Most obesity “experts” assume (erroneously) that the big equal sign between the blue and red terms implies a direction of causality. In other words, they assume that an increase in fat mass (the blue side gets bigger), was CAUSED by the red number being bigger than the green number.
Yes, physics always works. Yes, the First Law of Thermodynamics is always true. Yes, “calories in” always equals “calories out”. But that does not explain why we get fat. The equals-sign in the calories-in equals calories-out does not tell you anything about causality.
As with every single thing Peter Attia writes, you should go read this. Twice.
Whenever I’m playing with my phone I am only shortening my life. A smartphone is useful if you have a specific thing you want to do, but ninety per cent of the time the thing I want to do is avoid doing something harder than surfing Reddit. During those minutes or hours, all I’m doing is dying.
The whole article is full of great truths, many of which I feel comfortable saying I’ve learned. But on this one in particular I was guilty, until very recently.
About a year ago, I picked up the idea of clearing my phone’s home screen and re-learning to always use the search to explicitly launch the app I wanted. I also disabled all notifications and converted the phone into a tool which I use—the phone never uses me.
Was there some amount of value I was getting from Facebook? …certainly. Given that all things take up time, resources, and/or just space in my mind, what’s the cost-benefit analysis?
Sometimes I stumble upon things like this—in this case, from Maria Papova—and I’m not quite sure what to do with them. There’s something to this which scratches at the back of my mind.
What does it take to balance creative passion, personal growth, and professional responsibility while navigating life’s unpredictable journey?
Amos Rendao reflects on what music means to him, flowing vs planning, and the benefits and importance of journalling. The conversation turns to the idea of success and what that means, before moving to Aikido, and information activism. Amos shares his insights on diet and nutrition, his journey with injuries and recovery, and how he manages self talk.
Journaling is such an important way to develop a relationship with yourself.
~ Amos Rendao (49:50)
The conversation covers the relationship between creativity, self-reflection, and structured productivity. Amos reflects on his deep connection with music, sharing how his early experiences in bands shifted to a hiatus as parkour and business took priority. He revisits his passion through home recording, finding renewed joy in music’s restorative power. This leads to broader discussions on the interplay between freeform exploration and the necessity of structure, reflecting on how Amos balances spontaneity with highly organized systems to maximize productivity.
Amos and Craig explore the transformative impact of journaling as a tool for self-awareness and growth. They discuss the challenges of maintaining consistency in habits, diet, and personal health while navigating entrepreneurial and athletic commitments. The dialogue also touches on the influence of aikido in shaping their movement practice, drawing parallels between martial arts and parkour. The broader theme highlights how embracing both structured goals and open-ended exploration can lead to deeper personal insight and development.
Takeaways
Journaling – A powerful tool for developing self-awareness, tracking personal growth, and identifying patterns over time.
Creativity and Flow – Revisiting creative passions can restore mental health and balance, even after long hiatuses.
Structured Productivity – Building organized systems around sleep, diet, and time management can significantly enhance efficiency.
Freeform Exploration – Spontaneous, unstructured days can lead to valuable experiences and insights, balancing out rigid schedules.
Movement and Recovery – Insights into how parkour, aikido, and other movement practices contribute to long-term physical resilience and injury recovery.
Diet and Performance – Experimenting with diet, fasting, and biohacking to improve mental clarity and athletic performance.
Community and Connection – The importance of community involvement, both in local parkour initiatives and broader projects like USPK.
Resources
APEX School of Movement — A movement school co-founded by Amos Rendao focused on parkour education.
Parkour EDU — An educational platform designed to teach parkour principles and coaching techniques.
Crafting these blog posts has become a daily practice of introspection. Once a day or so, I stroll out to the digital workshop and putter around. Sometimes I simply clean up. Sometimes I do a bunch of heavy-lifting work. Sometimes I think I catch a glimpse of what it might mean to be a human being.
I just dropped a jar of salsa on the kitchen floor. How quickly can I agree that this is reality now? The reflexive internal discussion about what ought to be happening is usually an unwelcome distraction. It prevents acceptance. We should always be aiming for real-time acceptance of all developments, to the extent that it is possible.
Once you master that skill, the next pitfall is focusing too much on the future by over-thinking everything.
Broken jar of salsa? Easy. Takes a few minutes to clean it up. But . . .
Maybe I should move the refrigerator? …if I had room to open the door fully, I wouldn’t have dropped that. Maybe I should put cork flooring down in the kitchen? …that would greatly reduce breakage. What’s going to happen as I get old and physically less capable? I should develop the habit of placing my pinky finger under things like jars and glasses; When they slip, my pre-positioned finger gives me a much better grip. What if I reduced the amount of glass I have around; Buy more things in plastic? What if I could drastically reduce the number of things in the refrigerator?
Over-thinking things: That’s my current challenge.
When you recognize that it is actually impossible to do work tomorrow, then you know to stay with your work until something starts to take form. Today is the only day you can ever work, and once you see this truth, he is defeated.
The Lesson: This first insight is in truly learning that social media is much more of a mindless habit — and a very strongly ingrained one — than a pleasurable or fulfilling activity. We do it out of compulsion rather than intention.
Back when we invented all this online bru-ha-ha, they were called “social networks.” I think we should still be using the word network rather than media, because then it would remain clear: A healthy community necessarily has a network of people, but a network of people is not sufficient to create a healthy community.
How does moving to Brighton and experiencing injury influence an athlete’s approach to training, recovery, and personal growth?
Lynn Jung discusses Brighton, what it means to her, and how moving there affected her life. She unpacks how she approaches training, her movement background, and her journey of injury and recovery over the past few years. Lynn shares how she came to freerunning, her current projects, and her involvement with Storm Freerun and xDubai.
Then I moved to England where I didn’t know anyone other than my boyfriend which I think is a very hard situation to be in because you don’t always just want to spend time with one person. You need to have a broader network of people which was hard to build up first.
~ Lynn Jung (13:30)
The conversation focuses on Lynn Jung’s experiences moving to Brighton and how it shaped her personal and professional life. She shares how the move initially brought challenges, such as building a social network and dealing with the absence of indoor Parkour facilities. Despite these hurdles, Brighton eventually became her home, supported by a community of Freerunners who shared her lifestyle.
Lynn also reflects on the impact of injury, describing her recovery process and the mental shift it required. She explains how her injury led her to explore other physical activities like yoga and diving, broadening her understanding of movement. Professionally, Lynn discusses her involvement with Storm Freerun, her commercial work, and plans to develop skills in filmmaking and photography. Throughout the conversation, she emphasizes the importance of community, resilience, and adaptability in navigating her athletic career.
Takeaways
Brighton as a training environment — The city lacks dedicated Parkour facilities, which initially frustrated her but later pushed her to diversify her training.
Injury and recovery process — Lynn faced a severe tibia fracture, prompting a two-year recovery that reshaped her relationship with movement and rest.
Building community — Moving to Brighton required Lynn to actively form connections and step outside her comfort zone, enriching her experience.
Role of Storm Freerun — Joining Storm Freerun significantly impacted her career, offering professional opportunities and strengthening friendships.
Emotional connection to Freerunning — Freerunning became a refuge after personal loss, highlighting its role in her healing and personal growth.
Resources
Storm Freerun — A professional Parkour team Lynn is part of, involved in projects and community building.
XDubai — A Dubai-based company sponsoring athletes and promoting action sports.
My first thought was that my worst critic is myself. It strikes me that Seth’s comments apply equally to the me-voice in my head. Criticising myself is literally zero-effort; Much easier even than someone posting a critical comment somewhere.
The biggest factor in getting something to go from hard to easy is normally exposure. The more you encounter something, the less intimidating it gets. Your emotional relationship changes. There’s less uncertainty, your skill in dealing with it improves, your resentment for it fades, your craving for ease or salvation disappears. It has become easy.
Yes, there are other things beside growth, outside your comfort zone: Fear, danger, and mistakes, for example. Irrational fears you know you should work through. Danger you know you should avoid. But what about mistakes? When’s the last time you made a mistake?
The following is from Bruce Lee’s hand-written essay entitled, The Passionate State of Mind, which I discovered in the Artist of Life by J Little.
To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are. Whether being different results in dissimulation or a real change of heart—it cannot be realized without self-awareness. Yet is is remarkable that the very people who are most self-dissatisfied and crave most for a new identity have the least self-awareness. They have turned away from an unwanted self and hence never had a good look at it. The result is that those most dissatisfied can neither dissimulate nor attain a real change of heart. They are transparent, and their unwanted qualities persist through all attempts at self-dramatization and self-transformation.
I wish I had read that 20 years ago. But I suspect I wouldn’t have understood it the way I do now. I only understand because of the path I’ve taken through my life.
Bruce Lee was not an Exceptional Philosopher; Please stop quoting, “be water my friend,” as if it’s the ultimate grain of wisdom for the ages. Rather, I suggest that Bruce Lee was an Exceptional Person because he asked questions and he followed those lines of enquiry wherever they led, often inward into his thinking, beliefs and goals.
Are you self-aware enough to ask, “am I satisfied with myself?” and what are you going to do with the answer?
… I wasn’t surprised to read that nationwide survey by the Chicago Tribune in which half of the respondents said there should have been some kind of press restraint on reporting about the prison abuse and just as many said they “would embrace government controls of some kind on free speech, especially if it is found unpatriotic.”
I wonder if there is such a thing in nature as a FAT MIND? I really think I have met with one or two: minds which could not keep up with the slowest trot in conversation; could not jump over a logical fence, to save their lives; always got stuck fast in a narrow argument; and, in short, were fit for nothing but to waddle helplessly through the world.
What an interesting metaphor! Can a mind be overfed? Can a mind undergoing regular, additional exercise require more feeding? Are there different diets—composition of the nourishment, not strategies to lose weight—for the mind?
Am I the sort of person who takes seriously the specifics of nutrition and exercise of the mind?
What would “junk food” be for the mind? What would “comfort food” be for the mind? What’s the equivalent of quadrupedal movement for the mind? What would over-training be for the mind?
…and why do I have the urge to dump out the “cabinets” where I store my mind’s nourishment in order to reboot my mental diet?
The challenge with on-boarding as with most investments in the humans at your company is proving a compelling and measurable return on that investment. Everyone agrees that on-boarding feels like a thing we should invest in, but isn’t the first priority building and selling a product?
The answer to that question, by the way, is, “No.”
Winning sports teams, and successful companies, focus on getting the small things right. Do this right. Do that right. Focus on doing the right thing now. The team’s season, and the company’s product, will take care of themselves.
Except for a leader. The team and the company need a leader with vision. It’s true that to build the best wall, you focus on laying this brick as best you can, and the result is the best wall. Except, someone had to determine where the wall was located. Someone had to determine what materials we’re building with. So we need the focus on doing things right, and we need a leader with vision.
The real challenge is to integrate the leadership vision with the team that’s doing things right.
It took me years longer than I had originally hoped to finish this series of posts. I’ve recently decided to push these posts out the door so that they could possibly be of some use to others. Having them laying around as drafts-in-progress isn’t helpful.
As this series was being written, I took a terrific detour working with two friends who were experimenting with starting their own personal training company. They used me as a guinea pig for testing their coaching and training systems for nutrition, psychology of eating and physical training. During this time working with them I succeeded at some huge improvements in psychology (related to eating) and achieved the best physical condition I’ve been in in recorded history. If you want to do a deep dive, check out, Training for the New Alpinism.
What do I want? I simply want to be able to move and play. I’m constrained by physical limitations (age, body type, etc.), but mostly just by my total weight. So although I always want to increase my general fitness, the current first order problem—and I’ve linked directly into the Wikipedia article to the section that could be a profound, new way for you to consider when solving problems—for me is simply weight. For me, that is almost entirely driven by psychology—psychosis?—as it applies to food.
What am I tracking? I’ve often heard, “that which you measure gets improved.” Tracking and measuring does focus your attention, but it only gets you data. You have to be motivated to analyze that data and make adjustments to your routine. Am I making progress? Is the rate of progress what I expected when I planned? Is the progress too slow or too fast? What can I change that would affect the progress? What happens if I cycle periods of tracking a lot, and tracking nothing? You have to look at your assumptions, analyze, research, and experiment to figure out what’s true. “Science, bitch!” ~ Jesse.
What role does fear, physical limitations, and personal motivation play in pursuing movement-based activities as one ages?
Jean Lam reflects on how she became interested in fitness and eventually joined the industry, her love of movement, and what sports and activities she is involved in now. Jean discusses corrective exercise, and shares her insights on programming, motivation, and scope of practice. She goes into injury and rehab, before explaining how she keeps up with coaching best practices.
I think that failure is part of the equation. If everything you do guarantees success, you’re not going to ever expand and do more.
~ Jean Lam (14:20)
Jean Lam discusses her journey from being a self-described couch potato to becoming deeply involved in movement-based activities such as parkour, skiing, and aerial silks. She shares how discovering jazzercise in her twenties helped her lose weight and sustain her fitness for over 30 years. Jean emphasizes the importance of finding joy in physical activities and explains how parkour became a fun and functional way to apply the strength she built through traditional gym workouts. She reflects on how women can be inspired by seeing others engage in movement and how visibility plays a role in motivating participation.
Jean delves into the psychological aspects of fear and adrenaline in sports, contrasting her controlled approach with the more extreme pursuits of others. She highlights her involvement with PK Silver, a program designed to teach older adults parkour-inspired movement. Jean discusses the importance of addressing physical dysfunctions through corrective exercise, focusing on mobility and prehab. She stresses the need for fitness professionals to stay within their scope of practice and explains how she continuously educates herself to provide safe, science-based programming for clients.
Takeaways
Fear as a limiting factor — Addressing fear helps expand comfort zones and prevent further restriction of movement.
The role of fun in fitness — Enjoyable activities sustain long-term engagement with physical exercise.
Corrective exercise — Addressing physical dysfunctions is essential for safe and effective movement, especially as the body ages.
Scope of practice — Fitness professionals must recognize boundaries between training and medical treatment to avoid harm.
Motivation through community — Seeing others engage in movement inspires peers to take action and pursue their own fitness goals.
Aging and movement — Fitness routines should adapt to the needs of older adults by incorporating mobility and stability exercises.
Overcoming injuries — Recovery from acute injuries involves patience and may change how training is approached.
Progression and adaptability — Programming for clients should evolve based on their capabilities, ensuring movements match their current physical state.
Physical limitations and self-awareness — Understanding personal limitations helps prevent injury and supports sustainable fitness progress.
Resources
PK Move — A non-profit dedicated to teaching parkour to all ages, including the PK Silver program for older adults.
Conversation with Fear — Mermer Blakeslee’s book exploring the psychology of fear and strategies for confronting it in sports and life.
Barbell Physio — A resource for strength and mobility training, founded by a physical therapist with a focus on functional movement.
Shift Movement Science — Provides educational resources on gymnastics and physical therapy for athletes.
With any form of IF, you can get the same physiological benefits. The key is to find a form/style of fasting that works for you and which yields the results you want. No matter what you do, it requires [what may be] a whole new level of paying attention to your body; how you feel, how much you weigh, how strong you feel, how sharp your mind seems, etc. IF is putting your food consumption and internal eating-related systems on manual. That can be great, or it can be a car crash.
I’ve come to realize that the style of fasting I do is not actually me “doing something”, but rather me living in tune with my body. The way I ate previously was automated and not healthy. I started IF as a project, and now it’s simply more normal and healthy than they way I used to eat.
Misinformation
“Starvation mode” is not something you have to worry about with any of these short-term fasts. You’re not going to lose muscle (especially if you continue training or weight lifting). You certainly can exercise in the fasted state; I do just that all the time. I don’t eat until Noon and I’ve done all sort of ranges of activity in the fasted state.
Oversimplified
Cells prefer to run on glucose. Things like muscles store some glucose internally and use that initially because it’s readily available. Some cells (notably, your brain cells) don’t store glucose and must have glucose from the blood. The liver stores glucose and releases it into the blood when glucose levels drop. When the liver runs low on stored glucose, it creates glucose from fat. In that process, the liver also create ketones (small, simple, alcohol-like molecules) which get dumped into the blood and will be removed by the kidneys or expelled in the breath.
Counterintuitively, some processes in your body (e.g., your heart muscle) operate more efficiently in the fasted state. When the liver adds ketones to the blood, your brain and heart prefer ketones as an energy source, which reduces your need for glucose to be produced by the liver. (If you do the deep dive on the biochemistry, it turns out that per joule stored in glucose versus in ketones, the heart can do more work per joule when using the ketones.) There is also a pronounced mental “feeling” of thinking sharper when your brain is using ketones. “ketone hacking” is an entire universe of people, information, podcasts…
What to Eat
Fasting is all about WHEN or HOW MUCH to eat. What to eat is a whole additional discussion. Some of the things you’ll read talk about what to eat, but I recommend initially focusing only on the when and how-much of eating. Then on subsequent reading and study, you could look at what you are eating and adjust that within the framework you’re settling on.
Types of IF
Aside from the various religious fasting prescriptions, there are two main variations: “eat, stop, eat” (ESE) and “16/8”. ESE is where you fast for a 24 hour period, once or twice per week. With “16/8” you fast 16 hours every day and have an 8 hour eating window.
I prefer the 16/8 because I like the regular schedule and I can always have lunch/dinner with people. (Most people don’t even notice I’m actually fasting in the morning.)
Ready?
So that’s my overly-simplified introduction to the actual introductions to IF. I suggest starting here:
Many moons ago I had frequent back problems. There were many things which provided me temporary relief, but this is not an article about temporary relief. This is an article about one of the things which actually fixed my back: Walking.
I recall Ido Portal saying in a podcast with Daniel Vitalis, something to the effect of: Your spine is for orienting yourself in your environment. Your spine’s myriad of joints should be flexible and powerful. At that point in my journey, I wasn’t even really thinking of my spine as joints; It was simply something with an upper and lower portion, both of which were frequently in significant pain. That was the exact moment when I became convinced my spine was weak.
…and then I read _Walking Found to Provide Significant Relief from Back Pain. At the time, I was preparing for a parkour trip to Québec for an event they where having with the Yamakasi. So I was already focused on finding my weaknesses—my back!—and trying to fill them in.
…and then I read Walking, an article by Steve Kamb about walking to Mordor. Yes, that Mordor. It’s a challenge to walk 1,779 miles (but see below.) I took my exercise tracker out on a few of the common walks I like, and noted the mileage. I’ve been keeping track of the total ever since.
It’s 1,779 miles to get from Hobbiton to Mt. Doom. Then riding the eagles back to Minas Tirith cuts the return walk to Bag End down to 1625 miles. Plus 467 more miles, roundtrip to Grey Havens. Brings my total goal to 3,871 miles. This is roughly the entire length of the Nile river, or the distance from the surface to the center of the Earth. (Mid 2019 I’m a few hundred miles from Mt. Doom.)
There’s so much that can be said about walking. But rather than read more about walking, why not go for a walk?