Author: tom44

I spent the past week in The Land of Shadow.

It was miserable.

I loved almost every minute of it.

I recently finished playing Shadow of the Erd Tree, the expansion for 2022’s game of the year, Elden Ring.

In case you’re unfamiliar, Elden Ring is an action-adventure game where you play as an undead warrior tasked with slaying grotesque bosses across a hauntingly beautiful landscape.

Fair warning: I will be making QUITE the analogy between two toxic online discussions I’m seeing these days. Don’t worry, I promise to bring you along for the ride even if you’re not a gamer.

Let me first set the stage, and then we’ll get into the details.

Elden Ring is Incredible and Incredibly Difficult

Most modern big-budget games hold the gamer’s hand, providing a tutorial and guardrails, making sure gamers never feel overly frustrated or confused.

Hidetaka Miyazaki and the team at FromSoftware, the team behind Elden Ring, go hard in the other direction:

They essentially drop you in the middle of a terrifying world full of enemies that can kill you in two hits and essentially say, “Good luck, idiot.”

This has been true for all of FromSoft games: Demon’s Souls, Dark Souls, Bloodborne, and Sekiro.

In the book, ​Dark Souls: Beyond the Grave​, Miyazaki’s game design philosophy is explained in glorious detail, like in this discussion with Game Informer:

“Having the game be difficult was never the goal. What we set out to do was strictly to provide a sense of accomplishment. We understood that difficulty is just one way to offer an intense sense of accomplishment through forming strategies, overcoming obstacles, and discovering new things.”

Years later, he further refined his philosophy when speaking with Playstation Blog about his next game, Dark Souls:

“We are trying to create a game that is spicy. And we want to make it as spicy as possible. But it’s edible and tastes good and leaves you wanting more.”

So, yes, difficulty and dying repeatedly are part of the FromSoftware experience.

But!

These games also have certain built-in systems that help less-experienced or skilled players. Players can find certain weapons that are overpowered, enlist the help of computer-controlled allies, and even recruit other human players to help.

This allows all gamers of all levels to play the same game while experiencing completely different levels of challenges.

• Some gamers will use every system available to win.
• Other games will voluntarily choose to NOT summon any help.
• Other gamers will specifically choose to not level up at ALL to make it extra difficult.

The fact that all of this works in a game with one difficulty level is brilliant game design.

Still with me?

Good.

Now that we know Elden Ring is difficult, but also includes different systems for players of all skill levels to win, we can get to the current toxic discussion around Elden Ring and difficulty!

There’s No “Right Way” to Play Elden Ring

Find any article about the difficulty of Elden Ring (and Shadow of the Erd Tree) and you’ll find comments that say you’re not a “true gamer” unless you beat every Elden Ring boss without recruiting any help.

These gamers feel morally superior for beating a game without using its built-in systems, and they will not allow for any discussions like “Is it possible this boss is poorly designed?”

According to them, the only possible response is, “I beat the game without help. Just get better.”

Personally, I think Shadow of the Erd Tree has some of the best exploration I’ve ever experienced in any video game. And also, some of its bosses are difficult in a way that’s neither interesting nor well-designed.

I’m a fan (and proud Patreon supporter) of the podcast ​Bonfireside Chat​, which had a great discussion around why Elden Ring’s “Just get good” argument is tiring.

They point out that many people simply decide there’s no room or need to discuss Miyazaki’s decisions and the game’s difficulty. Those people explain that because they’ve beaten the boss without a challenge, everybody else should suck it up and get good.

Replying to this perspective, Gary and Kole share an opinion that is full of a wonderful thing called nuance:

They possess the ability to hold two different thoughts simultaneously. They rightfully point out that a game can be brilliant and some parts might be unnecessarily difficult or poorly designed.

The point: if we’re ever going to evolve past this noise and have good discussions around gaming, we also need to bring nuance and understanding to the table!

Bringing all of this together, here are my summarized thoughts on “Elden Ring is/isn’t too difficult” debate:

• Shadow of the Erd Tree is sometimes too difficult for the wrong reasons.
• Systems exist to help players of all levels still advance.
• There’s no right way or wrong way to play Elden Ring.

Great! Now that we’re all on the same page, it’s time to tackle the other toxic discussion taking place on the internet right now…

I promise these two things are related, so bear with me.

There’s No “Right Way” to Lose Weight Either

For a large majority of the population, losing weight is unbelievably difficult or impossible.

A combination of environment, physiology, and genetics creates a situation in which sustainable weight loss just isn’t going to happen.

This isn’t a question of willpower, discipline, or intelligence. It’s not because these people are lazy. It’s not a moral failing either.

The problem, as I laid out in “​Of course you don’t like to exercise​,” is that we’re creatures built to survive in scarcity, not thrive in abundance.

As a result, sustainable weight loss is something nearly everybody struggles with despite their best efforts.

And this is where we combine the Nerd discussion with the Fitness discussion:

Elden Ring has multiple in-game systems to help people of all skill levels win…

So does losing weight!

Over the past few years, dramatic breakthroughs in weight loss medications (like Ozempic and other GLP-1 medicines) have helped millions of people lose weight and keep it off.

This development has thrust the discussion of weight loss, difficulty, and willpower into the spotlight. And because the internet doesn’t do nuance well, the discussion has turned toxic.

Find any post or article about weight loss medications and you’ll find comments like:

• “That’s cheating and lazy.”
• “Just eat less and move more.”
• “It’s not that hard. I did it.”

People who make these comments enjoy the feeling of moral superiority for losing weight “the right way.” They look down upon anybody who doesn’t also lose weight without medication or assistance.

This is the same playbook that vocal gamers are using for Elden Ring and difficulty!

This viewpoint is toxic, lazy, misinformed, and unhelpful.

Just like there’s no shame in the way somebody chooses to play Elden Ring, there’s no shame in how somebody loses weight either.

That’s between them and their doctor. Full stop.

As I explained in my essay on “​5 fitness beliefs I no longer believe​”:

Instead of asking, “Why don’t people just get more disciplined and eat less instead of ‘cheating’ with weight loss drugs?”…

The better question is, “Which tools are available to help each individual person get healthier?”

For many, it’s education around calories and making slightly healthier choices. For some, it’s weight loss medicine and therapy. For others, it’s all of the above.

We’re most interested in the end result (a healthy, happy life), and we’re open to the infinite paths to get there.

If we accept that we’re not designed for modern life and abundance, we’re all wired differently, we all have different physiologies and opportunities and privileges, then we can also accept we’re all playing the Game of Life in our own way.

It requires us to apply both self-awareness and nuance.

Recently, I had a viral post that explained how I ​maintain my physique at 39 years old​:

I got to play “fitness” on easy mode, and I am well aware that other people don’t have that same luck or privilege.

So I have no problem with anybody else using any tool available to them on their journey. That might include therapy, surgery, hiring a trainer or dietitian, or weight loss medication.

My friend ​Dr. Spencer Nadolsky​, a board-certified physician and one of the kindest, most considerate, and well-read doctors I know, has worked extensively with patients who use or don’t use GLP-1 medications.

He shares some ​desperately needed experience​:

His caption provides even more clarity:

“The reason why many aren’t able to sustain [weight loss] over time is due to biological appetite drivers that push people to regain any weight lost.

So does everyone need the medicine? No, of course not. Not everyone has strong biological drivers. About 15% of people who do an intensive lifestyle program will have similar success to the average that these medicines get over the course of a year or so. Likely a lot less as time goes on.

So not everyone will need the medicine.

However, why would you be against a tool that helps people decrease their risk of disease progression and even decrease the risk of heart attacks etc?”

If you tell people they’re cheating by using weight loss medication, it says more about you than it says about the person you’re criticizing.

Here at Nerd Fitness, we have many ​coaching clients​ on GLP-1s, all of whom are also doing the work of exercising and learning about nutrition and adjusting their lifestyle. The medication allows them the mental space and clarity to stick with their lifestyle changes.

Yes, there could be medication side-effects for some. Yes, exercise and behavior change are also still necessary. All of that can be true AND weight loss medication can still be the best decision for that person.

Keep this in mind when seeing discussions on the internet about the right way to do anything. We’re all trying to live the best life we can before the “Game Over” screen. So, here’s your permission to use whatever tools you have available:

• If you want to play Elden Ring and recruit help, great!
• If you want to play ​Elden Ring using a Guitar Hero controller​, swell!
• If you need to use a tool like GLP-1 to manage your weight, neato!
• If you’ve lost weight without a tool like GLP-1, fantastic!

Everybody should have the ability to play the Game of Life how they want.

Cool? Cool.

-Steve

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Last week, Wells Fargo fired a bunch of their remote employees.

It turns out that these employees were “simulating keyboard activity” (with a program/device that automatically typed keys or jiggled their mouse when they weren’t at their computer).

Why?

Because that’s how these employees were evaluated:

Not by how many clients they brought in, nor how many relationships they fostered, but by how many hours they were active on their computers.

So that’s exactly what these employees gave them.

Remember, this is the same bank that told employees back in 2017: “Sign up as many clients to extra banking services as possible.”

The result?

Millions of unknowing customers had credit cards and savings accounts and brokerage accounts created illegally in their names, hundreds of millions of dollars in fines, and destroyed goodwill for Wells Fargo.

Why did both of these comically bad lapses in judgment happen?

Bloomberg’s ​Matt Levine​ said it well:

Two basic principles of management, and regulation, and life, are:

1. You get what you measure.
2. The thing that you measure will get gamed.

Really that’s just one principle: You get what you measure, but only exactly what you measure. There’s no guarantee that you’ll get the more general good thing that you thought you were approximately measuring.

If you want hard workers and measure hours worked, you’ll get a lot of workers surfing the internet until midnight.

I stumbled across this story last week, and immediately thought how this exact incentive-and-unexpected-results plays out everyday in our lives.

We download Duolingo to learn to converse with a native speaker in their language. Months later, we’re checking in daily so we don’t get yelled at by the Owl, we are desperate to keep our daily streak active…and we can only say “I found a blue ostrich at the library.”

We lie in bed, waiving our arm above our head like a madman, because our FitBit says we need 500 more steps to hit 10,000 for the day. (​Here’s the history of the 10k step rule​ by the way…)

I once “meditated” every single day for 6 months so that I could build my meditation streak in Headspace. Sometimes I would even open the app and just let the meditation play so I got credit for it, even though I wasn’t meditating…THE WHOLE REASON I HAD DOWNLOADED THE APP.

We tell ourselves that we want to “read more,” but then we track how many books we read. This incentivizes us to read books quickly (without retaining any of it), instead of tackling bigger challenges like War & Peace or rereading our favorite books to glean more lessons.

WHY do we want to read more? To learn stuff or to be entertained! The ​number of books, or WHICH books, doesn’t matter​:

Social media began as a way to connect with friends. These days, social media is big business and the only marketing tool for many creators. Because these companies track “time on app” and “attention”…social media is now a hellscape of outrage.

The most attention-grabbing content filters to the top: outrage inducing, factually incorrect, awful content designed to enrage and fear monger. Even most of my favorite wellness creators these days spend their time making reaction videos to the most vile wellness misinformation, because that’s the only type of content that gains any traction.

(No wonder so many people are avoiding the ​Dark Forest of the Internet​!).

All of these things weave a fascinating tapestry of how the human brain works, and just how good our brains are at taking a metric and learning the wrong lesson from that metric!

What are you measuring?

The majority of people visit NerdFitness.com to “lose weight.”

This is the one metric that everybody is used to tracking. Every ad talks about how to lose weight fast. They see the number on the scale and let that number determine how they feel about themselves that day.

This is the wrong metric to exclusively focus on:

We don’t really want to “lose weight.” What we want is to lose fat while keeping the muscle we have (or building muscle).

If our ONLY goal is weight loss, severe calorie restriction and endless cardio might result in a lower number on the scale. BUT! If we don’t change our relationship with food, and consume enough of the right macronutrients and micronutrients, we’ll end up feeling lethargic, starved, and miserable…and then gorge ourselves as soon as life gets in the way.

If we strength train while eating enough protein and in a caloric deficit, we’ll actually lose weight slower than if we just starved ourselves and did hours of cardio. BUT, we’ll be losing fat while maintaining muscle.

The scale should only be ONE part of how we ​evaluate our progress​:

After all, the number on the scale is going to ​fluctuate from day to day​:

• If we went out to dinner last night.
• if we ate too much salt yesterday.
• If we’re carrying extra water weight.
• If we’re on our period.
• any number of reasons.

So, once we know that what we choose to track is important, how do we use this to our advantage?

What to Track, What NOT to Track

Remember, that which gets measured gets improved, so let’s be smart about what we’re tracking.

We can ask, “What do I REALLY want to happen? Is this the right metric for that goal?”

• Trying to “eat better”: ​Track your protein intake ​and number of fruits/veggies eaten daily. If those are the first two things on your plate for each meal, your weight will start to shift without your focus on it.
• Trying to build a “​beach body​”? Great, let’s ​build some muscle​. Track your workouts, and write down exactly how many sets and reps. Then, do ONE more next time. The goal? Progressive overload for the win! Get stronger,
• Want to read more? Don’t track “books read,” which might result in you picking shorter books or speed reading, but instead track “time spent reading.” This can include audiobooks, rereading old books, whatever. Treat your reading list ​like a river, not a to-do list​!

Finally, there are many things we probably DON’T need to track, or we should be careful about when tracking.

There’s a whole community of biohackers who are prioritizing tracking the tiniest of details across a variety of metrics, many of which don’t matter, or might result in adverse outcomes.

Here’s something we get asked about a lot:

Unless you’re a diabetic and have been advised by a doctor, you do not need to wear a continuous glucose monitor. Temporary glucose spikes after eating a meal are perfectly normal.

(​This podcast​ from my friend Dr. Spencer Nadolsky does a good job explaining why you don’t need a glucose monitor unless you’re diabetic).

Here’s something I used to track but abandoned:

I used to track my sleep religiously with an Oura ring and AppleWatch, but then I would get anxious in the middle of the night and worry that I was ruining my “sleep score”…which negatively impacted the very activity I was trying to improve through tracking. These days, I worry far less about tracking “good sleep” and just do what I can to be in bed for 8ish hours, asleep or not.

And on a bigger, life philosophy question:

Be wary of how social media is warping the scorecard you’re using to track your progress in life! It’s really easy to get sucked into: “Work hard to make money to spend it on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t even like” Life success isn’t measured in the size of our house, or value of our car, or the number in our bank account.

Bringing it all together:

When it comes to personal development or health improvement, it helps to ask: “What am I optimizing for, and does that actually help me get the result I really want?”

We can then decide if we’re even playing with the right scorecard and keeping our focus on the right metric.

I’d love to hear from you: what’s a metric you USED to prioritize, but no longer track? And what’s the important metric that you’re choosing to prioritize these days?

Hit reply on this and let me know!

-Steve

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Today, we’re diving deep into the viral 30-30-30 “rule” for weight loss.

Recently, I noticed the 30/30/30 method blowing up on TikTok and Instagram.

Here’s the video of Gary Brecka explaining the “30/30/30 rule to lose fat” in case you haven’t seen it:

Let’s quickly recap what this “rule” entails, in case you missed the video.

The 30-30-30 Rule: Kickstart your day with 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up, followed by 30 minutes of steady-state cardio.

Simple, right? The claim is that this combo will make body fat vanish like magic.

Let’s dig a little deeper into the nuances here – where does this rule hold up, and where does it fall short of the mark?

I asked Jim, one of our Master Coaches, to share his thoughts:

Here’s what Jim had to say:

He then broke down each section a bit:

#1) Do I Need 30 grams of Protein for Breakfast?

Starting your day with a protein-packed breakfast is fantastic. It helps to maintain muscle and keeps you feeling satisfied.

But does it have to be exactly 30 grams?

Absolutely not!

That number is not some magic incantation that unlocks fat loss. You may be eating more or less protein.

What matters most is that you’re getting enough throughout the entire day to support your goals. You can calculate the range of protein you’ll likely need each day, then divide it by the meals and snacks you have.

This will give you a better target to start.

#2) Do I Need to eat within 30 minutes of waking up?

Some of us are early birds, while others prefer a leisurely morning routine.

And some of us are wrestling kids and crazy schedules as soon as we get up!

The 30-minute window after waking up is not a rigid law. As with most things related to nutrition, there are many ways to eat to support your goals. Your progress will be determined by the total number of calories and protein you eat across a day and week, not within any specific hourly window.

Some people may benefit from having protein early on in their day if it helps them feel more satiated and less likely to overeat other foods. But it is by no means some “magic” window to unlock fat loss.

Bottom line, if you want to eat within 30 minutes of waking up, go for it! But if you don’t, there’s no need to force this. 95% of your progress will be determined by what you eat across an entire day, not in any one specific time frame.

#3) Do I need 30 minutes of cardio in the morning?

Cardio is a fantastic way to get moving and burn some calories.

But whether you prefer it in the morning, afternoon, or evening is entirely up to you. Do what works best for your schedule and is most sustainable.

There is not some secret fat loss power-up that you’re missing out on by going for a walk at lunch instead of in the morning.

Plus, it doesn’t always need to be “steady-state.” You could mix in some interval training on occasion if that’s more your style.

The bottom line?

Fitness is not about fitting into a prescribed mold; it’s about finding what works best for you and your lifestyle.

While catchy strategies and specific numbers are easy to remember – they often stress us out about tiny details that ultimately don’t make a big difference.

Are we eating enough protein and moving around?

Then you’re doing good. Keep at it!

—

-Steve

PS: Do you wish you had a Coach like Jim in your corner to answer questions and ensure you’re not wasting time and energy fretting about the tiny details that don’t matter?
​
​Check out our coaching program! You can schedule a chat with our team right here:

Have a fitness expert answer all your questions!

**Photo Souce from Four Bricks Tall**

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I don’t really like to exercise.

Okay, I kind of like picking up heavy weights and doing handstands.

But I certainly don’t love “cardio.”

Rather than nerd out about biomechanics, I’m more interested in anthropology and human behavior.

Rather than going to run a 5K, I’d rather sit on my couch and play Fallout 4 I (just watched the show, it’s fantastic.)

What I’m trying to say is I’m not a fitness nerd.

I’m a nerd who tries to be fit.

So if you’re somebody who also just doesn’t “like to exercise,” you are in good company.

I also have some amazing news for you.

Back in Time

I recently read ​Exercised​ by Daniel Lieberman, professor of anthropology at Harvard University.

Lieberman has spent large swaths of time studying and living with hunter-gatherer tribes all over the world, including the Tarahumara (who appear in the book Born to Run), the people of Pemja (Kenya), and the Hazda tribe of Tanzania.

Lieberman points out that most studies and research are conducted on very specific, narrow subset of humans:

WEIRD humans!

Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.

Modern western society only makes up a tiny part of the total human experience.

Homo Sapiens have been around for 150,000-300,000+ years!

So, if our goal is to see “what most humans do,” we need to expand the variety of humans we observe, look way back in time, and observe human behavior outside of modern western culture.

Luckily, Lieberman has done exactly that, living with modern hunter-gatherer tribes and studying ancient cultures:

For generation after generation, our ancestors young and old woke up each morning thankful to be alive and with no choice but to spend several hours walking, digging, and doing other physical activities to survive to the next day.

Sometimes they also played or danced for enjoyment and social reasons.

Otherwise, they generally steered clear of nonessential physical activities that divert energy from the only thing evolution really cares about: reproduction.

For 99.99% of our existence as a species, we needed to conserve energy, not needlessly try and burn extra energy. Whenever we weren’t actively securing our survival, we were resting to conserve energy. This whole modern concept of trying to build excess muscle, or exercising to burn extra calories would be a foreign concept to our ancestors.

Food was always in short supply, which meant every day the bodily cycle for each human has to decide how to use each calorie consumed.

Because we had to burn precious calories to hunt or find our food, needlessly burning excess calories during the rest of the day just doesn’t make any sense to ancient humans, nor to modern hunter-gatherers.

So! Of course…

It makes sense you don’t want to exercise!

As Lieberman points out:

“We never evolved to exercise.

…exercise today is most commonly defined as voluntary physical activity undertaken for the sake of health and fitness.

But as such it is a recent phenomenon…

The mantra of this book is that nothing about the biology of exercise makes sense except in the light of evolution, and nothing about exercise as a behavior makes sense except in the light of anthropology.”

As Lieberman shares in the book, tribes like the Hazda certainly burn more calories than western office-workers, but only because they have to, and not dramatically so: “Typical hunter-gatherers are about as physically active as Americans or Europeans who include about an hour of exercise in their daily routine,” but don’t have abundant access to easily consumable energy the way the rest of us do.

This is where we encounter the “​Evolutionary Mismatch Hypothesis​”:

Differences in stressors between the environment in which humans evolved and the current environment are mismatches that can cause disease.

Up until 10,000 years ago, humans lived a nomadic lifestyle as hunter-gatherers, with different stressors from the ones that people experience nowadays in modern environments.

Note: this is NOT where I’ll tell you to start eating Paleo (​Paleo is a misguided diet​ that works because of math, not “ancestral” reasons).

I’m specifically talking about how our brains and bodies try and function in a modern environment. Edward Wilson said it best: “We have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions and godlike technology.”

Which means we need to ​start with acceptance​: Rather than beating ourselves up for struggling to build a voluntary exercise habit, we can accept we’re human.

We evolved to survive in scarcity, and now exist in a world of abundance.

Exercise is beneficial AND no longer “necessary”

Exercise is good for us.

Cardio is good for our heart and lungs. Exercise of any type can help create a calorie deficit, and reducing our body fat percentage can help reduce all-cause mortality. Building and maintaining muscle mass and strong bones is critical for our health as we get older. We also feel better after we exercise: thanks dopamine and serotonin and endorphins!

There are literally hundreds of benefits of exercise with regards to our health.

We all know this.

And yet we all think: “I know I should exercise more, but I can’t get myself to do it.”

Let’s set aside the fact right now that we’re all busy as hell, and taking extra time out of our day to exercise is a BIG ask for many (shout out to single parents working multiple jobs!). With that out of the way, why is it so hard for us to build a new exercise habit and stick with it?

Because we’re fighting against biology and our history.

For our day-to-day survival, we don’t need to exercise anymore:

• We used to have to find/hunt our food, now we can hit a button on our phone.
• We used to have to travel by foot everywhere, now we can drive a car.
• We used to have to stay active or die, but we can now survive for a long time even if we’re unhealthy and inactive.

And if exercise is no longer necessary for our survival…

The Only Two Reasons We Exercise

Unless we’re being chased by a wild boar or fell off a boat and need to swim to shore, none of us need to exercise today specifically to survive.

Then why does anybody exercise at all? As Lieberman categorizes it, we exercise for one of two reasons:

• It’s emotionally rewarding
• It’s physically rewarding

We can exercise because it’s emotionally rewarding: We might go for a run because of the dopamine hit, or because we are part of a socially active club. We might strength train because it feels empowering, or because we don’t want to feel lonely or lazy, or because it helps us process our anxiety or depression.

We can exercise because it’s physically rewarding. We might try to get better at pickleball because we’re competitive. Or we might exercise because we want to lose weight and fit into certain sized clothes, or because we don’t want to die of a heart attack at an early age like our dad.

In ALL of the examples above, we’re all having an internal debate with our lazy brains, who would rather conserve energy.

We have to convince ourselves “the benefits of this activity now outweigh the negatives, so I’m willing to take time out of my day to do it!”

Here’s how you can do exactly that.

How to Make Exercise More Rewarding

With “necessity” off the table, we need to find ways to make exercise emotionally rewarding, physically rewarding, or both.

Here are some thoughts to get you started.

Let’s start with making it more emotionally rewarding:

Socializing is a HUGE part of humanity, and includes things like camaraderie, positive social pressure, etc.

• Join a running club where the goal isn’t even “get better at running,” but because it’s your friends.
• Dance classes or martial arts classes in disciplines that seem fun to you.
• A kickball league or pickleball league for your apartment building.

We can also reframe how we think about exercise. Instead of just calories burned, what if we focused your exercise on “This makes me feel better.”

• Listen to your favorite podcasts while working out (​temptation bundling​).
• Treat your daily walk like a walking meditation.
• Running a 5K to raise money for a charitable cause.
• Your Big Why (to be a role model for your kids, to be around for your grandkids).

Can you find ways to make exercise feel physically rewarding? Yep, “look good naked” is still a viable motivator for many. Feel free to keep that as part of your reason for exercise! It’s certainly one of my reasons.

However, for many of our ​coaching clients​, their big shift to sustainable exercise happens when their mentality changes from “How much weight do I need to lose?” to “I wonder what my body is capable of!”

Instead of just weight loss, they have goals like:

• ​Get my first pull-up​
• ​Do a handstand​
• ​Run my first 5K ​

Alternatively, exercise can be physically rewarding when it doesn’t feel like exercise! Dancing, yoga, LARPING, hiking, walking. We’ve even written about ​40 ways to exercise without realizing it​. Movement can be fun.

You may also start to enjoy the physical sensations of exercising and feeling your body move. For many of ​our clients​, focusing on what their body is capable of doing and the feeling of moving their body can completely shift their associations with exercise from noxious to welcoming.

Finally, exercise can be physically rewarding when we find ways to make exercise secretly more “necessary.” Parking at the other end of the parking lot, adopting a cute pup that needs to be walked every day, taking the stairs, walking or biking instead of driving.

It all adds up!

Why I Personally Exercise

This book caused me to reflect on my personal reasons for working out.

I have a single workout folder in Evernote with 1975 notes in it, and my workouts over the last 11 years haven’t changed that much.

How do I get myself to do the same boring workout, 4 times a week, every week, for more than a decade, even though I don’t like to exercise?

It’s combination of all the methods above:

1. Genetic lottery (luck). I exercise because I’ve always exercised. I grew up being active, I played sports, I worked out in college, it’s now just something I do. ​I got lucky​.
2. Working out makes me feel good (emotionally and physically rewarding). When I exercise, I feel like I did something good for myself. Like showering and flossing my teeth, it’s part of my hygiene. I also sleep better and eat better on days when I exercise.
3. Exercise is the path to aesthetic self-confidence (physically rewarding). I might have more fun exercising in other ways, but I know strength training with heavy compound movements helps me look a certain way (like a guy who owns a fitness company)
4. Working out is my podcast-meditative time (emotionally rewarding). I know I have 1 hour where I can’t look at a screen. Which means I can listen to a fun podcast and exercise.
5. I go for meditative walks (emotionally rewarding). When I’m walking I can’t be looking at a screen. I’m also outside. I might listen to a walking meditation, or a podcast, or just force myself to actually be present with my thoughts on walks.
6. Exercise makes me better at golf (emotionally and physically rewarding). I like golf, and I know strength training will make me better at golf. And golf doesn’t feel like exercise, but it gets me out of the house, off my phone, hanging with my friends and walking 5+ miles every time I play.

Remember, it’s okay if you don’t want to exercise.

Exercise is no longer necessary for immediate survival and we didn’t evolve to want to exercise to burn excess calories. This is a modern, mismatched phenomenon.

We’re still monkeys on a rock, built for scarcity, but surrounded by abundance.

So if you can find a way to make exercise more physically rewarding or emotionally rewarding, you’re more likely to turn it into a routine you look forward to, rather than something you have to endure.

Good luck, fellow monkey on a rock!

-Steve

PS: If you hate treadmills, feel free to keep this fact from Exercised in your back pocket:

“Treadmill-like devices were first used by the Romans to turn winches and lift heavy objects, and then modified in 1818 by the Victorian inventor William Cubitt to punish prisoners and prevent idleness.

For more than a century, English convicts (among them Oscar Wilde) were condemned to trudge for hours a day on enormous steplike treadmills.”

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Today I’m going to teach you a valuable lesson about time from a giant tree.

No, not Groot.

Redwoods.

If you drive down the Avenue of the Giants in Northern California, you’ll find yourself weaving in and out of some of the most majestic, gigantic redwood trees you’ll ever see.

If you’re having trouble picturing this in your mind, think back to the Endor speeder chase scene in The Return of the Jedi. This scene was filmed near the Avenue of the Giants in Humboldt Redwoods State Park.

And as you’re driving down the Avenue of the Giants, you’ll eventually stop at a nondescript gift shop along the side of the road, and this is where things get even crazier.

You’ll encounter a slice of a redwood tree standing on its side. This tree has a diameter of nine feet and was over 300 feet tall at the time of its felling, the length of a football field.

The first observation you’d make: “Sweet sassy molassy, this tree is gigantic.”

The next jaw dropping moment happens when you get closer and notice its concentric rings. As we all learned in grade school biology class, the rings of a tree can tell us the tree’s age: each ring represents a year and tells a story.

This is where the fun happens.

Scattered across this dissection of the tree are little name tags, identifying key moments in history, starting in the center and working its way outward. Photo here from ​Barry Swackhamer​:

1000AD: “Vikings Discover America.”

1096AD: “Oxford University Founded.”

1218AD: “Genghis Khan conquers Persia.”

This head-exploding trip through history continues, from the Ming Dynasty to the Renaissance to the Printing Press, Cortez conquering the Aztecs, Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, Boston Tea Party, and so on, to the founding of the California National Parks System in 1927, and beyond.

Here you can see the entirety of modern history, separated by a few feet within tiny concentric rings inside a 1000+ year old tree.

It’s wild that from the perspective of a tree, just a few feet (1 meter) separate “Vikings reaching America,” and modern life 1000+ years later. Zoomed out, it’s wild to see how insignificant this time gap is:

Which brings me to today’s point.

We’ve got time wrong.

We humans are really good at worrying about what we can get accomplished today, what we ate for ONE meal, what’s important this week, or how much we can change in a month.

From the perspective of a 1000 year old tree, these time frames are comically short and insignificant.

If trees could laugh (like the Ents of Fangorn Forest), they would laugh at us.

This realization had me thinking about time and how to reframe the timeline on which I think about stuff.

As I talked about in a recent newsletter about the ​additive method for habit building​, I’m in the process of building a meditation habit.

And as I was reading Jon Kabat-Zinn’s book ​Wherever you Go, There You Are​, and this quote rattled my brain:

“It may take some time for concentration and mindfulness to become strong enough to hold such a wide range of objects in awareness without getting lost in them or attached to particular ones, or simply overwhelmed.

For most of us, it takes years and depends a good deal on your motivation and the intensity of your practice. So, at the beginning, you might want to stay with the breath, or use it as an anchor to bring you back when you are carried away.

Try it for a few years and see what happens.“

That final sentence completely shifted my expectations.

In the past, I would think “if I could just meditate for 30 days straight, THEN I’ll be really good at mindfulness”

This quote helped me realize I was thinking about this all wrong. I wasn’t going to have some magical epiphany when I reached enlightenment. I wasn’t going to “get there” in weeks or months. Instead, the only goal was to set aside time to sit with my awkward brain and focus on my breath. That’s it.

Suddenly, “trying it for a few years” had me thinking about this completely differently.

Here’s why this is important.

Extend your time horizon

Here are two of my favorite quotes about time:

Bill Gates: “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”

Daniel Hofstadter: “Hofstadter’s Law dictates it will always take longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter’s Law.”

Everybody is in such a rush to see how many weeks or months it will take to get in shape. Or how long they need to go on a diet to lose the weight, and then they can go back to “normal eating.”

Reality plays out differently: things will always take longer than we want, so we should change how we think about it.

Instead of “how fast can I get there,” we should be thinking “what’s the least amount of work I can do today, to help me be in better shape a year from now?”

If we change our time horizon, paradoxically we often end up making more progress, more permanently.

If everything takes longer than expected, then we should probably pick reasonable goals, sustainable routines, and enjoyable activities that we won’t mind doing for a much longer period of time.

We talk about this a lot with our ​coaching clients​.

I even made this video a number of years ago: “​Think in terms of days and years, not weeks and months.​”

Here’s one final helpful reframing of time horizons:

Whenever I’m finding myself overwhelmed with making a certain decision…I ask myself “Will this matter 6 months from now? A year from now? A decade from now?” By extending my time horizon, it often helps me realize that the thing I’m agonizing over doesn’t matter nearly as much.

What’s one area of your life that you’re thinking about on a short term time scale, that would benefit from thinking on a far longer horizon?

• A short term crash diet, vs. long term reevaluation of your relationship with food
• An unsustainable workout program vs building a daily habit of movement.
• Agonizing over small decisions that won’t matter a month from now, let alone a year from now.

Extend your timeframe, and see if that changes how you think about things.

-Steve

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