amounts of additional exercise. Luckily exercise also affects appetite for many people, and muscle mass increases your basal metabolism. Therefore exercise is a win, but for moderate amounts of exercise not mainly because it directly burns off calories.
A Big Mac has 540 calories, fries are 380. The cost difference between 2500 calories and 3420 calories is the cost of a Big Mac and fries. McD's portions are big, but they aren't 3500 calories big. This isn't about finishing your portions. It's about not ordering and eating an extra meal.
You might be right if the only meals available had 1750 calories. In that case, your only choices are 1 meal (underfed) or 2 meals (overfed). But that simply isn't the case.
It is easy to become fat in the US, rich or poor. The poor are more likely to take advantage of this, it is true. But it doesn't save them money.
Your argument is sound, but overlooks that most people don't consume their entire daily caloric intake in a single meal. If I have a Big Mac, Fries and a medium soda, I'm almost certainly overfeeding myself for that meal.
Of course you can stop eating, but a poor person is more likely to get the 50 nuggets for $10, instead. Twice, for a total of 4750 calories, minus the ones they don't get to in each meal before they get cold. ;)
">>There is no significant research that shows adding exercise to an overweight person's lifestyle will significantly reduce their weight - typically just increases their appetite.
>Increasing exercise and holding consumption constant will reduce body fat."
I'm not sure you read the sentence you're responding to: "typically just increases their appetite."
Yes, if you lock a person in a room with the exact same meals every day, exercise will reduce their weight. A real world person who exercises though typically eats to compensate.
I'm not sure what your problem with Taubes is; your discovery of his 'incredible dishonesty' doesn't pass the smell test -- surely someone eating 7.5 extra strips of bacon per day would notice? There's a shot at his thesis being 'buy my book'; why is it more unreasonable to buy his cheap Kindle book than e.g. Tyler Cowen's to get the full scientific background? It's not like he's hawking some diet empire.
I'm not sure you read the sentence you're responding to: "typically just increases their appetite."
If you add exercise to a person's lifestyle without adding calories, they will lose weight. It's that simple. There is research to show this. I cited some of it.
your discovery of his 'incredible dishonesty' doesn't pass the smell test -- surely someone eating 7.5 extra strips of bacon per day would notice?
Go read Gary Taube's blog post. He spends thousands of words discussing that, according to the traditional calorie counting theory (which he is attempting to refute), the difference between a fat person and a thin person is "only" 20 calories above their respective maintenance levels. He then argues this must be absurd and incorrect, because how can "only a cube of sugar in your coffee" make you fat. This is an attempt at reducto ad absurdum.
He never, in his entire blog post, mentions the fact that the fat person is also eating 7 extra strips of bacon each day. If you read his article without being extremely careful, you will come away with the impression that the only thing the fat person eats that the thin person doesn't is an extra morsel of food each day.
"If you add exercise to a person's lifestyle without adding calories, they will lose weight. It's that simple. There is research to show this. I cited some of it."
That's great. There is also research that shows that acceleration due to gravity at sea level is 9.8 m/s^2, but that has little to do with what the OP said, which is that "exercise tends to increase people's appetites." You're refuting something he never claimed.
"He never, in his entire blog post, mentions the fact that the fat person is also eating 7 extra strips of bacon each day."
I'm guessing because that's not the case? You're begging the question by showing that his claims don't work out according to the calories in/calories out model.
From the original post: "There is no significant research that shows adding exercise to an overweight person's lifestyle will significantly reduce their weight - typically just increases their appetite."
I'm guessing because that's not the case?
If you take as given the cals in/cals out model (as Taubes does, in an attempt to refute it via reducto ad absurdum), they do.
You're completely discounting the effect different foods have on insulin response as a factor in obesity. 2500 calories from carbs has a different effect on metabolism than 2500 calories from protein and fat.
The poor in India and China don't eat enough to become obese, let alone gain significant weight.
I think that the term "poverty" relates specifically to developed countries where fast food is the cheapest way for the poor to feed themselves off the dollar menu.
Very true, in my mother's generation overweight people in China were seen as 'freaks', as in circus freaks. This was even when there was enough food to feed everybody, most people remained in shape because
1. The food was whole.
2. People were very active, particularly where my mother grew up(Shanghai), mothers usually got up at 5am to get the fresh produce from markets everyday, people walked around a lot, bicycles were a luxury item.
According to USDA, the recommended (carb, fat, protein) calorie distribution is (53%, 29%, 18%). Looking at McDonald's nutrition facts, the hamburger follows this distribution pretty closely; the other sandwiches appear to skew towards fat. Even fries still only get half their calories from carbs (and almost half from fat, well above the recommended 29%). When eating out, fat is cheap.
Again, good meat and produce (raw materials for cooking) are also accessible for less than it costs to eat out.
Where do you buy your affordable meat and produce? Every time I buy raw ingredients for a meal I end up spending like $25 (plus $100 worth of my time) for one or two servings that I could've got for $15 from Applebee's.
Where do you buy your affordable meat and produce?
The grocery store (and I don't mean some specialty place like Whole Foods -- if we're talking about eating on a tight budget, something like Wal-Mart will be much more helpful).
> don't eat boxed foods or foods that went through multiple stages of processing
What's wrong with cheese, or butter? Or sauerkraut and pickles? All processed food. Also, powdered mashed potatoes and puffed rice are just conveniently preserved starch. They're perfectly healthy.
The "processed food" and "mostly plants" stuff is just marketing psychology that taps into SWPLs' inner hippie. The real diet rules aren't mystical:
* Avoid sugar, especially fructose
* Avoid vegetable oils
* Don't be afraid of saturated fat
* Prefer rice and potatoes to wheat/rye/etc
* If you're fat, try cutting out starch, but don't worry about it if you're not fat.
A couple years ago I worked on a market research contract for a food grower that tried to answer the opposite, "what does all natural mean" (or some set of synonyms)?
Turns out it's virtually impossible to define it.
Here was one of the exercises we went through:
1) Take an orange, grown in the wild without being touched in any way by the hand of man.
2) If you eat that orange, are you eating something that's "all natural"?
3) If you squeeze that orange, and drink its juice, is it still "all natural"?
4) If you strain the juice to eliminate pulp, through a handwoven cloth (or a mat of grass or some other "all natural straining device") is it still "all natural"?
5) If you heat the juice and drink it, ie cook it, is it still "all natural"?
6) How about if you heat it long enough to boil off some of the water?
7) How about long enough to boil off all of the water?
8a) What if instead of boiling you simply dry out the juice in the sun?
8b) What if in addition to boiling it, you dry the remains in the sun?
9) What about drying it in an oven?
10) Suppose I take the dry particles left and through any conceivable natural operation sort them by density? Say, putting the particles into an all natural basket and shake it vigorously until my arms are tired?
11) Now how about I remove particles of a certain density? Is the remaining product natural?
12) Now suppose I add water to the remaining sorted particles, fresh from a mountain spring.
13) Suppose I do the same (#1-12) with other plant sources?
14) Suppose I mix the results into either a mix of powders or a mix of reconstituted liquids?
This is an actual replication of a process for producing an artificial sweetener (not with fruit, but a different plant source). That sweetener is generally not called "all natural" but the process is more or less the above.
At every point in the process we haven't done anything that's not natural. There's some analogy to every step that you probably have to do with any food source to make it edible. Nobody thinks squeezing, chopping, cutting, cutting plants creates a processed food. Or straining liquids or really any of the above. We've been doing all of the above as a species since before writing.
But many people think the result of the specific combination of the above, #14, is a "processed food".
How about cheese? Most cheese, even modern cheese is just milk and bacteria in a controlled spoilage environment. As natural as dirt. And in general the result of very few steps.
Defining "processed food" from "natural food" ultimately ends up trying to set some kind of arbitrary definition delineating the two -- "processed food is any food that has undergone more than 3 processing steps" I have news, chopping and peeling fresh picked garlic takes more than 3 steps.
1) Wash the dirt from the bulb
2) Dry the bulb
3) Remove the outer layers of onion skin
4) Separate the cloves out of the bulb
5) Cut the hard connective bits
6) Peel the layers of onion skin from the cloves
7) Chop to size
Now if I include it in a recipe I'm including it in even more processing steps. I may boil it, grill it, bake it, or some other cooking process.
I may strain it from a broth if all I care about is the flavor.
Before I can actually get the garlic into my mouth, through even an elementary recipe, I've had to process it at least 8 times, likely a dozen.
"2) If you eat that orange, are you eating something that's "all natural"?
3) If you squeeze that orange, and drink its juice, is it still "all natural"?"
The In Defense of Food argument is not so much about whether or not the food is still "natural" at that point. The point is you are throwing out much of the orange, and there is probably stuff in the part you are throwing away that is good for you.
Pollan talks about how at one point a scientist thought he had isolated all of the necessary parts of nutrition: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.
Then they discovered vitamins. Oops. If you actually believed what that first scientist said, you probably died of scurvy.
So, let's take our food stuff made from proteins, fats, and carbohydrates and inject some vitamins in them! Should be all good now, right?
Except, we continue to discover stuff in the food that grows out of the ground and on trees that turns out to be good for us. (I forget the more recent examples he mentions in his book, but you get the idea.)
So your choice is basically to take the chance that the scientists have finally found all the parts of plants and animals that are good for us, synthesized or extracted them, and injected them into that box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs you are eating. Or you can just eat the actual plants and animals and be done with it.
Or you can just eat the actual plants and animals and be done with it.
You don't just grab a potato out of the ground and eat it whole. Or jump out into a field of cattle with a fork and knife ready to go. You can do that with some foods, not so much with others. If the metric is "you must be able to eat it right out of the wild with 0 processing" you're going to eat a lot of raw tomatoes and peppers and not a whole lot else.
In many cases, you have to process the food source to make it edible. Rhubarb for example has poisonous leaves that will kill you. The green bits of the tomato can surpress cardiac functions. For most animals you can't just start biting chunks out of them. You may have to remove internal organs that are inedible, bones (I don't see many paleo eaters advocating cracking open thigh bones to get at the marrow very often btw), etc.
In some cases, edible parts may contain bad stuff, pork meat for example is well known to be unsafe raw. I'm pretty sure cavemen ate pigs (or at least boar). Cow brains may contain prions. etc.
I do agree with you that food manufacture from chemical components on up is likely not complete, but there's not really much of that in the industry. Even highly "processed" foods like hotdogs or McDonald's chicken McNuggets are just ground up and cooked scrap meat and connective tissue (all paleo friendly!). They have all the stuff that's in meat anyways. The process to make imitation cheese doesn't generally fall under that kind of manufacturing process.
Many common and cheap foodstuffs also don't contain much nutrition. Vitamin fortified rice has probably improved the lives of a billion people.
People also get all kinds of scared when the chemical names for common food components are used. Should I use "salt" or "sodium chloride"? Should I avoid all foods with Monosodium Glutamate (good luck with that)?
But like anything it all just comes down to moderation. Nutmeg is great and natural, but if you eat too much of it you'll get have hallucinations and may die. Who knows what's in a clam, perhaps if you eat clams 3 times a day for a year (a completely possible scenario for a caveman) you'll have serious health problems like mercury poisoning or some other issue.
Who knows?
and there is probably stuff in the part you are throwing away that is good for you.
You may also be throwing out stuff that's very bad for you. It's all conjecture.
What Pollan actually advocates is eating a traditional diet that has been refined over centuries. He says that which one you pick doesn't matter that much.
The traditional diets of people living around the Mediterranean and people living near the Arctic circle have nothing in common, but according to Pollan, either will give you better health outcomes than a normal Western diet.
If people have been eating a certain way over a long period of time, they have probably learned to avoid the stuff that will kill or injure you, and probably have discovered foods that nutritionally complement each other, as well. (He gave examples of such complementary foods in traditional diets, which I can't remember right now.)
(He gave examples of such complementary foods in traditional diets, which I can't remember right now.)
One thing I've definitely noticed time and again is how complete traditional diets tend to be. It's amazing, thousands of years ago, with no concept at all of nutrition, people managed to put together fantastically complete (and tasty) diets.
It's amazing, thousands of years ago, with no concept at all of nutrition, people managed to put together fantastically complete (and tasty) diets.
I can't tell if you're being really subtle here, but the causality is probably reversed - people ate whatever they could get away with, and over the course of many tens of thousands of years they evolved to process that food efficiently. Anatomically modern humans evolved approximately 200,000 years ago, and agriculture was only invented 10,000 years ago. And industrially produced processed food didn't become a staple of most Westerners' diets until 65 years ago.
No I actually mean it. I've had the good fortune to travel all over the world and it continuously amazes me that no matter where I go that local traditional food, made with local ingredients, is so commonly put together in combinations that are completely nutritious (and tasty).
The skills necessary to survive on the local available food in one place don't entirely translate someplace else. Somebody had to look at a squid for the first time and decide to eat it for example. Or that the rotting month old cabbage would be a good meal.
Traditional foods are often preagrarian foods in some cases. You can find expensive wild foods restaurants in South Korea for example that serve only food you can gather in the mountains, mushrooms, pine nuts, pine needles, ferns, wild onions, etc. These are things that people cobbled together before they had any knowledge at all of nutrition and amazingly, when we look at them today with the modern eye find out that they represent a fantastically complete diet, rich in essential nutrients. In Latin America you can still find plenty of pre-Columbian cuisine with similar characteristics. And I'd wager elsewhere as well.
Put another way, why didn't they just settle on say mushrooms? How come the entire diet for a people isn't just one food? Or a combination of foods that represent a diet lacking in a certain vitamin? Amazingly, wherever you go, the traditional foods tend to make up a complete diet.
It seems a modern curse that we can gorge ourselves on singular foods and grow fat and suffer malnutrition at the same time. Only today can somebody eat hamburgers and pizza 3 times a day for years.
So, you're telling us that a couple of Slim Jims is no worse for a person than a serving of steak?
I think the poster you replied to was making the point that industrial mangling of our food likely has some detriment to our health. Sure, cheese and kraut are processed (we make both at home, btw), but they're more natural processes than, say, turning corn into corn syrup. In fact, the end products of these natural processes are often argued to be healthier (or at least offer more bioavailble/digestible nutrition) than the original material.
Look at the ingredients list of your average loaf of store-bought wheat bread. All of the continuant ingredients have been refined, had preservatives added, then re-mixed to make "bread". The list is typically a mile long! Take my wife's home-made bread, as a counter example: whole wheat flour (ground minutes before making, from home-grown wheat), salt, maybe a dash of sugar or honey, water, and our sourdough starter.
Cheese, butter, sauerkraut and pickles are all products of fermentation. Fermentation is how people preserved and enhanced the nutritional composition and digestibility of many foods. Process's like canning, freezing, refrigeration, dehydration, bleaching(flour,sugar,salt) and pasteurization, to name a few, are all examples of modern food process's that typically alter the food in some way that favors shelf life, cost or convienence over nutrient density.
This recalls a conversation I had with a highly noted doctor of nutrition at University of Colorado @ Denver.
He was the first to admit that nutrition sciences were largely confused. All of those years of studying cholestrol and various other substances in isolation had led to a ton of barely viable nutrition advice that didn't seem to work in practice.
He has come to believe that the research continues to point in a single direction. It's more or less what the OP said, with a bit of twist. The problem isn't processing in the traditional sense... it's processing in the industrial sense. Modern processed foods contain a whole litany of preservatives that seem to have a profound impact on food in two ways.
1. It often more or less removes much of the health benefit of actually eating. Vitamins, minerals, and a whole range of amino acids magically disappear. Post-processing foods tend to be left high in carbs and so called "empty calories". This is why, in his mind, McDonalds and the like are so damaging. It's why TV dinners (even the 'healthy' ones) are terrible for you. By eating more "whole" foods (as the OP suggested) you avoid so much of this.
2. Those preservatives themselves trigger body processes that cause all sorts of strangeness. Why can you drink Coke Zero everyday and not lose weight (or Stevia, Splenda, etc..)? Because your body has a natural metabolic reaction to the sweetness. It's still calorie-in/calorie-out, your just sabotaging the calorie out. The prevailing theory about this has something to do with energy storage back in our caveman days. When eating sweet fruits and the like, our bodies would go into energy storage mode for the coming winter. In those days fruits represented one of the few times that we would experience a calorie surplus. Apparently many common preservatives trigger that same response.
For the last couple of years I've essentially followed the OP's advice. I eat as close to "whole" as I can. I eat quite a bit more meat than he's advertising, but I try to make sure it as unprocessed as possible. I eat a lot of whole vegetables and a bit of fruit. Nuts and the like are a staple. I eat fewer refined carbs, but I don't necessarily try to stay far away from them either.
I'm healthier, fitter, and all around in better shape then I ever have been.
Of course, the experts have a better sense of why these advices work (that's why I trust Marion Nestle's advice more than Michael Pollan's). You're right, I meant processed in the industrial sense (you can consider tofu processed out of that context).
Just imagine what primitive man would eat. He would spend most of his days eating what grew from the ground and when they finally hunted down meat, they would eat their catch as a group
Ugh, I hate this concept. Primitive man also died in their 20s and 30s. No thanks.
I'm pretty sure this is false. As I understand it hunters and gatherers lived about as long as we do. It was only with the invention of agriculture and the kind of societies (and diseases) it enabled, that our average lifespan took a nosedive which we are pulling out of now, thanks to modern medicine.
It's relatively easy to test though. You can look at life expectancy figures of hunter gathering cultures (which are a useful proxy for pre-agricultural cultures) that don't deal with modern issues, or didn't deal with them at some point that we have pretty good data on. For example the life expectancy in Papau new Guinea was flat lined at just over 30 until about 1940.
You can see similar trends in other non-agrarian societies.
Doesn't infant mortality greatly skew life expectancy? I thought I remembered reading that it's the single biggest thing we've done to increase life expectancy, meaning if a hunter-gatherer reaches adulthood, they don't have an especially short lifespan compared to a developed country.
Absolutely. But the premise we're testing here essentially boils down to "we should do things like cavemen because it's natural, because it's natural it's what we evolved to do, since it's what we evolve to do it'll be healthier"
The other component of that is of course that we're all fat and out of shape today because we eat foods that cavemen never had access to.
One measure of health is of course weight, but so is life expectancy. If we follow a life-plan where we're around some normal weight but die at 30 I'm not sure that's a great plan. We evolved to die around 30, most research into aging agrees with this (some say ~40), and that's "natural" I suppose, but I think I reject that notion that we should only do things in the modern world that fit what we were required to do a million years ago because it's what we evolved to cope with and eek out 3 or 4 decades of life.
Another is infant mortality, we evolved to reproduce pretty fast because we evolved to maintain population with lots of dead infants. We also evolved to produce slightly more males than females since men die faster, which is okay since fewer men can reproduce with more women.
We also evolved to be able to bear children in our early teens, to grow beards, hair and nails, and to have bad eyesight in some large percentage of the population. Should we lower the age of consent to 13? Not shave or cut our hair or nails ever and not wear glasses?
I'm not sure any of these notions work today, but extending the central argument out:
If we should eat like our ancient ancestors did since we evolved to eat like that and therefore it must be healthy, should we not live like our ancient ancestors did since therefore that must be equally valid by the "it's all natural so it's good" principle?
I think you're missing my point: if it's infant mortality that keeps average life expectancy down, it's false to say that "caveman" diets are optimized for only aging to 30. I think it's closer to the truth to say that cavemen either died at birth, or lived a natural lifespan closer to modern man than an average would indicate. So you can't discount a "caveman" diet because average life expectancy was (and in some cultures still is) 30 years old.
And I think it's a straw man to say that accepting a "caveman" or "hunter gatherer" diet means we need to accept -every- aspect of "primitive" life.
Even if there is a 0% infant mortality rate, if everybody dies around 30, the average life expectancy can still be 30. Like I said, this is easy to test, there are still quite a few hunter gatherer cultures around, and they aren't exactly struggling to deal with an elderly care problem. This is pretty well studied. What you are supplying is conjecture, or perhaps an interesting hypothesis.
"I think it's closer to the truth to say that cavemen...lived a natural lifespan closer to modern man." Test it! I honestly don't know the answer, the data I managed to find in 10 minutes of searching says that hypothesis is incorrect -- but as you rightly point out my data includes infant mortality in the averages (I believe). But if you can find data that says "excluding infant mortality, pre-agrarian cultures have an average lifespan of 70-80 years" I'll be more than happy to accept that.
According to the entry above, there's a measure called e5 that should supply the relevant figures.
And I think it's a straw man to say that accepting a "caveman" or "hunter gatherer" diet means we need to accept -every- aspect of "primitive" life.
I'm not really attacking the diet per se, many of the recipes are actually pretty tasty and are generally pretty healthy. I'm attacking the faulty line of reasoning given as to why one should do this.
"it seems to be pretty healthy" is wishy washy, but okay
"You should eat this way because evolution made you to eat this way therefore it's healthy" is not, it present a long chain of reasoning that falls apart at almost every link, but it's presented as a kind of science, which it's not by this reasoning.
As someone who went from being pretty overweight to really fit simply by following a policy of eating no sugar or grains and as much deliciously fatty meat, eggs and cheese as I want, I have strong skepticism towards the conventional wisdom about "healthy" foods.
You only made a case against the lipid hypothesis, which Michael Pollan also criticized in his book, so you have fallen into his trap of eating healthy and didn't even know it.
Meh? I buy store-brand bacon, eggs, cheap beef, and Vermont cheddar. When I treat myself, it's to a $12/lb steak (on sale at $6). I mostly don't eat vegetables aside from the odd mixed-green salad when I'm in the mood. I don't buy mechanically separated and prepackaged meat only because it either tastes worse, or costs more.
I eat whatever's cheap and tasty, as much as I want, mostly meat— the literal antithesis of Pollan's catchphrase. If I've fallen into his trap, it's a very cunningly hidden one.
In seriousness, there was an adjustment period of "intestinal irregularity" when I first switched, presumably due intestinal flora etc. adapting from substantial amounts of carbs and fiber to all fats and protein. These days I'd say I'm on the infrequent end of normal, pooping once every day or two, which I think is pretty typical for paleo folks.
If I do end up eating a substantial amount of carbs, usually at a restaurant or dinner party, it does often give me the runs later, which is my primary reason for strictly avoiding grains moreso than health or philosopical concerns. And if I drink too much (which is easy to do when you eat low-carb) all bets are off.
Could not agree more. I never got in shape until I found a workout which I loved and could not wait to get back to (ironically, it was crossfit which the author calls out as "sadistic").
All of a sudden I even enjoyed planning my diet just on the chance that it would make me strong/faster in the next workout.
So, yes, like all in things in life, put the right incentives there (and just getting fit/healthy, obviously doesn't cut it for millions of Americans) and make it fun and it's a piece of cake.
And for those of you who haven't found your muse yet, I urge you to give crossfit a try. It lets your inner 5 year old run wild. You'll get to run/jump/climb/swing/throw heavy things until you crumble in a sweaty heap at the end. It is pure unadulterated fun. Plus, fat will run screaming from your body (but that's just a happy side effect).
I'm guessing the bit about sadism was added by the headline writer, since a lot of what the author describes is textbook Crossfit. Besides, isn't it more strictly speaking masochistic?
That said I'm currently taking a break from it due to a jumper's knee that won't go away.
As a squash player, one thing I hear often, and also tell people myself is: You don't play squash to get fit, you get fit to play squash.
It's a bit opposite of what you are saying, in the sense that you want to do alternative/strength training next to your sport to improve your game. This mentality and way of training has radically improved my own game the last year.
Book your flight for the end of November. Round trip to Bangkok before the peak will run you $600-$800 from the west coast. Make your way to Tonsai and negotiate yourself a good monthly rate for a bungalow. If you show up before the main tourist season and plan to stay until March, you can usually get them down to around $200/month.
Even with all the Beer Chang and Massuman Gai you can handle, you still won't be able to spend more than five grand all in.
Having travelled both Indonesia and Thailand I am surprised you mentioned Thailand as a good spot for Surfing. I just found a lot more surfers in Bali and on the Gili Islands.
Food was probably comparable in price, but a Bintang being slightly more expensive than an 80Baht Chang :)
Not sure how you got that from what I wrote. As you correctly noticed, Thailand has roughly the same surf potential as Iowa. Possibly Montana. Unless you hit it on just the right day in 2004.
It does, however has some truly amazing rock climbing on the beaches in Krabi Provence. That's why I spend every other winter there.
"I have two obsessions in life: Rock Climbing and Surfing. I'm pretty good at the first, and borderline hopeless at the other, but I'm committed to the point where I've arranged my life so that I can travel for months at a time to pursue one or the other each year."
I think I took from your original post that you do both, hence my confusion. Regardless, congrats on the pursuit, its something I am very envious of!
It's good that you live in a place that's conducive to significant physical activity and have the means to take advantage, but the gym is the top option for most situations (access + expense).
Every time there's an article on exercise or diet, there's a pileon of people promoting their own beliefs, with no apparent sign that they read the original link.
How do you address the fact that your point is actively contradicted by the article? Did you even know your point is actively contradicted by the article? I'm not even saying that proves you're wrong; what bothers me is that you just ran off to post your own stuff with no apparent engagement of the topic. That's not a recipe for learning anything.
The author talks about his experience or getting fit by going to a gym and lifting free weights. I countered with my approach, which revolves around setting your life up so that fitness is merely a side effect.
I'm not contradicting anything that he says. I used to lift weights in much the manner that he describes, and it'd be difficult to deny that it works.
The thing that he misses is motivation. Most people simply have none of it. I certainly don't for weight lifting.
In my experience, climbing rocks and surfing, while possibly suboptimal as workouts, will absolutely get you into great shape. And they have the added benefit of providing their own motivation.
In my experience, climbing rocks and surfing, while possibly suboptimal as workouts, will absolutely get you into great shape. And they have the added benefit of providing their own motivation.
Eh, I don't find rock climbing at all enjoyable. But I love running marathons. I've even been known to put in 22 miles _on a treadmill_. Different strokes for different folks.
He said to take up a sport that you love. Rock climbing is my passion as well but most certainly not for everyone. I am in much better shape now that I am a rock climber than before because of two reasons I do it a lot, and any outside trip is a hike with heavy gear. I honestly cannot stop thinking about my next climb and that is the kind of thing that will bring you fitness as a side effect.
If you love (insert sport/fit activity that you cannot stop thinking about) then do that and be super fit because you love it. That was the op's point.
22 miles on a treadmill. Talk about boring, I do not understand how you can manage this. Now running outside is another story entirely but stationary bikes/treadmills/elipticals I cannot understand.
Same thing I recommended above and in my initial comment:
Find something fun to do that just happens to get you in shape.
I suspect they have basketball hoops, raquetball courts, swimming pools and Ironic Kickball leagues in your home town (and probably a climbing gym too). Go have some fun!
Tampa is a vast, flat, suburban wasteland of sprawl; but there's a fantastic climbing gym built into an old warehouse 5 miles from my work, martial arts studios everywhere, public parks with bodyweight exercise stations in circuits, etc.
Let's bear in mind that the author is a guy who went to several different specialists across disciplines. I'm don't think he's talking about a lack of motivation - I think it's more about trying to continue to be active in a healthy way.
The author's incentive for going to the gym was so that he could go climb or surf or ski or whatever and be both "fit" and injury-free. It's a critical distinction. There was probably a time when all he had to do was go out and make those activities a part of his existence, but I would wager that as he has aged and had different responsibilities come up just making that fitness a side effect wasn't possible. Instead, he probably tried to go ski X times a year, but got hurt the first time, and the subsequent trips never happened. He probably tried to go climbing weekly, but something tweaked and suddenly he was only climbing monthly. When it's harder to go out and run 5 miles like you used to, you're less inclined to go run 5 miles, and might slip to 3. When 3 is eventually harder than before, you might just not run at all.
I think the article is speaking more to concerns as you age and you can no longer get away as easily with just participating in the sport. Rob Shaul and his mtnathlete.com and militaryathlete.com sites address those problems quite directly, and unfortunately it involves a lot of painful work that is mostly gym based. He's designing the mtnathlete workouts to help skiiers stay healthy and be ready when the season arrives. He's training military personnel to be more durable and harder to kill. To explain, the site is a few years old, but when he started it it was as Crossfit was just starting to ramp up in popularity. Despite the advertising that it makes you better at everything athletic, Crossfit is usually all about Crossfit - there are Crossfit games now and it is in many ways its own sport now. Rob's site was very specifically geared to mountain athletes who wanted to perform their sport at a high level possible with less injury. It's not a gym program just for the sake of being a gym program.
There was a time when I could go out and make my life about doing whatever sport it may be - climbing, running, basketball, etc. - and recover quickly and easily from the activity. Now my body has aged a little, I sit in a chair too much, and suddenly a small nagging injury never goes away, and I'm less motivated to go run several miles or play basketball or climb. By incorporating durability training like the article discusses, I'm more able to avoid those prolonged periods of inactivity and keep motivation up.
For what it's worth, the author of the article is the real deal, has written one of the best books on Yosemite climbing and a memoir of a year in which he surfed N Cal every day. It's not like he's some wide eyed dilettante who has never been outside.
To prove your point, I will offer my own belief. Actually, I am not posting it here because it supports your observation but vice-versa, because your observation supports my point.
You're right: there are always people crawling out of the woodwork suggesting one approach or the other. Whenever someone gets evangelical about something, it proves that it's working for them, for the moment at least. How else could they think that their mundane and unoriginal approach is "the" solution that will change lives? There are evangelists for everything from walking an hour a day on a treadmill to rock climbing. Ergo, almost anything works for some people sometimes. However, no new or old exercise idea has had widespread acceptance and staying power. Therefore, every idea fails for most people, either immediately or eventually.
Conclusion: Certainly educate yourself about all the options and their benefits, but right now, do whatever you find compelling right now. Don't worry about whether it will for someone else, or whether it will work for you next week. Just do what works for you right now.
For example, I thought I was bored with kettlebells (lately I've been trying to learn Olympic lifting) but one night last week for some reason I didn't want to leave my apartment, so I did a kettlebell workout. That worked for me on that particular night. For some people, that wouldn't work at all, because they like to have every workout scientifically planned out: exercises, reps, weights, etc. Sticking to the plan is what motivates them, so they would have dealt with the situation differently.
Some people really get off on the idea of having a "treat" occasionally. For them, maybe they can motivate themselves by signing up for a triathlon in some exotic location. Or they might take a day off and visit a national park, or treat themselves to a beautiful evening wandering around with a friend, splurging on a show and a nice dinner downtown. (Two or three hours of walking may not be challenging, but health-wise, it beats the hell out of sitting at home.) Or maybe they would sign up for an expensive activity such as riding lessons.
It all depends on your situation. Do you have outdoor recreation nearby? Do you live in a walkable or bikeable city? Can you afford Crossfit or an expensive gym? Do you have a garage where you can put a few hundred dollars worth of weight equipment? Do you have enough money to become an equestrian? Do you get off on consistency, or is boredom your bane? Does measurement of your progress motivate you or demotivate you? Do you like to geek out over your fitness, or relax and let your mind wander? Do you like it if your workout activities express your trendiness or your wealth and status, or would you prefer a "no bullshit" workout at a grimy gym surrounded by tattooed guys in sweat pants?
There's no answer that fits everyone all the time. Different people will thrive with different choices, and next month you may be a different person than you are now. Just do whatever works for you right now. (If that means forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do, well, that is a paradox. Best to just do it and not think about it.)
Agree that you must find what works best for you in terms of preferences, enjoyment, and practicality.
It's also important to keep in mind timing and the training cycle (break down, recover, supercompensation) as the author points out. If you really want to "optimize" your training, or at least take steps in that direction, doing the same thing over long periods of time will result in a longtime plateau. I think the way most people manage their fitness - do the same lifts at the gym or the same 45 minute routine on the treadmill, for years in a row - results in many people treading in plateau zones and generally underwhelmed by their fitness despite putting in the time.
I don't think the two are _necessarily_ contradictory.
The article says, essentially, that a basic strength and conditioning program is the way to go. The GP says that picking a sport that makes you fit is the way.
To add another opinion, that ties the two together, to the mix: think of the fittest people you know. To a person, they're probably obsessed with their chosen sport (which may be soccer, or bodybuilding, or weightlifting, or running, or ...). These people live and breathe their sport, and when they're not doing it or training for it, they're thinking of how to get better at it.
At some point, thinking of how they can get better at it is probably going to lead them to doing, well, a basic strength and conditioning program. That's because squats and presses and the rest of what the article outlines are still about the best the exercise world can come up with for almost all the athletes out there.
(For what it's worth, I'd strongly second the recommendations of the article for Starting Strength and Olympic-Style Weightlifting. They're both fantastic books.)
Counting on your regular activities and sports to keep you fit is likely to result in eventual injury. It does not provide any reserve strength to ward off various strains and stresses. No matter what else you do, a weight training program is very helpful. especially as you get older and need more consistent exercise to keep your strength and endurance from deteriorating. Note that preventing injuries when you are younger will also be a great help as you get older.
Usually these folks' discussions are more interesting than the original article.
I value hn because it has a variety of quite interesting individuals. Somehow some percentage have interesting take on physical fitness and physical culture - I have talk movement classes professionally in between hacker gigs and find the hn's folks' idea interesting and challenging.
Fitness is a very individual thing. If talking about individual experience with it is evil, give me more evil, please.
My intention wasn't to be literal. I was really curious what kind of food is available over there and what would you recommend eating. Not everyone eats Chinese, Thai, Mexican or other foreign cuisines.
Even better, take up a daily activity as a matter of routine that gets you fit as a side effect.
I locked up my care for a summer and biked to the coffee shop and grocery store every day.Before long I was taking 5 mile bike rides on the spur of the moment. I lost about 35 pounds that summer. Unfortunately, I live somewhere that has a winter which makes biking impossible. I should have switched to cross country skiing or something I guess... if only they groomed ski paths on the side of the street.
Winter doesn't make biking impossible, just challenging. Get a basic aluminum mountain bike, put studded tires on it, and dress pretty much the same as you would for skiing (but with right pant cuff held down somehow). Make sure to clean salt off the bike, or you'll have to replace components more often.
Way more here: http://www.icebike.org/ and here: http://bicycles.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/winter?so...
This is a one sided view of fitness. e.g. there is zero focus on cardio. Would be interesting to see one of these guys do a light 5 mile run. Look into real world training: running, hard hiking with a pack, mountain biking, swimming/surfing. These types of exercise have been the most rewarding for me in terms of skeletal, muscle and cardio fitness.
The only thing I agree with in the article is that cardio machines in the gym are a waste of time.
The only thing I agree with in the article is that cardio machines in the gym are a waste of time.
Not sure this is really true or that it matters. A 5 mile run on the treadmill at an x minute pace is the same as a 5 mile run outside at an x minute pace. Advantages of the treadmill include being able to keep a given pace without making any particular mental effort. Advantages of being outside is that it's not boring.
Hmm, well it's more subtle than that. Running on a "real" surface, that is constantly changing gradient and direction, works a lot of ancillary muscles for stability and balance that you don't get on a treadmill. The cardio workout might be the same. But if you trained for a Marathon only on a treadmill, you'd be in for a bit of a surprise when you tried a real one. Without the core strength you'd lose your form, your running would be less efficient, you'd get exhausted much more quickly.
The other thing I've noticed is that when running on a treadmill, it may seem like your legs are making roughly the same motion as real running, but you're not pushing yourself forward, just upward. Your legs definitely don't have to work as hard pushing your body around.
My girlfriend is currently training for a half marathon and was told to never ever run on the treadmill with it set flat, so she goes with a fairly decent incline (not running up hill, but definitely should get some resistance) the entire time at a minimum.
maybe I'm in a minority, but I've always found the way the treadmill cuts short my naturally long stride at any reasonable pace to require far more body adjustment than minor undulations in the ground (which I adjust for naturally and subconsciously, without worrying that I'm going to misjudge the pace the machine fixes for me)
Suffice to say I strongly prefer the real surface.
Depends on where you live. A hilly area can kick your ass a lot harder than a treadmill, but my current neighborhood is flat and it compares pretty evenly to a treadmill run.
Running on the ground you push yourself forward. On a treadmill the amount of work you are doing can vary quite a bit by technique (ie. how much contact you are making with the treadmill) because you are not actually propelling yourself.
Sure, your benefit is still proportional to your effort, but if you look at the odometer and think that you've ran 10 miles just because 10 miles of belt passed underneath you, then you really need to run outside once in a while.
The fact that you are upvoted more than me shows me that too many people spend too much theorizing and not enough time actually trying it out. Go spend some time on a treadmill and some time running outside. It very well could be that if you had a perfect tailwind (which doesn't happen) then it would be similar, but I wouldn't bet on it (the surfaces are different for starters). My point was that running on a treadmill is not the same, and that's irrefutable.
That's not at all true. In addition to the lack of variation in stride that gaius points out, it's almost impossible to not cheat on a treadmill and let it do some of the work for you, and there's no wind resistance.
Treadmills have their place - for warming up a bit before some other kind of exercise, or as a replacement when the weather or traveling keeps you indoors - but they just aren't equivalent to real running. 5 minutes on a trail will tell you that.
No particular mental effort beyond that needed to abstain from committing suicide due to the extreme monotony of a treadmill run.
That said, the treadmill can be a fine tool for training. It allows you to totally ignore weather conditions, and actually for speed workouts it can have the advantage of forcing you to stay on pace. A common rule of thumb is that a 1% incline on the treadmill compensates for the lack of wind resistance.
I can't stand the damn things myself, but there are runners, including some guys I know personally, who train exclusively using the treadmill and still do well in races up to marathon distance (I've never heard of any ultramarathoners who train exclusively on the treadmill).
That's interesting, because personally I find running outside boring whereas on a treadmill I can use the time & distance readouts to help me stay motivated (e.g I'll just keep going until the timer gets to the next multiple of 5 minutes... ok, now I'll keep going until the next whole kilometre... and so on). Each to their own, I guess.
I get FAR more tired running 2 real miles than 2 "miles" on a treadmill.
On a treadmill, both of your feet are in the air for a significant amount of time, and you're not being carried backwards. Yet, I bet that distance still gets counted.
I once trained for a 5k race by doing just squats. I beat most of my "cardio" friends. When you start squatting above your BW then you'll be just as out of breath after 8 reps as after a full-on 5k run. Your heart will beat just as fast, and youll be sweating about the same.
Also squats will improve your bone density.
Don't be fooled that suffers like Laird get their physique from surfing. All of them dead lift and squat.
The best thing about squats would be that they "insure" your knees for old age.
Do them right and they are easily the best exercise ever invented IMHO.
Squats, dead lifts, bench presses, those are the Big Three. That's what you absolutely need to do, and if you do them it is where 90% of your results will come from. It's also the only exercises you need to ever do.
Having said that, if you "like" some other exercise, like cable chest presses, dumbbell flyes, standing barbell bicep curls, crunches, or whatever, then fine do them (I do), but do so knowing that the Big Three should be the core of your exercise, and whatever else is complimentary.
I would do chinups/pullups/pushups/dumbell-presses instead of bench press. If you have long arms then bench press can lead to shoulder injuries as you approach 1xBW if you dont do it right.
Of those, only the dumbbell presses are even an alternative to the bench press.
Dumbbell presses are fine. But bench presses are better, and if you do them, you don't need to do dumbbell presses (but do, if you like them, I do too, as a complimentary exercise).
Injuries are nothing to scoff at of course, and you should always make sure to not put on more weight than you can safely manage. Regardless of exercise method.
I was trying to suggest other very useful exercises instead of bench presses.
You need to do pullups if you do benchpresses else you'll have a big chest and weak back muscles. This will pull your shoulders in. And which will eventually lead to injuries. Yo
In fact I've increased my bench by just working my back.
Lots of people only work the "mirror muscles" (ie ones you can see when you check yourself out in the mirror) and this leads to shoulder injuries.
You should include (weighted) pullups too, as something supplemental. This will develop the antagonistic (opposite) muscles as the bench press, and help prevent the hunched-shoulders-overdeveloped-pecs problem a lot of people get.
They're great, better than the complimentary ones I listed, but not strictly necessary if you do the Big Three.
The areas you mention are covered by the dead lifts, especially shoulders and upper back. The bicep is a relatively tiny muscle that we tend to over train because of its "reputation" so to speak, but at a beginner to intermediate level, it really does get enough from just the dead lifts. You might want to re-evaluate that when you can dead lift at least 2x your body weight though.
The bicep isn't the primary muscle being used, but it isn't relaxed during the exercise either, and at a beginner to intermediate level, it simply isn't necessary to target the bicep specifically. That's what makes these compound exercises better than others; they involve lots of different muscles other than the primary ones.
Interestingly enough some former USSR long distance runners used squats as a form of substitute during winter training (if it was too cold to do long outdoor runs).
Thing is that 5k is really really really short distance for a human. I honestly can not be bothered with gym anymore so I just run about 10k a day with longer weekend runs, 5 times a week.
I mostly exercise with a barbell, including snatch and clean & jerk. It's ridiculous to claim a barbell workout will give you much aerobic endurance. I also do cycling and I assure you barbell fitness does not much carry over. It's very different metabolic pathways. I've also found the carry-over from weights to sub 400m sprint speed to be pretty weak. Come on. Barbells are not magic.
I think a lot of the comments here are missing the point of this article.
Free weights are vital for muscle strength, mass and edurance. That doesn't mean free weights take the place of your other activities such as skiing or mountain climbing. That doesn't mean that you cut out cardio, that's something else entirely, even though some people work on cardio in the gym along with strength training.
Free weights are also great for building the entire structure of your body. There is nothing which can stress the major muscles of the legs, bones and supporting muscle groups like throwing a huge weight on your shoulders and squatting that weight multiple times. Swimming, isometrics and all that other stuff won't do it. Machines also don't do this because you don't have weight to stabilize in both directions. The power move of the squat is to push upwards with your legs but you still have to lower that huge weight in an orderly down movement to start the exercise.
Further, you should eat well and wait for your muscles to recover, the optimal time to retrain is during 'overcompensation', 40-60 hours for endurance and 48-72 hours for power, strength and mass.
As well, you should exercise 'weak muscles' to avoid injury, for people sitting in front of computers a lot it really helps to exercise the back muscles.
Actually it kinda reads exactly like cutting out cardio for the most part, though admittedly I only skimmed through it. Perhaps it isn't communicating its point very well?
Personally I heavily favour cardiovascular fitness over muscular fitness, and would choose the former in a heartbeat (ahaha) if I had to pick one. Currently I cycle and do astanga, though I plan on adding some low-rep strength training to the mix too.
The article doesn't really touch on cardio much. The general idea of the article is that in the gym all you really need is the basics of free weights. That's the best you can get out of the gym for the other activities in your life which may include all the cardio you need. There's lots of ways to get cardio, but everyone would do well to follow the same basic free-weight program like he lays out.
Here's another anecdote: No lifting weights, only running & cycling and lately swimming. Pretty much the opposite of what the article is arguing. Since I started this I'm doing I'm doing fairly well, six pack included. I went to the gym once, and saw bulked up guys getting 5 pull ups. So I tried that and could easily do 30. Lifting weights may make you look like a bodybuilder, but are you really fit?
Sure, they do weigh a lot more than I do. Isn't that part of the fair comparison? You don't give a cyclist or runner a backpack with weights in it because it's "unfair" that he weighs less than the other cyclist/runner. These guys were probably training pull ups every week at least, so it's on their home territory. Yet their training is less effective than running & cycling. For the vast majority of activities, performance relative to body weight is the interesting measure, not absolute weight lifted. I'm just saying that if lifting weights is so much better than other forms of training, why weren't they able to do pull ups much better?
My second point is that yes, this is an anecdote. So is the article. Don't take either as a scientific inquiry.
And in a rock lifting competition they would win easily. I don't see your point. You pick an arbitrary metric that you happen to be good at and declare victory.
As it stands, all you've done is point out that there are different tasks and depending on your target task the ideal body composition and training routine differs.
If you want to be good at pullups you should probably let all your leg muscles atrophy and just build lats and biceps.
If you should do that then I am certainly doing it wrong by running and cycling and letting my arm muscles atrophy. Sure, they'd win a rock lifting competition. And if weight lifting is so good, then they should win a pull-up competition, since that's also what they're training for and it's not what I'm training for by virtually only using my legs. My point being: take this article with a huge grain of salt and train for real fitness not for how much kg you can lift. The easiest way to improve that is to become very fat.
When I was going to the gym (old school) three times a week I couldn't do a single pull up. Once I quit in two weeks or so I could do my usual slack ass five pull ups.
Funny thing is that I still could only do 10-20 pushups but they were effortless, completely different then at the time I was slacking.
The article mentions the four basic muscular aptitudes: strength, power, muscle mass, and muscular endurance. In your case it's about muscular endurance, while in the case of those bulked up guys it's probably about strength and muscle mass. What I'm trying to say is that you're comparing apples to oranges.
"Fitness" is defined relative to the task you want to accomplish. For most sports and athletes, if you are fit for that sport, you are "fit" in the sense that you are healthy. But athletes training for different sports may have vastly different abilities.
I think it's also worth noting that not all weight training has the goal of "looking like a bodybuilder."
Are you just taking this sample from a random time you looked at someone in the gym? There's a very good chance that these "bulked up" guys were near the end of their workout or have already heavily fatigued their back somehow. Either that, or they probably had a lot of bodyfat in which case obviously body weight exercises for reps wouldn't be their strong suit.
As someone who just tried to start this kind of thing (heavy squat/deadlift every couple of days) and hurt my lower back pretty good, I just don't know about this advice.
That is why all the training programs tell you to start out lifting light (even just the bar by itself) and gradually add weight over time as your technique improves. If you use common sense and follow the guides you won't get hurt.
Both are too easy to hurt yourself. This is why, for example, why deadlifts are generally not recommended for professional athletes. For example, notice Kobe doesn't do deadlifts: http://www.nbaplayerworkouts.com/kobe-bryant
I tend to find them a lot safer. The weight used is a lot less and is much more forgiving of improper back posture. With that said, for beginners, I do think that the Power Clean is more dangerous. More places to make a mistake. But for an ahlete with strength training background, deadlift is more dangerous, I think largely due to the weight. I've seen too many people with what looked like perfect form hurt their back.
I have a back injury from weightlifting in high school, so I view deads (and the entire "olympic lifts for desk jockeys" meme) with suspicion. However, I think people mainly get in trouble because they try to do too much weight, too soon.
Then you did the exercises in bad form. Years ago my fitness condition was like the article described: little-girl weak. My back and my neck ached a lot after coding sessions. Fast-forward until now doing squats, dead lifts, presses three times a week for 3 months I am much stronger, can run 2x longer and the pain has completely gone away.
At first i followed Stronglift 5x5's advice: start with the bar only, concentrate on proper form for at least 2 weeks and increase the load slightly for each workout. I'm also lucky that there are sport students working as tutors at my university gym. They are taught proper (olympic) weight lifting so I asked them to correct my form if I did the exercises wrong. After that it's like riding a bicycle, once learned you will never forget how to ride.
See, but I had done it before - 3/4 years ago I was squatting 315 for 10 reps, so either my form was fine back then and degraded somehow or it was never good and I just got away with it because I was young and in shape.
Either way, the article completely glosses over the "oh, by the way if you do this wrong you will ruin your shit" aspect of squats and deadlifts, which is a pretty compelling argument for machines in my book.
My personal experience (which includes a lovely meniscus blowout during squats) is that even given perfect form, once you get up to heavy weights (2x-3x bodyweight for deads and squats) you are starting to push the limits of your body and need to realize that occasional injury is part of the total picture.
That said, I still stay away from machines. I feel even if you're working with light weights, the balance factor of free weights adds so much more to the workout.
I swear by bodyweight-only resistance / circular strength training. Currently doing TacFit -- despite their ridiculous hard-sell marketing which is uselessly and pointlessly "spec ops" and warrior-themed (I won't link as I'm not affiliated other than a legit happy user). But there are more body-weight approaches than that one. Google circular strength training / CST and much cheaper than buying the TacFit videos would be getting a used paperback copy of "You are your own gym".
It's body-weight only, unlike gyms no machines, unlike crossfit no other weights.
BENEFIT: keep travelling without buying equipment you don't want to carry in your luggage. Don't maintain x gym memberships around the world.
It burns fat (don't really need that too much yet) faster and more efficiently in less time than hours doing aerobic running / swimming / cycling would. Aerobic exercises may be good for heart and lungs, but for calory burning they're laughable.
BENEFIT: muscle building and calory burning in one workout.
(Of course, if you wanna look like The Hulk you'll need to have weights at least kettlebell dumbell or indian clubs, daily protein counting and all the bodybuilding stuff. BUT you will look incredibly impressive with just bodyweight / Tacfit after only 20-30 days of good form, and it only gets better from there -- you even retain a good amount of the goodness after pausing from it up to 2 months afterwards, which a longer hospital attendance may force upon you).
No rep-counting, time-under-tension matters. This matches your bodily clockworks. Your muscles don't count reps either. Time under tension, whether you only get 2 reps under perfect form (important) or 20.
BENEFIT: no counting, just stopwatch.
There are no off-days, you cycle through 4 consecutive days (no intensity day 1: 20 mins, low intensity day 2: 20 mins, moderate intensity day 3: 40 mins, high intensity day 4: 40 mins) all the time. After 4x7 days, it is time to level up, adding sophistication, more challenging movements etc. to keep the body from adapting. TacFit in my view is a pretty unique mix of exercises and movements recombining elements of martial arts, yoga, classical bodyweight exercises and more, that help you on joint mobility, flexibility, core strength, muscle building, posterior improvement and both injury prevention and proofing -- all in a pre-defined package that will last you 9 months in a row without having to customize, modify or tweak the program. Afterwards, add weights, take 5 days off and start from scratch, mix or match, etc.
BENEFIT: minimum time investment gets you results in all areas that matter, including but not limited to mere appearance and looks.
Boy I sound like a marketer but this is really hacker-friendly, entrepreneur-friendly, productive-but-time-pressed-busy-person friendly. It revolves around so much research and experimentation done by the coaches who composed this after decades of experience. They're on Facebook, real people giving sensible advice to everyone and anyone dropping by asking questions. They get 70-80 year old people incredibly fit that couldn't survive neither a gym nor a crossfit session. (But rest assured their exercises are not granny material, they will kick your butt no matter your stage of physical development.) I'm seriously impressed with their stuff. You can browse my past comments here over the last 3 years, I'm not usually writing marketing copy for commercial digital goods around here at all. So this is really simply "everything I need to know about fitness" and I really do think it's the most hacker-suitable option out there.
Yes the shady-looking site is the one ... I know it's just a horrible ridiculous "spec-ops / warrior-themed" silly uber landing page. But the sports / education / science bits behind it are sound and a lot of effort, expertise and coaching experience went into the videos. My guess is that this guy tried hard to be his own marketer or hired some "ebook sales copy pro" or his cousin to do the overall presentation. It looks shady but isn't one bit once you get to the actual contents.
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[ 6.7 ms ] story [ 949 ms ] threadIf you just learn this 'fact', then some of the facts you know about fitness will of necessity be true, consistency willing.
That is to say, fitness + good eating = many years of happy hacking
The problem is that it takes time and is boring. I don't care if it means I live a few years longer since I will be too old and infirm to be able to hack.
Besides, the energy benefits right now and the impact that has on how much you can hack is far more easily noticed than the potential lifespan differences.
That's what you'd say at least if /r/fitness is anything like /fit/ on 4chan.
It just takes too much energy to go hard enough to achieve big things, I wouldn't even consider it practical if you don't have some degree of physical fitness.
Stuff like Muay Thai and Karate's pretty good too.
We do. A lot. Because we're not sitting in our parent's basements eating pizza and chugging mountain dew, we're not hacking the gibson and we're not sweaty, unbathed, pimply losers.
We're motivated, we're not planning to die anytime soon, we're concerned with being able to do things, we're social, we're active and we're sick of the stereotypes.
I'm going to make a massive assumption that your sarcasm was intended to hide the fact that you yourself are ashamed of your fitness. You can't hide behind your profession, your job or your peers. You are the reason you are unfit, unhealthy, eat badly and don't exercise. There truly is no-one else to blame.
But since you're here I assume you have a desire to change the world somehow, so I truly hope you're able to get past any shame and fear you may feel and do something about your problem.
If a feeling of inadequacy is not the problem, they you need to socialize more with hackers... Being a slob in the basement went out the window with the Apple Lisa and Gen X having hair.
Now if you want that thats perfectly alright, but I at least only want to spend as little time as possible caring about my body and as little time as possible with normal people since both things are utterly boring.
You do have a point. Conformity is not the way. But, at the same time, I'm sad you feel those things are boring. Allow me to explain.
I used to be in your shoes, at least in the fitness aspect. I was a bit of a curmudgeon who'd figured life out at age 24 and decided that I'd be happy programming for, well, ever. That worked well until about age 27, when it started to wear thin. Deadlines, feature creep, a billion new technologies...who cares? It was losing its luster quickly. When I turned 28, I came down with carpal tunnel-like symptoms stemming from an overuse injury. I had to leave my job to give my body time to heal. I learned the hard way that I had to respect my body, and respect myself more.
The time I've put in on fitness has enhanced the rest of my life a disproportionate amount. I'm much smarter about what I eat, and I feel better, and I sleep so much better now. Because the sleep is higher quality, I don't need as much of it. I awaken ready to engage the day, rather than slinking through it. The secret of this is that the body was never meant to be disconnected from the mind. The two are engaged in an continual feedback loop whereby one is reinforcing the actions of the others with beliefs/chemicals. You just need to gently prod the two into better habits in order to feel better.
As for people, well, that's what life's all about.
I'm still happy to eat out with friends, mind you.So I suppose you could say I became more aware of what I was eating, rather than remaining apathetic about it.
I hate to break it to you man, but we're all normal people around here.
As for me, I prefer the version on one page, with no ads. Clicking "cancel" is not too high a price to pay (for me).
I say cut it, nobody is going to miss it.
I didn't realize how complicated this was until I tried to explain it to my grandparents.
Sure, machines aren't perfect, and they railroad your form, but it's better than nothing. I train on machines, _and_ with free weight, _and_ doing bodyweight / crossfit stuff. They all have their place.
There's no way I'd try to pull the rep max on a free barbell that I would on a smith machine, but it says nothing about how effective one or the other is.
It's like the whole internet self defense huff. A billion words written on the technicalities of all the different martial arts but most fights are won by punching the other guy repeatedly hard enough to stop him hitting you. Sure it's not perfect, but its taking action and it gets results.
Why not? So long as you're not being stupid, a spotter and/or the safeties built into the cage/rack or bench should do fine.
From anecdotal experience - the training plan he describes is something I did when I started out mountainbiking and ran straight into a probably best coach in vicinity.
My training program was a lot like the one described in the article - It was longer, but I was too lazy to do all of it - so I landed right where he suggests 3-4 times lifting weights a week. And boy did I get strong. But then I started fiddling out with trendy programs and fuxxored it all. :)
I guess that not using machines wont make such a difference, its more the training regime (reps, measuring your maximum, doing the pyramid). It's just that they are unnecessary.
So there are 3 things I have learned about fitness:
1. Your basic training / off season training should be exactly as described in this article.
2. Most people work out waaay too much.
3. If you are serious about your sport: do interval training twice a week (max).
That's it - that's all are there is. Everything else you can do your sport or whatever.
Not a unique attitude at all. What got me down to the 200 mark though was just joining a gym, pushing out squats / deadlifts / presses (on machines for the first few months), utilizing the trainers, getting some buddies on board, eating less and getting the job done.
Average joe doesn't have room for gear at home, or the motivation to independently structured programs, or they just flat out get intimidated by hanging around training camps or gyms. I don't think there's room to discourage anything that has potential benefit for people.
I wonder if we read the same article?
Overweight people don't need any reason to not turn up a gym or think they know better. Anything that provides benefit is better than nothing. If the entry barrier is signing up to a gym and having a trainer run you through a program, that's pretty low.
If it's finding obscure training venues with hardcore types and being broken down as a weakling (which yeah, works better than anything out there, and it's what I sign up for these days), then people won't touch it with a hundred foot pole.
Most uber-chunkers already feel like shit day in day out without coming up against further entry barriers or reams of information. Just find the closest venue or activity that will make you sweat and do it.
What I actually do: Take walks and do isometrics on convenient bars, poles, etc. Max power, 5-10 second holds, multiple angles. The better I am about those rules, the more progress I make. More effective than any gym I've ever been in.
But don't confuse those results with the results from classic big lifts. Like I said, I do isometrics all the time, but squats, deadlifts, benchpress and pullups are going to develop your musculature in ways isometrics never could.
What I'm doing now is a class lift style of back squats, deadlifts and benchpress 5x5 program for strength. Progress 5 pounds each session (make sure you start very low so you can build up) and end the each session with a circuit of your choosing x 3 (I normally do something like BW to failure of pullups, pushups, dips, plank, bridge/mule kick, ...then break and do it all again). Total workout including warmup takes 45 minutes max (I warm up for about 20 minutes).
This will build tons of muscle and you will gain strength very quickly. Though, make sure you eat right (Paleo) and cut out the crappy foods like grains/glutens/sugars and you will see fantastic results (if you still eat grains and the like, you'll gain weight, but you likely won't lose any fat .... some people call this "shitty weight" akin to drinking 2 gallons of milk a day).
If you want to be fit, start exercising--a nice way to get started is to truly understand that any kind of exercise is very much better than doing nothing.
Also, I don't know about you, but I don't personally know anyone in jail, so other than perception that guys in jail are huge, I'm not really sure its true.
Training Behind Bars Pt. 1: http://goo.gl/epno3
Training Behind Bars Pt. 2: http://goo.gl/ppvHU
Easily two of the best articles on T-Nation.
Just go out there, experiment and see what works for you.
Now I only sport outdoors and for muscle strength I use kettle-bells: http://www.amazon.com/Kettlebell-Strength-Secret-Soviet-Supe...
Just read http://www.amazon.com/Kettlebell-Strength-Secret-Soviet-Supe... and you know enough. No expensive equipment needed and it takes only 3 times 30 to 40 minutes a week to gain considerable strength and cardio!
1. Do something you like. This way you stick to it. 2. Don't overthink it, if you are just doing fitness for your health. There is not such thing like a perfect fat burning workout, etc. 3. My ideas don't count if you are an athlete who wants to improve on performance.
No go out and do something, dont read this crappy article
Ten years of doing this professionally led to shoulder/neck problems, culminating in a pinched nerve between my C6 and C7 vertebrae. It improved with physical therapy, but was never truly fixed, and has bothered me off and on for two years now, despite my adherence to the therapist's rubber band and stretching routine.
I heard through a relative about "Upper Cross Syndrome". Whether that's specifically what I have or not, I don't know, but the symptoms match quite well. Read about it, and you'll probably see that it perfectly describes so many tech people:
http://www.active.com/fitness/Articles/Avoid_upper_cross_syn...
Exercise 6, "External rotation top to bottom" has literally changed my life, and it did so within the first week. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I maintain proper posture at the keyboard (and while walking around). I still get nerve issues if I spend too many days in a row at the computer, but I can't describe to you how much better I feel now than I did after physical therapy!
http://www.mensjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/picture-81.jpg
I find that maintaining the posture that my 8th grade typing teacher enforced is solving all of my neck issues. It's just difficult to maintain awareness of posture when I'm concentrating really deeply on a bit of code or documentation. Weight training helps me overcome the changes to my musculature that occurred from a lifetime of such computer use.
Incidentally, my sister, who is obese, wants to take your plan one step further by going to the treadmill desk. I'm told that there is no problem interacting with stationary desk items after a period of adjustment.
I find the idea of a treadmill desk very interesting. I bet that would really help lose weight and keep one in shape.
By getting yourself winded do you mean being punched in the stomach hard enough to lose your breath for a moment, or something else?
What you're referring to is getting the wind knocked out of you.
Curiously, in my karate dojo, we are taught to learn to fight whilst being winded - as in, having the wind knocked out of you.
It is.
I would think the rest of the US uses it the same way, just based on talking with friends throughout the country. I'm not sure if our brethren to the north use it the same way.
The fundamental business model of most gyms is to sign up as many members as possible, irrespective of whether those members then attend (that is why you have membership 'contracts', direct debits, etc...)
Hence, gyms are optimised for increasing sign-ups - not for getting you fit. So things look shiny, modern, relaxing, appealing to some imagined lifestyle. Then in reality you end up sitting on your couch eating crisps ('chips' Americans) and feeling guilty.
So there's a silver lining but there's still a cloud.
My observation: the vast majority of those "mostly-large-males" are extremely nice, even if they do sometimes make scary faces while lifting and look like Danny Trejo. If you pick the right gym (typically in lower class neighborhoods), they might even critique your form, which is incredibly valuable.
Most of the very large men have no need to harass random women - all they usually need to do is walk into a bar and say "hello". And I've never met a guy at the gym who would even be tolerant of such harassment, let alone participate.
tl;dr Fitness is too important to let a one-in-a-million bad event deter you. Statistically speaking, your biggest worries are poor fitness > harming yourself due to poor form/bad luck > getting harassed at the gym.
Honestly, I know a lot of VERY big guys who lift a heck of a lot of weight. Without exception, every single one of them is the nicest, most even-tempered, welcoming fellow you could imagine. The stereotype of a angry, musclebound meathead is just that, a stereotype.
If you're really too scared, go find yourself the most convenient Crossfit gym and drop by for a free workout. You'll find that MOST Crossfit gyms are well over 60% female and that there are several women there that are leading a lot of the men in weightlifting and overall athleticism. I'm a guy and I've most definitely been shown up by a lot of the women at my particular box and I'm not alone.
Believe it or not, weightlifting/getting fit is going to make you VERY uncomfortable for non-trivial periods of time. You might as well get used to it. Seeing a whole cadre of women lifting heavy and doing it fearlessly might really do you a lot of good from a psychological perspective.
Greg Glassman always said that the biggest adaptation a Crossfitter experiences is between their ears.
Hyperbolic headlines are intensely irritating.
In Crossfit times and reps matter more than form. Just take a look at some gyms. The exercises and the philosophy behind is awesome, but the practical appliance is far from great.
I believe it's a CrossFit thing.
Based on this claim I assume also that Crossfit invented the barbell, the bumper plate and gravity.
The sudden outburst of anecdotes about how your Crossfit gym rooly trooly emphasises form seems to have come after years of sustained criticism by strength coaches and Olympic weightlifting coaches.
It's as simple as this: nobody -- not me, not you, not your coach, not the pros -- nobody can pump out high rep Oly movements without steady and ultimately dangerous degradation in form. The force plate studies, the EEG studies, the eyeballing of experienced coaches demonstrate over and over and over that it is a flat out stupid idea to do snatches or cleans for reps.
And yet in Crossfit gyms everywhere, this idea of smashing out 20 clean & jerks still keeps getting circulated.
You cannot do this and learn to do the movements precisely enough. You will only train yourselves to do it messily. Under heavy weights you will fuck up and injure yourself.
Given that I love Oly lifting, I don't want people getting injured and then blaming the lifts, when they should be blaming a faulty training technique.
I don't think anyone is saying that it's not possible, it's just much more likely that your average lifter is going to run into injury.
The Olympic lifts require:
1. Precision.
2. Power.
In that order.
The problem is that the motions happen so fast that even at light weights you quickly deplete the central nervous system's ability to provide sharp signals. Ideally the signal conveyed to muscles looks like a square wave. However as repetitions mount, it becomes more and more to resemble noise, leading to sloppy form.
Repetition is the basis of learning, especially for complex movement. If you are doing 20 reps, and 15 of them have degraded form, what will you wind up learning?
And it doesn't help that the emphasis is doing the 20 reps in the minimum time possible, which discourages lifters from taking the time to set themselves in the correct position off the floor.
The weight is almost, but not quite, irrelevant to my main point. My main point is that the body learns what you make it do. If you continue to work through degraded form you will only learn to make the lifts sloppily. As you increase the weight (Crossfit calls this "scaling the workout" as if they were the first to think of changing the weight on the bar), you will only increase your risk of injury.
crossfit does make use of some of the principles outlined in the article, yes. but you could say that about almost any workout scheme, including 20lb weights balancing on a bosu ball. there are bound to be some similarities.
crossfit is frenetic, with exercises that vary daily. this routine is advocating a more static set of consistent core exercises.
crossfit mixes up the styles of exercises pretty frequently -- some are strength, some are endurance, some are timed, etc.. again, this routine is more about slow, steady, consistent improvements on a single set of exercises.
crossfit is a single workout track that gets everyone "fit", while this routine is pointing out that you need to approach the exercises differently based on your personal goals.
etc etc.
> Hyperbolic headlines are intensely irritating.
Jason Fried said yesterday: "Something I didn't know when I started writing for Inc: The authors don't write the headlines. The editors write the headlines and subheads."
(from http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2271625)
Perhaps it's the same at Mens Journal.
http://www.mtnathlete.com/page.php?page_ID=2
[1] http://www.elitefts.com/documents/gpp.htm
Take up a sport that gets you fit as a side effect.
I have two obsessions in life: Rock Climbing and Surfing. I'm pretty good at the first, and borderline hopeless at the other, but I'm committed to the point where I've arranged my life so that I can travel for months at a time to pursue one or the other each year.
When I'm working a contract to save up for the next trip, I'll find myself slowly fattening up on fish tacos and 12 hour days coding in a felt cube with only the occasional after work or weekend fix of rock or salt water. After a few months I'm decidedly soft, and quite a bit heavier. But put me on the beach in Thailand for 5 months and holy crap, what a difference.
It's like Fat Camp out there. There's so much fun climbing to be had right on the beach. Overhanging routes that work you into the sort of shape that lets you literally hand-over-hand your way out a horizontal roof by your fingertips as your feet dangle out in space. Without anybody forcing you, you spend your entire day working yourself silly, then you come back and eat rice. You can imagine what that does for your physique. It's like a convention of Men's Health cover models out there.
I come back to the world, and watch people going to the gym and clearly hating every minute of it. I can't understand why they would do that to themselves, when there's a climbing gym just a few miles away.
Just imagine what primitive man would eat. He would spend most of his days eating what grew from the ground and when they finally hunted down meat, they would eat their catch as a group[2]. That doesn't mean you have to do exactly that, but try to keep your eating habits in sync with what it was originally adapted to consume not what hyper stimulates made you believe it wanted to consume[3].
Now don't go about forcing yourself to eat stuff you don't enjoy. In the same manner jasonkester engages in something he enjoys that have the "side effect" of being healthy (I still think these activities are something we were adapted to engage in the first place), find foods you find delicious but also happen to be something that isn't processed. I can assure you that there is plenty of "healthy" or "natural" foods out there that you would enjoy[4].
[1]http://www.ted.com/talks/mark_bittman_on_what_s_wrong_with_w...
[1.5]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=eating-made...
[2]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3723678050599653349#
[3]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzN-uIVkfjg
[4]http://smittenkitchen.com/
You could argue that nature intended us to die from Malaria by the age of 30, I'm very glad that for most of the world that's no longer the case.
[Of course, whether a 'natural' life is desirable is debatable.]
Malaria, however, we attempted to evolve away from(sickle cell anemia).
Humans are no longer subject to natural selection. There needs to be significant culling pressure for real evolution to happen.
What? Are you sure? Because we most certainly are subject to natural selection.
A more obvious example of the sorts of changes we can still go through is sickle cell.
Evolution is a slow process. But there is no reason to believe that it is going any slower today than it ever did in the past - we're just being selected for different things than in the past. (For instance carelessness about birth control.)
Think of it this way: we used to be directly reliant our the environment for survival, like animals are. But now, we process our environment to such an extent that small variations in it are overcome by our intellect. Those variations in the past would constantly be exerting selective pressure on us in many different directions. Those pressures are processed out now.
http://www.scribd.com/doc/33322719/Cochran-Gregory-10-000-ye... http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/11/science/11gene.html http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2007/12/humans-evolving/
And anyway, I completely disagree that we're no longer subject to natural selection. We're always subject to natural selection. We're not immune to everything.
It has changed my life. When I follow the diet, it has been pretty impossible not to lose weight. That's with eating as many eggs, as much butter, and as much natural, delicious, other whole foods as I can stuff myself with.
However, the metabolic science is there if you read it, and I can't argue with the profound effect switching to a diet based on meat, eggs and other sources of saturated fats has had on my body.
I eat as much as I want, whenever I want, I'm never really hungry any more, and I've been losing fat and gaining muscle without thinking about it at all. It's pretty incredible.
Anyway, I'm not discounting the underlying concept of your comment; I'm just saying that malaria wasn't a particularly apt comparison.
Ditto Europe, by the way.
Actually, an awful lot of us do. I see those fucking Anopheles mosquitoes on a regular basis, especially if I venture a bit north from here.
> If you and I were bit by an infected mosquito, there's a very good chance either of us would die in a relatively short period of time.
Actually, out of the 225 million cases of malaria per year, there are only about 1 million deaths.
I'm not discounting the underlying concept of your comment; I haven't gotten malaria yet because of public-health measures like draining swamps, because of cypermethrin on the walls, because of DEET on my legs and head, because of sleeping under a mosquito net or in a room without entrances for mosquitoes, because of sleeping during the day, and because I have enough leisure time to swat the mosquitoes that do land on me.
I'm saying there's no need to stick to some strict diet, just eat a wide variety of foods instead of just one subset. The whole "think like a primitive man thing" is just a helpful starting point to point you towards what kinds of food to look for, but I'm not advocating some strict following. I had three In and Out dinners this past week since I'm too short on time to hunt down a pigeon or pluck mysterious fruits from trees all day.
We're not as fast as most animals out there, but I don't think that means we didn't run a lot in prehistory.
(Food diversity sucket in our grandparent's era. )
"Don’t eat anything your great-great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food. (Sorry, but at this point Moms are as confused as the rest of us, which is why we have to go back a couple of generations, to a time before the advent of modern food products.) There are a great many foodlike items in the supermarket your ancestors wouldn’t recognize as food (Go-Gurt? Breakfast-cereal bars? Nondairy creamer?); stay away from these."
All those foods that you mentioned, a 19th century mom would recognize as food. Just not her kind of food.
From here: http://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/unhappy-meals/ (and his books of course)
Doubtful. I mean, the vegetables aren't cooked. That can't be healthy!
(Before anyone downvotes me: Look up how we used to cook vegetables. 'Boiled to a mush' just about sums it up. That's neither tasty nor healthy.)
The main issue with obesity is that people can easily afford to be obese and not too significantly impact their lives (aside from all health and social malaise of being overweight).
Eating how a caveman ate isn't a particularly bad diet, but misses out on the major aspect of a day filled with exercise.
Lack of money for food is not a cause of obesity. If your goal is to obtain 2500 calories (assuming that is what you need to maintain a healthy weight) for a little money as possible, you will consume 2500 calories of carbs. You will not become obese. If you instead consume 3500 calories and become obese, you are wasting money on 1000 extra calories. You are not constrained by cost. You could instead reduce consumption by 1000 calories, and spend the money on increasing the quality of the remaining 2500 calories.
There is no significant research that shows adding exercise to an overweight person's lifestyle will significantly reduce their weight - typically just increases their appetite.
Increasing exercise and holding consumption constant will reduce body fat. One of many studies:
http://www.duke.cardiologydomain.com/images/uploaded/dukeh/2...
Do a google scholar search. The only difficulty is that you'll find so many studies which measure additional benefits to exercise that some of the studies measuring only effect on body fat will be buried. (I.e., the majority of the articles have conclusions like "exercise reduces body fat AND increases muscle mass", "exercise reduces body fat AND breast cancer", etc).
I'm curious, did you hear this claim from Gary Taubes? The one time I read a blog post by him, I discovered him to be incredibly dishonest: http://crazybear.posterous.com/how-1-graph-reveals-what-3000...
Because they're not eating extremely processed foods based on subsidized grains that make them cheaper than real food... yet.
Corn subsidy in the U.S.. Not much else to say.
They are skinny because they eat less. They cannot afford 2500 calories, so they consume 2000 calories (mostly rice or wheat, depending on region) and suffer adverse health as a result. They also get exercise working physical jobs rather than sitting at home and watching TV.
Of course, even if corn subsidies were unique, poverty still don't explain why the US poor waste money on 500-1000 extra calories. If they were optimizing for cost, they would eat only 2500 calories of cheap corn.
When people say that obesity goes with poverty, they're noting that virtually everyone eats until they are sated, and if you eat until you are sated with high-quality, expensive food, you will be far less likely to be overweight than if you eat until you are sated with low-quality, inexpensive food.
High discount rate reduces the propensity for work (most poor don't work much, if at all), particularly work with a career path. Why work hard now just to have a middle class life in the future?
Similarly, a high discount rate cuts against a healthy lifestyle - why suffer through a run in the park and hunger right now, just for future health?
(Also explains correlation between poverty and: drugs, alchohol, unprotected sex, probably other pathologies I can't think of.)
High discount rate is the cause, everything else is an effect.
Of course, a high discount rate has nothing to do with the cheapness of carbs, fat and sugar relative to meat or veggies. Money is not the limiting factor. Willpower/preferences are.
No one is saying that poor people couldn't eat healthy if they wanted to more than they wanted to feel satisfied. They're saying that given two people with the same metabolic genes, exercise level, and discount rate, if one of these two people spends ten times as much on food as the other, they will be likely to be thinner. This is because being sated with more expensive food results in eating fewer calories and better nutritionally than being sated with less expensive food, and this point has everything to do with the cheapness of carbs, fat, and sugar (which taste good no matter how prepared, essentially) relative to well-prepared meat and veggies.
If you're poor, odds are that you're eating fast food. The primary cost of fast food is not the cost of the raw ingredients, it is the time and effort to make the fast food. Furthermore many of the customers there see large portions as a value. Therefore fast food places have found it worth their while to offer large portions at a low price, and to inflate those portions with the cheapest foods that they can - french fries and soft drinks.
As long as fast food places do that, there is no real cost difference between 2500 calories and 3500 calories. Given how addictive most people find food that is high in sugar, fat and salt (which describes soft drink + fries), people tend to finish the portions that they are given. That will make you obese fairly fast, even if you don't "supersize" your portions.
Food banks often offer similar foods to fast food places because it is cheap and what their clientele is used to. This causes similar consequences. So in the USA even if you have no money at all, it is easy to get fat.
If there were cheap, convenient places to eat that made you pay according to calories and were willing to give realistic but smaller portions for significantly lower prices, then your reasoning would be absolutely correct in the USA.
Now you can argue that the underlying cause that makes this possible is that the country is rich enough that we can afford to be wasteful even on poor people. This is absolutely correct. But for practical purposes that detail doesn't matter. If you personally have little money and live in the USA, it is really easy to become fat.
An incidental note on exercise. Exercise burns calories. Obviously. However it takes very little extra food to offset the calorie expenditure from moderate amounts of additional exercise. Luckily exercise also affects appetite for many people, and muscle mass increases your basal metabolism. Therefore exercise is a win, but for moderate amounts of exercise not mainly because it directly burns off calories.
You might be right if the only meals available had 1750 calories. In that case, your only choices are 1 meal (underfed) or 2 meals (overfed). But that simply isn't the case.
It is easy to become fat in the US, rich or poor. The poor are more likely to take advantage of this, it is true. But it doesn't save them money.
Breakfast: Egg McMuffin (300 cals), Hash Browns (150 cals) and Coffee (0 cals).
Lunch: McChicken (360 cals), Fries (380 cals) and Coca Cola (210).
Dinner: Big Mac (540), Premium Southwest Salad with Chicken (320 cals), and Coca Cola (210).
2470 cals/day.
To become obese, you need to add this:
Afternoon Tea: Sweet Tea (150 cals) and McRib Sandwich (500 cals).
Desert: Hot Fudge Sundae (330 cals).
Now you are up to 3450 cals/day.
There is nothing about being poor which compels you to spend money on the McRib Sandwich, sweet tea and the Hot Fudge Sundae.
http://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en/food.html
>Increasing exercise and holding consumption constant will reduce body fat."
I'm not sure you read the sentence you're responding to: "typically just increases their appetite."
Yes, if you lock a person in a room with the exact same meals every day, exercise will reduce their weight. A real world person who exercises though typically eats to compensate.
I'm not sure what your problem with Taubes is; your discovery of his 'incredible dishonesty' doesn't pass the smell test -- surely someone eating 7.5 extra strips of bacon per day would notice? There's a shot at his thesis being 'buy my book'; why is it more unreasonable to buy his cheap Kindle book than e.g. Tyler Cowen's to get the full scientific background? It's not like he's hawking some diet empire.
If you add exercise to a person's lifestyle without adding calories, they will lose weight. It's that simple. There is research to show this. I cited some of it.
your discovery of his 'incredible dishonesty' doesn't pass the smell test -- surely someone eating 7.5 extra strips of bacon per day would notice?
Go read Gary Taube's blog post. He spends thousands of words discussing that, according to the traditional calorie counting theory (which he is attempting to refute), the difference between a fat person and a thin person is "only" 20 calories above their respective maintenance levels. He then argues this must be absurd and incorrect, because how can "only a cube of sugar in your coffee" make you fat. This is an attempt at reducto ad absurdum.
He never, in his entire blog post, mentions the fact that the fat person is also eating 7 extra strips of bacon each day. If you read his article without being extremely careful, you will come away with the impression that the only thing the fat person eats that the thin person doesn't is an extra morsel of food each day.
That's great. There is also research that shows that acceleration due to gravity at sea level is 9.8 m/s^2, but that has little to do with what the OP said, which is that "exercise tends to increase people's appetites." You're refuting something he never claimed.
"He never, in his entire blog post, mentions the fact that the fat person is also eating 7 extra strips of bacon each day."
I'm guessing because that's not the case? You're begging the question by showing that his claims don't work out according to the calories in/calories out model.
From the original post: "There is no significant research that shows adding exercise to an overweight person's lifestyle will significantly reduce their weight - typically just increases their appetite."
I'm guessing because that's not the case?
If you take as given the cals in/cals out model (as Taubes does, in an attempt to refute it via reducto ad absurdum), they do.
I think that the term "poverty" relates specifically to developed countries where fast food is the cheapest way for the poor to feed themselves off the dollar menu.
1. The food was whole. 2. People were very active, particularly where my mother grew up(Shanghai), mothers usually got up at 5am to get the fresh produce from markets everyday, people walked around a lot, bicycles were a luxury item.
Poor people eat fast food. Good food is cheaper than McDonald's, but you have to be able to cook.
Again, good meat and produce (raw materials for cooking) are also accessible for less than it costs to eat out.
The grocery store (and I don't mean some specialty place like Whole Foods -- if we're talking about eating on a tight budget, something like Wal-Mart will be much more helpful).
What's wrong with cheese, or butter? Or sauerkraut and pickles? All processed food. Also, powdered mashed potatoes and puffed rice are just conveniently preserved starch. They're perfectly healthy.
The "processed food" and "mostly plants" stuff is just marketing psychology that taps into SWPLs' inner hippie. The real diet rules aren't mystical:
* Avoid sugar, especially fructose
* Avoid vegetable oils
* Don't be afraid of saturated fat
* Prefer rice and potatoes to wheat/rye/etc
* If you're fat, try cutting out starch, but don't worry about it if you're not fat.
Turns out it's virtually impossible to define it.
Here was one of the exercises we went through:
1) Take an orange, grown in the wild without being touched in any way by the hand of man.
2) If you eat that orange, are you eating something that's "all natural"?
3) If you squeeze that orange, and drink its juice, is it still "all natural"?
4) If you strain the juice to eliminate pulp, through a handwoven cloth (or a mat of grass or some other "all natural straining device") is it still "all natural"?
5) If you heat the juice and drink it, ie cook it, is it still "all natural"?
6) How about if you heat it long enough to boil off some of the water?
7) How about long enough to boil off all of the water?
8a) What if instead of boiling you simply dry out the juice in the sun?
8b) What if in addition to boiling it, you dry the remains in the sun?
9) What about drying it in an oven?
10) Suppose I take the dry particles left and through any conceivable natural operation sort them by density? Say, putting the particles into an all natural basket and shake it vigorously until my arms are tired?
11) Now how about I remove particles of a certain density? Is the remaining product natural?
12) Now suppose I add water to the remaining sorted particles, fresh from a mountain spring.
13) Suppose I do the same (#1-12) with other plant sources?
14) Suppose I mix the results into either a mix of powders or a mix of reconstituted liquids?
This is an actual replication of a process for producing an artificial sweetener (not with fruit, but a different plant source). That sweetener is generally not called "all natural" but the process is more or less the above.
At every point in the process we haven't done anything that's not natural. There's some analogy to every step that you probably have to do with any food source to make it edible. Nobody thinks squeezing, chopping, cutting, cutting plants creates a processed food. Or straining liquids or really any of the above. We've been doing all of the above as a species since before writing.
But many people think the result of the specific combination of the above, #14, is a "processed food".
How about cheese? Most cheese, even modern cheese is just milk and bacteria in a controlled spoilage environment. As natural as dirt. And in general the result of very few steps.
Defining "processed food" from "natural food" ultimately ends up trying to set some kind of arbitrary definition delineating the two -- "processed food is any food that has undergone more than 3 processing steps" I have news, chopping and peeling fresh picked garlic takes more than 3 steps.
1) Wash the dirt from the bulb
2) Dry the bulb
3) Remove the outer layers of onion skin
4) Separate the cloves out of the bulb
5) Cut the hard connective bits
6) Peel the layers of onion skin from the cloves
7) Chop to size
Now if I include it in a recipe I'm including it in even more processing steps. I may boil it, grill it, bake it, or some other cooking process.
I may strain it from a broth if all I care about is the flavor.
Before I can actually get the garlic into my mouth, through even an elementary recipe, I've had to process it at least 8 times, likely a dozen.
The In Defense of Food argument is not so much about whether or not the food is still "natural" at that point. The point is you are throwing out much of the orange, and there is probably stuff in the part you are throwing away that is good for you.
Pollan talks about how at one point a scientist thought he had isolated all of the necessary parts of nutrition: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates.
Then they discovered vitamins. Oops. If you actually believed what that first scientist said, you probably died of scurvy.
So, let's take our food stuff made from proteins, fats, and carbohydrates and inject some vitamins in them! Should be all good now, right?
Except, we continue to discover stuff in the food that grows out of the ground and on trees that turns out to be good for us. (I forget the more recent examples he mentions in his book, but you get the idea.)
So your choice is basically to take the chance that the scientists have finally found all the parts of plants and animals that are good for us, synthesized or extracted them, and injected them into that box of Chocolate Frosted Sugar Bombs you are eating. Or you can just eat the actual plants and animals and be done with it.
Or you can just eat the actual plants and animals and be done with it.
You don't just grab a potato out of the ground and eat it whole. Or jump out into a field of cattle with a fork and knife ready to go. You can do that with some foods, not so much with others. If the metric is "you must be able to eat it right out of the wild with 0 processing" you're going to eat a lot of raw tomatoes and peppers and not a whole lot else.
In many cases, you have to process the food source to make it edible. Rhubarb for example has poisonous leaves that will kill you. The green bits of the tomato can surpress cardiac functions. For most animals you can't just start biting chunks out of them. You may have to remove internal organs that are inedible, bones (I don't see many paleo eaters advocating cracking open thigh bones to get at the marrow very often btw), etc.
http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-10-poisonous-fruit...
In some cases, edible parts may contain bad stuff, pork meat for example is well known to be unsafe raw. I'm pretty sure cavemen ate pigs (or at least boar). Cow brains may contain prions. etc.
I do agree with you that food manufacture from chemical components on up is likely not complete, but there's not really much of that in the industry. Even highly "processed" foods like hotdogs or McDonald's chicken McNuggets are just ground up and cooked scrap meat and connective tissue (all paleo friendly!). They have all the stuff that's in meat anyways. The process to make imitation cheese doesn't generally fall under that kind of manufacturing process.
Many common and cheap foodstuffs also don't contain much nutrition. Vitamin fortified rice has probably improved the lives of a billion people.
People also get all kinds of scared when the chemical names for common food components are used. Should I use "salt" or "sodium chloride"? Should I avoid all foods with Monosodium Glutamate (good luck with that)?
But like anything it all just comes down to moderation. Nutmeg is great and natural, but if you eat too much of it you'll get have hallucinations and may die. Who knows what's in a clam, perhaps if you eat clams 3 times a day for a year (a completely possible scenario for a caveman) you'll have serious health problems like mercury poisoning or some other issue.
Who knows?
and there is probably stuff in the part you are throwing away that is good for you.
You may also be throwing out stuff that's very bad for you. It's all conjecture.
What Pollan actually advocates is eating a traditional diet that has been refined over centuries. He says that which one you pick doesn't matter that much.
The traditional diets of people living around the Mediterranean and people living near the Arctic circle have nothing in common, but according to Pollan, either will give you better health outcomes than a normal Western diet.
If people have been eating a certain way over a long period of time, they have probably learned to avoid the stuff that will kill or injure you, and probably have discovered foods that nutritionally complement each other, as well. (He gave examples of such complementary foods in traditional diets, which I can't remember right now.)
One thing I've definitely noticed time and again is how complete traditional diets tend to be. It's amazing, thousands of years ago, with no concept at all of nutrition, people managed to put together fantastically complete (and tasty) diets.
I can't tell if you're being really subtle here, but the causality is probably reversed - people ate whatever they could get away with, and over the course of many tens of thousands of years they evolved to process that food efficiently. Anatomically modern humans evolved approximately 200,000 years ago, and agriculture was only invented 10,000 years ago. And industrially produced processed food didn't become a staple of most Westerners' diets until 65 years ago.
The skills necessary to survive on the local available food in one place don't entirely translate someplace else. Somebody had to look at a squid for the first time and decide to eat it for example. Or that the rotting month old cabbage would be a good meal.
Traditional foods are often preagrarian foods in some cases. You can find expensive wild foods restaurants in South Korea for example that serve only food you can gather in the mountains, mushrooms, pine nuts, pine needles, ferns, wild onions, etc. These are things that people cobbled together before they had any knowledge at all of nutrition and amazingly, when we look at them today with the modern eye find out that they represent a fantastically complete diet, rich in essential nutrients. In Latin America you can still find plenty of pre-Columbian cuisine with similar characteristics. And I'd wager elsewhere as well.
Put another way, why didn't they just settle on say mushrooms? How come the entire diet for a people isn't just one food? Or a combination of foods that represent a diet lacking in a certain vitamin? Amazingly, wherever you go, the traditional foods tend to make up a complete diet.
It seems a modern curse that we can gorge ourselves on singular foods and grow fat and suffer malnutrition at the same time. Only today can somebody eat hamburgers and pizza 3 times a day for years.
I think the poster you replied to was making the point that industrial mangling of our food likely has some detriment to our health. Sure, cheese and kraut are processed (we make both at home, btw), but they're more natural processes than, say, turning corn into corn syrup. In fact, the end products of these natural processes are often argued to be healthier (or at least offer more bioavailble/digestible nutrition) than the original material.
Look at the ingredients list of your average loaf of store-bought wheat bread. All of the continuant ingredients have been refined, had preservatives added, then re-mixed to make "bread". The list is typically a mile long! Take my wife's home-made bread, as a counter example: whole wheat flour (ground minutes before making, from home-grown wheat), salt, maybe a dash of sugar or honey, water, and our sourdough starter.
He was the first to admit that nutrition sciences were largely confused. All of those years of studying cholestrol and various other substances in isolation had led to a ton of barely viable nutrition advice that didn't seem to work in practice.
He has come to believe that the research continues to point in a single direction. It's more or less what the OP said, with a bit of twist. The problem isn't processing in the traditional sense... it's processing in the industrial sense. Modern processed foods contain a whole litany of preservatives that seem to have a profound impact on food in two ways.
1. It often more or less removes much of the health benefit of actually eating. Vitamins, minerals, and a whole range of amino acids magically disappear. Post-processing foods tend to be left high in carbs and so called "empty calories". This is why, in his mind, McDonalds and the like are so damaging. It's why TV dinners (even the 'healthy' ones) are terrible for you. By eating more "whole" foods (as the OP suggested) you avoid so much of this.
2. Those preservatives themselves trigger body processes that cause all sorts of strangeness. Why can you drink Coke Zero everyday and not lose weight (or Stevia, Splenda, etc..)? Because your body has a natural metabolic reaction to the sweetness. It's still calorie-in/calorie-out, your just sabotaging the calorie out. The prevailing theory about this has something to do with energy storage back in our caveman days. When eating sweet fruits and the like, our bodies would go into energy storage mode for the coming winter. In those days fruits represented one of the few times that we would experience a calorie surplus. Apparently many common preservatives trigger that same response.
For the last couple of years I've essentially followed the OP's advice. I eat as close to "whole" as I can. I eat quite a bit more meat than he's advertising, but I try to make sure it as unprocessed as possible. I eat a lot of whole vegetables and a bit of fruit. Nuts and the like are a staple. I eat fewer refined carbs, but I don't necessarily try to stay far away from them either.
I'm healthier, fitter, and all around in better shape then I ever have been.
Ugh, I hate this concept. Primitive man also died in their 20s and 30s. No thanks.
You can see similar trends in other non-agrarian societies.
http://www.gapminder.org/world/#$majorMode=chart$is;shi=t;ly...,
There are studies that go along with your POV
http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/GurvenKaplan2...
but they are, to date, very much in the minority of research in the area.
The other component of that is of course that we're all fat and out of shape today because we eat foods that cavemen never had access to.
One measure of health is of course weight, but so is life expectancy. If we follow a life-plan where we're around some normal weight but die at 30 I'm not sure that's a great plan. We evolved to die around 30, most research into aging agrees with this (some say ~40), and that's "natural" I suppose, but I think I reject that notion that we should only do things in the modern world that fit what we were required to do a million years ago because it's what we evolved to cope with and eek out 3 or 4 decades of life.
Another is infant mortality, we evolved to reproduce pretty fast because we evolved to maintain population with lots of dead infants. We also evolved to produce slightly more males than females since men die faster, which is okay since fewer men can reproduce with more women.
We also evolved to be able to bear children in our early teens, to grow beards, hair and nails, and to have bad eyesight in some large percentage of the population. Should we lower the age of consent to 13? Not shave or cut our hair or nails ever and not wear glasses?
I'm not sure any of these notions work today, but extending the central argument out:
If we should eat like our ancient ancestors did since we evolved to eat like that and therefore it must be healthy, should we not live like our ancient ancestors did since therefore that must be equally valid by the "it's all natural so it's good" principle?
And I think it's a straw man to say that accepting a "caveman" or "hunter gatherer" diet means we need to accept -every- aspect of "primitive" life.
EDIT: http://www.anth.ucsb.edu/faculty/gurven/papers/pdrdraft04182...
"I think it's closer to the truth to say that cavemen...lived a natural lifespan closer to modern man." Test it! I honestly don't know the answer, the data I managed to find in 10 minutes of searching says that hypothesis is incorrect -- but as you rightly point out my data includes infant mortality in the averages (I believe). But if you can find data that says "excluding infant mortality, pre-agrarian cultures have an average lifespan of 70-80 years" I'll be more than happy to accept that.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
According to the entry above, there's a measure called e5 that should supply the relevant figures.
And I think it's a straw man to say that accepting a "caveman" or "hunter gatherer" diet means we need to accept -every- aspect of "primitive" life.
I'm not really attacking the diet per se, many of the recipes are actually pretty tasty and are generally pretty healthy. I'm attacking the faulty line of reasoning given as to why one should do this.
"it seems to be pretty healthy" is wishy washy, but okay
"You should eat this way because evolution made you to eat this way therefore it's healthy" is not, it present a long chain of reasoning that falls apart at almost every link, but it's presented as a kind of science, which it's not by this reasoning.
I eat whatever's cheap and tasty, as much as I want, mostly meat— the literal antithesis of Pollan's catchphrase. If I've fallen into his trap, it's a very cunningly hidden one.
(serious question, though I appreciate the fact that I just asked the most base question in this entire comment page)
In seriousness, there was an adjustment period of "intestinal irregularity" when I first switched, presumably due intestinal flora etc. adapting from substantial amounts of carbs and fiber to all fats and protein. These days I'd say I'm on the infrequent end of normal, pooping once every day or two, which I think is pretty typical for paleo folks.
If I do end up eating a substantial amount of carbs, usually at a restaurant or dinner party, it does often give me the runs later, which is my primary reason for strictly avoiding grains moreso than health or philosopical concerns. And if I drink too much (which is easy to do when you eat low-carb) all bets are off.
All of a sudden I even enjoyed planning my diet just on the chance that it would make me strong/faster in the next workout.
So, yes, like all in things in life, put the right incentives there (and just getting fit/healthy, obviously doesn't cut it for millions of Americans) and make it fun and it's a piece of cake.
And for those of you who haven't found your muse yet, I urge you to give crossfit a try. It lets your inner 5 year old run wild. You'll get to run/jump/climb/swing/throw heavy things until you crumble in a sweaty heap at the end. It is pure unadulterated fun. Plus, fat will run screaming from your body (but that's just a happy side effect).
That said I'm currently taking a break from it due to a jumper's knee that won't go away.
It's a bit opposite of what you are saying, in the sense that you want to do alternative/strength training next to your sport to improve your game. This mentality and way of training has radically improved my own game the last year.
That's my dream right there.
Book your flight for the end of November. Round trip to Bangkok before the peak will run you $600-$800 from the west coast. Make your way to Tonsai and negotiate yourself a good monthly rate for a bungalow. If you show up before the main tourist season and plan to stay until March, you can usually get them down to around $200/month.
Even with all the Beer Chang and Massuman Gai you can handle, you still won't be able to spend more than five grand all in.
Don't forget to send us a postcard!
Food was probably comparable in price, but a Bintang being slightly more expensive than an 80Baht Chang :)
It does, however has some truly amazing rock climbing on the beaches in Krabi Provence. That's why I spend every other winter there.
I think I took from your original post that you do both, hence my confusion. Regardless, congrats on the pursuit, its something I am very envious of!
How do you address the fact that your point is actively contradicted by the article? Did you even know your point is actively contradicted by the article? I'm not even saying that proves you're wrong; what bothers me is that you just ran off to post your own stuff with no apparent engagement of the topic. That's not a recipe for learning anything.
I'm not contradicting anything that he says. I used to lift weights in much the manner that he describes, and it'd be difficult to deny that it works.
The thing that he misses is motivation. Most people simply have none of it. I certainly don't for weight lifting.
In my experience, climbing rocks and surfing, while possibly suboptimal as workouts, will absolutely get you into great shape. And they have the added benefit of providing their own motivation.
Eh, I don't find rock climbing at all enjoyable. But I love running marathons. I've even been known to put in 22 miles _on a treadmill_. Different strokes for different folks.
If you love (insert sport/fit activity that you cannot stop thinking about) then do that and be super fit because you love it. That was the op's point.
All on their own supply. ;)
Find something fun to do that just happens to get you in shape.
I suspect they have basketball hoops, raquetball courts, swimming pools and Ironic Kickball leagues in your home town (and probably a climbing gym too). Go have some fun!
The author's incentive for going to the gym was so that he could go climb or surf or ski or whatever and be both "fit" and injury-free. It's a critical distinction. There was probably a time when all he had to do was go out and make those activities a part of his existence, but I would wager that as he has aged and had different responsibilities come up just making that fitness a side effect wasn't possible. Instead, he probably tried to go ski X times a year, but got hurt the first time, and the subsequent trips never happened. He probably tried to go climbing weekly, but something tweaked and suddenly he was only climbing monthly. When it's harder to go out and run 5 miles like you used to, you're less inclined to go run 5 miles, and might slip to 3. When 3 is eventually harder than before, you might just not run at all.
I think the article is speaking more to concerns as you age and you can no longer get away as easily with just participating in the sport. Rob Shaul and his mtnathlete.com and militaryathlete.com sites address those problems quite directly, and unfortunately it involves a lot of painful work that is mostly gym based. He's designing the mtnathlete workouts to help skiiers stay healthy and be ready when the season arrives. He's training military personnel to be more durable and harder to kill. To explain, the site is a few years old, but when he started it it was as Crossfit was just starting to ramp up in popularity. Despite the advertising that it makes you better at everything athletic, Crossfit is usually all about Crossfit - there are Crossfit games now and it is in many ways its own sport now. Rob's site was very specifically geared to mountain athletes who wanted to perform their sport at a high level possible with less injury. It's not a gym program just for the sake of being a gym program.
There was a time when I could go out and make my life about doing whatever sport it may be - climbing, running, basketball, etc. - and recover quickly and easily from the activity. Now my body has aged a little, I sit in a chair too much, and suddenly a small nagging injury never goes away, and I'm less motivated to go run several miles or play basketball or climb. By incorporating durability training like the article discusses, I'm more able to avoid those prolonged periods of inactivity and keep motivation up.
You're right: there are always people crawling out of the woodwork suggesting one approach or the other. Whenever someone gets evangelical about something, it proves that it's working for them, for the moment at least. How else could they think that their mundane and unoriginal approach is "the" solution that will change lives? There are evangelists for everything from walking an hour a day on a treadmill to rock climbing. Ergo, almost anything works for some people sometimes. However, no new or old exercise idea has had widespread acceptance and staying power. Therefore, every idea fails for most people, either immediately or eventually.
Conclusion: Certainly educate yourself about all the options and their benefits, but right now, do whatever you find compelling right now. Don't worry about whether it will for someone else, or whether it will work for you next week. Just do what works for you right now.
For example, I thought I was bored with kettlebells (lately I've been trying to learn Olympic lifting) but one night last week for some reason I didn't want to leave my apartment, so I did a kettlebell workout. That worked for me on that particular night. For some people, that wouldn't work at all, because they like to have every workout scientifically planned out: exercises, reps, weights, etc. Sticking to the plan is what motivates them, so they would have dealt with the situation differently.
Some people really get off on the idea of having a "treat" occasionally. For them, maybe they can motivate themselves by signing up for a triathlon in some exotic location. Or they might take a day off and visit a national park, or treat themselves to a beautiful evening wandering around with a friend, splurging on a show and a nice dinner downtown. (Two or three hours of walking may not be challenging, but health-wise, it beats the hell out of sitting at home.) Or maybe they would sign up for an expensive activity such as riding lessons.
It all depends on your situation. Do you have outdoor recreation nearby? Do you live in a walkable or bikeable city? Can you afford Crossfit or an expensive gym? Do you have a garage where you can put a few hundred dollars worth of weight equipment? Do you have enough money to become an equestrian? Do you get off on consistency, or is boredom your bane? Does measurement of your progress motivate you or demotivate you? Do you like to geek out over your fitness, or relax and let your mind wander? Do you like it if your workout activities express your trendiness or your wealth and status, or would you prefer a "no bullshit" workout at a grimy gym surrounded by tattooed guys in sweat pants?
There's no answer that fits everyone all the time. Different people will thrive with different choices, and next month you may be a different person than you are now. Just do whatever works for you right now. (If that means forcing yourself to do something you don't want to do, well, that is a paradox. Best to just do it and not think about it.)
It's also important to keep in mind timing and the training cycle (break down, recover, supercompensation) as the author points out. If you really want to "optimize" your training, or at least take steps in that direction, doing the same thing over long periods of time will result in a longtime plateau. I think the way most people manage their fitness - do the same lifts at the gym or the same 45 minute routine on the treadmill, for years in a row - results in many people treading in plateau zones and generally underwhelmed by their fitness despite putting in the time.
The article says, essentially, that a basic strength and conditioning program is the way to go. The GP says that picking a sport that makes you fit is the way.
To add another opinion, that ties the two together, to the mix: think of the fittest people you know. To a person, they're probably obsessed with their chosen sport (which may be soccer, or bodybuilding, or weightlifting, or running, or ...). These people live and breathe their sport, and when they're not doing it or training for it, they're thinking of how to get better at it.
At some point, thinking of how they can get better at it is probably going to lead them to doing, well, a basic strength and conditioning program. That's because squats and presses and the rest of what the article outlines are still about the best the exercise world can come up with for almost all the athletes out there.
(For what it's worth, I'd strongly second the recommendations of the article for Starting Strength and Olympic-Style Weightlifting. They're both fantastic books.)
For paragraph comparison:
NYTimes: font-size: 15px; line-height: 22px; width: 600px;
Men's Journal: font-size: 12px (small); line-height: 15px (tight); width: 800px (I lose which line I'm on);
And problem is???
Usually these folks' discussions are more interesting than the original article.
I value hn because it has a variety of quite interesting individuals. Somehow some percentage have interesting take on physical fitness and physical culture - I have talk movement classes professionally in between hacker gigs and find the hn's folks' idea interesting and challenging.
Fitness is a very individual thing. If talking about individual experience with it is evil, give me more evil, please.
I locked up my care for a summer and biked to the coffee shop and grocery store every day.Before long I was taking 5 mile bike rides on the spur of the moment. I lost about 35 pounds that summer. Unfortunately, I live somewhere that has a winter which makes biking impossible. I should have switched to cross country skiing or something I guess... if only they groomed ski paths on the side of the street.
The only thing I agree with in the article is that cardio machines in the gym are a waste of time.
Not sure this is really true or that it matters. A 5 mile run on the treadmill at an x minute pace is the same as a 5 mile run outside at an x minute pace. Advantages of the treadmill include being able to keep a given pace without making any particular mental effort. Advantages of being outside is that it's not boring.
Suffice to say I strongly prefer the real surface.
Running on the ground you push yourself forward. On a treadmill the amount of work you are doing can vary quite a bit by technique (ie. how much contact you are making with the treadmill) because you are not actually propelling yourself.
Mark a dot on the treadmill track.
How is the person moving relative to that dot?
How is the air in the room moving relative to that dot?
That's basically all that can distinguish between running at constant speed on a treadmill vs. on level (non-treadmill) ground.
If you're running 8mph on a treadmill, it's like running 8mph on level ground, with an 8mph tailwind.
How do you fail so badly at physics?
Treadmills have their place - for warming up a bit before some other kind of exercise, or as a replacement when the weather or traveling keeps you indoors - but they just aren't equivalent to real running. 5 minutes on a trail will tell you that.
That said, the treadmill can be a fine tool for training. It allows you to totally ignore weather conditions, and actually for speed workouts it can have the advantage of forcing you to stay on pace. A common rule of thumb is that a 1% incline on the treadmill compensates for the lack of wind resistance.
I can't stand the damn things myself, but there are runners, including some guys I know personally, who train exclusively using the treadmill and still do well in races up to marathon distance (I've never heard of any ultramarathoners who train exclusively on the treadmill).
I get FAR more tired running 2 real miles than 2 "miles" on a treadmill.
On a treadmill, both of your feet are in the air for a significant amount of time, and you're not being carried backwards. Yet, I bet that distance still gets counted.
Also squats will improve your bone density.
Don't be fooled that suffers like Laird get their physique from surfing. All of them dead lift and squat.
The best thing about squats would be that they "insure" your knees for old age.
Do them right and they are easily the best exercise ever invented IMHO.
Having said that, if you "like" some other exercise, like cable chest presses, dumbbell flyes, standing barbell bicep curls, crunches, or whatever, then fine do them (I do), but do so knowing that the Big Three should be the core of your exercise, and whatever else is complimentary.
(I'm a novice, genuinely curious.)
Lots of great info at t-nation.com .
Dumbbell presses are fine. But bench presses are better, and if you do them, you don't need to do dumbbell presses (but do, if you like them, I do too, as a complimentary exercise).
Injuries are nothing to scoff at of course, and you should always make sure to not put on more weight than you can safely manage. Regardless of exercise method.
You need to do pullups if you do benchpresses else you'll have a big chest and weak back muscles. This will pull your shoulders in. And which will eventually lead to injuries. Yo
In fact I've increased my bench by just working my back.
Lots of people only work the "mirror muscles" (ie ones you can see when you check yourself out in the mirror) and this leads to shoulder injuries.
The areas you mention are covered by the dead lifts, especially shoulders and upper back. The bicep is a relatively tiny muscle that we tend to over train because of its "reputation" so to speak, but at a beginner to intermediate level, it really does get enough from just the dead lifts. You might want to re-evaluate that when you can dead lift at least 2x your body weight though.
The thing to do to build biceps without doing curls are pulling motions - rows and pullups.
Thing is that 5k is really really really short distance for a human. I honestly can not be bothered with gym anymore so I just run about 10k a day with longer weekend runs, 5 times a week.
A body which has been doing squats is not going to be a great runner at a professional level.
But at our "weekend warrior" levels it does very much translate. I infact did this exercise on purpose to prove to myself that squats would translate.
And it very much did increase my sprint speed.
Dont take my word for it... Email a few strength coaches - Eric Cressey, Mike Robertson. Ask their opinion.
How fast were you?
Free weights are vital for muscle strength, mass and edurance. That doesn't mean free weights take the place of your other activities such as skiing or mountain climbing. That doesn't mean that you cut out cardio, that's something else entirely, even though some people work on cardio in the gym along with strength training.
Free weights are also great for building the entire structure of your body. There is nothing which can stress the major muscles of the legs, bones and supporting muscle groups like throwing a huge weight on your shoulders and squatting that weight multiple times. Swimming, isometrics and all that other stuff won't do it. Machines also don't do this because you don't have weight to stabilize in both directions. The power move of the squat is to push upwards with your legs but you still have to lower that huge weight in an orderly down movement to start the exercise.
As well, you should exercise 'weak muscles' to avoid injury, for people sitting in front of computers a lot it really helps to exercise the back muscles.
I'm a former endurance athlete and used to train twice a day
Personally I heavily favour cardiovascular fitness over muscular fitness, and would choose the former in a heartbeat (ahaha) if I had to pick one. Currently I cycle and do astanga, though I plan on adding some low-rep strength training to the mix too.
Here's another anecdote: No lifting weights, only running & cycling and lately swimming. Pretty much the opposite of what the article is arguing. Since I started this I'm doing I'm doing fairly well, six pack included. I went to the gym once, and saw bulked up guys getting 5 pull ups. So I tried that and could easily do 30. Lifting weights may make you look like a bodybuilder, but are you really fit?
The really bulked-up ones most likely train for muscle mass, not for any useful activity.
My second point is that yes, this is an anecdote. So is the article. Don't take either as a scientific inquiry.
As it stands, all you've done is point out that there are different tasks and depending on your target task the ideal body composition and training routine differs.
If you want to be good at pullups you should probably let all your leg muscles atrophy and just build lats and biceps.
Funny thing is that I still could only do 10-20 pushups but they were effortless, completely different then at the time I was slacking.
I think it's also worth noting that not all weight training has the goal of "looking like a bodybuilder."
The delta in benefit is not worth a back injury.
At first i followed Stronglift 5x5's advice: start with the bar only, concentrate on proper form for at least 2 weeks and increase the load slightly for each workout. I'm also lucky that there are sport students working as tutors at my university gym. They are taught proper (olympic) weight lifting so I asked them to correct my form if I did the exercises wrong. After that it's like riding a bicycle, once learned you will never forget how to ride.
Either way, the article completely glosses over the "oh, by the way if you do this wrong you will ruin your shit" aspect of squats and deadlifts, which is a pretty compelling argument for machines in my book.
My personal experience (which includes a lovely meniscus blowout during squats) is that even given perfect form, once you get up to heavy weights (2x-3x bodyweight for deads and squats) you are starting to push the limits of your body and need to realize that occasional injury is part of the total picture.
That said, I still stay away from machines. I feel even if you're working with light weights, the balance factor of free weights adds so much more to the workout.
[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2287803
It's body-weight only, unlike gyms no machines, unlike crossfit no other weights.
BENEFIT: keep travelling without buying equipment you don't want to carry in your luggage. Don't maintain x gym memberships around the world.
It burns fat (don't really need that too much yet) faster and more efficiently in less time than hours doing aerobic running / swimming / cycling would. Aerobic exercises may be good for heart and lungs, but for calory burning they're laughable.
BENEFIT: muscle building and calory burning in one workout.
(Of course, if you wanna look like The Hulk you'll need to have weights at least kettlebell dumbell or indian clubs, daily protein counting and all the bodybuilding stuff. BUT you will look incredibly impressive with just bodyweight / Tacfit after only 20-30 days of good form, and it only gets better from there -- you even retain a good amount of the goodness after pausing from it up to 2 months afterwards, which a longer hospital attendance may force upon you).
No rep-counting, time-under-tension matters. This matches your bodily clockworks. Your muscles don't count reps either. Time under tension, whether you only get 2 reps under perfect form (important) or 20.
BENEFIT: no counting, just stopwatch.
There are no off-days, you cycle through 4 consecutive days (no intensity day 1: 20 mins, low intensity day 2: 20 mins, moderate intensity day 3: 40 mins, high intensity day 4: 40 mins) all the time. After 4x7 days, it is time to level up, adding sophistication, more challenging movements etc. to keep the body from adapting. TacFit in my view is a pretty unique mix of exercises and movements recombining elements of martial arts, yoga, classical bodyweight exercises and more, that help you on joint mobility, flexibility, core strength, muscle building, posterior improvement and both injury prevention and proofing -- all in a pre-defined package that will last you 9 months in a row without having to customize, modify or tweak the program. Afterwards, add weights, take 5 days off and start from scratch, mix or match, etc.
BENEFIT: minimum time investment gets you results in all areas that matter, including but not limited to mere appearance and looks.
Boy I sound like a marketer but this is really hacker-friendly, entrepreneur-friendly, productive-but-time-pressed-busy-person friendly. It revolves around so much research and experimentation done by the coaches who composed this after decades of experience. They're on Facebook, real people giving sensible advice to everyone and anyone dropping by asking questions. They get 70-80 year old people incredibly fit that couldn't survive neither a gym nor a crossfit session. (But rest assured their exercises are not granny material, they will kick your butt no matter your stage of physical development.) I'm seriously impressed with their stuff. You can browse my past comments here over the last 3 years, I'm not usually writing marketing copy for commercial digital goods around here at all. So this is really simply "everything I need to know about fitness" and I really do think it's the most hacker-suitable option out there.
Maybe better to start from here:
http://www.rmaxinternational.com/forum
The TacFit coaches are also RMAX coaches or somehow connected but sell their own TacFit creation under their own label it seems.