The Core

Just as an aside, I am half way through the Tim Spector book, and one of the things he talks about is the lack of rigorous data on taking supplements.

It has made us reevaluate what we have. Sue has a few, and its easy to get sucked in.  I recently went back to :
https://informationisbeautiful.net/visualizations/snake-oil-scientific-evidence-for-nutritional-supplements-vizsweet/

Downloaded the spreadsheet, ordered them by their evidence score and looked at the top and bottom ones. I found it interesting reading.

Creative666, if you are avoiding hidden sugars, you will probably like what Tim Spector has to say about OJ, bread, meat, porridge and general processing. I have recently certainly got better at listening to my body (general tiredness, bloated feel for example) and realising it is usually caused by what I have eaten. (sugar crash after eating the chocolate bar to get me though the next hour, as I did not breakfast properly in the first place.... )

Yes I can be Really stupid.

I don't think I am filling that big of a bucket in this case because it is just one set per muscle group per day

The idea of the bucket is how big the bucket is for you as a human. The amount you exercise does not determine the size of your life stress bucket, it determines one input into that bucket.

The goal is to help people look at stress holistically and realize that if you are having a period of super high stress at work or you are normally splitting childcare duties but your spouse is away for a month and it's all on you or you have a huge number of unexpected expenses and you suddenly can't pay your bills, all of these things are increasing your cortisol and other stress markers. So if you try to exercise like a pro athlete who has no kids, no spouse, no side job and lots of money to pay the bills, you are going to get hurt even if your built-in stress bucket is just as big as his.

For a college athlete, for example, a coach might dial back training during finals week. That's because over the very short term, the size of your bucket doesn't change. All you control is the rate at which you're filling it. Since finals has added a lot of stress, the risk of injury goes way up if the coach doesn't adjust training to accommodate the increase in other life stress.

Another way to put it is this - if you've got sh## going on, cut yourself some slack. Progress does not happen during training. It happens during *recovery* from training. If you do not have adequate capacity to rest, your training becomes a negative.

The case that's been getting a lot of coverage lately is Ryan Hall, the US record holder in the marathon and half-marathon. By the time he quit running, he was so overtrained that after a 30-min run he needed to nap, his testosterone level had fallen to 140 (at, I think, age 29) and he was 127 pounds and 5' 10" or 5' 11". He says his body was totally depleted. He quit running, rested, started lifting. Now he's a 190-pound monster, has rebuilt his endocrine system, is super strong and will never run a fast marathon again (but actually is faster in the 100M than he was when he ran a 2:04 marathon). It's pretty fascinating.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/12/21/sport/ryan-hall-marathon-running-weightlifting-spt-intl-cmd

>>  fatigued are still a badass

I think what I do is mostly just different, not super hard. The "kids" don't think I'm badass. They think I'm fit "for your age." One of them who is 30 texted me at Thanksgiving and said she wants to be like me "when I grow up." So it's come to that now HHH

It's been a while since anyone has checked in.

How's everyone doing?

I was feeling really fit, then had an inury and had to take about six weeks mostly off due to a foot injury (so a full couple weeks mostly lying on the couch with my foot up). I've been back active for a few weeks and feeling quite good.

On the mental side, after getting walking again, we went on a short backpacking trip with lots of time to reflect and I realized that I wanted more spice in my life. I've changed up my feeds - less news, more inspiration. I also try to do one "special" day each week, i.e. a day where I do something I don't normally do.  A bit more carpe in my diem ;-)


Beyond that, I've recently read or listened to a few things that, though they don't directly pertain to fitness, seem germane to the general topic of health and living well.

I discovered "adventurer" Alastair Humphreys, who has the idea of "micro-adventures" and encourages people to think about "adventure" they can have near their home, maybe in their own yard (climb a tree). I really like his stuff. https://alastairhumphreys.com/

I also read Bill Perkins, Die with Zero. https://www.diewithzerobook.com/welcome I had mixed feelings, but you might enjoy it if you're thinking about when is the right time to spend less time at work and spend more of the money you've saved.

I've sort of been looking at it from a fuel/resource perspective which has helped, and is essentially the same.

I think you mean "fuel" somewhat metaphorically like I was using the "bucket," but there's also been a lot of talk about fuel in the strict sense (i.e. actual calories) this year following the Tour de France.

1. Barring some substance for which riders are not as of yet tested, the best guess as to why athletes are able to perform at the highest level since they started testing for EPO is that they eat a huge amount while riding. Far more than in the past. Riders used to eat 30gms or at most 60gms per hour. The rule of thumb now is 120-150gms of carbs per hour during a ride. So roughly speaking, 400-500 calories per hour. Some riders are going as high as 600 calories. There were even cases of riders grabbing a bottle and dropping 30gms five minutes before the finish. That's too short a time for those carbs to reach the muscles, but the idea is that they are working on recovery before they even finish and would rather give up a few seconds in the last five minutes than compromise recovery.

A serious biker friend of mine has been doing this on his rides and has called it a "recovery cheat code." I've been bad at this for climbing, but for any runs over an hour, I carry a fair bit of food and make sure it's gone before I'm done. In a similar vein, I'm also trying to keep protein above 100gms/day. It should be higher in an ideal world, but that ends up being like a full-time job and I also start getting fat because it's hard for me to get 140gms of protein without taking in too many calories.

2. Riders are still not taking in enough calories overall and between the calorie deficits and the fact that biking is a non-impact, non-weight-bearing sport, a recent study found that the bone mineral density of TdF riders is similar to a typical 70 year-old. When you go into calorie deficit, proteins that go into building and maintaining bones go to other things. Also, calories deficits lead to hormonal crashes. Low T, low HGH, etc. They are planning followup studies to find out whether riders recover after they retire and go back to training less. Of course, with top endurance athletes now competing until almost age 40....

Short version (to quote my favorite running podcast): "Eat enough always. Eat too much sometimes. Eat too little never."

>> 49 year old body do not perform quite as well

It's more about slowing the decline than hitting a PR. New goals help. In any case, in terms of quality of life and healthspan, the benefits only increase with age, even if the absolute performance declines

>> above all ... sleep

I don't remember who, but someone said "Sleep is a weapon."

I've been trying to improve my sleep habits but it's challenging with a partner who snores. 

My main exercise recently has been gardening, and an adult trike that was a surprise gift from one of my sons. Arthritis slows me down sometimes but I've managed to maintain my weight loss from a while back.

Not much else to say, other than that shopping for clothes is fun these days!

Great updates. It sounds like I'm not the only one to get off the wagon and back on. It reminds me of something a para-Olympic skier said in a video after a nasty fall: "Six times down. Seven times up."

Bucky - my dad's main exercise for many years now has been gardening. At 94, he's still at it, sometimes 10 hours a day (but then he wakes up in the middle of the night with painful calf cramps and we keep trying to tell him that three hours would make more sense).

>> snores

Has he tried Breathe Right strips? Honestly, these have improved my sleep a lot. I just got a friend hooked.


>> cyclocross

That sounds fun. I always thought of it as one of those absurd British sports and then started running into devotees in the US.

I'm impressed. I realized the other day that all my favorite sports are things I started doing before I was 9 years old. It makes me feel pretty stuck in my ways.


>>Midlife Cyclist by Phil Cavell

Along similar lines, I found Joe Friel's Fast over Fifty to be a good rundown. Worthwhile read.


>>Bill Perkins

I don't know as I would say that about Bill Perkins. It's mostly ideas that I came across years ago in a book that really changed how I saw money called, "Live Rich, Die Poor." The gist of it is this: too many people have a target amount of savings that is based on what they think will lead to a good, maybe luxurious retirement. The problem is that they tend to either save that amount and then decide it isn't enough or they fail to save that amount and keep toiling away to get there. In the meantime their life energy is slipping away. By the time they finally quit toiling because they reach a magic number that represents the good life, it's too late for them to live the good life they had imagined.

His basic formula is to decide what the absolute minimum you need to live on is. Until you get there, you can't stop accumulating. But once you've hit that minimum, you want to figure out not a peak savings amount, but a peak savings date. At that point you start decumulating.

In any case, the idea is to spend your time and money and life energy when it will have the biggest impact, rather than saving and saving out of fear.

The book was salient to me mostly because I've been having an ongoing discussion with a couple of risk-averse friends who (in my opinion) have plenty of money but say they can't quit their jobs. What I have been arguing is that they are underestimating the massive massive risk of delayling living the life they want. I know too many people who appeared to be in great health and then died in their early or mid-60s.

So basically the argument is that you don't want to run out of money and be elderly and poor, but you also don't want to die with a huge pile of savings or be continuing to accumulate wealth at age 80.



>>But compared to your weekly, the quarterly seems pretty unambitious!  Hats off.

I would say the contrary actually. I'm not doing anything as substantial as trying a new sport (yet!). In my case, this is more weekly micro-adventures along the lines that Alastair Humphreys talks about.

Basically, I realized that I was, say, going out and running the same trails and climbing the same climbs over and over. Fine for physical fitness, but a bit lacking for mental/spiritual fitness.

I noticed that if I just sucked it up and drove somewhere and ran/hiked/climbed/bowled/golfed* somewhere new, I felt a huge mental boost. So, last week we drove 2 hours and did a climb we had done before, but not for about a dozen years. The week before we drove 2.5 hours and hiked a mountain we had done once before about 15 years ago.

So it's not like I'm trying a new sport every week or ticking off a bucket list item. I'm just trying to do things that are not part of my routine. This week was going to be a movie night and climb in a place we haven't been for maybe 20 years with friends we hadn't seen in a long time. That fell through, but that gives you an idea of the limits of my ambition. Again, mostly the "micro-adventure" concept.

*the golfing and bowling have not happened yet, but who knows? Why not?

>TRT has been a bit of a cheat code for me, it has made everything easier.

Seeing a LOT of that recently. Seriously considering looking into as well. So you just went to your doc?

LM has gone way deeper than I have yet, but it's been on my mind a lot.

I found the stuff from Kyle Gillett helpful as an overview. He has info on his website and makes videos and podcasts, but this was the most succinct for me

https://www.artofmanliness.com/health-fitness/health/podcast-893-optimize-your-testosterone/

He's a young MD with a primary care practice and he treats people for hormonal problems from young kids who have medical issues up to oldsters. I don't have the knowledge or tools to really evaluate him, but he seem to know what he's talking about.

Also
 - https://gilletthealth.com/
 - https://kylegillettmd.com/
 - https://podcastnotes.org/huberman-lab/episode-102-dr-kyle-gillett-tools-for-hormone-optimization-in-males-huberman-lab/