Knowing and Acting
“There are risks and costs to action. But they are far less than the long-range risks of comfortable inaction.” — John F. Kennedy
Worth Listening To
Andrew Huberman, Ph.D., and Peter Attia, M.D. discuss landmark research in:
a) How light (in the morning) and dark (in the evening) + sleep impact our mental health.
Getting direct sunlight vs. artificial light, and when to use sunglasses and when not to.
How mental health disorders, specifically depression, are impacted by too much light exposure at night (and not enough light during the day).
Timing your cortisol secretion and depletion properly to optimize energy, recovery, and sleep (so, so important).
The difference between going to bed under duress vs. relaxed.
Sleep & performance devices: the pros and the cons.
b) The future of cancer, cancer treatment, and our immune systems
Much of this conversation was over my head — I’ve listened three times, and it still hurts my head.
How cancer treatments work and the likelihood of success in early vs. late stage.
Different types of cancers and treatments.
Melanoma and the genetic mutations in cancer cells.
Other Learning This Week
Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal’s Acquired Podcast goes in-depth on the history of diabetes, insulin, and the companies behind Ozempic (Novo Nordisk) and other GLP-1 agonists.
Brad Gerstner on The Art of Investing
His plan for Invest America: Helping every kid born in America be financially literate.
How A.I. is impacting every company and the future of work.
Brad Gerstner and Bill Gurley’s BG^2 podcast on the state of financial markets.
Conversations With a Personal Trainer
This particular client came in for three sessions during the week. His first session involved interval sprinting, his second was a strength-focused workout, and in his most recent session, we focused on zone 2 cardio and mobility.
During each session, we discussed running and, specifically, how good it makes him feel. Even after the zone 2 cardio, which he described as boring (very understandable), he remarked how awesome his body felt.
This is not an isolated comment about running, and I personally feel similarly upbeat and energized after completing a run. But it goes to a deeper thought: our bodies are built to run. There are obvious circumstances where it’s not physiologically possible, but for 95%+ of the population, we are certainly capable. Why don’t we?
That answer to that question is probably the same reason why I’m fortunate enough to have a job as a personal trainer.
Metabolic Health: Crafting a Regimen
The Envision Endeavor began as a three-pronged project: expand my presence on the internet, help you learn about your health in easy-to-understand concepts, and as a journal to myself. It’s this last prong that led me to this week’s project: putting myself through the metabolic testing program we offer at Envision Fitness.
As I mentioned in last week’s post, building a healthy metabolic triangle is vitally important to optimizing longevity and health. And yet, I remarked that I knew my own triangle was not up to the standards I set for myself. If my focus on health extends to more than just lifting heavy weights and having big muscles, then I need to hold myself to that same standard. This week, I put my assumption to the test.
The results were not terribly surprising, but they did show precisely where I need to shift my attention and the amount of work I have in front of me. Let’s dive in!
The Resting Metabolic Test
A Resting Metabolic Rate test (RMR) is used to show the subject how efficiently their body performs at rest in the following ways:
Cellular efficiency, or metabolic health
Fat burning efficiency
Heart & lung fitness
All while fasted and rested state. The outcome will help the subject create a nutrition and lifestyle plan to optimize each category. It is worth noting that the resting test has much less to do with physical fitness than the active test does, which we’ll get to shortly.
How did I perform on the resting test?
On the surface, it looks like I did ok. So much so that I even tested twice because I wasn’t expecting these numbers. Numbers were identical both times. However, there is something to note: Resting Metabolic Rate
Why is this number so much lower than the rest?
Resting Metabolic Rate is perhaps the single most important metric on the RMR test. Makes sense since it’s the name of the damn test. What does it mean? Take my Fat Burning Efficiency — 100%. Pretty good, right?! Certainly. However, while my body may be excellent at burning fat, my overall metabolism is not functioning as well as it should, meaning I’m not burning calories as fast as I ideally should be.
Metabolic Fitness is very similar. 80% may be a great score, and my body does convert the nutrients I eat into energy reasonably well. But I do not necessarily use that energy well. As a result, my body likely stores much more fat than it should.
Sure enough, I tested it. The numbers, quite bluntly, shocked me. According to my scale at the gym, my body fat percentage is 22% — for reference, the last time I tested it was during my days working at Lifetime Fitness, where I usually hovered around 10-12%. To make matters worse, my visceral fat was a whopping seven pounds (I spoke about the dangers of visceral fat a few weeks back).
This insight is undoubtedly useful, but what to do with it?
Nutrition and lifestyle changes are the big two. Let’s start with nutrition.
In the above image, you can see my specific RMR is 2,043 calories per day. And below is how that number becomes helpful:
Because my goal is to build muscle and reduce body fat, and because my body’s fat burning efficiency is high, my macronutrient recommendations are laid out for me.
With each category on the RMR test, it also gives lifestyle recommendations to improve functionality. Many of them are obvious and fairly low-barrier. It just takes doing them. Here are a few examples:
Sleep — I know I need to improve here; not so easy with a 2-year-old and a 6-month-old.
Reduce Stress — Don’t we all? But how? This week’s podcast recommendation teaches that timing your light and dark exposure can significantly help reduce stress. Going to sleep doing something you enjoy also dramatically helps as well.
Some non-obvious examples included:
Cold therapy — cold therapy can improve mitochondrial efficiency, which is vital for metabolic health.
Heat therapy — Saunas, in particular, are terrific tools for improving blood circulation and cardiovascular health.
Daily walks — again going to the reduction in stress.
The Active Metabolic Test
The Active Metabolic Rate test (AMR) gives you a window into your physical health and provides you with a roadmap for improving your metabolic health and physical performance. Here are the main objectives to learn from an AMR test:
VO2 Max — your body’s maximum ability to consume oxygen and produce ATP.
Heart health — similar to VO2 Max, but also with an emphasis on your heart’s ability to recover after high-intensity work.
Biological age — a combination of your VO2 Max, Fat Burning Efficiency, and your Metabolic Rate.
Lung Health — How well your lungs are able to perform under high-intensity work.
Movement Economy — How effectively your body burns calories while exercising.
Let’s dive into my scores:
What do you notice first? Yup. Aerobic Capacity and Cardiovascular Fitness are not good. What does this mean? Well…
…It means my VO2 Max leaves something to be desired. At just 17ml/min/kg, it is roughly half of the recommendation range (30-35ml/min/kg) and well in the red zone. Not ideal. But incredibly useful information because I know that needs to improve.
How can this be if most of my other scores were good? Because while I do exercise regularly, I do not do enough of the exercise I need: zone 2 cardio and high-intensity interval training; the same exercise we need to build a healthy metabolic triangle.
One of the pillars of having a healthy metabolic triangle is having a biological age less than your chronological age. At 32 years old, any guess what my biological age is?
Not ideal. But again, very useful information. Notice on the righthand side how biological age is determined: VO2 Max, Fat burn efficiency, and Metabolic Rate. The blue, downward arrows show that my Fat Burn and my Metabolic Rate are bringing my biological age down, but my poor VO2 Max is bringing it up dramatically.
With this information, what do I do next? I know what needs to change, but how? As a personal trainer who enjoys lifting weights, I both know and am dreading the answer: More cardio.
Fortunately, the AMR test shows me how. In the image below, you’ll see my precise heart rate zones. Observe how low my zone 5 window is — this is because I could not even make it to my actual zone 5 on the test, reaching maximal exhaustion beforehand.
Knowing these heart rate zones will help me put together my cardio exercise regimen. What comprises the metabolic triangle? A wide zone 2 base and a high zone 5 peak. My zone 2 base is very small, peaking at 132bpm (ideally this would be closer to 150bpm), and my zone 5 peak is almost nonexistent.
Between now and when I retest in three months, my goal is to dramatically increase my VO2 Max and Resting Metabolic Rate. My plan has been laid out for me; now I have to act on it. Stay tuned!
Interested in joining me on this metabolic healthy journey? Contact me here to get started!