The 5-Minute Athlete

History Makes Exercise and Nutrition Simple

For most of human history, our ancestors didn't have abundantly stocked fridges and pantries. When they got up in the morning, they likely had to scavenge or hunt (exercise) before they could eat. Prior to the dawn of agriculture, around 10,000 years ago, our diet was fundamentally different from a typical modern diet. People mostly ate meat, including animal fats, nuts, leafy greens, and depending on availability, a moderate amount of fruit.

In terms of evolution, that time wasn't long enough for our bodies to adjust to the foods introduced by agriculture, and worse, the hyper-processed "food" products introduced in the second half of the 20th century. This prompts the question if it's a coincidence that obesity has been on the rise in the last decades and becomes endemic now, when screens and processed food are omnipresent and lifestyles tend to be sedentary?

In that context, intermittent fasting and what is generally referred to as the Paleo diet, seem like sound ideas. The latter is not a diet, like the many diet fads out there, it's just based on our evolutionary biology.

Breakfast: The Most Important Meal of the Day

Our history indicates that we're probably meant to have fasting periods. Intermittent fasting works for some people and for some people it doesn't. If you find that you need breakfast, why not break your fast like our ancestors would have? Nuts with a moderate amount of fruit and/or bacon and eggs are great options for a delicious breakfast that is aligned with our history in terms of evolutionary biology. You don't need any extra fat, just let the bacon melt and fry it in its own fat. It's good animal fat. The eggs can be boiled or fried together with the bacon.

Not Every Food is Food

You wouldn't fill your car with lemonade and expect it to run well. There are foods which provide us with nutrients. They're the foods our ancestors ate, before there were supermarkets. Today, there are tasty things which may not be great for nutrients. Eating pizza, fries, or potato chips when you're hungry is a bit like drinking liquor when you're thirsty.

There's nothing wrong with eating pizza, fries, and potato chips, of course, just like there's nothing wrong with enjoying liquor. There are delicious things we may consume just because they're tasty. Nutritious food can also be super delicious though. It all depends on how it is prepared.

Don't confuse things you consume for enjoyment with things that fuel you. You may enjoy a mindless popcorn flick, but you wouldn't watch it to nourish your mind. Just like you wouldn't drink whisky to quench your thirst. Yet, whisky is enjoyed by many. When you eat or drink something, think about whether it's fuel or something you consume just for the joy of it (or both).

Rule of thumb: If it doesn't have/need packaging and a label, such as e.g. vegetables, it's probably good for you.

Restrictive Diets: Say No to Fascism

That which is forbidden is all the more appealing. The best way to create an unbearable craving is to tell yourself that you can't have it. Even if you were to assume that restrictive diets make sense, the question merely becomes how long you can or want to keep it up. Life should be enjoyed and lived to the fullest, because sooner or later, we die, one way or another. Would you really want to live in a constant state of "Oh, I can't have this and I can't have that"? That's not living, it's more like existing... in misery. The key to a healthy diet is balance, not restriction. If you live an active life and you mostly eat nutritious food to satisfy your hunger, you should be able to enjoy a delicious treat whenever you like, free of guilt and limiting thoughts.

Calories, Santa Claus, and the Easter Bunny

Do you believe in Santa Claus and/or the Easter Bunny? No? Well, those are actually more worth believing in than calorie counting, because they're fun, at least. Calorie counting, while an idea that seems sound in theory, is practical nonsense. You don't believe me? Read the next paragraph and web search it.

The idea of counting calories is based on the first law of thermodynamics which states that the total energy of a closed system remains constant. This means that in the context of nutrition, to maintain energy balance and body weight, one calorie eaten must be offset by one calorie burned.

So if you eat less than the energy you expend, you lose weight, right? This seems like a sound idea. The problem is that a calorie isn't a calorie. Calorie quality differs in terms of nutrient density and digestibility. The calories of a salad, meat, and animal fat are entirely different from those of pizza and cake, for example.

The other problem with calorie counting is that most people, professional athletes aside, aren't able to burn the amount of calories supplied by modern food. And even if all calories were created equal, they're hard to measure in practice, because cooking and other processing alters fundamental properties such as digestibility and nutrient density.

Fat: Libel and Slander

A common mistake is to avoid and replace foods that have healthy, natural fats, which are good for you, with no- or low-fat processed and packaged foods.

"Dietary fats also have a complex, profound, and varied role to play in physical structure and function. Dietary fat—arguably the most important macronutrient, with the possible exception of water—serves the needs of innumerable physiological processes: building, rebuilding, and maintaining cellular membranes and nerve tissue; manufacturing hormones and neurotransmitters; facilitating cellular communication and absorption of critical fat-soluble nutrients; stabilizing the nervous system; supporting the immune and lymphatic systems; creating proinflammatory and antiinflammatory compounds; supporting the proper use of proteins; and fueling the brain, heart, and other muscles. This alone should help underscore the fundamental insanity of low-fat diets."
– Primal Body, Primal Mind (Gedgaudas, 2009)

Food products that are advertised as low-fat, reduced-fat, or fat-free tend to be high in salt, sugar, refined carbohydrates, and other artificial ingredients with strange names that nature never intended for us to consume. Whereas natural fats in nuts, fish, avocados, olive oil, and other natural food even have health benefits.

Metabolic Syndrome: The Bane of Fitness

Imagine your body is a village. Insulin is a shepherd boy whose job is to shout, "Open the gates! Bring the food (glucose) inside!". Your muscle and liver cells are the sheep whose job is to listen and open their gates to let the glucose in.

At first, the shepherd boy (insulin) shouts gently, "Open up!" and the sheep (cells) listen immediately, open their gates, and the glucose gets used for energy. Now, imagine the shepherd boy starts shouting too often and too loudly because there is a lot of sugar coming in (you ate too many carbs/sugars). He screams, "OPEN THE GATES!" constantly.

The Sheep get annoyed. They think, "He's always screaming. We don't really need to open the gates right now". They start ignoring the boy. They close their ears. The shepherd boy (insulin) thinks, "They aren't listening! I must be too quiet!" So, he screams even louder and runs around frantically. The body produces massive amounts of insulin, but the cells still barely open the gates. The glucose stays in the street (bloodstream). Because the sheep kept ignoring the boy, the glucose piles up in the streets.

The wolves (high blood sugar, high blood pressure, heart disease) arrive.

The tragedy of the fable is that the shepherd boy (insulin) is exhausted. He has been screaming at the top of his lungs for years, trying to force the sheep (cells) to open the gates. He is now hoarse and tired. When the real danger (type 2 diabetes) finally hits, the shepherd boy (insulin) tries to scream one last time to save the village, but the sheep (cells) are completely deaf to him (severe insulin resistance). The boy has no voice left (the pancreas burns out). In the original fable, the boy is ignored when the wolf comes because he lied. Metabolic syndrome means the body is ignored because it over-reacted for so long that the signal became noise.

The only way to fix this is to stop the screaming. By eating less sugar and moving more, you reduce the need for the shepherd boy (insulin) to shout. Eventually, the sheep (cells) remember how to listen, the boy can rest, and the gates open normally again.

"Miracle" drugs such as e.g. Ozempic work, because they manipulate insulin levels. Does using drugs to offset a garbage diet and a lethargic lifestyle devoid of physical activity sound healthy to you though?

How to Take the Fun out of Anything

Just like restrictive diets and calorie counting are ideal to take the fun out of nutrition, there's a great way to take the fun out of exercise too. You only need to tell yourself that you have to "go to the gym" x times per week for y hours and make sure to bureaucratically count your reps, miles, etc, so that you can feel bad when you don't meet whatever you think your current goal is. It's that simple. When you do a certain amount of reps, miles, etc on one day, it's easy to feel obligated to do the same amount next time or better, even surpass it. There you go, you have now created something dreadful that invites procrastination.

Casual Exercise in Pop Culture

Many high achievers seamlessly integrate fitness into busy schedules and casually exercise between tasks. This is often depicted in popular culture. Typically, these people are athletes, entrepreneurs, or other high-performers. They embody drive, resilience, and mental clarity. What's stopping you from training like them?

Movies

• Creed III (2023 @ 1:20:20): Damian "Dame" Anderson does chin-ups on his staircase while he watches TV.
• Rocky Balboa franchise (especially Rocky IV): Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) is iconic for his impromptu workouts, including running up the Philadelphia Museum of Art steps and doing push-ups in his kitchen. These moments emphasize his gritty, self-made ethos.
• Terminator 2 (1991 @ 14:47): Sarah Connor has her bed propped up sideways and uses it to do chin-ups while incarcerated in a mental institution.
• Batman Begins (2005 @ 1:07:20): Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) drops to the floor and does push-ups after he wakes from a long sleep induced by a hallucinogenic pathogen Scarecrow poisoned him with.
• Never Back Down (2008 @ 1:03:15): Jake does push-ups
• The Big Short (2015): Michael Burry (Christian Bale) is shown energetically playing the drums and doing push-ups in his office while listening to loud metal music on his headphones.

TV Series

• The Playlist (2022, S01E01 @ 09:50): Martin Lorentzon participates in an enthusiastic office push-up competition, which he probably orchestrated, before he went on to co-found Spotify.
• For All Mankind (2019, S04E03 The Bear Hug @ 33:30): Dev Ayesa bench-presses weights next to his desk.
• Billions (2016, S01E01 @ 23:10): Bobby Axelrod's (Damian Lewis) kids bet push-ups on the answer to a history question, displaying their father's playfully competitive drive.

Redefine Exercise: Fitness is an Attitude

The primary barrier to fitness is psychological. People think they need time, money, space, equipment, or even a gym setup to exercise. The truth is that you are already surrounded by a gym you can use free of charge, anytime and anywhere. Don't think of it as a workout. The word implies effort and suffering. It sounds big and serious, and literally has the word "work" in it. Why so serious?

Gyms work for some people and for some they don't. The average gym-goer though, tends to train for their gym routine rather than functional strength, speed, or general fitness for everyday life. Maybe you have experienced the balloon-muscled gym bro who turns out to be completely useless when moving furniture or the person who struggles to walk up a steep hill in the sun and wonders what they go to the gym for.

Whether you need a gym membership or not, depends on your goals. If you want to look like a bodybuilder, a gym membership makes sense. If you want to build functional strength, be athletic, buff and toned, or just lean and slim, a gym membership is completely optional. Anyone who tells you otherwise either doesn't know what they're talking about or has something to gain from lying.

If gyms work for you, why limit yourself to them though? Physical flexibility is an important aspect of fitness and yet people tend to stuff exercise into rigid, mentally inflexible routines. Why not get creative with your environment whenever you have an opportunity? Why waste time standing around, waiting, when you could set an example in terms of fitness? If fitness is your attitude, your environment becomes your playground and you'll be surprised how much fun there is to have.

If you want functional fitness for everyday life, improvisation is superior to specialization, because life is random, chaotic, and likes to throw sticks into the spokes of routine. The person who goes to the gym, but walks around all stiff and strictly confines their physical activity to the gym, isn't fit, they're just someone who goes to the gym.

Don't wait for the gym. It's already here. It's wherever you are. Your only barriers are mental ones. The only limit is your imagination. A gym membership is optional. Equipment is optional. You don't need a perfect schedule. All you need is the will to move. Whether you're in a tiny apartment, a hotel room, or near a park bench, you can squeeze in some quality exercise, anywhere and anytime, using what you have.

Dear gym bros,
Until you can do more than 5 one-arm/one-leg push-ups with that one leg elevated, one-arm handstand push-ups, one-arm chin-ups, and one-arm pull-ups, you can't confidently say that calisthenics don't offer enough resistance for muscle growth. I'm aware of the false, but commonly held belief that "real" exercise requires a gym membership. You know who you are. If you don't feel addressed, you aren't the intended audience.
Love,
The guy who beats you in arm-wrestling and other activity that requires functional fitness

Gymification: Make the World Your Gym!

gamification

the practice of making activities more like games in order to make them more interesting or enjoyable

gymification

the practice of making fitness a seamless, ambient part of one's environment rather than a scheduled chore

Peoples' biggest limitation when it comes to fitness is that they view it as a separate event requiring a specific time, place, and mental state. Integrating fitness into daily life makes sense, because you don't add another task, you remove friction. A gymified lifestyle doesn't cost time, it reclaims time.

It's not about finding time, it's about using time that is otherwise wasted, such as e.g. wait times for coffee to brew, conference calls to start, or food to heat. Even if you take a couple of minutes for a few reps in between, it's not a break from work, it's fuel for the next hour of deep work.

Fitness makes more sense as a theme rather than a goal. Think about it. Even if you consistently go to the gym and make effective use of its equipment, you'll only be in shape for as long as you keep going. Let's assume a perfect world in which you regularly go to the gym and you know how to use it's equipment and machines effectively so that you're in great shape. This is already not the case for most people. But even if it were, the only question is how long they'll keep going to the gym. When they stop going, they'll go out of shape. Do you want to be fit for a limited time only or do you want to be fit for as long as you live?

You brush your teeth daily to take care of your dental health. Why not casually exercise daily to take care of your general health? Why not just integrate fitness into your lifestyle? And if you're a parent, show your kids early on that fitness is part of life, not a chore you run away from.

With an open mind, it's possible to exercise anywhere and anytime. Whenever you can squeeze a few reps in. Equipment is optional. There's a lot of fun in getting creative with everyday items, such as e.g. towels, pillows, chairs, and tables. It's all about improvising with what you find in your environment.

Remove any mental barriers. Go from gym-dependent to environmentally fluent. Gymification is about more than fitness. It's about freedom and independence from time, money, space, and equipment. It's about creativity and the joy of discovery. What can you do with a table or a window sill? Think beyond intended use cases.

Fitness Lives Here

A pull-up bar in a doorframe is a statement. It invites to casually pull or just hang. Don't feel pressure to do a pull-up or a certain number of them. Approach the bar like a child would and just play. You'll be surprised how small sessions add up and before you know it, you'll be stronger and more toned.

If fitness is part of your space, it becomes part of who you are—not just something you do.

Effective Exercise is Simple

Our bodies adapt quickly. Which means routines aren't the best way to train. To keep your muscles growing, keep your muscles guessing. All you need to train effectively is resistance and muscle contraction. Make sure you have sufficient resistance for your current fitness level and focus on maximum muscle contraction. When you push, aim to push through the floor. When you pull, grip the bar so that your knuckles turn white, aim to crush it.

Think of exercise as practice rather than a workout. You don't need to do more than 5 repetitions of an exercise. If you can do more than 5 without struggle, the exercise is too easy for you and it's time to move on to something more challenging. For quick, effective exercise, do less than 5 repetitions of whatever is challenging for you.

Weights and machines are optional. Resistance for calisthenics exercises can be adjusted, meaning they can be made easier or more challenging, by playing with leverage. There are variations for everyone, from absolute beginner to seasoned master. You can get more out of 5 well-executed repetitions, in a variation that is challenging for your current fitness level, than 50 sloppy ones.

Bodyweight exercise makes sense for everyone, regardless of whether you go to the gym, because true fitness is to handle your body well and what good are those big guns if you can barely pull up your own weight?

One is Better Than None

Many people feel guilty if they miss a 60-minute gym session. Integrated fitness removes this all-or-nothing mentality. Shift your mindset from "Did I hit my 1-hour quota?" to "Did I move my body 5 times today?". Turn your day into a series of micro-training sessions. No gym commute. No change of clothes. No time wasted. By the time others get to the gym, you already did a variety of exercises.

A single push-up is better than the one hour gym session that doesn't happen. Ten 5-minute sessions are better than one 50-minute session you never start. Aim for consistency, rather than duration or intensity.

Time, Money, Equipment, and Space: What's Your Excuse?

Charles Bronson is notorious for his prison workouts without equipment, in the tiniest space, a literal prison cell.

You can do push-ups, squats, lunges, and many other exercises in all kinds of variations, at no cost, in a matter of seconds, anywhere and anytime.

Equipment is optional. You can train effectively without it and you can get creative with what you find in your environment, such as e.g. chairs, tables, towels, pillows, window sills, or stair guardrails.

You don't need a professional kitchen to make a great meal, if you know how to use the ingredients in your fridge. You don't need a gym, if you know how to use your environment.

Worthy Investments

If you have money to spend, a doorframe pull-up bar, a rope to skip, training gloves for a good grip with sweaty hands, and a shaker to drink your liquids from are affordable, enduring investments.

Obesity Is a Trend, Why Not Just Go With It?

People tend to think that fitness is about how you look. Regular exercise is great for your mind too though. It's good to relieve stress, combat anxiety and depression, clear your head, and come up with fresh ideas. Being in good shape is merely a nice bonus. Exercise gets you pumped, not just physically, but also psychologically and mentally.

Most importantly, exercise is about quality of life. Can you really enjoy life to the fullest if you're totally out of shape?

Scales and Sizes

Instead of numbers on scales and characters or numbers on clothing labels, focus on how you look in the mirror and how you feel about yourself. The latter are better progress indicators than the former. When it comes down to it, exercise should be all about how you feel about yourself.