THE BESTOF’S
January !
Not the bumper crop of past double-headers but a lot of useful info nonetheless. Had to limit the commentary to just a couple because they got out of hand.
Enjoy.
BEST IN SHOW
I stumbled on this Substack over the holidays and have, thus far, worked my way through just over half of the (current) 41 essays.
This series dissects the vectors of our many social ills, and, despite the social, historical, political, and anthropological subject matter, you’ll see all the same themes I’ve been discussing here, through a fitness lens, for years.
And, most starkly, all of them underpinned by the same old problem: a disconnect from reality.
As Japanese swordsman-philosopher Musashi said, “Once you know the way broadly you see it in all things.”
Not to confer any unwarranted wisdom on the matter when what we’re confronting here is, if not obvious, then repeatedly proven:
You can divorce yourself from evolutionary physiological and psychological realities in favour of feel-good fictions, but you’ll pay for it. Dearly.
If you’re new around here and wondering what the ‘fitness’ connection might be, I’ve long said body and mind are— to all intents and purposes— one and the same, and reflection of our environment and broader society at large.
It was back in the 1950s, Krishnamurti observed, ‘it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. I think he was referring to a spiritual sickness, but 70 years later it is now (statistically) normal to be abnormal. Obese, weak, sedentary, miserable and medicated.
If that rankles, first, understand it's not a personal attack but a verifiable fact. These are symptoms that signal alignment with society.
Second, feeling bad about it and rejecting it, instead of doing something about it, is making you feel better (in the short term) in favour of you being better —healthier. Happier.
And further symptomatic of a far more modern malaise that only guarantees you’ll stay there: the primacy of feelings over reason.
It's difficult to ascribe 'blame', for want of a better word, to the individual for the continuing tailspin of our physical capacities but more and more it comes to be a casualty of this same mistake.
Which is also not to say you can’t be physically fit as a fiddle and completely out to lunch in your ability to reason or otherwise think critically: I give you the ‘wellness’ space as exhibit A. But then you are, at best, half-baked.
A Leftfield definition of fitness— that of being fit for purpose— demands this balance, so I further recommend this reading as exercise.
Our overall fitness is the physical mirrored by a mental robustness that, while increasingly difficult to achieve amidst our societal clamour, is made easier via exposure to rational, substantiated, evidence-based argument.
You can draw your own conclusions. This is not a cult. You are free to read, think, say and do whatever the hell you want— and I hope you do— but there is much in this world that precedes any preference, Left and Right, Boomer or Millennial, or any other identity or agenda. And feelings, yours or anyone else’s don’t count where making an argument is concerned. Indeed, these essays detail the cascade of problems afflicting us on an individual and societal level stemming from these errors.
You don’t have to accept it if you can make a case against it. Or you could sit firmly on the fence. But outright rejection of it not only misses the point but proves it.
It’s science. And reason. And, it too is FITNESS. If you are willing to do the hard often uncomfortable work — just like the physical — you’re better for it.
Everybody is better for it. Only, also like the physical, too few are doing it.
I won’t recommend any single essay as all, so far, are valuable and while it will help to start from the beginning, they do stand alone. Were you to read even a fraction of them this would easily be the lengthiest offering in the history of the Bestof’s, but, I suggest working your way through them as you have time.
Given the subject matter, the scholarship and level of insight, even allowing for a recency bias, I’m leaning towards it being the best BEST IN SHOW ever.
Fitness, fat loss or whatever the desired outcome. This should sound familiar.
The plants grow themselves.
Her job is to create conditions for the plants to grow.
https://seths.blog/2024/01/kashs-garden/
You can guess how much time I spend on TikTok so I hadn't heard of the concept of 'food noise' before reading this. An article subtly suffused with the bullshit that has now come to define the NYT but, I'm leaving that well alone here.
Indeed, the point is that much more of it isn't.
The crazy, and clearly so, is no small problem in the fitness and dietary media, but the far trickier one is that of the reasonable sounding but still wrong. Advice that is more likely to be well received and followed, but leading to trouble nevertheless. Less the lie with the kernel of truth, than a fine-looking dwelling built on sand.
But so we're on the same page going forward, read the article first. I'll wait.
[If it’s paywalled, copy and paste the title—What if ‘Food Noise’ Is Just … Hunger?—into Google and you’ll be able to access it.
Okay. Hopefully, you will have recognised many of the ideas I've shared here like food being more than fuel and problems of restriction and diet culture and even broadly the same analogy of dietary experimentation being comparable to sleep manipulation.
All underpinning the overall takeaway— and equally Leftield axiom— you should listen to your body.
So there's a LOT of the Leftfieldish in there and yet, if you take that message and run with it, it's vanishingly unlikely you're going anywhere good.
"The idea of billing our body’s pleas for rest as mere noise — and hence as something that ought not be listened to — borders on dystopian. The case of hunger is no different…
When we are hungry, our bodies tell us to eat, almost literally, issuing cries and calls and pleas that constitute bodily imperatives. We silence or ignore that inner voice of need at the expense of accepting our animal nature — and with it, our humanness.”
Sounds good, right? Only hunger is different.
And being attuned to it is one thing, but obeying it is a ticket to disaster when your physiological defences have been either disabled or turned against you.
Yes, you are an animal. But even a zoo would make a token effort to create an environment with at least a passing resemblance to the natural habitat— and failing that— still provide food in type and quantity for the overall health of the animal concerned.
You, by contrast, live on a hostile planet. And one utterly alien both to your Sapiens-Savannah-model physiology and your best interests.
For most of your daily life, body and mind are scrambled. Furthermore, you are conditioned to it so where is the reference for any reliable reading? Your body doesn't know what electric light is, much less blue light. Berries are meant to taste sweet. Carrots are sweet. And as for hunger?
Any decision to eat is so confounded by dictates like time (midday), place (kitchen), occasion (watching a movie), emotion (boredom) and in various combinations thereof, you likely have little idea of what pure (leptin v ghrelin) hunger even feels like.
You can— and I would argue should— learn to 'hear' your body but only after affording it some opportunity to know what it's talking about. Recalibration: Eat real food only. Slowly. And exercise the equivalent to your hunting of said food. For a start.
Not forever, necessarily. But long enough to hear your body talk some sense for a change. Following this reset a student of Leftfield Youniversity once reflected she hadn't been hungry for years. And she wasn’t kidding. So it's possible you wouldn't know hunger if it slapped you in the face.
And it would need to.
Because these signals are not merely distorted they struggle to compete in an environment saturated by advertising and all the associated psychological prompts and cues. And the endless distraction of social media and—even more effective— hijacking of your attention and dopamine.
But coming to trust body and mind is less a question of how and more of when.
Because the point at which your body does become a true North star in your guide to the good life is after the fact.
How do you feel after eating too much?
Like shit. Probably not a good idea then.
How do you feel after eating crap?
Like shit…
How do you feel after no exercise for a couple of days?
…
All, just like a hangover, giving crystal clear indications as to the physiological wisdom of your actions.
And, in just the same way, if you've determined you're getting by okay with a hangover or graduated to not getting them at all, that only signals a far bigger problem.
Unfortunately, it's not only possible but as described above in the Best in Show it could well be a new 'normal'. You need recalibrating.
It's also possible you feel like shit but you can endlessly distract yourself from feeling it enough. Should you wish to continue doing so you needn't worry. It is endless.
In any case, the point here is that we have a textbook case of a pendulum moving away from madness, through a useful middle ground and back into crazy land again.
Much of the time you are about as unreliable a guide or witness as could be imagined. Just understanding these signals are distorted is a game-changer.
Short of rejecting society there’s much you can’t change but you can still learn techniques via which you can more readily translate. But it starts from recognising that, yes, you want to listen to your body if you are in dialogue with it - speaking a language it understands. Things like:
Tension and time, not exercise or ‘reps’
Food, not foodstuffs
Sunlight
Weather
Heat (see below) and cold
Sleep
But forget the fantasy it should otherwise be deferred to. Our primal drives are just that. I'll keep this PG-rated by saying you shouldn't eat when you feel like it any more than you should go around belting people who have it coming.
It's information. Use it wisely.
The polarities of fitness and diet are all or nothing. I advocate for the middle ground: a daily practice, as you know.
But these guys, first making an appearance in the Bestof’s back in 2018, have run with something different. An extreme daily practice. I don’t suggest it, but there is much you can learn from it. It sure puts the ‘difficulty’ of getting up early into perspective.
…try to emulate their positive attitudes toward adversity and awareness principles to push us into a more spiritual realm. That means opening our senses to the sights, sounds and smells of the surrounding environment. It does not mean coming in first or running the longest. We can enjoy another dimension—one of pure joy in the moment.
https://www.trailrunnermag.com/people/culture-people/the-marathon-monks-of-mount-hiei/?scope=anon
Dr Rhonda Patrick on the benefits of saunas.
When you're in the sauna And you start getting that "I need to get out ASAP" feeling That's dynorphin being released One of its benefits? Increasing sensitivity to endorphins (aka the long-lasting "feel good" effect from the sauna)
https://twitter.com/fmfclips/status/1731359251904286936
MISCELLANEOUS
Recommendations reflect what I’ve been reading/listening to/watching/using recently but, in most instances, and especially where music is concerned, will not have been released in the past month.
MUSIC
BOOKS
Code Red - A Mitch Rapp novel by Kyle Mills.
Kyle Mills's final turn at the help before handing over to Don Bentley
TV
Yellowstone.
Watched a couple of episodes way back and couldn’t get into it. Then dragged our sorry arses back for lack of a better option, burned through it, and are now chomping at the bit for the finale. In November. Already February, mind you.
APP
CLIP
Have a great weekend.
- OLI