I’m very selective when it comes to recommending books. But I think you should definitely check out The Sight Edge by Jeff Olson.
The essential point of the book is that if we were to view the sum total of a person’s life choices – be they related to health, finances, or relationships – we wouldn’t see a pattern of linear progression or regression. Instead, we would see very marginal change at the front end followed by a rapid acceleration in either a positive or negative direction:
In other words, your choices and actions compound over time in either a healthy (positive) or unhealthy (negative) direction – but you probably won’t notice these effects until the last 20% of the time horizon when they develop quite suddenly.
Let’s take diabetes and coronary artery disease, for example. One or two greasy burgers and sodas today won’t make you immediately insulin resistant. And one week of heavy endurance training – along with the accompanying stress response and systemic inflammation – won’t necessitate an arterial stent tomorrow. In fact, you probably won’t even notice any of the negative effects of these behaviors for months or even years.
But these small daily decisions, as they compounded over time, will accelerate at the “back end” and rapidly propel you in either a healthy or unhealthy direction.
The key is, at every moment, you are either going uphill or downhill – you just may not be seeing the effects of your choices and actions. And if you don’t believe me, listen to Jack as he talks about the consequences of “disobeying Nature’s law”:
We sure had our work cut out for us today! The lake temp came in at a cool 52F, but the chops were a bit of a challenge throughout the entire course. These weren’t high volume swells, but no matter how hard you tried to time things you were sure to get a souvenir mouthful of lake water at some point.
Congrats to new Lake Monster Jeff! Also in the video clip are the magnificent Arthur, a red Doberman, his owner Jay, and one of the Ochoa brothers out in the kayak. Summer is just around the corner!
I biked on out to L1 and immediately ran into Fred, another Lake Monster who last joined us back in October. He’s in town from North Carolina, so he joined us for a nice crisp miler in the 53F-54F water.
Also joining us was Nick, Lake Monster #40, who’s training for a number of events including a 10K swim later this summer in Indiana. As the video shows, it’s typically sunny and calm at the lakefront in the mornings. So if you sleep in, you miss out on the best swim opportunities!
“Diver Dave” Oliva, a long time Ladder #1 stalwart of over three decades, celebrates another annual milestone today. Be sure to send out your cheers to him!
The good news is that the mainstream fitness community is more aware that the body mass index (BMI) standard for measuring human health is indeed flawed.
Check out this blurb over at Livestrong.com which talks about a recent study proposing the waist-to-height ratio (WHtR) as a better measure than BMI for assessing obesity and cardiovascular risk.
Essentially, the WHtR focuses on measuring abdominal fat as a way of quantifying fitness and risk for cardiovascular disease. This is certainly preferable to BMI measurements.
However, what it doesn’t really accurately measure is body composition. And it certainly doesn’t measure systemic inflammation.
This means that you can still deem “skinny fat” people such as chain smokers who eat primarily junk food as “Slender and Healthy” or “Healthy and Attractive” according to the new WHtR categories. And the same goes for heavy endurance athletes and chronic cardio fiends whose cortisol levels are way out of range due to a constant stress response with inadequate recovery.
Still, until we come up with a more mainstream tool for measuring body composition and systemic inflammation, it’s at least a step in the right direction.
Check out this video of Terry Laughlin demonstrating the TI freestyle stroke:
The key thing to note is that he “spears” the water ahead of him and sustains this position for a few more moments while relaxing his hand. Also notice that he’s not really using his legs that much at all.
A lot of his forward momentum is actually coming from him driving his hips down. In other words, there’s very little emphasis on “grabbing and pulling” the water – which flies directly in the face of most swim instruction these days.
I recently adjusted my swim stroke accordingly, and I’ve noticed about a substantial improvement in being able to go faster and longer while using much less energy. Try it out!
Here we are out at L1 at just after 7:00am. The air temperature came in at a brisk 43F (brrr…!). Fortunately, it was a cloudless morning with “full on” sunshine which helped keep things warm during the swim.
The lake temperature (according to “Cowabunga”) came in at 52F – a significant drop from last weekend. But that’s certainly not unusual for this time of year.
When I wrote on the brown fat phenomenon over a year ago, there was a fair amount of media hype about how activating our stores of brown fat could be the key to triggering effortless weight loss. My conclusion at the time was (and still is) the following:
As you can see, these brown fat deposits are minimal. And while there is some evidence that this type of fat is stimulated by exposure to colder temperatures, there is no solid evidence to date that brown fat activation alone can significantly alter one’s metabolism.
So bottom line, if you’re looking to jack up your metabolism and burn your existing fat stores, a much better approach would be to engage in Power Law training and primal eating.
Alternatively, you could always wait for Big Pharma to come up with a drug designed to stimulate the tiny amounts of brown fat in your body. While this may take a few of years (and might include a number of nasty side effects), it would be easier than eating well and being active in the elements as Nature intended.
Well it turns out that Big Pharma is not the only one interested in tapping into the brown fat fad. Researchers at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg, Germany are genetically engineering lab rats to produce higher levels of the enzyme COX-2, which triggers development of fat cells to become brown fat instead of white fat.
But as usual, the potential future “magic bullet” solution for obese humans could be a bit ghastly. Per the scientists:
Scientists could now try using stem cells to generate brown fat cells in a lab dish to then implant them into the body and help speed up calorie burn.
Isn’t it far easier – let alone safer – to just eat the right foods and do the right types of exercise?
