I spent last couple of years going deep in health and fitness science and really learning what is scientifically proven or at least substantiated to work and what isn’t. I also applied all of it on myself and everything worked as expected. I am in best shape of my life right now and defenitely top percentile if we don’t include influencers or trainers who do it as their primary income. My goal has been to increase my longetivity and health so all my knowledge is based on that. I do not know much about being the strongest power lifter or fastest marathon runner so will refrain from question around peak atheletic performance.
How to increase my longevity and health so all my 401k contributions is not all for nothing.
1. Nutrition 2. Sleep 3. Strength training to put and maintain muscle 4. Stress reduction
What all comes in nutrition ? How much strength training to do like how many sessions per week and what do those sessions look like for you ? I have felt whenever I exercise more I don't feel the need to pop multivitamin pills. Don't understand why, may be the body has it's own way of producing those that scientists don't know
I find there are different standards of fit. Can you climb a 15 ft rope with no leg help? Can you sprint up your staircase skipping every other step?
Correct. My goal and definition for fitness is to increase my longevity and overall health while I am alive to be able to do stuff what I want as long as want. Both of the activities which you asked above have no real value add directly and are not the safest way to exercise for above goal. Such skills are called practice based skill the more one does the better they get at it. Even if you ask an Olympic lever athlete who is in prime of their fitness level to do another event which they haven’t trained for they will fail miserably at it.
I disagree, things like grip strength are well established markers of longevity, and climbing a rope guarantees you have suitable grip strength. The stair exercise is a great proxy for explosiveness and coordination, which are hallmarks of a youthful metabolism. Plus it’s trivial to find a setup to test yourself. You certainly don’t have to train either of those things. If you have the capacity to do it, you’ll succeed on your first try
What routine do you follow ?
5 days split.
Can you share a routine to stay energetic throughout the day? I feel my energy and productivity dips after 10-12 hours. If I start my day around 7am, I am already feeling tired by the evening and want to hit the bed at 5-6pm (and then wake up at 8pm 😭). Any tips?
How many hours do you sleep and how is your sleep? That’s the first thing I will ask keeping aside all health stuff aside.
On WFH days: I sleep late and wake up late. Mostly 8-9 hours sleep. On RTO days (2x per week): I sleep late and wake up early. Mostly 5-6 hours sleep. Irrespective of the two cases above, I am tired by the evening and feel like dozing off. Or I just get unproductive and don't feel active. I am often groggy in the morning but wide awake at 1 AM. Quality of sleep is ok. I wake up to pee sometimes early morning. Unrelated note - my focus is really poor. I pick up my phone every 5 mins. Help me please 🥺
Here are my questions OP What diet worked for you? Also do you take any supplements? If yes, which brand and what? How important is cardio? What should be the ratio of weightlifting and cardio in a week?
All diets are good and bad. There is no single perfect diet. The only key principle is eat whole unprocessed food as much as possible. Calorie in and calorie out is the only math for weight loss or gain. The more calorie you get from clean nutritious food the better your body will be in all aspects. So yes one can lose weight eating McDonald’s but such food are very low in satiety and high in calorie also even after eating a burger you will get hungry but you wouldn’t if you eat something on high satiety. Anyone who tells you to follow one diet and not another is just wrong. Just follow what you enjoy and can stick to for life consisntely keeping the key principles in mind. All supplements are bs except protein sups if you can’t get enough from diet and beside that only supplement which is scientifically studied and proven to work is creatine. Everything else if company selling bs at high prices including things like ag green which many well reneowed scientists push for because they get money. The only exception here is if your blood work or tests says one is deficient in something for example vitamin d or magnesium etc then those sups will makes sense. When you say cardio what do you mean specially and what is the focus of this cardio. Strength training is essential. Your muscle is the most important thing which can give your longevity. As you age you will lose most of it. With strength training you can do 1) build as much as posssible, everyone has genetic limit here 2) retain and slow down the decay with age as much as possible. Your muscle determines your metabolism, bone health etc etc.
I wouldnt trust or wait for blood work to suggest "deficient" for vitamins. A lot of the times, the deficiency bar for vitamins are waaay lower than where you actually want to be (the optimum range). Otherwise, the level that a person is considered to be deficient in e.g Vitamin C is when they have symptoms of a disease that's only found in 3rd world countries. Of course we know that antioxidants or Vit C in this example is far from where it's supposed to be in the Standard American Diet.
Does bulking then cutting work, or am i better off clean bulking?
Even with clean bulk you will put on some fat. Clean bulk just reduces the amount of fat you put on during bulk. This allow 1) bulk longer putting on more muscle before you get to the bf level which you don’t like and want to cut again 2) shorter cuts
I have 2 questions : 1. Does exercise improve brain fog and did you experience it personally? Or does it help your brain 2. Did you try keto, what's your take?
1. It helped a lot with how I feel and energy level etc. my mood is much better etc. I don’t see any difference in cognitive abilities as such. It didn’t even made 2x engineer. But I am sure I can enjoy my 1x engineer salary and nw much longer. I see it this way enjoying x nw till age 100 is better than enjoying 100x nw only till age 70ish
No I didn’t do Keto. There is no advantage of any specific diet. As long as you enjoy a particular diet and can stick with it following the golden rules of nutrition all diets will work. Just be a little careful of extreme diets which excessively reduce something’s for example if you enjoy keto do it but know that carbs are important macro nutrient and at least eat the minimum needed by your body.
When you say you are in the best shape of your life right now, what outcomes have you achieved? Why do you think that you should be some sort of resource for fitness related questions? Just an fyi, there’s a lot of people in better shape than influencers and trainers that work outside of those professions…
I know very little just trying to share the very little I know. I don’t see such people coming here and sharing their knowledge so…
How many hours of sleep is ideal?
Science says 8-9 hours.
7 is as good as 9 and lets you live 13% longer in terms of hours you are awake
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What happens to your body after running a marathon?
Never ran one dont intent to run one as marathon runs are very hard on body and stressful. The training process of it also very stressful on body. Scientifically such long runs are determintal if one’s goal is lonetivity and health. Like any sport marathon runs increase the chance of injury darastically so unless one goal is to do it as a sport accepting its risks or as hobby for the love of it there is no point of it or any such stressful sports for health.
This is bullshit. Long distance runner life expectancy is +3 years above non runners