I love that you distill all the advice down to "don't be a weirdo." I remember seeing Joel Salatin speak and what he said stuck with me. "You can be a Buddhist or you can be a Nudist but you can't be a Buddhist Nudist. It's just too weird." I'll try to not be too weird.
My wife and have a saying for small bits like this... What would Mary Ball Washington do? George Washington's mother didn't have pre-made formula, care.com, or supermarkets. How did she manage to raise her son without the benefit of modernity? It helps keep us grounded as we raise our 3 little ones.
Yep, been thinking about this. Or, I think this is along the lines of what is said here, but may be tangential.
You interviewed Jay Heinrichs so you know his running-up-a-mountain story, how a big crazy goal motivated him to fix a his hip more than if he had just done PT and tried to tackle it directly.
So he mentioned this in a post about NY resolutions and how much better it is to set yourself a crazy goal than something small like losing 1-2 lbs and it clicked for me.
Working out "to be healthy" is kind of boring. I think even wanting to look jacked is preferable because you can chase something concrete. When I tried running the Starting Strength nlp (did not have the fortitude lmao tapped out in 2 or 3 months) I was driven by the idea of becoming way stronger than I was or than most people I'd meet in life. I hardly thought of the health benefits.
I went to this weird dance thing last night that demands a lot of strength and coordination. I managed to get on my back and roll around on my shoulders in a way that had thrown my back out when I had done it a month ago. No spasm yet although it can creep up in the middle of the day after something brings it on, so fingers crossed.
Made me thankful for the workouts I've been doing, mostly animal locomotion and calisthenics and occasionally heading to the gym. I enjoy any real life task that seems to require an expression of the strength, endurance and coordination.
The guys I get these locomotion programs from talk a lot about strength to do things you already do, which could fall into the same issue of just being neutered fitness. What about becoming able to do things you can't do? Who cares about getting better at getting in and out of a chair? Thankfully they don't really fall into that trap and still train you to do hard stuff.
I love that meditation helps my mental health but doing it just to be mentally healthy is boring. What about vividness? Deep down I do it because I want to tap into the sensory immersion I had in my teens.
There's one technique that I occasionally try to research and nearly every resource you can find casts it as a way to reduce your anxiety level and nothing more. Some nlp guys use it for learning. This annoys the hell out of me. There's clearly so much more to this method that few people seem curious about.
I've found one teacher who incorporates it into his methodology and appreciates it's significance as a way of bringing yourself into altered states of consciousness and touching the sacred.
I think I've been the most motivated towards a goal when it's hyperbolic, concrete and has more to do with engaging the world and radically expanding what I can do than just patching holes.
Outstanding. I think this essay stands within the pantheon of the best Art of Manliness and DB articles.
Like Theodore Roosevelt, I too suffered from illness during my childhood and most of my life. I am writing this five-month post surgery from my eighth - yes, eighth! - shoulder surgery. I am a Christian. Yet, I misdirected my loves and made health paramount.
Months ago, my mindset shifted and I think this essay gave the last nudge to have my loves in the right order. This essay is a gift. Thank you! Now, I’m going to the sauna!
This was such a fun read. Reading about morning walks and Huberman sun hacks all the way to Nietzsche and Plato with a 1994 film about goofball heath hacks of centuries past wasn’t how I planned to begin the day. This was ambitious and you nailed it without losing humor or common sense.
The description of the valetudinarian living in “constant torment” hit home. There’s something deeply relatable about how trying too hard to be healthy ends up making you feel worse. Especially in the online ‘manosphere.’
The idea of health as something to use rather than obsess over really stuck with me. That’s a definition worth keeping close. Functional health and strength are there for the long haul.
Also, a quick nod to the old Art of Manliness videos about cold showers and evening routines, hiding the old HTC outside the bedroom is fun to look back on. Brett was ahead of the curve on all this long before it turned into full-blown biohacker culture. Fun to see that thread picked up here with a more reflective lens.
I don't count the hours I sleep, macros or footsteps. I just sleep when I'm sleepy, eat when I'm hungry (and real food) and walk to places.
I also believe that if someone is healthy and honest about themselves, their bodies naturally tell them what they need. Feel sleepy? Go to sleep. Feel hungry? Eat. When drinking, feel oozy? Say no to the next one and go home.
Thank you for writing this Brett. Reading this comes at a time when I haven't felt the best about my health, and there are many things related to health optimization competing for my attention. While it's fun to ponder what my life would be like with all these health gadgets, your end comment of building enough health to give yourself away in work, love, and service is all the validation I need to know I'm doing all that I can
Oh, Nietzsche! I will never forget my son’s discovery of him in the philosophy class at college. He was so enamored by him he took one of his books to the wilderness survival 12 step program in the San Raphael swell 18 years ago. When I checked him in for the drug and alcohol abuse program. The therapist said to my son that he couldn’t “bring any books, we all love Nietzsche, but he is not going to help you get sober “
Well, the philosopher couldn’t go on the survival 12 step program but I read his book while my son was getting better. He has been sober for 18 years I am so grateful!!
"Yes, I want to be healthy, but I want to be Great Health healthy. I want health so I can use it. To have the stamina and clarity of mind to work long, fruitful hours. To have the energy to serve in my church congregation. To help a friend move their heavy ass antique piano from their third-story apartment. To do fun physical activities with my kids on trips — and someday take my grandkids on adventures too." this is a variation of what I tell people when they asked why I lost 135lbs and how I work out to make sure I am strong and stay at the weight I am currently at. I want to be healthy but I also want to be useful.
Over time I’ve distanced myself from tracking everything. As someone who used to be obsessed with health, I realized the stress of the obsession wasn’t worth it. I would track all my meals in cronometer, even weigh them on a food scale. When i would fall out of it, I’d feel bad about myself.
I even have got away from my oura ring, mostly since my old one has started to not track my sleep every now and then and I also realized, “do I need something to validate if I had a good night of sleep?” I have like 6 years of tracking my sleep every night and I don’t think I need it.
I also started to use a paper notebook again for logging my workouts. It’s helped disconnect me from constantly needing to check the tech. It’s nothing fancy, just a list of lifts to do and target weight. Keeping it simple instead of over documenting.
I do think it becomes existential if you try to become healthy just for the sake of it. Like why? Is it so you can be in great shape for your kids? Is it so you can be a better person and coworker? There’s many reasons but health is the vehicle of getting there, not the end game as you said here.
Hm. Did you ever figure out a solution to your waking up at 4am? I woke up at 3:30am today :) I go for a 5-15 min walk around the block daily, lift M-W-F, read before bed, and don't have Google/Gmail/Chrome/Youtube or any social media on my phone (it's a dumbphone with maps, Google Calendar and Todoist), read before bed. But I wake up at 330-400 daily without an alarm.
As a guy who had his twins 3 weeks before his 40th birthday I figured I'll be in my 70s when I'm at the age to wrestle with grandkids so went down the Peter Attia labwork rabbithole, nothing too hardcore, just some DEXA (how skinny-fat am I?), and genetic cholesterol risk stuff. I figure I'll spend some time up front to get on a better autopilot but don't really think about it the rest of the day besides my meals and lifting 3x/week. For too long I was doing too little, but also don't wanna get too influencer/weird and obsess. Goldilocks and Aristotle were right about so much.
Curious if you ever found a way to sleep in to normal wakeup time!
BTW got Gus' card. Classy gent! I love that you've passed on the handwritten thank you notes.
The only thing that consistently gets me to sleep through the night is Benadryl/NyQuil/Advil PM. But there's potentially some increased risk of Alzheimer's if you hit that stuff every night so I use it sparingly.
I try not to freak out too much about waking up at 4 am. I just lie there until I go back to sleep. I usually do and can get about another hour and half of sleep. I get about 6.5 hours of sleep a night which according to the research is all that you need. Most hunter gatherers get that much sleep. Sleep Baseball helps if it feels like my mind is a little to "on" to go back to sleep.
Glad you got that note from Gus! He really appreciated you thinking of him.
Excellent article, Brett, and well timed. It describes the underlying reason I (finally) joined TSL last week. I hadn’t made the connection to Nietzsche’s “last man” or the various health trends influencing me, but what you lay out is the perfect encapsulation of my experience with tracking, supplementing, hacking, etc. It ultimately becomes empty and pointless if not connected to a greater purpose. Maybe I’ll change my personal theme this year from “Connect” to “Große Gesundheit”…Thanks for all the excellent content you continue to provide. It really makes a difference, at least in my life.
I love that you distill all the advice down to "don't be a weirdo." I remember seeing Joel Salatin speak and what he said stuck with me. "You can be a Buddhist or you can be a Nudist but you can't be a Buddhist Nudist. It's just too weird." I'll try to not be too weird.
A motto in our family is "Don't be a weirdo."
Ours is be weird just not too weird :)
Too weird is weirdo territory.
Great perspective going into this year. Thanks for all the work you put into this writing!!
Fantastic article.
My wife and have a saying for small bits like this... What would Mary Ball Washington do? George Washington's mother didn't have pre-made formula, care.com, or supermarkets. How did she manage to raise her son without the benefit of modernity? It helps keep us grounded as we raise our 3 little ones.
Yep, been thinking about this. Or, I think this is along the lines of what is said here, but may be tangential.
You interviewed Jay Heinrichs so you know his running-up-a-mountain story, how a big crazy goal motivated him to fix a his hip more than if he had just done PT and tried to tackle it directly.
So he mentioned this in a post about NY resolutions and how much better it is to set yourself a crazy goal than something small like losing 1-2 lbs and it clicked for me.
Working out "to be healthy" is kind of boring. I think even wanting to look jacked is preferable because you can chase something concrete. When I tried running the Starting Strength nlp (did not have the fortitude lmao tapped out in 2 or 3 months) I was driven by the idea of becoming way stronger than I was or than most people I'd meet in life. I hardly thought of the health benefits.
I went to this weird dance thing last night that demands a lot of strength and coordination. I managed to get on my back and roll around on my shoulders in a way that had thrown my back out when I had done it a month ago. No spasm yet although it can creep up in the middle of the day after something brings it on, so fingers crossed.
Made me thankful for the workouts I've been doing, mostly animal locomotion and calisthenics and occasionally heading to the gym. I enjoy any real life task that seems to require an expression of the strength, endurance and coordination.
The guys I get these locomotion programs from talk a lot about strength to do things you already do, which could fall into the same issue of just being neutered fitness. What about becoming able to do things you can't do? Who cares about getting better at getting in and out of a chair? Thankfully they don't really fall into that trap and still train you to do hard stuff.
I love that meditation helps my mental health but doing it just to be mentally healthy is boring. What about vividness? Deep down I do it because I want to tap into the sensory immersion I had in my teens.
There's one technique that I occasionally try to research and nearly every resource you can find casts it as a way to reduce your anxiety level and nothing more. Some nlp guys use it for learning. This annoys the hell out of me. There's clearly so much more to this method that few people seem curious about.
I've found one teacher who incorporates it into his methodology and appreciates it's significance as a way of bringing yourself into altered states of consciousness and touching the sacred.
I think I've been the most motivated towards a goal when it's hyperbolic, concrete and has more to do with engaging the world and radically expanding what I can do than just patching holes.
Great article and great timing.
Outstanding. I think this essay stands within the pantheon of the best Art of Manliness and DB articles.
Like Theodore Roosevelt, I too suffered from illness during my childhood and most of my life. I am writing this five-month post surgery from my eighth - yes, eighth! - shoulder surgery. I am a Christian. Yet, I misdirected my loves and made health paramount.
Months ago, my mindset shifted and I think this essay gave the last nudge to have my loves in the right order. This essay is a gift. Thank you! Now, I’m going to the sauna!
This was such a fun read. Reading about morning walks and Huberman sun hacks all the way to Nietzsche and Plato with a 1994 film about goofball heath hacks of centuries past wasn’t how I planned to begin the day. This was ambitious and you nailed it without losing humor or common sense.
The description of the valetudinarian living in “constant torment” hit home. There’s something deeply relatable about how trying too hard to be healthy ends up making you feel worse. Especially in the online ‘manosphere.’
The idea of health as something to use rather than obsess over really stuck with me. That’s a definition worth keeping close. Functional health and strength are there for the long haul.
Also, a quick nod to the old Art of Manliness videos about cold showers and evening routines, hiding the old HTC outside the bedroom is fun to look back on. Brett was ahead of the curve on all this long before it turned into full-blown biohacker culture. Fun to see that thread picked up here with a more reflective lens.
Man, the HTC. That's a deep pull. I forgot about that phone.
I was a fan of those. In the ‘log on’ days if the internet it was AoM videos and Gary Vee’s wine library TV. Those were fun days!
This is brilliant Brett, just brilliant. Thanks for bridging the gap between 19th-century philosophy and 21st-century supplements.
I don't count the hours I sleep, macros or footsteps. I just sleep when I'm sleepy, eat when I'm hungry (and real food) and walk to places.
I also believe that if someone is healthy and honest about themselves, their bodies naturally tell them what they need. Feel sleepy? Go to sleep. Feel hungry? Eat. When drinking, feel oozy? Say no to the next one and go home.
Excellent article. The conclusion is virtuously consistent, and, well, beautiful.
Thank you for writing this Brett. Reading this comes at a time when I haven't felt the best about my health, and there are many things related to health optimization competing for my attention. While it's fun to ponder what my life would be like with all these health gadgets, your end comment of building enough health to give yourself away in work, love, and service is all the validation I need to know I'm doing all that I can
Oh, Nietzsche! I will never forget my son’s discovery of him in the philosophy class at college. He was so enamored by him he took one of his books to the wilderness survival 12 step program in the San Raphael swell 18 years ago. When I checked him in for the drug and alcohol abuse program. The therapist said to my son that he couldn’t “bring any books, we all love Nietzsche, but he is not going to help you get sober “
Well, the philosopher couldn’t go on the survival 12 step program but I read his book while my son was getting better. He has been sober for 18 years I am so grateful!!
"Yes, I want to be healthy, but I want to be Great Health healthy. I want health so I can use it. To have the stamina and clarity of mind to work long, fruitful hours. To have the energy to serve in my church congregation. To help a friend move their heavy ass antique piano from their third-story apartment. To do fun physical activities with my kids on trips — and someday take my grandkids on adventures too." this is a variation of what I tell people when they asked why I lost 135lbs and how I work out to make sure I am strong and stay at the weight I am currently at. I want to be healthy but I also want to be useful.
Over time I’ve distanced myself from tracking everything. As someone who used to be obsessed with health, I realized the stress of the obsession wasn’t worth it. I would track all my meals in cronometer, even weigh them on a food scale. When i would fall out of it, I’d feel bad about myself.
I even have got away from my oura ring, mostly since my old one has started to not track my sleep every now and then and I also realized, “do I need something to validate if I had a good night of sleep?” I have like 6 years of tracking my sleep every night and I don’t think I need it.
I also started to use a paper notebook again for logging my workouts. It’s helped disconnect me from constantly needing to check the tech. It’s nothing fancy, just a list of lifts to do and target weight. Keeping it simple instead of over documenting.
I do think it becomes existential if you try to become healthy just for the sake of it. Like why? Is it so you can be in great shape for your kids? Is it so you can be a better person and coworker? There’s many reasons but health is the vehicle of getting there, not the end game as you said here.
Hm. Did you ever figure out a solution to your waking up at 4am? I woke up at 3:30am today :) I go for a 5-15 min walk around the block daily, lift M-W-F, read before bed, and don't have Google/Gmail/Chrome/Youtube or any social media on my phone (it's a dumbphone with maps, Google Calendar and Todoist), read before bed. But I wake up at 330-400 daily without an alarm.
As a guy who had his twins 3 weeks before his 40th birthday I figured I'll be in my 70s when I'm at the age to wrestle with grandkids so went down the Peter Attia labwork rabbithole, nothing too hardcore, just some DEXA (how skinny-fat am I?), and genetic cholesterol risk stuff. I figure I'll spend some time up front to get on a better autopilot but don't really think about it the rest of the day besides my meals and lifting 3x/week. For too long I was doing too little, but also don't wanna get too influencer/weird and obsess. Goldilocks and Aristotle were right about so much.
Curious if you ever found a way to sleep in to normal wakeup time!
BTW got Gus' card. Classy gent! I love that you've passed on the handwritten thank you notes.
The only thing that consistently gets me to sleep through the night is Benadryl/NyQuil/Advil PM. But there's potentially some increased risk of Alzheimer's if you hit that stuff every night so I use it sparingly.
I try not to freak out too much about waking up at 4 am. I just lie there until I go back to sleep. I usually do and can get about another hour and half of sleep. I get about 6.5 hours of sleep a night which according to the research is all that you need. Most hunter gatherers get that much sleep. Sleep Baseball helps if it feels like my mind is a little to "on" to go back to sleep.
Glad you got that note from Gus! He really appreciated you thinking of him.
Excellent article, Brett, and well timed. It describes the underlying reason I (finally) joined TSL last week. I hadn’t made the connection to Nietzsche’s “last man” or the various health trends influencing me, but what you lay out is the perfect encapsulation of my experience with tracking, supplementing, hacking, etc. It ultimately becomes empty and pointless if not connected to a greater purpose. Maybe I’ll change my personal theme this year from “Connect” to “Große Gesundheit”…Thanks for all the excellent content you continue to provide. It really makes a difference, at least in my life.