Steven Kotler says that we are all capable of so much more than we know, by adopting simple habits that rewire our mindset and tame anxiety and depression by leveraging our natural ability to produce “feel good” chemicals like endorphins and serotonin.
Gratitude. Mindfulness. Walk, bike, or run, outside.
Between social media and “the news” we are bombarded every day with social anxiety and fear, which can be difficult to overcome and is bad for all of us.
Of course you can reduce the role of those things in your life, which is always a good idea, but completely independent from that you have the ability to counteract those negatives by focusing on what you *can* control.
Gratitude. Mindfulness. Walk, bike, or run, outside.
Confirming everything I have ever said about exercise:
Direct quote from Dr. Peter Attia:
“Exercise is the single most important longevity drug we have, bar none.”
Ponder that and note the following which he emphasizes, and which I have been saying for a long time.
Cardio and strength (not muscle mass) are by far the two best predictors of longevity. It isn’t close.
Cardio is the biggest impact on longevity, with a 5x reduction in all-cause mortality — dying from any reason — but strength is important too, with a 3x reduction, so it’s best to do both with cardio as your base. The ideal is biking (stationary is okay) 4x per week for 45 minutes (which is exactly what my ideal goal has always been, coincidentally). He does not discuss walking but my own take is that walking is far better than doing nothing, but biking, swimming, or running are ideal.
For strength the biggest predictors of longevity are grip, dead arm hang, and quads strength (body squats with a basic test of how quickly you can get up from a chair five times in a row). His testing only splits people into “high” vs. “low” strength so that’s where the 3x reduction in mortality applies, no further breakdown is available. Still, what more do you need to know? Work on your grip, your dead arm hang, and body squats, first and foremost. These are lifestyle exercises, too. Everything becomes easier with strong hands, forearms, legs, and core.
And as he notes, and I have always said, by far the biggest “bang for your buck” is in the change from doing nothing to doing something, not in going from doing something to doing a lot. Avoid sloth — it’s a sin, and not good for your health either. Just aim for moderately active, consistently. If 4 x 45 minutes per week is too difficult at first, or due to age or infirmity, try for 3 x 30 minutes per week.
The first step is always the hardest. Make yourself do that, the rest will be easier.
Late one afternoon while out walking I noticed a squirrel run across the grass and start to climb up a tree — and then he just stopped, four feet off the ground, frozen.
It seemed maybe he was eyeing me carefully as I walked by. A defensive posture, probably.
But maybe not. Maybe he was mentally running through his list of attack options.
Maybe he was sick and tired of all these annoying two-legged intruders on his territory and finally ready to actually do something about it, for once.
Maybe he had claws like eagle talons, and teeth like a bear, and jaws like a python that unhinge to swallow prey. Maybe I narrowly escaped with my life and body parts intact.
Who knows? Maybe killer squirrels are actually a thing but they hide it well and are very, very patient, waiting for the right moment to unleash the mass coordinated attack.
It’s also possible, I guess, that he froze like that because he was fearing for his life, seeing me as a predator looking for a tasty meal like him, frozen in hopes I wouldn’t see him.
Or maybe he noticed a different predator nearby, not me, and froze to avoid detection.
For decades the accepted wisdom for maximizing cardiovascular fittness levels has been the “target heart rate” defined very simply and roughly as 80% of your age subtracted from 220.
In a formula, ( 220 - age ) * 0.8.
For example:
For a 20 year old ... 200 * 0.8 or 160
For a 50 year old ... 170 * 0.8 or 136
For an 80 year old ... 140 * 0.8 or 112
You can see that for every 10 years of increase in age, target heart rate drops by 8.
This target heart rate is an ideal to maximize the beneficial cardiovascular effects, it’s not the minimum before any beneficial effects occur.
This point is the single most important thing to understand about cardiovascular exercise: any kind of movement is a good start and will be better for you than sitting on your butt. Going beyond that is fine tuning for personal goals, whatever those might be.
Benefits occur within a range. You will definitely still realize some benefit from hitting 70%, or 60% — probably even 50% — as long as you do it long enough, compared to a baseline of sitting and doing nothing.
This debate often shows up in opinions on whether or not walking “counts” as cardiovascular exercise. Just asking the question is evidence of a classifcation error for people under the spell of counting and measuring, and “data”, and studies, and every damn thing under the Sun except for the only thing that matters: trying it and evaluating what it does for you.
Active is active and your body doesn’t much care what you are doing, as long as you are somehow moving your legs, which are by far the biggest muscles in your body and kick the entire cardiovascular machinery into gear. Leg exercise also engages your core — glutes, abdominals, lower back, hip flexors, pelvic floor, etc.
Leg exercise of any kind *is* cardiovascular exercise, as long as you do it long enough.
I fell victim to the “what good could walking possibly do, it’s too easy” fallacy myself, until I actually ... you know ... tried it. In the winter of 2010 or 2011, after years of knowing I missed outdoor exercise during the winter (I like biking in warmer weather), I decided to try walking 30 minutes or more several times per week, in the middle of the day during the best daylight hours, as part of a lunch break, and see what happens.
I was impressed and amazed at the energy and focus I gained afterward, the mood improvement, and then — a most welcome surprise — the improvement in sleep quality. It was quite the discovery and really opened my eyes to the benefits of moving your legs, for long stretches of time, even at lower intensity levels — much lower than we’ve been taught are required.
Sleep quality! It was life-changing. Just from walking 30 minutes at 2pm. Who knew?
Key point: I only discovered this by doing it myself and learning how it helped me.
I didn’t pay any attention to target heart rate, either. I just treated it like an activity break, as much for mental and emotional recharging as anything else. And yet, the other benefits were obvious and pronounced. I became a big fan, and have been walking ever since, along with biking and other activities. And I do not stress about counting steps, or target heart rate, at all.
Target heart rate is of course a fine concept and we need it to have something to aim towards, especially for cardiac patients and the ultra-competitive among us. But at the end of the day, it’s a very simplistic, rough guideline based on the idea that, well, people need a number to aim for, so let’s give them one. It’s not magic and it’s not a mimimum, and it obscures the more important divide, the only divide that really matters: sedentary vs. active. All else is details.
I’ve learned a lot over the years about exercise, and I can say with confidence that there’s just something magic about moving your legs at a steady pace, outside, for at least 25 minutes, that produces real results for your entire cardiovascular sytem plus better sleep quality, mood, energy, focus, and more.
You may find these same results, or they may be different, but either way, you really should try it for yourself and stop listening to people’s opinions about what “counts” as cardiovascular exercise. It’s your heart, you own the condition it’s in, and you want to keep it healthy as long as you can.
Dr James Meschino does a great job of explaining this.
Walking has obviously become insanely popular, but for some folks, questions remain like how many steps should I target each day, and how much overall health benefit can I really expect from walking?
The first thing to understand is that walking is not sitting, so it automatically moves you out of the sedentary and into the active category. Everything else is details.
This simple framing permits your brain to classify it accurately and motivate you to get active enough to make some kind of difference without overthinking it — and that’s huge. Still, some people look past this simple and effective way to think about it, mainly those who need numbers and goals to motivate them and those who need confirmation from third parties — in the form of studies — to validate easily observed empirical changes in their own lives.
I’m no doctor or exercise physiologist, but I have substantial experience with steady-state aerobic exercise — 40+ years ago I was a running fanatic (6 days and 40 miles a week), and later I became a biker, and then added walking about 10 years ago. I’ve also read a bit about the clinical side of it, but primarily my own experience has taught me many things, and always confirmed what I’ve read about the clinical benefits.
Here’s what I’ve learned.
All steady-state aerobic exercises — “aerobic” means “with oxygen”, meaning your muscles are getting the blood supply and oxygen they need to do work for a long time — work the same basic way, with two distinct phases: warm-up and equilibrium.
During warm up you start from resting pulse rate and respirations and body temperature and metabolic rate, and then as you start moving you increase all of those gradually for around 10-15 minutes (shorter if you’re in excellent shape, longer if in poor shape) before you hit equilibrium. where all of those same measurements stabilize so that your body (and especially your cardiovascular system) becomes like a fully-warmed-up car engine that is operating at peak temperature and efficiency.
Because your body responds to demands upon it, during equilibrium there are lots of good things that happen to your cardiovascular system, your blood, your cells, your muscles and capillaries, even your brain and emotions, etc.
Maximizing the time spent in this equilibrium state is they key to gaining the most benefits.
This is the only important point to memorize about any type of aerobic exercise. It’s all about time spent in that state, because this is when — along with the recovery period over the next 24-48 hours — the big benefits occur. Over time, say 6-12 weeks, and depending somewhat on intensity of the exercise:
Your body creates more red blood cells to carry more oxygen to your muscles through new capillaries, greatly improving circulation.
Your lung capacity increases, your heart becomes stronger, and these changes to lead to feeling better all the time because your heart and lungs are working better.
Your blood chemistry improves in every way, from more HDL to lower LDL and triglycerides.
Your body produces endorphins, improving mood and emotional energy for several hours.
All parts of the body benefit from all of these changes: skin, nails, eyes, internal organs, hands and feet, are all served better and more efficiently with more oxygen to your cells from improved circulation.
You feel more alive and have more energy and better mental focus.
Sleep quality improves, which then helps you handle tomorrow better. Rinse and repeat.
The point here is that this list is long and impressive, and every single person who has ever done this kind of exercise for any length of time can confirm all of it.
Dr James Meschino does a great job of explaining this.
Research on activity levels correlating with cardiovascular health and weight loss stretches back decades and is not exactly revolutionary or hidden away. The life insurance business depends on such research to set rates. However, that’s another topic for another day.
So: anything that gets you up off the couch and moving your legs in any way at all, for at least 10 minutes, is good for any person at any age. Do as much as you can. Training for triathalons and marathons is obviously an entirely different discussion. The rest is details.
Pretty nice summer weather this weekend around these parts, highs around 90 Friday through Sunday but the humidity was fairly low — so while it was definitely warm it was not oppressive. At least your sweat has a chance to evaporate to cool your body.
I took advantage of this opportunity and got out on the bike both weekend days. My goal every summer is to ride 3-4 days per week for a total of about 3 hours — this year I’m adding stadium stairs 2x per week, plus a 20-30 minute walk 2-3x per week for some variety and a mental break from high exertion activity.
Sounds like a lot sweating and it is — but not doing it is even worse.
Most people think about only the physical and health benefits of exercise, but I find that my overall attitude and sense of “drive” are better with a consistent level of these kinds of activities, especially biking.
Experience has taught me that it’s about emotional mood management almost as much as physical health: something amazing goes on inside your body and brain with steady state aerobic activity, and it stays with you all day. Endorphins, increased oxygen in your blood, etc., it’s a miracle cure for a lot of ills.
When the weather gets really hot, say 90s and humid, everyone knows that the coolest time for biking and running is in the early morning, before 7am. However this involves way too much waking up at 4:30 and sweating by 5:15 — I’m more of a “wake up when I wake up and have some coffee and do some reading and writing” type of guy — but I can probably aim for 7:30 though on those really hot days.
Quick music notes: Late last week I discovered a good jazz/pop singer by the name of Laura Fygi — pronounced “fee-gee” — so over the weekend I listened to a lot of her music. The three albums that really caught my attention so far: “Introducing” her first album in 1991, “Change” from 2001, and “At Ronnie Scott’s” a live album from 2003. Her version of “Dream a Little Dream” is outstanding.
Yesterday we hit 90 or thereabouts, although the humidity was not bad so it was not oppressive.
However I see that the upcoming forecast is getting cooler again though. 83 today, 54 on Friday.
Well, that’s May in Chicago for you. There will be time for sweating and discomfort later this summer, I’m pretty sure.
After getting out on the bike 3-4 times in March - April but not at all in the last 4 weeks I finally got out for a couple of hour long rides on Thursday and Saturday, and will do one this afternoon.
Biking is my primary source of exercise in the warmer months — I aim for 3-4x per week, 45 minutes or more. This amount does a lot of good for my metabolism, cardiovascular system, leg strength, mood and emotional state, and sleep quality.
About 20 years ago I had a job that was about 8 miles away and accessible by bike path, so I decided to start riding to work twice a week. This worked great, and kept me in pretty good shape.
The only tricky parts were drying off at work and having dry clothes to wear, and making sure I had enough calories to handle the ride home during the hotter part of the day. I used powder and paper towels plus a change of clothes for the first challenge, and found that the best solution for the second was a small bag of vending machine potato chips right before I left. The salt, carbs and fat were perfect for energy.
Energy food looks like this sometimes. Don’t listen to “experts”. Your body knows different.
I did this bike to work twice a week from May - September for about 10 years at two different jobs that were pretty close to each other. Sadly that came to an end when I got one of those “work from home” jobs that everyone seems to love so much.
Working from home does not provide this opportunity. Keep that in mind.
Memorial Day is coming up
Did you know it’s literally one of the most important days on the calendar? I’ll post an essay about that on Thursday.
