After spending about a week in self-pity, lying on the couch and agonizing over missed exercise, I decided to hit the gym. Even though I was limping there was nothing wrong with my upper body. I soon found out that even though walking hurt like hell I was also able to do squats and leg presses without problems. Go figure. And since running and Yoga were out of question, I started to tweak my old gym routine.

Photo by: Scootzsx

I reacquainted myself with a blog specialized in muscle growth which I had found already over a year ago, and to my luck the author Mark McManus had just published his newest take on Targeted Hypertrophy Training. I started reading and actually gained some new insights:

1. Muscle growth (overcompensation) does not take place until after the muscle has recovered from the workout.  This means that if you train too often your body will never have time to actually increase the size and strength of the muscle.
2. In order to maximize growth, you should reach failure at around 1-minute mark  when doing strength training. If you reach failure much sooner you are not able to recruit all muscle fibers and thus limit the opportunity for growth. If, on the other hand, you reach failure much later it is your aerobic system that is stressed, not muscular strength.
3. Both compound and isolation exercises are needed for optimal benefits.  I’ve been solely focusing on compound exercises without realizing that they cause certain muscles to fail sooner than others - thus limiting the potential for growth in the less strained muscles.
4. The best exercises are those where the largest load on the muscle occurs when it is fully contracted.  E.g. bicep curls as such are inferior as the load is not fully on the biceps in fully contracted position - unless done with a machine that overcomes this.

Armed with this information I set on to create a new workout routine for myself. I used Mark’s 5-day program as a basis, but since I have no time to hit the gym five times a week I came up with a 3-day program of my own.

After experimenting with the exercises and feeling pretty settled on them, I went to the gym for one marathon workout with my girlfriend. We timed each exercise to see how many reps we can do in one minute. This was an eye-opener. I’ve considered myself to train with a steady pace - a bit on the slow side - and good form, and I assumed I’d manage about 10 reps. However, to my surprise even some of the exercises that I considered slow took altogether 14 or 15 reps before the one minute mark.

This basically meant that I had been training outside the anabolic window, where the largest number of muscle fibers are recruited and strained, and as a result the largest opportunities for muscle growth occur.

As I finalized my new workout routine I divided all the exercises into 4 rep range groups depending on how many reps I did within a minute at my own pace. The one minute mark took place during either the last rep, or one after that - e.g. in a range of 8-12 it took me 12 or 13 reps before the one minute mark. However, I’d recommend that you record the time at your own pace, and come up with your own target number of reps.

Although this routine is not as intense as the one in Targeted Hypertrophy Training, I’d still keep about one week between working out the same muscles to give time for recovery and overcompensation. For example, you could go to gym on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and do a separate workout each day, or do the workouts with always one resting day in between.

Legs + Triceps

• Squat (10-14 reps)
• Squat (10-14 reps)
• Leg press (10-14 reps)
• Leg extension (8-12 reps)
• Leg curl (10-14 reps)

• Standing calf raise (12-16 reps)
• Seated calf raise (12-16 reps)
• Standing calf raise (12-16 reps)

• Tricep pushdown (8-12 reps)
• Tricep pushdown (8-12 reps)
• Tricep dip (12-16 reps)

Back + Shoulders

• Deadlift (8-12 reps)
• Deadlift (8-12 reps)
• Barbell row (12-16 reps)
• Barbell row (12-16 reps)

• Dumbbell lateral raise (8-12 reps)
• Dumbbell lateral raise (8-12 reps)
• Military press (6-10 reps)
• Military press (6-10 reps)
• Barbell shrug (12-16 reps)
• Barbell shrug (12-16 reps)

Chest + Biceps + Forearms + Abs

• Bench press (8-12 reps)
• Bench press (8-12 reps)
• Pec deck (6-10 reps)
• Pec deck (6-10 reps)

• Pullup (8-12 reps)
• Bicep curl (6-10 reps)
• Bicep curl (6-10 reps)

• Reverse wrist curl (12-16 reps)
• Regular wrist curl (10-14 reps)

• Sit-up (8-12 reps)
• Sit-up (8-12 reps)
• Headstand (as long as you can keep it :) This is a legacy exercise from the time I did yoga and might take some practice at first)

Some of the exercises such as dumbbell lateral raises can be followed straight away with military presses, but in general I’d recommend keeping at least a 2,5 minute break between sets to ensure that the strain is concentrated on muscles instead of cardiovascular system. And if you reach the end of the rep range, remember to increase the amount of weight the next time you work out to ensure continuous progression.

When it comes to nutrition, the people who follow this blog should know that I’ve been eating primal / low-carb fare for a year and a half now. I won’t go into dietary details in this post, except for saying that I’ve done the following tweaks to my diet:

• No more post-workout carbs 
  • If I would load myself up with carbs three times a week after gym sessions, it would most likely have a seriously adverse effect on my insulin levels. Muscle gain might increase somewhat but at the expense of gaining also body fat. Instead, I now enjoy low-carb protein shakes or bars and normal low-carb meals also during the workout days.
• Carb-cycling 
  • This means that I deliberately increase the amount of carbs from Friday night to Saturday night, allowing myself to enjoy certain vices such as chocolate and ice cream, as well as eat foods I normally stay away from (pizza, pasta, potatoes...). According to this article, carb cycling actually helps build muscle without sacrificing leanness.

There are some major changes happening in my life now: Next week I will be flying to China, and from there to Seoul, South Korea for a student exchange. After that I’m planning to travel around Asia for about two months, so I won’t be back in Finland until late February 2011. I will also be without Internet access and laptop for a while now until I get settled in Seoul. I plan to keep writing from there as well, but I can’t say yet when I’ll be able to do that the next time.

Cheers!

Related articles:

• The how and why of weight loss
• Evolved to eat meat: The logic of low-carb diets
• Growth hormone, resistance training, and 5 great blogs!
• The most important thing

If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends

Every now and then you hear guys talk about how it seems so difficult to find an interesting, clever, and a beautiful woman when they are single, but as soon as they start dating they become chick magnets and suddenly that kind of quality women are around every corner. On top of that, many of them seem to be attracted to these guys - something that was completely unheard of before! One moment you’re just another single guy trying to get the attention of a beautiful woman. Start dating, and you become magic.

The scarcity principle is one explanation; people are always more interested in things that seem unobtainable or rare. Then there is social proof; someone else has already done the screening for you. But how do you create the same effect without starting to date and consequently remove yourself from the marketplace?

Most guys do the mistake that they imagine their life would become somehow better when they introduce a woman to it. This presupposes that there is something wrong in their lives, or that something is missing. Their lives feel incomplete, and they imagine that a woman’s presence will fix it. This creates neediness and I think women can sense it when you interact with them - if not consciously, then at least in the more primitive parts of their brain.

So if you want to attract a beautiful, clever, and an interesting woman I’d say stop trying. Stop being just another guy who approaches her with nothing unique to offer. The reality of attractive women is that they get approached multiple times a day, and this becomes a bother. They’re not necessarily bitchy, but they need to develop ways to make snap judgements about the men who approach them, and be able to shrug them off in the blink of an eye.

Instead, think about your life. What do you value? What do you enjoy doing? What kind of life you want to be living in the next five years? Start systematically improving your life so that it becomes so enjoyable you don’t need a woman on it, or necessarily even have time for one. Doing this will cause few things to happen:

• You will have a lot more fun
• You are in control of the fun, it’s not dependent on anyone else
• You will stop projecting that air of neediness
• You will become seemingly unavailable, which makes you appear even more desirable
• Women will notice how much you enjoy your life and want to be part of it

Most importantly; a decision to involve a woman into your life will not be anymore about trying to fix something that is broken, but about making an already great life even more enjoyable.

You and your life, the whole package you have to offer to a woman is a product. How can you sell it if you don’t like what you’re selling in the first place?

Related articles:

• How to use reframing to destroy a limiting belief
• Living a life of your own standards
• The best books of 2009

If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends!

In the first part I talked about the shortcomings of conventional wisdom in what causes overweight and obesity. The second part was more focused on biochemistry and the reasons why carbohydrates and sugars are the most likely culprit. Now it’s time to put it all together and discuss what you can do to lose weight, gain better body composition, better health, and feel more energetic.

I strongly recommend reading at least the previous part before proceeding with this one.

Diet

Korean barbecue is a great example of delicious low-carbohydrate food. Photo by Shutter FerretIn the second part I made it pretty clear why sugars and dietary carbohydrates cause people to gain weight, so the solution for the diet part is rather simple:

Avoid dietary sugars and carbohydrates, as well as sugared drinks.

This act alone will greatly lower the amount of insulin in your bloodstream, and also cut down the triglyceride production - meaning that your body will have hard time storing fat. When glucose is not available for use as energy, your body will start releasing fatty acids from the adipose tissue into bloodstream, and starts using those as a preferred energy source.

We don't need dietary carbohydrates at all. Even the tissues and organs such as the brain which is said to require glucose can get its energy from ketone bodies. Those are produced in the liver from acetyl-CoA, which forms during the breakdown of fatty acids. Our bodies are also able to synthesize glucose from protein for the minuscule energy needs that might not be covered by ketone bodies.

In practice this means that your diet should consist mainly of fat and protein. Add in a mixture of fresh green vegetables and berries, as those are low in carbohydrates and sugars, and you can come up with tons of different kinds of meal plans: how about having an omelette for breakfast, a large bowl of salad and fish for lunch, a smoothie as an afternoon snack and a steak for dinner?

I've been following this kind of diet for over a year now without any issues. Quite the opposite, I've reduced my body fat from 22% to somewhere around 14%, reaching the point where my abs are clearly visible. I also feel a lot more energetic and focused than when I ate the normal "recommended" low-fat high-carbohydrate diet.

Exercise

As mentioned in the earlier parts of this series, eating less and exercising more does not work. Mainly because the more you exercise, the hungrier you get as your body compensates for the increased energy expenditure. 

Every time I go to gym there are overweight people desperately trying to get leaner by spending an hour on an exercise bike or crosstrainer and watching the heart rate monitor like hawks to ensure they stay on the "fat-burning zone". The problem with this approach is that it does nothing to change the underlying conditions which actually cause the body to accumulate fat.

As you know from the dietary part, the key is to avoid foods that raise insulin levels since insulin causes the body to store fat. When it comes to exercise, the focus should logically be on activities that mobilize those fat stores and increase your body's sensitivity to insulin. Remember, chronically elevated insulin levels are a result of insulin resistance, and whatever increases insulin sensitivity will help to cure that.

There is one hormone in particular that deserves special attention, and that is Human Growth Hormone (HGH):

• It causes muscle growth, mobilizes fat stores and shifts metabolism to burn fat, which results to an increase in lean body mass and decrease in body fat.
• It increases insulin sensitivity.
• It repairs tissue damage, which among other benefits helps your skin look better and more youthful.
• It strengthens the immune system.
• It strengthens joints.
• It increases bone density, which significantly decreases the risk of osteoporosis.

The first two benefits are the most important ones when it comes to staying fit. When your body releases growth hormone, it causes the adipose tissue to release fatty acids for fuel, and also increases your cells' sensitivity to insulin, fighting against insulin resistance.

We have plenty of growth hormone available as we grow in our early years, but upon reaching adulthood the growth hormone secretion diminishes. Luckily things can be done to better the situation. I have found two effective ways to cause the body to produce growth hormone in significant amounts. There may be more, but these are the ones I know to be working.

Lift heavy things:

In order for the body to secrete growth hormone, it must be stressed to its limits. This is best done by stressing the big muscle groups as it causes more growth hormone to be released than if you stress only specific smaller muscles such as the biceps.

The key here is to reach muscle failure. When you push your muscles to their limits, they actually develop microscopic tears. Your body will then release growth hormone to repair the inflicted tissue damage, and also to augment the damaged muscle, resulting in an increase in lean mass. 

Now there are many different ways to approach this. In my current regime I do strength training once every 4-5 days, with a little bit different routine every other time.

Routine 1:

• Deadlifts (4 sets, aiming at 4-6 reps / set)
• Bench presses (4 sets, aiming at 4-6 reps / set)
• Leg presses (1 set for both legs separately, aiming at 10-15 reps / set)
• Squats (3 sets, aiming at 8-12 reps / set) 

Routine 2:

• Shoulder presses (4 sets, aiming at 4-6 reps / set)
• Pull-ups (1 set, as many as I can)
• Bicep curls (2 sets, aiming at 4-6 reps / set )
• Dips (1 set, as many as I can)
• Leg presses (1 set for both legs separately, aiming at 10-15 reps / set)
• Squats (3 sets, aiming at 8-12 reps / set)

I aim to do all movements slowly and with good form. I normally have about 60-90 second break between sets, and a longer 3 minute break between different exercises - except in the Routine 2 where I do pull-ups, bicep curls, and dips with only 60-90 seconds in between.

Of the exercises mentioned above, I'd say that deadlifts, shoulder presses, and squats are the most important ones: Deadlift is probably the best overall body developer exercise, working all the major muscle groups. Shoulder presses strain not only your arms and shoulders, but also your back and torso. In squats the whole body is working as your legs do the actual movement, but at the same time your core muscles need to maintain proper upper body form.

I always start with the heaviest weight up front, lowering the amount of weight for each set as the muscles get more fatigued, and I always do as many repetitions as I possibly can. This ensures that I get to squeeze the last bits of strength I have and cause enough stress to send the signals for my body to start releasing growth hormone. Whenever I manage more than 6 reps with a specific weight, I increase the amount of weight the next time I go to the gym.

To summarize:

• Use enough weight to reach muscle failure (meaning you can't do any more reps)
• Focus on large muscle groups and compound movements
• Use full range of motion
• Good form and relaxed pace is better than speed
• Take adequate breaks between exercises - the point is not to do cardio, but to stress your muscles

Sprint:

Case against low-intensity cardio. Which body composition you'd rather have? The marathon runner on the left, or the sprinter on the right?Another key exercise is sprints - meaning running as fast as you can! I have had knee problems for over 7 years now and I cannot run long distances without experiencing serious pain, but for some reason sprinting works for me. The added benefits are that sprinting is hell of a lot better from growth hormone point of view, and it's extremely efficient; it takes usually only about 30-40 minutes to finish this exercise, and that includes warming up and cooling down.

As with strength training, there are also variations in doing sprints. I used to do sprints in such a manner that I jogged for 30 seconds, ran for 30 seconds, jogged again for 30 seconds etc., repeating that for 15 times.

However, now I simply go to the beach or a park, jogging for about 10 minutes to warm up the muscles, and then running for 20-25 seconds like there's no tomorrow! I tend to have about one minute break between each sprint, repeating the whole thing 10-12 times and then jogging back home. I might also take couple minutes longer breaks after I've done 6 and 10 sprints.

Rest

Taking a break is equally important to stressing your muscles: Too much stress and your body will start breaking down muscle tissue, whereas too little stress and you won't get into better shape. The key is to balance the two. This is the reason why I only go to gym once every 4-5 days, and won't do sprints more than once a week. The remainder of the days I either rest and recover, or do lighter exercise such as yoga or play squash.

Getting a good amount of sleep is vital. It's actually during the wee hours when you're asleep (or should be!) that your body secretes additional growth hormone and repairs those damaged muscles and other tissues.

This is it folks! I hope you've enjoyed the series and if I haven't convinced you to try out a different way of eating and exercising, then hopefully I've at least gotten you to question some of the conventional assumptions of what is healthy and what is not :)

Related articles:

• The mechanics of gaining and losing fat, part 1
• The mechanics of gaining and losing fat, part 2
• The how and why of weight loss
• Diet, cholesterol, and heart disease
• Evolved to eat meat: The logic of low-carb diets
• Growth hormone, resistance training, and 5 great blogs!

If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends!

One thing missing from the conventional hypothesis (Change in weight = Calories IN - Calories OUT) is the arrow of causality. Even if we'd believe this formula to be correct, it doesn't tell us anything about what causes people to eat too much and expend too little of their energy. In this light, what should be said about obesity - and when I talk about obesity I'm talking about things that can be applied to any amount of overweight - is that it is a disorder of excess fat accumulation.

We don't assume that people eating too much and exercising too little results in obesity, and at this point we don't even say that specific foods such as saturated fats or sweets cause obesity. We're just saying, that something causes the fat tissue to store excessive amounts of fat in obese and overweight people.

When looked from this point of view, overeating is not a weakness of character and the "cure" is not to live our lives constantly battling hunger and the desire to eat. This starting point also allows us to ask different kinds of questions. One extremely important one that has been missing from the caloric balance hypothesis is; if obesity is a disorder of excess fat accumulation then what regulates fat accumulation?

The nutrient cycle

Before we get to the storage of fat, it's necessary to talk a bit about how our cells use food for energy. Basically the cells have two forms of fuel available; glucose and fatty acids (glycogen, the glucose stored in muscles for rapid need of energy is not relevant to this discussion). Our bodies first burn all available glucose for energy, and then fatty acids cover the rest.

What the body needs is a steady source of energy, and due to this after you eat 50-70% of that energy goes into the adipose tissue (body fat), from where it is then steadily released into the bloodstream as free fatty acids. Carbohydrates in food are converted into glucose and used as a primary source of fuel, but in the modern low-fat carbohydrate-rich diets this means that a significant portion of carbohydrates will also be stored as fat in adipose tissue.

The storage form of both glucose and fatty acids is a triglyceride, consisting of 3 fatty acids (tri) on a glycerol backbone (glyceride). Inside fat cells, triglycerides are continuously broken down and recomposed, releasing fatty acids into the bloodstream. This process ensures that there is a continuous supply of energy available for cells. Any excess fatty acids in the blood are converted again to triglycerides and shipped back to adipose tissue for storage.

How this system should be working is in a homeostasis, a dynamic equilibrium, where the flow of fatty acids in and out of fat cells works freely and the rest of our body is ensured a constant supply of fuel. When blood sugar (please note, that I am using the terms glucose and blood sugar interchangeably, as it's easier to understand) gets low, more fatty acids are released, and cells stop burning glucose in favor of fatty acids.

In this context, hunger is not a psychological phenomenon, but instead a physiological sign that the fuel supply for our cells is failing and more energy is needed. That's why we get hungrier after exercise and after a period of fasting, and that's why in reduced-calorie diets the body starts conserving energy.

What drives fat accumulation?

 I'll repeat it here because it's important: Fat is stored in the form of triglycerides. The glycerol molecules which form the backbone of triglycerides come from glycerol-3-phosphate, which is a byproduct of glucose metabolism. A small quantity of g-3-p is made via glyceroneogenesis in the fat tissue, but the primary source by far is dietary carbohydrates. The more there is glucose in fat cells, the more g-3-p is available, the more the body creates triglycerides, and the more the rate of fat deposition in adipose tissue increases.

In other words the arrow of causality would go like this: Carbohydrates > glucose > g-3-p > triglycerides > fattening. In fact, it is impossible to accumulate fat without the presence of g-3-p. This explains why overweight and obesity are non-existent in isolated populations such as the Inuit who rely solely on an all-meat diet, and why it has been impossible to inflict weight gain in experiments where excess calories have been fed to the test subjects without those excess calories coming from carbohydrates.

With a diet low on carbohydrates, there is less glucose for cells to burn, and thus less g-3-p to keep fatty acids bound up in the adipose tissue. 

The role of hormones

The caloric balance hypothesis states that people gain weight because they eat too much and exercise too little. However, in order for this to make at least some logical sense it is implied to apply only for the overweight people. Let me explain: By this logic a child who is growing year-by-year and thus gaining weight is considered to eat too much and exercise too little. It is also presupposed, that the child is gaining weight because she's eating too much, not for any other reason. But I doubt anyone would take this seriously. It's much more reasonable to say that the child is overeating because she is growing.

The important thing here is to notice the causality: The child is growing, therefore she overeats. Not the child overeats, therefore she is growing. And even if you put the child on a calorie restricted diet she will keep on growing. Not as much if she could eat freely, but she would grow nonetheless. The body would simply conserve energy elsewhere in order to fuel the growth. Same applies to pregnant women. If they don't eat enough their bodies conserve energy elsewhere in order to supply enough fuel for the growing fetus.

These processes are controlled by hormones, and the most important of them when it comes to accumulation of fat is insulin. The primary role of insulin is to direct the flow of glucose from blood into cells, for use as energy or storage as triglycerides. Therefore it can be said that insulin is also controlling fattening by causing the body to form more triglycerides. Another effect of insulin is that it inhibits fat cells from releasing free fatty acids into the bloodstream.

When the body works in harmony, or homeostasis, we would be getting a steady supply of energy from the food we eat. Our cells would first use glucose from the diet as energy, store the rest in adipose tissue, and then gradually release the stored energy as free fatty acids. In this model eating is followed by an increase in insulin levels, as a response to the carbohydrates in diet, driving fat accumulation. When all glucose from the bloodstream is either used for energy or stored, insulin levels would go down and the adipose tissue would then start releasing free fatty acids.

The real problem is that our bodies were not evolved to handle such high spikes in blood sugar that are common when eating modern diet high in sugar and carbohydrates. An increase in blood sugar is followed by an increase in insulin levels, and when this keeps going on for a long time cells start to become resistant to insulin, meaning that more and more insulin is needed to keep the blood sugars steady. 

However, because fat tissue is extremely sensitive to insulin, muscles and other parts of our body start to lose their sensitivity - or become resistant - much sooner than the fat tissue. This causes less glucose to be used as fuel, and instead fat cells soak up all the excess blood sugar to prevent it from reaching toxic levels. Since insulin also inhibits the release of free fatty acids from fat tissue into the bloodstream, suddenly the body is in a situation where muscles and other tissues cannot use all the glucose in bloodstream for energy, more and more of it is being directed into the fat tissue for storage, and yet the fat tissue is not releasing its energy stores.

In this unbalanced situation when people are kept on calorie restricted diets, their fat deposits may actually be increasing even though the rest of their bodies are starving for energy: insulin directs the flow of nutrients into adipose tissue, and prevents them from being released back into the bloodstream. Now when all the glucose from the bloodstream is gone, irresistibly strong cravings for sweets occur as the body needs energy, but fat tissue is unable to release it.

This inability to release free fatty acids and therefore provide a steady supply of energy is a result of chronically elevated insulin levels, which is a result of insulin resistance. Both the obese and overweight people, as well as type II diabetics, all have elevated insulin levels. They also have a greatly exaggerated insulin response to dietary carbohydrates - meaning that their bodies secrete significantly more insulin when carbohydrates are consumed compared to a healthy person.

In this sense it is idiotic to the point of insanity to "treat" type II diabetics by giving them more insulin and recommending them to eat high-carbohydrate diets. This is yet another example of modern medicine treating a symptom, not the cause of the disorder. When type II diabetes patients are treated with insulin for up to 12 months, weight can be expected to go up by 2.0 - 4.5 kg. This weight gain then leads to the often-cited vicious cycle of increased insulin resistance, leading to the need for more exogenous insulin and to further weight gain, which increases the insulin resistance even more.

Afterword

When it comes to the role of glycerol-3-phosphate in fat accumulation, or how insulin drives blood sugar into cells and inhibits the use of fatty acids for energy, and even the development of insulin resistance and obese people having chronically elevated insulin levels, none of this research is particularly controversial. Yet it is rejected out-of-hand in the mainstream obesity field. One reason - as I mentioned in the part 1 - is that so much has been invested in the current dogma that it's very difficult change course now. The other reason is that the field of medicine has become overspecialized, and most nutrition researchers do not have e.g. sufficient knowledge of biochemistry to see the necessary connections.

I originally thought this topic would be covered in two articles, but after writing all this I feel a third one is needed; one that puts together practical advice and what all this science talk actually means when it comes to losing weight and staying healthy. After all, obesity is just one part of metabolic syndrome which is also associated with cancer, heart disease, and Alzheimer's. All of which may have the same underlying cause described above.

Meanwhile, if you want to know more I'd recommend spending an hour to watch this lecture by Gary Taubes: Why we gain weight: Adiposity 101 and the Alternative Hypothesis of Obesity. 

Another good resource is this website, where you can also find a summary of the major differences between the caloric balance hypothesis, and the one I just described above.

It may be stated categorically that the storage of fat, and therefore the production and maintenance of obesity, cannot take place unless glucose is being metabolized. Since glucose cannot be used by most tissues without the presence of insulin, it may also be stated categorically that obesity is impossible in the absence of adequate tissue concentrations of insulin... Thus an abundant supply of carbohydrate food exerts a powerful influence in directing the stream of glucose metabolism into lipogenesis, whereas a relatively low carbohydrate intake tends to minimize the storage of fat.

- Edgar Gordon, JAMA, 1963

Related articles:

• The mechanics of gaining and losing fat, part 1
• The how and why of weight loss
• Diet, cholesterol, and heart disease
• Evolved to eat meat: The logic of low-carb diets

If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends!

Can wearing sweaters make you fat? Yes, if you follow the logic of caloric balance hypothesis.

This article wouldn't be possible without the brilliant Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, who spent five years studying medical literature and research related to metabolism, nutrition, and obesity starting from mid 1800s. He then summarized his findings into one book that covers the journey of how this field of science has evolved, and how we ended up from very controversial hypotheses to government-enforced nutritional guidelines.

In this first part I'll focus more on the conventional wisdom and its shortcomings in explaining why people become overweight. I hope you enjoy the ride!

The role of thermodynamics

We have become obsessed with calories. Eat less, exercise more and the weight is supposed to melt away. This makes logical sense, doesn't it? How could you even possibly become overweight if you eat less than your body consumes? The basal metabolic rate (meaning how much your body consumes energy at rest) for most men is around 1900 kcal/day range, whereas for women it's maybe 200 kcal/day less. So munching more than 2000 kcal/day while doing little to no exercise would mean you become fatter, whereas on the other end of the spectrum if you exercise well and keep the caloric intake below, say 1600 kcal/day, you should be losing weight.

The formula for this caloric balance hypothesis is as follows:

Change in weight = Calories IN - Calories OUT

If Calories IN is more than Calories OUT, then an increase in weight ensues. Whereas if Calories OUT outweigh Calories IN, then one should be losing weight. The fundamental principle behind this thinking is the First Law of Thermodynamics.

The first law states that energy cannot be created or destroyed. It can only be transformed from one form to another. From the perspective of weight gain this means that the excess calories you ingest will be either stored as fat, or dissipated as heat through thermogenesis. It doesn't matter if those calories come from fat, protein, or carbohydrates, you cannot avoid the laws of thermodynamics.

A fundamental flaw in this thinking, however, is that the first law is valid only in closed systems, and we happen to live on planet Earth, not in an isolated box. A human organism is:

1. Not in thermal equilibrium with its environment (our body temperature is not the same as the temperature around us).
2. Capable of significant mass flows (e.g. respiration).
3. Capable of sequestering entropy (e.g. protein synthesis).

In other words, the first law does not tell whether or not excess calories will be stored as fat. If it held true, wearing sweaters would make us fat as it would reduce our bodies' need to produce heat, and thus reduce the total energy expenditure. The above thinking would also imply that we consume calories for the sole purpose of generating heat, rather than e.g. breathing, using our muscles, digestion etc. In reality heat is a waste product of our normal metabolic functions.

Another fundamental problem in this caloric balance theory is that it assumes that Calories IN and Calories OUT are independent variables. This means that if your basal metabolism is 1800 kcals/day and you eat 1600 kcals/day you'd be losing weight since your Calories OUT part is higher than the Calories IN part. However, in reality when you reduce the Calories IN, the Calories OUT decreases as well. Eat less and your body will also consume less energy.

Perhaps the significance of this becomes more evident when presented the other way around; if your Calories IN part is more than your basal metabolism, your body will also compensate on that and increase its energy expenditure. Another result of this compensation mechanism is that if you increase Calories OUT by for example exercising, you will become more hungry and need to eat more to satisfy your appetite.

So if you eat too much and your body will increase energy expenditure to compensate for it, then why do people become overweight? I'm afraid you need to wait until my next post to find the answer.

How it all went wrong

Those of us born after the 60's probably are not aware of the starting point of the low-fat craze. So would it surprise you to know that the low-fat thinking didn't become mainstream until 1970's? Before the Second World War it was public knowledge that carbohydrates, and especially sugars, are fattening.

In the 1970's the US government started publicly announcing that low-fat high-carbohydrate diet is good for you, and that you should be especially worried about saturated fat intake. However, there has never been conclusive evidence that would support the dogma of low-fat diets being healthy. Since the 1970's hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on studies trying to prove this hypothesis, but to no avail.

In science hypotheses are tested by performing experiments. The results of an experiment are then evaluated in light of the hypothesis under scrutiny, either confirming the hypothesis or disproving it entirely or partially. Even if the results of an experiment contradict a hypothesis, it does not necessarily mean that the hypothesis should be discarded as wrong. Our ability to perform experiments is limited by conditions such as technology, time, and resources which all affect the reliability of the results.

However, when a hypothesis is being tested over and over again by numerous researchers, and in numerous experiments, while the research results consistently give inconclusive evidence in light of the hypothesis, it should be time to re-evaluate the hypothesis itself. In the field of nutrition, health, and obesity research this has not been the case.

One of the underlying problems is that governments have become so invested in the low-fat belief that it is very difficult to get funding for research that would, in essence, aim to disprove or at least challenge the current national dietary recommendations.

Problems with caloric balance hypothesis

In addition to research having failed to prove the caloric balance hypothesis, the hypothesis itself has other major shortcomings. It does not provide any explanation to the following facts. If the caloric balance hypothesis was true, then:

• Why is obesity more common amongst the poor people? After all, they work more physically demanding jobs than the more affluent and consequently their energy expenditure is also higher.
• How is it possible that a person engaged in heavy physical labor and eating significantly less than 2000 kcals/day may grow obese?
• How come in fattening experiments where two people eat e.g. 1000 kcals/day more than they need to maintain their weight, for weeks on end, one barely adds a pound of fat while the other puts on nearly ten (note: this alone indicates that there is something else involved than simply caloric balance)?
• Why do the fat stay fat and the lean stay lean, when obesity research shows that both groups of people are eating on average the same amount of food?

In the second part of the series I will focus on explaining more in detail what happens inside our bodies, how our cells use energy, how fat stores are mobilized, and why the key to unlock this mystery lies in a hormone called insulin. 

The urge to simplify a complex scientific situation so that physicians can apply it and their patients and the public embrace it has taken precedence over the scientific obligation of presenting the evidence with relentless honesty. The result is an enormous enterprise dedicated in theory to determining the relationship between diet, obesity, and disease, while dedicated in practice to convincing everyone involved, and the lay public, most of all, that the answers are already known and always have been - an enterprise, in other words, that purports to be a science and yet functions like a religion.

- Gary Taubes, Good Calories, Bad Calories

Related articles:

• The how and why of weight loss
• Diet, cholesterol, and heart disease
• Evolved to eat meat: The logic of low-carb diets

If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends!

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds. 
- Bob Marley.

Photo by: kronic.it

Thoughts have power, moreso when followed by action. And action is rarely present without the thought. You don't just get out of bed in the morning and go to work like a robot who has no say on what it's programmed to do. You think about what needs to be done before leaving the house, and you may even stop to think why you are going to work. Maybe you're saving money for a vacation, or maybe you feel like you are helping to make the world a better place through what you do for a living. In any case, you did not just end up where you are, but you rather got there as the end result of countless actions; actions preceded by thoughts.

Thoughts have power to manifest themselves in physical reality. The Wright brothers thought that a flying machine can be created. They believed it to be possible, even though the idea seemed ridiculous to others. But then again, it was the Wright brothers who created the world's first airplane. It was not someone who thought it couldn't be done.

Edison thought that it is possible to create light in a controllable way with electricity. He believed it so much that he famously invented 10 000 ways how to not create light before coming up with the lightbulb. What if he would have quitted? What if he would have buried his head in his hands in defeat, saying that "it is not possible" and fully embraced that thought?

Edison's lightbulb and the airplane of the Wright brothers did not exist in observable reality. They were literally born out of intangible ideas, and by taking action these men were able to turn their ideas into physical reality. Ideas and thoughts behind these inventions existed before their physical manifestations.

Our thoughts, beliefs, and how we see our relationship with the outside world provide a framework through which we operate. And our belief in what is possible and what isn't is a direct result of how that framework is built. For many people that framework was structured in a way that prevented them from even thinking about the possibility of a human being walking on the moon. But there were some with different frameworks. Some people thought it could be done, and believed in it, and it became reality.

Here is the kicker: that framework has your mind on a short leash. Since childhood that framework has been built in a way that certain things are taken for granted; as a truth that should never be questioned. This has lead most people to succumb to the notion that life is a fixed pattern of birth-childhood-school-work-retirement-death, and as a result they aren't able to see it for what it is: just another idea.

Consumerism is another example. It has become such an ingrained part of our thinking of how life should be that most people keep on creating artificial wants and needs; they buy this and that in pursuit of fleeting moments of happiness and excitement. I don't think many of them have stopped to question the origin or motives of this kind of behavior.

How the culture or the society wants us to live our lives is not a physical object that you can touch and observe. It is something that has gotten into our minds already at an early age, and then entangled itself to the framework. After you realize that these are just ideas, you begin to see you don't need to act upon them unless that is what you truly want.

This is what seeing things differently means. You can dismantle the framework that other people take for granted, and identify where it serves your purpose and where it is better to be reshaped or torn down altogether.

If you adopt this mindset you start to notice some interesting things around you. Take manners as an example: What we consider to be 'good manners' is simply one kind of behavior among other behaviors. That behavior in itself does not carry any value or any notion of 'good' and 'bad'. It is the framework in our heads that provides the context through which we observe and judge whether a certain behavior fits inside our concept of 'good' or 'bad' manners. 

I think here lies the essence of an entrepreneur. They are, by definition, people who have an ability to question things that others take for granted, see them differently, and evaluate their worth. They are not limited by what others think can or can't be done. They have the ability to decide for themselves which behaviors provide value and which ones are better to get rid of. 

For most people the framework is a master who needs to be obeyed. For entrepreneurs and other creative minds the framework is a tool. And if that tool is wrong for the purpose or task at hand, it needs to be changed.

In which group you belong to?

Related articles:

• Believing is seeing
• How to use reframing to destroy a limiting belief

If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends!

Photo by ladybugbkt

And what about the times when the dolphins ignore a struggling swimmer and let him drown? Or start towing or pushing him to the open sea instead of land? We never hear about these stories. It doesn't mean they wouldn't happen, but there's no one alive to tell them. Maybe a dolphin is just being playful, pushing and pulling the drowning man to wherever. The stories we hear are told by those who were lucky enough to be pushed ashore and lived to share their experience, and this distorts our perspective on reality. We are inclined to think that dolphins are benevolent creatures.

I was reading this article by Everett Bogue about becoming successful by setting unrealistic goals and I realized that many of the blogs I read are written by people who are making their income online with an illusory ease. In the process they seem to have achieved freedom, happiness, and financial security - and all of them are saying that you can do it too! This is connected with personal development, as the process involves shedding many of your limiting beliefs and learning things about yourself. These people make it sound so easy even when they say it isn't.

Don't get me wrong, I admire what these people have done, but similar to the drowning man saved by a dolphin, are we only hearing one side of the story? I don't know of any bloggers who are focusing only on their failures and how difficult it is to become successful in your chosen trade. In fact, I don't even think people want to read about this stuff. It's much nicer to read 'from rags to riches' kinds of stories. They give hope.

The few times I've seen people blog about where they failed the articles have always included very profound analysis and soul-searching to figure out what went wrong and how to learn from it, so I wouldn't consider these failures in that sense. The best way to learn is to try and fail and try again.

Humans have a tendency to wrongly estimate the likelihood of different events to occur. The more first-hand evidence we see about specific things the more common we assume them to be. This is why it's normal for a layman to grossly overestimate homicide rates. These events always make it to the newspaper and TV headlines so people are much more exposed to them than e.g. deaths caused by heart disease.

In a similar way I've begun to wonder if the number of lifestyle design, personal development, and online marketing blogs is skewing the actual data. Maybe these successful bloggers are just a dime in the dozens of failures, but because it's very rare to hear about those failures we assume that achieving what these people have achieved is somehow easy and commonplace.

What do you think?

Related articles:

• Believing is seeing
• Is having a passion really that important?
• We have failed to fail

If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends!

Coincidentally, I'm also reading Gary Taubes's Good Calories, Bad Calories and just finished a section about cholesterol. If you've read my earlier posts about nutrition and weight loss but doubt the science behind them, I really recommend getting a copy of this book. It's rather heavy to read, but gives a thorough overview about the science and research in the field of nutrition over the past 100 years. Things are not as black and white as we've been led to believe.

Most people think that cholesterol is the stuff that clogs arteries, causing heart attacks and stroke. Due to this it's also commonly believed that avoiding cholesterol rich foods such as eggs will keep you healthier. However, the truth is far more complex than that.

First of all, cholesterol is absolutely vital for life. Cholesterol molecules are the building blocks of cell membranes. Without cholesterol our cells would not be able to maintain their form. The cells in our bodies are continuously dying and born again in a cycle of life, but if we would somehow remove cholesterol the cycle would end, and so would our own existence.

In fact, cholesterol is so vitally important that only a minor portion of it is from the food we eat. Around 80% of the cholesterol in our bloodstream is synthesized by our own bodies, and in a healthy person it is a self-regulating mechanism; the more you eat cholesterol rich foods, the less your body produces it in order to maintain balance.

Now this is the point where it gets more technical, so let's get couple terms out of the way first:

• Triglycerides and free fatty acids are the molecular forms in which fat is found circulating in the bloodstream.
• Cholesterol is only one of several fat-like substances, which are collectively known as blood lipids.
• Both cholesterol and triglycerides are transported in our blood in particles called lipoproteins, and the amount of cholesterol and triglycerides varies in each type of lipoprotein.

You may have heard about the so-called 'good' and 'bad' cholesterol, or HDL and LDL. These are actually lipoproteins that have been distributed into categories based on their densities. HDL stands for high-density lipoprotein, whereas LDL is low-density lipoprotein. A third commonly used category is VLDL, or very low-density lipoprotein.

Usually when your cholesterol is measured in a standard health checkup, it will only show the concentrations of HDL and LDL. This is not because the other particles wouldn't be physiologically important, but because more detailed measures require different equipment and are, simply put, more expensive to perform. The problem is that focusing only on LDL and HDL levels results into an oversimplification of the underlying science.

Seven different subclasses of LDL have been identified, and each of them vary in density and size. This is why heart disease sufferers may have only a few percentage points higher concentration of LDL cholesterol in average, compared to those without heart disease: the size and density of LDL particles is a more significant risk factor than the total concentration of LDL. Especially the amount of smallest and densest of LDL particles have been found to correlate with risk of heart disease much more than the overall levels of LDL cholesterol.

I understand if you find this article difficult to read and follow. I've had my own problems trying to understand these concepts, but here's something really important to take away from reading this: focusing on overall cholesterol levels will not help you stay healthy. You may even lower your 'bad' LDL cholesterol but if it means that more of it will be packaged in small, dense LDL particles your risk of heart disease will actually become higher. It also works the other way around: You may have high LDL cholesterol but when it's in the form of large, fluffy particles your heart disease risk is significantly lower.

If your doctor says you should take some form of cholesterol lowering drug, I would be adamant about getting thorough measurements of your blood lipids, not just LDL and HDL, before agreeing on any treatment.

As explained above, finding out your LDL levels will not help much in determining whether or not you have a high risk of heart disease. Luckily HDL is a somewhat better indicator: It has been discovered that HDL has a strong inverse correlation with the amount of smallest and densest of low-density lipoproteins. In other words, if you have high HDL levels - and even if your overall cholesterol is high - it would mean that most of your LDL is in the form of harmless large and fluffy particles.

Diet and cholesterol

Considering the lipoproteins, an optimal diet would increase HDL and decrease LDL, while also ensuring that the LDL in bloodstream consists of the large and fluffy particles (remember, that an increase in HDL alone can be an indicator that the LDL particle size is of the harmless kind). One of the reasons why a low-fat diet is assumed healthy is that it lowers overall cholesterol. What is left out is that in the process of doing so, a low-fat diet actually increases the amounts of smallest and densest of LDL, resulting in a higher risk of heart disease.

According to Good Calories, Bad Calories, eating an "average American diet" with 35% of calories from fat, one in three men have a risk of heart disease. When the amount of fat is increased to 46%, only one in five are in the risk group. If, on the other hand, we look at a more extreme low-fat diet with only 10% of calories from fat, the risk of heart disease becomes three times higher.

Conventional wisdom says that we should eat less fat and more complex carbohydrates. In order to stay satiated this usually means replacing the fat calories with carbs. However, it is precisely the increase in carbohydrate consumption and decrease in fat consumption that lowers both LDL and HDL, indicating a shift towards the harmful small and dense LDL particles in the bloodstream.

Fats, on the other hand, behave differently: Saturated fats raise both HDL and LDL cholesterol, monounsaturated fats both lower LDL cholesterol and raise HDL, and polyunsaturated fats lower LDL cholesterol but have no meaningful effect on HDL.

Now let's take a look at those 7 eggs I had, and meat in general: The principal fat in meat is monounsaturated and most of that is oleic acid, which is the same stuff found in olive oil. A large portion of the saturated fat is stearic acid, which increases HDL and has no effect on LDL. Lastly, a very minor portion of the fat is polyunsaturated, lowering LDL. 

For example (and once again referring to Good Calories, Bad Calories), in a porterhouse steak with a quarter-inch layer of fat about 70% of it will improve the relative levels of LDL and HDL cholesterol, compared with what they would be if carbohydrates such as bread, potatoes, or pasta were consumed. The remaining 30% will raise both LDL and HDL cholesterol, having an insignificant effect, if any, on the ratio of total cholesterol to HDL.

So, I will happily enjoy my eggs in the future as well, and so should you :)

Related articles:

• The most important thing
• The how and why of weight loss
• Evolved to eat meat: The logic of low-carb diets

If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends!

Pohang, South Korea

During these couple of months I've learned something new, though. This is probably the first time ever when I have had so many promising opportunities that I simply can't get involved in all of them. I had to start prioritizing and actually refuse from things which is definitely something that doesn't come naturally to me.

Because of the standstill in my personal growth I have felt that I'm not moving forward, that I'm not evolving, and as a result I felt like I had betrayed myself and wasn't living up to my own standards. I also learned that this blog and my personal growth are very much intertwined. Without new profound realizations and discoveries in my own life it feels like I don't have enough interesting things to write about.

It's great to be able to plow through obstructions and get the job done. And it's good to keep yourself disciplined and on purpose. But if you forget your larger purpose while pursuing the small and endless tasks of daily life, then you have reduced yourself to a machine of picayune... Tasks are important, but no amount of duties adds up to love, freedom, or full consciousness. You cannot do enough, nor can you do the right things, so that you will finally feel complete.

- David Deida: The Way of the Superior Man

I'm sure no one wants to hear about the intricacies of my work as an SAP specialist, or what I'm learning at the university - which quite frankly isn't all that much. School and work really are not the places where you learn things about yourself, about what your wants and desires are, or how to discover your place and purpose in the world.

I wanted to empty myself of my commitments, obligations, duties, and wants in order to see them objectively and pick the ones that are most important. Applying Pareto principle, I wanted to find out the 20% of things that give me 80% satisfaction. Call it prioritizing or mental spring cleaning, but after I realized I needed to do this it felt like a huge burden was lifted from my shoulders. This is the list I came up with.

Highest priority commitments

Currently my number one goal is to do a student exchange in Seoul, South Korea next fall. I should know in two weeks whether or not I get accepted but I'm having my hopes high. I also want to graduate some day, so right now I'd say the two commitments I really feel obliged to keep are

• School
  • Getting more courses done this spring so I'm a step closer to graduating.

• Work
  • Saving money for the student exchange.

I was losing money the whole fall due to not having enough work, but to my big relief that changed now in mid-January. It also looks like I'm able to work throughout the summer and save money for the exchange. I'm having a new kind of project role at work which gives me more responsibility than before, so I'm also taking it as a challenge and a learning experience.

High priority stuff

These are the things I enjoy a lot, or are otherwise the ones that are giving biggest dividends for the time I invest in them.

• Physical fitness
  • Going to gym, doing yoga, running after the snows melt, playing squash etc.

• Diet and nutrition
  • Making sure that I keep eating healthy, which involves preparing most of my own food.
  • Taking care of what I eat and how I exercise gives so much energy that they are more like enablers that make it possible to tackle all the rest of the things going on in my life.

• Relationship
  • I started dating a lovely girl about two months ago, and this relationship is something I really want to invest in and explore more :)

• Friends
  • The people you spend time with will shape your own personality. One of the fundamental success principles is to surround yourself with people who are forward looking and have a drive to succeed in life. Their energy will enhance your own. There are some extremely wonderful people in my life, and I want to keep it that way :)

• Language learning
  • Don't ask why, but I wanted to do a student exchange in a country where English is not so commonly spoken. This is because I want to learn a new language and I figured it's much easier to stay motivated when you are actually going to need it every single day. So yeah, as soon as I get confirmation about South Korea, I'll start studying the language lifehacking style.

• Personal growth
  • As I said, this area of my life has been on a standstill for the past couple of months. Only this week was I able to do something new regarding it, and it's amazing how much energy the experience gave me. I felt again that I'm moving towards some larger goal in my life. For me reading is an integral part of personal growth, so I will not mention it separately.

There are actually quite a lot of these high priority things that I want to keep in my life and juggling all of them might be a bit of a challenge. I don't know how things will turn out, but these are the ones I will try to devote my free time to.

And the rest

This category includes things that I will do if I have time left from my other activities. The main reason to write them down and have mentioned here is to stop myself from feeling obligated to do them. I want to be free of them, and enjoy them only when and if it fits my schedule.

• Aalto Entrepreneurship Society
  • It pains me to not be able to commit more to being an active member of the society, because Aaltoes is doing amazing job in aggregating entrepreneurship in Finland.

• Blogging
  • Even though I enjoy writing a lot, I've realized that I shouldn't force myself to do it, at least when doing so does nothing but makes me more stressful. I will keep writing new blog posts in the future as well, but I'm stopping myself from being committed to the earlier once a week schedule.

• Developing business ideas
  • I am starting to seriously consider becoming an entrepreneur, and I have quite a few different business ideas to get started with. However, I feel that this is something I can also focus on later after I have done my student exchange.

There are a few other existing and emerging short-term opportunities in my life, and I try to keep what I have promised to deliver earlier. I don't want to prevent myself from accepting possible new challenges either, but I think I have to start acknowledging that I can't do everything, and to become rather critical about what I should commit myself into.

This exercise was first and foremost to help me regain some control over my own life and to figure out what I really want to do with the limited time I have. If you have done something alike or have a completely different method I'd love to hear about it!

Related articles:

• Evolving yourself into your best self
• Is having a passion really that important?
• Living a life of your own standards
• The most important thing

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.

- Matthew 6:34

I am not a religious person. In fact I've been jokingly telling my friends that if I had a religion it would have to be Dudeism, and even that only so I would be able to marry couples. I think that would be cool.

Luckily you don't have to be religious to find wisdom in religious texts, and I think the quote above is a very important one to keep in mind. I am a worrier by nature. If I have many things that need to be done, they start to accumulate in my head and I find it more and more difficult to focus on actually doing them. I become stressful and I feel like I'm not getting anything done, even though in reality I am probably working harder than ever to meet my obligations.

I am good at dealing with stress. Or so it used to say in my CV. I actually thought it was true, but my current situation of working most of the week, dealing with university courses, and trying to keep my other commitments such as writing this blog have proved otherwise. I suck at dealing with stress. Having one or two big things to do is perfectly fine, but when the small ones start to accumulate on top of those, I am in trouble. I find it genuinely difficult to put them in order and deal with them without letting them gain power over me.

The problem is not so much that I wouldn't be able to deliver what I've committed to, but the process of doing it drains all the juice out of me and I end up feeling miserable until most of the things are out of the way.

People who know me tend to see me as someone who is very focused and constantly getting a lot of things done, but that's not the way I see myself. My attention is not on what I did, but what is still left to be done and that is a problem. Instead of stopping to celebrate the things I've accomplished I'm already striving towards the next thing on my list.

I could use some help here, and that's the main reason I'm writing this. I'm not a big fan of productivity systems that are complex and difficult to maintain, but I think I could use something to organize my thoughts and help me visually arrange the things I need to do. I have a tendency of committing myself into doing things even though I know I'm already busy with other stuff, so something that would help me see my current commitments and evaluate how much time it takes to do them would be perfect. If you have any ideas on this, I'd love hear them!

Now, I don't want this post to be all about bitching and whining, so here are couple things I've actually found very useful to make an active and busy life a lot more tolerable:

1. Write stuff down, even the small tasks.

If you try to keep everything in your head, these things will be popping up into your thoughts constantly to remind you that they need your attention. This will destroy focus, increase stress, and is just plain annoying.

2. Have an off-day once a week.

Doing this has worked great for me! Even with many things going on, forcing yourself to have one day a week when being productive and getting things done is banned from your vocabulary is a great stress relief. It might take a while to learn to do it as you need to consciously refuse to let your work and other commitments get inside your head. In long-term, though, this is very useful as it ensures that you have more focus and energy for the other six days.

3. Take care of eating, sleeping, and exercise.

Stress releases cortisol, which is a hormone that acts like insulin; driving glucose from blood into your cells to be used for energy or stored as fat. This is all fine and a natural survival mechanism as long as the cause of stress is short, but if you are experiencing chronic long-term stress you're in trouble. Sleep is important for stress release, and proper diet and exercise will improve your insulin sensitivity. These factors help you to maintain blood sugars at an optimum level, which brings numerous health benefits both physically and mentally.

I pretty much despise companies that track working hours of their employees and pay salary according to them. Counting time instead of actual results is a ghost of the industrial era and mass production. If the role of the employee is even a little more than that of an organic robot, time starts to lose its meaning.

If you're feeling stressed, low on energy, and lack focus, it might easily take 2-3 times longer to do a task than if you were super focused and completely immersed in it. Letting yourself take a day off and taking care of your health will help you reach that level of focus for the rest of the week. Even though you lose the hours of the off-day, you will end up getting more done in all the other days. And you are likely to feel better too.

On another note, I wrote an article for Lateral Action - one of my favorite blogs - about using your naturally occurring bodily rhythms to boost focus, energy levels, and consequently productivity. If the topic is of any interest to you, it's definitely worth checking out!

If you like this article, please consider sharing it with your friends!