Life by the Bells

12/02/2021

Morning play before school.

I don't force my kids to do anything physical. I simply provide the environment, opportunity, and encouragement to move and play.

This is the result.

Want your kids to do better cognitively?
Let them play! And maybe you can benefit too?

There are multiple meta-studies and more showing that movement and exercise improve learning and cognition in young children.

Likewise, a large body of research shows movement and exercise can stave off, and in some cases, reverse cognitive decline, including dementia and Alzheimer's in older populations.

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05/20/2020

Tired of the mealtime battles? Here are some strategies.

02/15/2019

Spot on.

Nutrition is often seen as a belief system. In other words, the answer to “What should I eat?” is often based on faith, magical thinking, emotional attachments, and/or what feels “truthy”, rather than on real evidence or the scientific method. Until we fix this, nutrition will get more confu...

01/02/2019

Happy new year, folks!

For those of you looking to make changes in your life, I want to point out something typically overlooked or ignored by most "advice" from "experts".

Self-compassion.

Often, only when we fully accept reality as it is can we hope to change it. Self-compassion is one of the fundamental parts of change.

Look to gain ground rather than be perfect and be ok with that. Moving forward is still moving forward, regardless of the rate.

Want some extra practice with self-compassion? Check this out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lfth1bJKMmA

Take the Self-Compassionate Quiz here:

http://bit.ly/1EJGzPF

Maybe try a 30-day Self-Compassion Challenge here:

https://www.cynthiabenge.com/lan…/self-compassion-challenge/

Positive psychology exercises are science-based interventions that help to increase psychological well-being (more at: https://positivepsychologytoolkit.com/...

12/03/2018

This was fun.

100 reps of 100kg trap bar dl. I didn't have a trap bar so I used these instead.

07/06/2018

"I have (insert thing here) going on and just need to (insert another thing) first before I look to get healthy."

Many of us wait for the “perfect time” with our health, nutrition, and fitness. But this all-or-nothing thinking — as in, “If I don’t do this perfectly then it’s awful!” — rarely gets us “all”. It usually gets us “nothing”.

06/05/2018

Betcha can't eat just one...with good reason.

You know the feeling: One salty crunch turns into 100, and suddenly you’re licking the cheese dust and wondering: What’s wrong with me? Actually, it’s normal to feel like you can’t stop overeating certain things. Today's hyperpalatable processed food is creating a modern-day food crisis — ...

03/09/2018

BSP breaking it down.

[COACHING TIP OF THE DAY, from Brian St. Pierre]

WE COACH REAL PEOPLE, NOT RESEARCH AVERAGES

Often times, with a health/fitness/wellness industry-wide push towards being evidence-based coaches (which is great, BTW), I see people make an unintentional mistake.

They reference research papers and researcher conclusions to "prove" why something "should" or "should not" be true/possible/right/whatever.

This is NOT how it works in the real world.

++

In reality, research mostly just reports averages. Fact is, the subjects tended to fall on a bell curve of some sort - some saw benefit, some saw harm, most saw something in between.

Lets look at one of my favorite examples.

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In this study, the researchers overfed folks by 1000kcal per day for 8 weeks. By conventional math, everyone should have gained 16lbs. Of course, this is not how it actually played out.

In reality, everyone gained weight, with one person gaining 9.3lbs, and one only gaining 0.79lb!

The biggest difference was their change in NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) output. On *average*, all subjects saw their NEAT output rise by 336kcal per day. Or about 33% of the excess calories fed.

So, if we just coached by research averages, we would deem the outliers in this study as "impossible".

Fact is, one male subject expended an extra 692 kcal per day via NEAT, or nearly 70% of his excess calories. (This was the guy who gained 0.79lb.)

And one poor woman expended 98 *fewer* NEAT calories than before. (She's the one who gained the most weight, at 9.3lbs.)

This is reality. Humans do differ from one another. And our differences cause us to respond to elements in ways that seem to contradict what the research bears out.

But that's only when we forget that people aren't research averages.

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The ultimate point here is to understand the spectrum of possibilities. Nearly all research is like this.

There's even research that shows that while most people build muscle when they add resistance training, some unlucky folks don't build any, and might even lose muscle!

Just remember - most papers / researchers report averages. But those averages don't accurately reflect the outcomes for EVERYONE.

So, focus on what *is* happening, rather than what you think *should* be happening.