It’s near impossible to track where our beliefs originate. And once they take hold they can be notoriously difficult to change. To further compound the issue, humans have a handy psychological trick that we use to delude ourselves into doing what we want to do. The mind tricks us into believing things that don’t always reflect what is best for us. It is known as cognitive bias. According to Wikipedia, Cognitive bias is defined as:
A cognitive bias is a pattern of deviation in judgment, whereby inferences of other people and situations may be drawn in an illogical fashion. Individuals create their own “subjective social reality” from their perception of the input. An individual’s construction of social reality, not the objective input, may dictate their behavior in the social world. Thus, cognitive biases may sometimes lead to perceptual distortion, inaccurate judgment, illogical interpretation, or what is broadly called irrationality.Some cognitive biases are presumably adaptive. Cognitive biases may lead to more effective actions in a given context. Furthermore, cognitive biases enable faster decisions when timeliness is more valuable than accuracy, as illustrated in heuristics. Other cognitive biases are a “by-product” of human processing limitations, resulting from a lack of appropriate mental mechanisms, or simply from a limited capacity for information processing.A continually evolving list of cognitive biases has been identified over the last six decades of research on human judgment and decision-making in cognitive science, social psychology, and behavioral economics.
We believe what we want to believe or what our brain interprets for us to believe. Our brain can be extremely bias when it comes to what we currently believe to be true. This is why religion, politics, food, and health are so heavily debated; people have strong beliefs and their minds will do anything to hold on to those beliefs.
Sometimes these beliefs are deep-rooted and have been developing since childhood, while others are more recent and less ingrained into one’s belief system. The latter are easier to change where as the former are damn-near impossible to sway without inducement from a near-death epiphany-like experience or some form of intense shock psycho therapy.
I’ve been thinking heavily on these concepts after a recent exchange I had with a friend of mine. It’s been long overdue.
THE BACKSTORY
This particular friend is an avid runner; frequent 5+ mile runs every week. She also engages in Crossfit 3-4 times a week and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t eat enough calories to boot.
Most of you will read this and think, “Damn she’s dedicated, I wish I could do that.” The rest of us; the coaches, trainers, and experienced athletes will see what I see: overtraining.
As a coach, this kind of training volume makes me cringe, and unfortunately, I see it all the time in my business. I have a few clients that look and train the same as my friend above (too much and very thin). Some train this way to reach a goal and some train this way to fulfill a psychological need.
Of course, I always perform my coachly duties and encourage them to do less. I’ll say something like, “you are overtraining and you need a balance” and “bla” “bla” “bla.” I know they aren’t listening. For people that train like this, it’s like telling a crack addict he should stop doing crack. Well maybe that’s true he might think, but he will quickly brush it off with an excuse thanks to cognitive bias (and addiction) and keep on doing what he wants to.
What leads to overtraining and makes it even more difficult to correct is usually trainees have fallen in love with their training–it’s a hi to them. It helps them escape their body image issues. It helps them stay sane. I’m completely on board with a reasonable amount of training volume and I really wish it was ok to train every day all day without long term repercussions……
But it isn’t ok. It’s not ok at all. It’s dumb. It’s dangerous.
It will steal years from your life. It will ruin your joints (especially running) and is not sustainable no matter how hard you try to make it. Yes, genetics and recovery will help increase what is considered safe volume, but most go above and beyond what is safe and fail to utilize proper rest or nutrition; this is my point.
On top of having a genuine concern for my clients and their longterm health—more than they do sometimes—I get frustrated when they tell me about the goals they are trying to reach. Usually it’s something like, “I want to lose this last 5 pounds” or “I want to get a butt” or “I want to lose the fat on my arms” or “I want to get rid of my love handles.”
And what do they do? They train more, harder, longer.
They believe that it takes more exercise to ‘burn’ away that last bit of fat or to ‘build’ that last bit of muscle. Good intentions, bad implementation.
What they need to realize is that training is a stress to the body. Typically, these stubborn goals that they are failing to reach are an indicator of the stress that their overtraining is creating. Since more training is why they can’t reach their goals, they should be doing less, not more. Although, more is exactly what most do because they don’t understand how the balance between stress and rest effect the body.
This is the ‘more is better’ syndrome in full effect.
My friend above told me that she has been engaging in high-rep squat work because she wants a bigger butt. This is on top of the running, the Crossfit training, and the lack of eating calories. Now, we can’t immediately blame her for her lack of understanding of how the human body grows in response to a stimuli; there is simply too much bullshit that has enforced her false beliefs of what exercise does. However, we can definitely blame her when she fails to take the advice of an expert (yours truly) that has trained hundreds (likely thousands) of clients. It goes in one ear and out the other and it is her brain’s bias in full effect. The brain chooses to ignoring my advice so she can keep doing what it likes to do, or believe it should do.
This effect is prevalent in so many things in life. Typically those that sigh and say, “I know” while going off to repeat the same mistakes over and over again.
Once again, maybe we can’t blame her; she is just doing what she believes will work. Her belief is that if she trains more her butt will grow. This seems like it would work. It seems intuitive. Unfortunately, it’s not how the body works (at least for natural non-hormone injecting folk).
Similar athletes that fall victim to this logical fallacy include the Crossfit athlete that trains everyday, sometimes twice. Or the determined soccer mom that goes to the gym 3 hours a day, does weights, abs, cardio, and finishes with a wheatgrass shot and a muscle milk and in an attempt to burn off that ‘stubborn 5 pounds.’ They are all doing what they think will get them to their results.
This is a huge problem.
Athlete’s will only listen to the advice they want to hear or that they already believe to be true. But when it challenges their belief system, they will do anything and everything to discredit the advice and its source. Furthermore, when an athlete doesn’t fully understand a recommendation, or it is too new to them, they will usually ignore it.
You must buy-in to any recommendation for it to have a real effect. Your subconscious is too powerful to let you do something it doesn’t agree with or doesn’t understand. Keep this in mind next time you want to pay for advice or the newest product or supplement. BELIEVE that it is going to work and you are 100000 times more likely to make it work. If you are at all skeptical, it simply won’t work.
READY FOR THE TRUTH?
Are you currently seated or laying down? Be very careful, what you are about to read could change your life. Don’t read this while driving or utilizing public transport as it might cause a sudden jolt of surprise that could result in a seizure, paralysis via shock, or loss of bowels.
I’m about to reveal a secret to you that is guarded by the select few in the industry that have learned of its existence.
Get Ready……..Drum roll……………MORE IS NOT BETTER. IN FACT, IT’S OFTEN WORSE
Nope, I’m not apologizing for the melodramatic build up. It’s necessary that you understand what I just said to you. It’s imperative that you GET what you are reading and I will use ANY means to get it pounded into your head. If you have yet to read any of my stuff then I suggest you read the Manifesto.
But I digress…
Lifting more weight doesn’t always build muscle or increase strength. Doing more reps doesn’t always equate to performance based improvement. Running more doesn’t exactly help you ‘burn’ more calories. Eating more–especially protein–doesn’t magically build muscle (as the bodybuilding mags would have you believe).
Your body is a fine balance between just enough and too much. Things that you think will get you there, when utilized in the wrong doses, can actually screw shit up more than you could imagine. If fitness, food, health, and all of this crazy human-body stuff was easy, than everyone would have it figured out and it wouldn’t be such a sought after item. But it isn’t easy and many DON’T have it.
THE MINIMUM EFFECTIVE DOSE
There is something known as the Minimum effective dose (MED for short). The MED is the least amount of stimuli needed to produce a desired outcome. The MED theory asserts that just enough input should be used to reach a desired result and no more. It also states that ‘more’ often has a negative effect and that the minimum should be enough for sake of saving resources such as time, energy, and so on.
While it is difficult to find the MED without having trained for years, you can start making a conscious effort to notice what your MED is when training. As you become more conscious, and develop the awareness needed, you will become more aware of what your body is telling you. You can train harder when you do train, and rest more deliberately when you are resting. You will better avoid over-training as well as have the wherewithal to know when you need to suck it up and bust your ass.
Anyone who is training to reach a goal should be conscious of the minimum effective dose. Doing so will keep you healthier, show results quicker, and allow you to enjoy your training more so.
The effect of more is exactly like the effect of less, just on the opposite end of the spectrum. At both ends, you are negating results. If you miss a month of training your results will start sliding backwards. If you train 7 days with no rest, your results will slide backwards. We all understand that if we don’t train we won’t get results; obvious right? But what about the correlation to training more and negating results? This is a less common idea because the effects aren’t as apparent and trainees seem fit during the process. With Crossfit and the popularity of HIIT training, overtraining and rest/work balance is a real concern that doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
Overtraining is a real thing. Watch out for it. It can really fuck up your health.
This leads me to the next topic: The Trinity of Food, Sleep, Stress
FOOD, SLEEP, STRESS
This is The Trinity ladies and gentlemen.
Your body, health, and results are a balance of many factors. The Trinity represents the foundation of these factors. You can’t neglect any part of the Trinity and expect to reach peak body composition and optimal health. If you do too much or too little in any one category, you will pay for it.
The Trinity is reflected in the habits we do on a daily basis. It is an expression of any action you take or fail to take. Act lazy and you will invariably be sick and unhealthy. Become more active and you will be healthier on average. If you lift you will be stronger. Eat junk food and you will make yourself weaker. Sure, we get these concepts, but there is too little emphasis on the balance and how importance diet and lifestyle really is to your physical efforts. It is non-negotiable.
What you must do: spend your resources where you are weak
Instead of doing more of what you are good at—training for example—I want you to work on your diet, your sleep, or whatever you suck at from the Trinity. I wrote a article on weaknesses training and the psychology perfectly applies here.
It’s imperative that we insert this notion into our stubborn skulls: We must focus on things we suck it.
BALANCE THE TRINITY
So how do we balance it all?
Food: You have to eat the right foods in the right amounts. Too much food and you gain body fat. Too few calories and you don’t supply your body with the proper fuel and nutrients to repair and grow. The wrong foods in any quantity and you fuck it all up, no chance whatsoever.
Sleep: Missing out on sleep is like trying to run with your laces tied. You may get there eventually, but it’s going to be a bitch and you are definitely making it harder on yourself. Your body wants to win, it wants to be fit and sexy. But it ABSOLUTELY needs sleep. Some people get there without sleep but they are destroying their health in the process. We all love sleep, there is a reason for that. Nature has programmed us to love sleep because it is necessary for survival, just like food.
8 Hours a night is standard but everyone is different. I’m not a sleep expert so look to the research for recommendations.
Stress: Stress is a bitch. It is the most under-appreciated aspect of the human condition. People act like chronic stress is normal; like it’s just a part of life. They don’t put effort into controlling it (or they don’t know how). We are often blind to the effects of stress because we have been living with it for so many years, most of us our entire lives. We are just used to it. It’s like breathing for us.
It’s why most of us do things to seek pleasure as a way to relieve this chronic state of stress. Drug and alcohol use is so prevalent because of this very reason. Humans are not psychologically equipped to deal with the chronic stress that is inherent in our modern societies. The large part of our ancestral history was lived in the wild as hunter gatherers. Since the advent of agriculture and condensed population dwellings, human beings have become more stressed, fat, and weak.
Training is a stress. And stress makes you fat, plain and simple. But stress also makes you stronger when applied strategically in the correct doses and balanced with rest periods. Most active gym goers induce extreme physical stress to their body on a regular basis before rejoining a life full of psychological stress. There is no balance. It is just stress on top of stress.
Our brains and bodies are made to deal with shorts bouts of stress as was necessary to survive dangerous environments in the wild (WOD comparable stress: sprinting from a predator or towards prey). We are programmed to deal with no access to food for periods of time (fasting). We are made to walk a lot. The average hunter gatherer would walk about 12 miles a day while gathering, hunting, and forging for food. We are made to climb, crawl, jump, balance, and hang as is necessary in a wilderness setting.
We were not made to worry about bills, pending deadlines, and constant mental stimulation via technology.
Our minds are constantly clouded with noise, most of which, we don’t realize is there. This is known as the subconscious. We attempt to ignore things that are painful and use pleasure to mask deep rooted issues that have been subconsciously dictating our actions our entire lives. These ignored issues come out in the form of mind-life crisises, depression, anxiety, and other clinical mental disorders.
Stress, mental and physical, is just another responsibility to yourself that requires your attention. You must be vigilant in doing things that help control your stress. The gym is the obvious answer to the positive stress but what about your mental stress? Are you doing things to reduce mental stress? Meditation, mindfulness, taking a break, and other mindful techniques can pay huge dividends. I notice that when I am more conscious of my mental state and practicing these concepts, my stress levels are wayyyy lower. It is too important to ignore.
Start being more conscious of your thoughts. Being aware and thinking about thinking is a huge step in the right direction.
ADJUST THE SCALE
The key is dose.
Your body and health are a balance. Nature is a balance; yin and yang, night and day. It is imperative that you create a balance that increases performance, preserves health, and enables longevity. It’s not easy folks. It can take years to find what is the correct dose for you. It is wildly difficult to build habit upon habit and find your balance. And once you find it, you still have to maintain it every day.
Do the work, stay the course, and make it your life.
“The path of least resistance leads to crooked rivers and crooked men.” ―Henry David Thoreau
Think of each part of the Trinity as a sliding scale of one to ten. One is the least compliance and ten is the most compliance. The goal is to strive for the best compliance (10) in EACH category. If your training and diet is are a 10 but your stress is at 1 (lots of stress), you will not reach optimal results. And vice versa.
Over the years, I have noticed that the best results come for people that put an equal amount into each category. You would be better served if you were a 5-5-5 on the scale for each category as apposed to a 9-9-1—or similar imbalance.
Your compliance is going to directly correlate to your beliefs. If you believe more is betteryou will never be able to do less (as you should) because your subconscious will fuck you up every time you try. You have to believe in these concepts. You have to believe in how you train, how you eat, and how you live.
This confusion is why there is so much money in the food, health, and fitness industries. There is profit in misunderstanding and confusion. There is a gap between what actually works and what does work and people are led into believe the wrong shit so they will buy products they don’t need. This stems from a baseline lack of knowing who and what to trust.
As stated above, it’s insanely difficult to change your beliefs. You aren’t going to change how you think only based on what I’m writing here. Although, hopefully, it could be the start. Most of us brush off the things we don’t want to hear and as a result your brain might try to discredit me so it can go back to doing the same shit it has done for years. Try to catch yourself doing this. Try to be conscious of your subconscious beliefs. With enough effort and awareness, you can eventually squash these limiting beliefs.
The best way to work on your beliefs is to read, ask questions, and seek answers to anything that confuses you. Knowledge is power, especially as it pertains to your belief system. The stubborn minded are ignorant because they don’t allow themselves to learn.
To learn is to challenge your beliefs, it is an affront to the ego.
The ego wants to believe what it believes. It must maintain its status quo. I can tell you right now, if you want to reach physical and mental enlightenment, you need to drop that shit right now. You need to be open minded and learn anyway you can, from anyone you can.
I am not pretending to have all the answers. I use what works for me, what I have seen work with thousands of people, and what solid research suggests. My three favorite sources of health and lifestyle information are: here, here, here. You should learn what you can from me and go elsewhere to learn even more. We all learn in differently. Utilize as many sources of knowledge as possible. If anything on this site speaks to you, awesome. Now go do something about it.
Now to some specific recommendations for specific goals. These recommendations are general guidelines that should be tweaked to your preference. Some may respond differently than others. Some may need to do slightly more or slightly less (or a lot more or less). Keep that in mind with any recommendation; you must always find your style. Because you are a unique individual, specific recommendations or programs may not always fully work for you as prescribed. As a result, you may need slight iterations compared to someone else.
THE FOUNDATION
This is the general template for those looking to lose weight and be healthy. It is the foundation of what makes a human healthy. No matter your goal, you should follow this template as your foundation. After you build your foundation you can pursue other aspects more specifically depending on your goals.
STRESS
Stress is referred to as any stress, good or bad. This encompasses reduction of stress as well as planned doses of beneficial stress.
Training:
- 4 Days a week of training (3 is the sweet spot)(high intensity WODs/strength)
- 2 days should be full rest (should move, walk a lot, etc)
- 1 day should be active recovery (can be yoga, mobility work, skill session, etc)
Sleep:
- Sleep 8 hours a night or more.
- Sleep in a dark room with no electronics or artificial light.
- Wake when your body tells you to.
- Find your average to feel great. I have to sleep 7 hours every night or I feel like liquid death. If you can regularly sleep 10+ hours a night it’s likely that you are sleep deprived and need to get on a better schedule.
Lifestyle:
- Walk everyday as much as possible
- Maintain social relationships
- Smile, laugh, play games, have fun as often as possible.
- Meditate as often as possible (5 minutes a day can be life changing)
- Be in the now, be present. Quiet your mind
- Slow down. Stop that rushed, nagging, worrying mindset
- Don’t road rage. Be conscious of it and ignore it.
- Read a lot. Reading is training for your mind. Recommended subjects: Stoicism, philosophy, psychology, this site
Food:
- 2-3 meals a day max
- Protein and fat as focus of meal (best quality possible, kerry gold butter, mct and coconut oil, fatty wild caught fish, grass-fed animals)
- Yams, nuts/seeds, veggies, some fruit to fill out the rest
- Don’t snack
- Skip breakfast when waking 2-6 hours after waking is ideal but you can slide this around to fit your lifestyle
- Aim for an 8 hour feeding window 16 hour fasting window every day/night
- Eat a unprocessed Paleo/Primal diet consisting of the best foods possible from the best sources
TWEAKS FOR COMMON BODY TYPES AND GOALS
Gain muscle:
- Eat lots of clean animal proteins and healthy fats (Coconut oil, Grass-fed butter)
- Utilize IF with an 8 hour eating window
- Have your biggest meal of the day right after you train. Load up with starchy carbs via sweet potatoes, and veggies.
- Take ZMA or a magnesium supplement
- Eat slow and eat a reasonable amount of calories
- Lift heavy with as many sets as possible in the 5-10 rep range. More sets AND more weight.
- Use these accessory movements: weighted dips, pull-ups, push-ups, jerks, cleans, presses
Lose Body fat:
- Utilize IF with a 8 hour eating window and 16 hour fast
- Eat lots of clean fats and moderate protein
- Avoid sugar at ALL COSTS
- Consume fewer carbs, less than 100g a day
- Walk a ton, especially after meals
- Take 5g of fish oil a day
- Do anything and everything to reduce stress (this is right behind your diet in importance)
- Sleep 8 hours a night – no exceptions
- Don’t beat yourself down in then gym. Less is more until you get lean
“Tone” (hate that word):
- Follow the foundation and the “lose body fat” recommendations
- Lift heavy weights
- Supplement your heavy sets with lots of 10-20 rep accessory movements
- Sprint once a week
Gain weight (hard gainers):
- Eat a ton of calories
- Follow the foundation recommendations
- Eat a ton of calories
- Make mega shakes of fat, protein, and carbs
- Eat a ton of calories
- Eat a ton of calories
Get ripped:
- Eat as clean as possible
- Get on a supplement program: Vitamin D, Fish Oil, Magnesium/ZMA, digestive enzyme, green tea, black coffee
- Eat slow
- Utilize IF with a 8 hour eating window and 16 hour fast
BODY TYPES
Stubborn body fat on an already lean/strong physique:
- You are doing too much and these stubborn fat stores are from stress. They will NEVER go away no matter how hard you train.
- Train less or spend more time on recovery.
- Sleep should be of paramount importance.
- Cut out shakes, bars, or other quick-digesting snack type foods.
- Watch your sugar intake and go lower carb.
Too skinny:
- Eat more freaking calories
- Especially protein and fat
- Consider doing less steady-state cardio
- Endurance training should be cut down
- Go for short-fast-hard sessions and lots of weight lifting
- Utilize protein shakes of fat and protein if you have trouble consuming enough calories
Big/strong but no abs:
- Watch sugar intake
- Watch calorie consumption when you do eat (these often overeat)
- Eat slow
- Walk everyday
- Avoid shakes and eat whole food
REMEMBER
Focus on The Trinity: Food, Sleep, and Stress.
This is going to be life-changing for most of you. As you get closer to 10 on the compliance scale you will have to set new goals for yourself because your current goals will get crushed, and fast. It’s that powerful. If you are already strong in one category but weak in another than you know EXACTLY what you need to focus your time on. Get in there and do the work.
The most difficult part of the trinity is mental stress in my opinion (it could be different for you). Most of us are blind to our subconscious. The simple act of thinking about thinking can do wonders. The next time you get angry, remind yourself that you are angry. Remind yourself that your anger is making you fat. Each spike in your emotions is a spike in your hormones. A spike in your hormones is bad: it causes fat gain and destroys muscle mass. Plus, angry people are weak minded and pathetic.
The truly strong have control of their emotions and bodies. They are in control of their food, sleep, and stress. They are harder to kill and more useful in general (quote credit: Mark Rippetoe).
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