Grahambles

In today’s world we are rewarded and encouraged to do more, be more, achieve more. Downtime and leisure are regarded as luxuries with an undertone of laziness and lack of drive. If you want to be successful, you can’t waste time doing nothing.

Show notes and more can be found at https://grahamtuttle.com/podcast

Podcast #29 – Don’t hire a personal trainer

People that try to outsource their own health and wellness never quite see the return they want.

You can’t treat your body like a car that you take to the mechanic or call AAA when you have a problem. Noone will ever know your body as well as you do.

Trainers can not fix you, get you in better shape, or change your mindset. They can only help you make that change yourself.

Working out hard for 60 minutes a day but sitting for 12 still makes you a sedentary individual.

The sweet spot for working with a coach is 1-2x/week. Going 3-4 times a week gets expensive and can be used as an excuse for outsourcing all your exercise and physical movement into those slots. But that just isn’t enough to really make change.

Trainers are good for:

Accountability

Structure

Motivation

Information

Trainers are not good for:

Doing things for you.

Reading your mind

Being your only source of motivation and desire.

You can’t coach desire, so before you hire a coach or trainer, you need to actually want the outcome yourself.

It’s not about how hard you are willing to work, it’s about how much you are willing to sacrifice.

It’s not about getting rid of the problem, it’s about choosing the problems you want to have.

Every “solution” has it’s associated pain, are you willing to accept that pain?

There are no quick fixes in life. You either become the person that is fit, strong, healthy, and athletic, or you don’t. And no one can do that for you. If you’re not willing to accept the sacrifice and pain that comes with an outcome, you’re not going to have the outcome.

People are obsessed with this notion of winning the lottery because it symbolizes the ultimate fantasy of getting something with no risk or input. But the problem shows up when those people are nowhere near ready to handle the pain that comes with having a ton of money. They get harassed, spend it on stupid stuff, go in debt, and end up worse off than before.

You see professional athletes do the same thing.

So if you want to be healthier, leaner, stronger, more muscular, more athletic, or feel better, don’t go to a personal trainer, unless you are ready and willing to do the work.

And if you do make that decision, choose a trainer who will help you build a program and structure for your entire life, not just the hour or so you see them in the gym. Work with someone who empowers you to actually grow and change, not just spend money.

Podcast #28 – How Your Body Actually Uses Those Calories

Basal Metabolic Rate – Basic functioning, breathing, body temperature, organ function, brain, cell processing, muscle building, fat storage, muscle breakdown, muscle contraction.. This is what keeps you alive. 60-75% percent of your calories are spent here

Thermic Effect of Food – This is how many calories are burned in the digestion of food. This equates for about 5-10% of your daily caloric expenditure. The energy required to digest each macronutrient (its TEF) can be expressed as a percentage of the energy provided by this macronutrient:[4]

·  Fat provides 9 food calories per gram, and its TEF is 0–3%.

·  Carbohydrate provides 4 food calories per gram, and its TEF is 5–10%.

·  Protein provides 4 food calories per gram, and its TEF is 20–30%.

Non-Exercise Active Thermogenesis – NEAT. This is the amount of energy you use with daily movement and activity. Yard work, moving, fidgeting, walking, typing… literally anything that isn’t exercise. This is 15-20% of total expenditure

Exercise Active Thermogenesis – Only 5-10% of total calories. Walking/Jogging a mile only burns about 100 calories.

Three big takeaways:

1) You cannot out work a bad diet. The math isn’t there. When you work out hard you’re more likely to be hungrier and eat that back. You’re more likely to feel tired and sore and cut down on your NEAT. Your will shut you down before you can work yourself to death -  you can only loose so much body weight naturally in a day.

2) NEAT is the biggest swing factor. As you get older, metabolism does go down slightly, but the bigger factor Is your NEAT. You tend to move less, do less, fidget less as your get older and have a much smaller rate of calories loss because of it.

3) If you want to lose weight or gain weight, exercise plays a part, but it’s only a small part. People that struggle to lose weight almost always move less than they think they do and eat more than they think they do. People that struggle to gain weight almost always move more than they think they do and eat less than they think they do.

The first thing that is important to understand is the context for track and cross country. These are their own sports, NOT just supplemental training. Unless the energy system and timing of the event is similar, training to get better at these sports will likely have no cross over to any other sport.

Cross country is long, steady distance training. This stands in contrast to the context of almost every other team sport that focuses on high intensity, short duration effort. You can train to be aerobically fit with a high aerobic threshold and a majority of type 1 muscle fibers OR you can train to be explosive, powerful, and quick with a majority of type 2 muscle fibers. It’s not that simple, of course, but the main focus needs to be on the fact that “doing cross country” is not going to keep you in shape for tennis or make you a better tennis player. In fact, it’s likely to have the opposite effect.

With that said, if you want to make running your primary sport, then by all means, go for it! I ran track and cross country for years as a scholastic athlete and was much better for it. All I am concerned with is the transparency and understanding that these sports are not inherently beneficial when it comes to athletic development!

If you are an athlete with aspirations outside of running sports, my recommendation is to pursue track with a focus on short to mid distance running (100-800 meters). This is because there is a much higher emphasis placed on correct form and running mechanics for these athletes than there is with the long-distance runners. The more power, speed, and performance you demand from your body, the less room for error you can have.

Running is a skill. It requires strength, control, balance, coordination, and a high pain tolerance. Anyone can go out for a run, all you need is a pair of shoes and a bit of space. That’s why running is considered as a ubiquitous mark of health and fitness because it is accessible by everyone. Unfortunately, this also creates a problem. Just because you can go run, doesn’t mean you have the ability to run well. Without a focus and practice of proper technique, a solid foundation of strength, and a base of movement specific conditioning, many people run themselves straight into injury. Pun intended.

As bipedal mammals (moving on two feet instead of four) there are two different types of movement patterns available to us: walking and running. The difference is the introduction of flight phase, or time spent in the air. When we walk, we always have one foot on the ground. As you step from side to side you are just shifting your weight from one foot to the other. This is an amazing achievement for a mammal. Most animals have 4 legs and cannot stand upright for long periods of time as a result. Since we can move on two limbs, we are able to use our arms to work with tools and hold things! And you can thank your heels for this. The ability to heel strike and maintain a balance as we step walk with a long ground contact time allows us to cover long periods of distance steadily. We sacrifice a great deal of speed and running velocity by being bipedal movers, just go race a horse or dog and tell me how it goes.

But the moment we transition into a jog, no matter how slow, we introduce flight into our stride. This means we are jumping from one foot to the other. This new move requires a new movement pattern – the fore foot strike. To help you visualize this, imagine you are jumping rope, with no shoes. You’re jumping on the front of your foot, right? Now shift to jumping on your heels. Not as easy and pretty painful... Our ankles, calves, and Achilles’ heel are designed to work as shock absorbers for our strides. This allows us to land softly, absorb force, and reproduce is effectively hundreds and thousands of times in a row without injury.

First world problems are things you complain about when you perceive an absence of the more pressing concerns in life. First world problems are really existential problems. First world problems are invented problems that come from not having something more important to focus on.

The things you get mad about show your ceiling. If you had something more important to care about, then you would. But you obviously don’t because you’re too busy obsessing over pennies.

It’s like you’re running on a big hamster wheel, and every adversity is an opportunity to get off the struggle and nitpick over some insignificant thing. But even though it feels good to have a mini excuse, or a fake purpose to take your mind off the difficulty of the struggle, that ultimately becomes a trap that keeps you from moving onward in life and caring about something bigger.

So every time you have the opportunity to get off the ladder and have an emotion or feeling about something, ask yourself: “Is this where I want to put my tent up? Is this worthy of my time and energy? Is this what I want to be known for?”

It is ok to feel bad - Striving to remove all negative removes all growth stimulus

Four Basic emotions – happy, sad, afraid, and mad

3/4th of the basic emotions are not “positive” ones. So trying to remove those emotions is like trying to remove 75% of your life.. And these negative emotions are the exact emotions that enable happiness. Taking anti depressants is a good example – they may remove the anxiety and sadness, but they also remove the happiness. You’re not living anymore, you’re just existing.

Good/bad, happy/sad, light/dark, hot/cold – you can’t have one without the other. So instead of trying to remove the problems and pain, accept them and reframe them.

Wanting something positive is a negative experience

Accepting of a negative is a positive experience

Reframe your problems- Success is created through difficulty and problems. Difficult situations are always an opportunity to growth. Pressure is a privilege - It means you have the chance to step up

Gratitude is always in reach – Are you alive? Are you able bodied? Are your loved ones still alive? Did you have food yesterday? Did you have a place to sleep? Are you safe from physical harm??

You will be happier with less -

The best investment I made all last year was therapy because it showed me that I was causing my own problems. Not buying more stuff, not wanting things to be better all the time, not always feeling this engine running to do more, be more, and work harder. When I stepped back and realized that I have so much to be grateful for I was able to focus on creating and doing what I actually love.

The big difference was that I stopped wanting to be wealthy, healthy, and have a great marriage. I started doing it. I realized that none of those things would bring me a deep sense of joy, contentment, and fulfillment if I didn’t decide to already be joyful, content, and fulfilled.

Thoughts shape your decisions which shape your reality which shapes your future

You define success for yourself. It’s up to you to choose daily or not. At the end of the day, we all die. The hamster wheel goes nowhere, but the only way to live fulfilled is to stay on it. We all care about something, finding that something and running toward it is the struggle worth living, and that energy contributes to the rest of humanity by adding good into the world

Podcast #25 – So I Went To A Big Box Gym…

Divorcing the muscle from movement defeats the Point

·  All these machines supposedly help you build muscle, but they take away all of the intrinsic benefits of the movement – stability, balance, control, and all of the small muscles and movements in between.

·  There are no little consequences for improper movement, only big ones, which is a bad thing. Sure it’s nice to be able to lift and push lots of weight, but if you aren’t prepared for it then you’re more likely to get injured when those safe guards are taken away. It’s like learning to bowl with the bumpers up. It doesn’t teach you how to bowl.

·  So much money and space goes into these machines that mimic what you would be doing with free weights or bodyweight..

·  The point of going to the gym is NOT to put on muscle, get “in shape”, or lose weight. The point should be to maximize your health and ability. Don’t agree? Look at any number of meatheads who grind their joints into the ground doing the same machines with bad form, or the body dysmorphic people who never leave the stair climber. The gym is a place to supplement a healthy lifestyle, not become the central focus it.

The path to being big and muscular has little to do with being an athlete or being athletic

·  I saw lots of jacked dudes walking around with the gym bag and blender bottles doing poor form on a machine. But they looked the part. The problem is that looking the part doesn’t mean anything about being able to live the part.

·  Training to be coordinated, mobile, capable, and athletic does not happen on a circuit rotation of 10 different sectorized machines.

·  Would you rather be athletic or look athletic? At the end of the day what is the point of having a muscle car that won’t drive anywhere…

Going to the gym will not save you.

·  Doing one hour of exercise a day and 8 hours of sitting still makes you sedentary.

·  You cannot outwork a bad diet.

·  It’s not about how much you’re willing to work, it’s about how much you’re willing to sacrifice.

Don’t go to the gym to just walk on the treadmill.

Exercising/working out from an emotionally reactive place of “I feel fat” or I need to get jacked will not help you create long term success

·  Going to the gym without a plan is like going to the grocery store or mall without a shopping list

·  Use the gym as a supplement for what you can’t do on your own.

·  Yes, it’s a big step to get to the gym, but the bigger step is creating a plan and setting up accountability to see it through.

Incredibly lonely

·  I found the whole experience incredibly lonely. Noone talked to anyone else, no one made eye contact. Most people were listening to music or looking at their phone.

·  A place where you heal your body and mind is best when you feel known and appreciated. Being so “independent” all the time isn’t healthy. Find a place where people know your name.

·  A gym should be more than just a building with equipment.

Sugar – I used to think it was benign and empty calories but now I realize that it is pretty inflammatory

Therapy/Permission/Stories – Therapy gives you a chance to verbalize unconscious thoughts and stories and hear them back objectively. You get to choose what you do with them. Therapy isn’t magic but being in a place to actually hear yourself and setting up accountability to change can be incredibly powerful.

Weight Loss – More about Mental/behavior change than foods. Slapping a meal plan on bad habits may mask them for a short period of time but will not fix them. I spend more time asking about the emotional reasons for WHY than I do about the actual logistics of what people eat. I believe that if you change the motivation you will change the behavior. How you treat yourself is a reflection of how you feel about yourself than anything else.

Mental Recovery/Processing – You can’t “GO GO GO” all the time and not build in time for deloading mentally. The big change here is understanding the point of structured deloading time, not just mindless activities like TV or social media. Meditation, silence, journaling are all great options.

Drugs – Psychedelic drugs and the power to change. Incredible work being done with anxiety, depression, PTSD, hospice patients. These drugs force you to reconcile your hidden stories and trauma instead of masking it all. They are incredibly anti addictive and can help you reframe your life your thoughts and your internal narrative.

Drugs – Caffeine covers up bad life choices, poor sleep, and being out of shape. Alcohol numbs the brain and lowers inhibition – alcohol covers up being out of touch with your thoughts and self.

Feet – Dysfunctional feet really mess up how your body moves with the world. Poor balance, stiff ankles, knee pain, bad running, tight calves, hip tightness…

We have to take care of our feet, put them in shoes that support natural movement, and strengthen them to do what we want in life.

Movement – Daily movement is an essential part of life. Non exercise movement is how our joints and muscles stay healthy and useful. Without movement we will die.

Intermittent Fasting – IF is a great tool for systems for eating. It takes some time to get used to, but I can’t see going back to 3-4 meals a day. IF maximizes simplicity, health benefits, and behavior change.

Sleep – I’ve always known that sleep is important, but this year I truly realized how important. I tried the getting up early thing for a while but realize that sacrificing sleep for more waking hours is always a loss. I need 7.5+ or I’m not at my best. It has to be a priority if you want to perform.

Working Out is a short term thing. It is an event. Working out is great for burning some calories, getting rid of stress, or getting out and being active.

The problem is that this isn’t fulfilling or meaningful enough to motivate most people.

Training is working toward a goal – Strength, Speed, Power, Competition, Sports..

Training for something means that every individual event is part of a bigger whole, working toward that end. Each practice or session is important as part of the bigger picture.

Skipping sessions and practices is like taking bricks out of a wall of a house. Sure you can miss a few, but over time the missing pieces will add up to a bigger problem of instability.

The other half of this conversation is the fact that success is build on consistency. It does not matter what you are trying to do, you need to be able to maintain a commitment over time.

If you workout consistently for a long period of time you will accomplish something. The question is, what is that something? This is where goal setting comes into play.

Being healthy can be a goal, but that may mean that some forms of exercise are unnecessary

Being well balanced physically can be a goal, which means that you need to have a variety of methods

Being Strong, muscular, lean, explosive, athletic, fast, or in great endurance shape are all goals, but they each have their own requirements for training to optimize the result.

Take a few minutes to think about what you actually want. And just because you pick a goal does not mean your life’s mission is set. Training goals should last at least 4-6 weeks to start to see results from your efforts and they can last a lifetime if you find a passion.

But if you’re struggling to stick to a routine, set a goal and then work backwards from that place to create a schedule and daily routine that works for you! Doing short terms challenges with a trainer or coach, or friend can be a great help too to build in accountability.

Big point here is that exercise doesn’t have to be miserable because it should be based around building to an outcome that YOU want.  If you don’t set goals and end up doing one-off workouts with this underlying guilt about “needing to go to a gym” then you’ll inevitably end up frustrated and in the same place you started.

So begin with the end in mind!

Plan ahead for the days you want to eat big or drink. Just like studying for a test you can’t cram the night before, the hay is either in the barn or it isn’t, you can’t make up for lost time.

·  Week 1 – Aggressive diet (500 calorie deficit)

·  Week 2 – Same deal, and yes, this means you may not crush it at Christmas parties. You get to Drink OR Eat dessert.

·  Week 3 – Christmas! Enjoy! 23-25th are days off. You’ve prepared and have some space to work. Back on track the 26th.

·  Week 4 – Strict diet until new years eve where you can go big, enjoy parties and do what you’d like. Jan 2, back to normal life of maintenance.

Just like saving for a bigger purchase, take the calories you either don’t eat or work out to gain and “save” them for the holidays.

·  Plan ahead, mentally save space each day

·  This builds anticipation, which is the most fun part

·  Build in reserve so that you can 100% enjoy the actual holidays

Writing things off, like “it’s just the holidays” is a negative and self fulfilling prophecy. If you don’t try, or actively stop doing the things that are moving you in the right direction then you will inevitable fail.

·  Slippery slope fallacy is a fallacy.

·  Don’t write off personal responsibility to some excuse.

·  Doing your best to swim against the stream will put you so much farther ahead of where you would have if you have just gone with the easy choice. Even if you don’t move further up, you definitively won’t move back.

Learn how to say NO. You don’t have to drink at every party. You don’t have to eat dessert.  You don’t have to try everything at the buffet. You don’t have to take the cookies home with you.

·  Example at the party about drinking.

·  Avoid pressure from group think, ultimately people that are “bothered” by your decisions are too self interested to really care. And people that care about you won’t pressure you.

·  Understand the pressures ahead of time and make your decision BEFORE you get to it.

Enjoy the HOLIDAY. But remember that the holiday is 1-2 days over the span of a month. Maximize the experience by creating anticipation and enjoying things around the event like family, decorating, and time off from work. If you decide to take Thanksgiving-New Years off from your eating, exercise, and self discipline, don’t be surprised that it’s hard to “get back on the wagon”

·  Cheat meals and off days need to be distinctly different from normal days

·  1-5 days off, no matter how “bad” you ate or drank, do not have a huge effect in the grand scheme. 45 consecutive days of “average” will sink you with slow and subtle efficiency.

·  Start your “new year’s resolutions” TODAY and you’ll have a much easier time actually doing it this year.