Going deep on biomarkers, blood tests, and debates about optimal levels is okay for some people who derive motivation from obsessing over topics, but I’m starting to notice a trend where people obsess about these things for a couple years before burning out and moving on to the next topic.
The best thing you can do for yourself is to establish healthy diet and lifestyle habits that are sustainable. A lot of people who jump from obsession to obsession do a great job at optimizing for something for a few years, but when their life changes they drop it completely and fall back to forgetting about it.
Fad diets are the original example of this: They work while the person is doing it, but they’re hard to maintain for years or decades. CrossFit and other exercise trends have the same problem where some people get extremely excited about fitness for a couple years before falling off completely because it’s unsustainable for them. Some people are able to continue these things for decades, but most people do it for a short while and then stop.
I’m now seeing the same pattern with biomarker obsessives: They go a few years obsessing over charts and trying things for a few months at time, but when the interest subsides or they get busy with life most of it disappears.
The most successful people over a lifetime are those who establish healthy habits that are easy to sustain: Eating well enough, reducing bad habits like frequent alcohol or fast food consumption, some light physical activity every day, and other common sense things.
The most important factor is making it something easy to comply with. The $300 biomarker panels are interesting, but most people don’t want to pay $300 every year or more to get snapshots that depend largely on what they did the past week. Some people even get into self-deceiving habits where they eat well for a week before their blood tests because the blood test itself has become the game.
> starting to notice a trend where people obsess about these things for a couple years before burning out and moving on to the next topic.
Really spot on with one of my besties. He does all the tests. He has a concierge doctor. He reads extensively on the topics of fitness and nutrition. And yet he doesn't do any of it. It's just an intellectual exercise for him. And he has had two heart attacks in the last several years. It's so frustrating. I just wanna shake him.
I learnt a great trick about exercise: find a podcast or audio book that you really enjoy listening to. Here's the trick: you're only allowed to listen when you're exercising.
Also with food and drink: place friction between the treat and yourself. The easiest example is to not have biscuits / alcohol in the house.
Bonus tip: alcohol free beer is really good these days.
I push hard enough during cardio that I can't really follow a podcast properly.
On the upside, it's only 30 minutes.
While lifting weight I do that since I rest for 90 seconds in between sets, which is actually very boring.
I started reading books during that time and that has been a big improvement.
If you're exercising for cardio, and you're able to follow your book or podcast, you're probably not doing good cardio. OTOH, it's not a bad way to do interval training while watching sports, go hard when they're yammering, slow down when the sports are happening (or, if you're watching soccer, you can go hard most of the time and then slow down for the replay if anything happens, which is unlikely)
The majority of your cardio should be LISS unless you have extreme time constraints, but most people can find 30-60 minutes per day to get the recommended time in. This is an intensity at which you can hold a conversation.
If you have time for TV, you have time for watching it from a treadmill.
> If you're exercising for cardio, and you're able to follow your book or podcast, you're probably not doing good cardio
But on the flip side, even if it isn't ideal, if that tip makes at least one person actually do any kind of cardio at all, even if it's the worst one on the planet, it's still better than nothing.
In fact, I'd probably consider your statement of preemptively shooting someone down like that (imagine being a 3rd reader of the original comment + your response), is massively more harmful to others than parent who at best tried to trick someone into doing bad cardio, which again would be better than nothing.
Maybe our brains work differently, but I have absolutely no problem following a podcast while running, and my race times indicate that I'm doing good cardio.
I do have a hard time with mind muscle connection during weight training if I'm listening to something other than music, though.
> If you're exercising for cardio, and you're able to follow your book or podcast, you're probably not doing good cardio.
Nonsense. Elite distance runners are doing 80% of their miles at essentially a conversational jog with a starkly lower HR than the 20% of intense miles. Cardio exercise under all levels of intensity is optimal, not just easy or just hard.
Alcohol free beer was a game changer for me. Also if I can’t avoid it alternating alcohol-containing and alcohol-free drinks.
For exercise your tip doesn’t help me at all. I hate audiobooks and podcasts so that would turn me off more from exercising. Also I want to concentrate on the exercise and not do it halfhearted.
What helped me was to realise how much better I feel after exercising - since then i kinda got addicted to it because I notice how much worse I feel after not doing it for a couple of days.
I agree on the friction. Just not having access to cigarettes is the best way for me to not smoke. I just don’t buy them and bumming one from someone else comes with a degree of personal shame for me that makes me avoid them (in almost all cases).
I naturally don’t like sweet stuff that much - however since I moved from EU to America (not US) it’s been really hard to avoid sugar.
Y’all put that stuff into everything it’s crazy; I gotta watch out like a hawk and go to special stores. In Europe it was so much easier, there are always cheap sugar free whole foods available in every supermarket.
Right on spot. Find a regime for body and mind that you can sustain without any significant mental effort, after some time lack of good behavior be it sports of healthy food makes one uneasy. Bonus points from getting happy from it / making it a passion, this helps a lot with coming back after some hiatus (ie injury, sickness, long travel etc.).
Personal story - I used to be super sporty, 4x gym training during work week - cardio & free weights, climbing over evenings after work, hiking/climbing/ski touring over weekends. Vacations were mostly more extreme variants of the same. Last year broke my both ankles with paragliding, one leg much worse, so took me some 8 months to be able to walk straight again, with some time in wheelchair, then crutches. All strength & stamina gone, flexibility 0, so had to rebuild from scratch and I mean deep bottom scratch from which you bounce very slowly, not some 1 month stop when things come back quicker. If all above weren't my proper passions I would have a hard time coming back to being again more active than most(sans that paragliding, took the lesson and have 2 small kids). That ankle won't ever be same but so far so good, ie managed some serious hike&via ferrata mix 2 days ago.
Getting happy from it is 100% the most effective way to change habits.
Unfortunately it’s also very subjective and hard to find out what makes you happy…
The best thing you can do for yourself is to establish healthy diet and lifestyle habits that are sustainable. A lot of people who jump from obsession to obsession do a great job at optimizing for something for a few years, but when their life changes they drop it completely and fall back to forgetting about it.
Fad diets are the original example of this: They work while the person is doing it, but they’re hard to maintain for years or decades. CrossFit and other exercise trends have the same problem where some people get extremely excited about fitness for a couple years before falling off completely because it’s unsustainable for them. Some people are able to continue these things for decades, but most people do it for a short while and then stop.
I’m now seeing the same pattern with biomarker obsessives: They go a few years obsessing over charts and trying things for a few months at time, but when the interest subsides or they get busy with life most of it disappears.
The most successful people over a lifetime are those who establish healthy habits that are easy to sustain: Eating well enough, reducing bad habits like frequent alcohol or fast food consumption, some light physical activity every day, and other common sense things.
The most important factor is making it something easy to comply with. The $300 biomarker panels are interesting, but most people don’t want to pay $300 every year or more to get snapshots that depend largely on what they did the past week. Some people even get into self-deceiving habits where they eat well for a week before their blood tests because the blood test itself has become the game.