Caught a documentary in Netflix, Stutz. It caught my attention when Tim Ferriss mentioned in his newsletter that he was watching it. This turned out to be a mirror of sorts for me. I will only explore one or two concepts here in my post and hone in on it vs. trying to digest it all at once. That would be injustice to the depth of the topics explored.

This is a conversation between a star and his shrink (therapist). Only the tables are turned, the star who was the subject has since healed, and now the shrink is on the decline due to Parkinsons disease, is going through a lot himself.

What strikes you most about Stulz is that he is a straight shooter, no BS type of guy. He gets straight into the process and the framework. This is like personal trainers who quit the talk and get your started right away. The documentary immerses you almost at minute 2!

The first dip is into your life force that is shaped by the pyramid of relationships that Stulz draws out…. something like this..

Stulz explains that whenever we feel lost, we can focus on our life force. That force is defined by the pyramid of relationships starting from the base, our relationship with our body. This is the one that is by and far the most underrated. Many of us, and certainly I count myself in those ranks of ignoring or taking the body for granted, especially in times of high stress. That is the start of a downward spiral.

I have long struggled to maintain my weight or fitness. There are extremes characterized by short spans of awesome fitness interspersed by long periods of decline and troughs… put in a graph, it looks roughly like this…

What do we notice in this chart? The chart above is just mine, may not be the same for others.

The difference between fit and unfit is quite large, so variance is very high

The times of high fitness are short, as mentioned above,

each time the span of maintaining that fitness starts to shrink,

the level of that fitness starts to decline and

overall the times that elapse between the peaks start to draw out.

Zooming out, the big takeaway is that the relationship with the body is a poor one in my case, and that is being kind. It is very mediocre to downright horrible. When that relationship is poor, everything else above in the pyramid starts to crumble. We will explore the other layers in follow up posts as I get through more of the documentary, but I wanted to dive into this base layer a little deeper to help better understand my own pattern a little better. Maybe you will understand it, relate to your own or think less of my ability to reason with my body.

My late uncle used to say “The Body is like a temple, you need to worship it, treat it with respect. Feed it well, nourish it as you should, serve it well and it will serve you long and well!”.

Peaks of fitness are very narrow, which means that peak fitness was maintained for a relatively short time compared to the troughs which are much longer. The decline is pretty steep, which means that after attaining peak fitness, there is an utter lack of discipline to maintain it. This is backed up by literature and several fat loss fads that are almost unrealistic to maintain over a longer time. In the translated words of Indian superstar, Rajinikanth, “What is hard to attain is held over a longer time than something that is easier to get.” No wonder you need experienced mountain climbers to help you reach the summit.

Attaining the Heights - Variance between peak and trough

Heard of that term consistency?? That is indicated in the variance between peak and trough in the curves above. Larger variance implies there are times of horrible fitness interspersed with times of peak fitness. In my case, that clearly indicates lack of consistency in eating habits, exercising routine and sleep. All these are obvious in times of good fitness. You maintain a journal of eating habits, you hit the gym 3 times a week, do upper body one day, leg day the next and full body on the 3rd. You tack in a couple of cardio sessions, in my case runs. All sounds so obvious to keep up once you understand it. The first time you hit the peak, assuming you started at the trough as I once did as a teen, you swear to yourself that you will not relent on these healthy habits. Then life happens and you roll it all back. Sucks!

The Doppler effect is akin to experiencing to rolling thunder that you hear when a train comes near and drowns away when it gets far. With fitness, it is the train going away as you age. With age comes a lot of constraints on time, the ability of the body, sources and factors causing stress, will power, boredom and defeat from the same rodeo of losing and gaining weight.

So, each time you regain weight, you lose the will to fight. One of the reasons is that it gets boring and you need a new challenge. How about the challenge of not letting go? That seems harder than loosening up the rules. Why? You tell yourself that you can do this, you can lose that weight again, you can go to the gym whenever you feel like - you have after all proved to yourself and the world that you can do this dance. The reps are not just in the gym machines, they apply to skills and your abilities too, right?

WRONG! Those of us who have been there know why… If you do manage to pull yourself together and get determined, you are more likely to stop before you get to the earlier peak. You tell yourself the stories, do I really need to go all the way? Are the stakes really that high? Isn’t this about the journey and about keeping it off - which you didn’t?

Why is it that we find ourselves fighting hard to attain something only to lose it all. This is true of fitness, of money, of relationships, and pretty much any thing of value that we all pursue, only to find it fleeting. How is it that some of us are able to maintain and hold on to these things whilst others aren’t? What in us changes that we cannot sustain.

When I look back at my multiple attempts to get fit, each time, I had a solid and deep reason to pursue it. Sometimes it was to prove to myself, other times, it was to prove to others, yet others it was to achieve a goal such as finishing a long distance race or running it faster. Each time, it was hard but I surprised myself, went above and beyond, raced past the goal lines. I tracked and gamed the gains I made. This motivated me to push more and more. However, once I got to the goal, I lost that motivation to HOLD on. That is the part that is baffling. Achieving comfort in getting to a goal temporarily is okay, but when that shifts to overconfidence that skipping sessions or time to maintain that fitness is OKAY. How do we shift to accepting a lower outcome? Why do we stop tracking, feeling proud of being fit? How do we accept needing to go back up sizes? Why?

I don’t have an easy answer. I want to tell myself that priorities change, other things fill up our lives. A new job takes a longer commute and we are exhausted at the end of it, kids take time, etc. But aren’t those all just excuses? Why did the body that wanted to race out the door at 5am no longer wants to get off the sheets?

Whatever the reasons, unless we establish a healthier relationship with our body, which per my uncle is a temple, none of the other relationships can really be healthy. How many times have we struggled to show up in social settings because of having to explain our weight? How many times have we put our kids to nap instead of chasing them down the backyard to teaching them how to run? How many races have we deferred because we are not quite where we should be in our training? Why is this okay or when does it become okay?

One of my theories is that the high variance of those peaks from the valleys is unsustainable unless the peaks and the base are climbing proportionately. Setting reasonable and sustainable goals are key. One cannot go into an ego trip of “proving” that we can lose weight. That is obviously a short term errand, not a way of life. The same thing happens with these fad diets which are super hard to maintain over a long time, so the body furiously slips back into its comfort zone and begins to adjust back up. As with running, strength training or any other physical activity that we pick up, it is important not to go all out and to have steady reps and keep increasing those reps. All basics, but need reminder and a system to track and hold accountability.

This time will be different….. one more time…

Caught a documentary in Netflix, Stutz. It caught my attention when Tim Ferriss mentioned in his newsletter that he was watching it. This turned out to be a mirror of sorts for me. I will only explore one or two concepts here in my post and hone in on it vs. trying to digest it all at once. That would be injustice to the depth of the topics explored.

This is a conversation between a star and his shrink (therapist). Only the tables are turned, the star who was the subject has since healed, and now the shrink is on the decline due to Parkinsons disease, is going through a lot himself.

What strikes you most about Stulz is that he is a straight shooter, no BS type of guy. He gets straight into the process and the framework. This is like personal trainers who quit the talk and get your started right away. The documentary immerses you almost at minute 2!

The first dip is into your life force that is shaped by the pyramid of relationships that Stulz draws out…. something like this..

Stulz explains that whenever we feel lost, we can focus on our life force. That force is defined by the pyramid of relationships starting from the base, our relationship with our body. This is the one that is by and far the most underrated. Many of us, and certainly I count myself in those ranks of ignoring or taking the body for granted, especially in times of high stress. That is the start of a downward spiral.

I have long struggled to maintain my weight or fitness. There are extremes characterized by short spans of awesome fitness interspersed by long periods of decline and troughs… put in a graph, it looks roughly like this…

What do we notice in this chart? The chart above is just mine, may not be the same for others.

The difference between fit and unfit is quite large, so variance is very high

The times of high fitness are short, as mentioned above,

each time the span of maintaining that fitness starts to shrink,

the level of that fitness starts to decline and

overall the times that elapse between the peaks start to draw out.

Zooming out, the big takeaway is that the relationship with the body is a poor one in my case, and that is being kind. It is very mediocre to downright horrible. When that relationship is poor, everything else above in the pyramid starts to crumble. We will explore the other layers in follow up posts as I get through more of the documentary, but I wanted to dive into this base layer a little deeper to help better understand my own pattern a little better. Maybe you will understand it, relate to your own or think less of my ability to reason with my body.

My late uncle used to say “The Body is like a temple, you need to worship it, treat it with respect. Feed it well, nourish it as you should, serve it well and it will serve you long and well!”.

Peaks of fitness are very narrow, which means that peak fitness was maintained for a relatively short time compared to the troughs which are much longer. The decline is pretty steep, which means that after attaining peak fitness, there is an utter lack of discipline to maintain it. This is backed up by literature and several fat loss fads that are almost unrealistic to maintain over a longer time. In the translated words of Indian superstar, Rajinikanth, “What is hard to attain is held over a longer time than something that is easier to get.” No wonder you need experienced mountain climbers to help you reach the summit.

Attaining the Heights - Variance between peak and trough

Heard of that term consistency?? That is indicated in the variance between peak and trough in the curves above. Larger variance implies there are times of horrible fitness interspersed with times of peak fitness. In my case, that clearly indicates lack of consistency in eating habits, exercising routine and sleep. All these are obvious in times of good fitness. You maintain a journal of eating habits, you hit the gym 3 times a week, do upper body one day, leg day the next and full body on the 3rd. You tack in a couple of cardio sessions, in my case runs. All sounds so obvious to keep up once you understand it. The first time you hit the peak, assuming you started at the trough as I once did as a teen, you swear to yourself that you will not relent on these healthy habits. Then life happens and you roll it all back. Sucks!

The Doppler effect is akin to experiencing to rolling thunder that you hear when a train comes near and drowns away when it gets far. With fitness, it is the train going away as you age. With age comes a lot of constraints on time, the ability of the body, sources and factors causing stress, will power, boredom and defeat from the same rodeo of losing and gaining weight.

So, each time you regain weight, you lose the will to fight. One of the reasons is that it gets boring and you need a new challenge. How about the challenge of not letting go? That seems harder than loosening up the rules. Why? You tell yourself that you can do this, you can lose that weight again, you can go to the gym whenever you feel like - you have after all proved to yourself and the world that you can do this dance. The reps are not just in the gym machines, they apply to skills and your abilities too, right?

WRONG! Those of us who have been there know why… If you do manage to pull yourself together and get determined, you are more likely to stop before you get to the earlier peak. You tell yourself the stories, do I really need to go all the way? Are the stakes really that high? Isn’t this about the journey and about keeping it off - which you didn’t?

Why is it that we find ourselves fighting hard to attain something only to lose it all. This is true of fitness, of money, of relationships, and pretty much any thing of value that we all pursue, only to find it fleeting. How is it that some of us are able to maintain and hold on to these things whilst others aren’t? What in us changes that we cannot sustain.

When I look back at my multiple attempts to get fit, each time, I had a solid and deep reason to pursue it. Sometimes it was to prove to myself, other times, it was to prove to others, yet others it was to achieve a goal such as finishing a long distance race or running it faster. Each time, it was hard but I surprised myself, went above and beyond, raced past the goal lines. I tracked and gamed the gains I made. This motivated me to push more and more. However, once I got to the goal, I lost that motivation to HOLD on. That is the part that is baffling. Achieving comfort in getting to a goal temporarily is okay, but when that shifts to overconfidence that skipping sessions or time to maintain that fitness is OKAY. How do we shift to accepting a lower outcome? Why do we stop tracking, feeling proud of being fit? How do we accept needing to go back up sizes? Why?

I don’t have an easy answer. I want to tell myself that priorities change, other things fill up our lives. A new job takes a longer commute and we are exhausted at the end of it, kids take time, etc. But aren’t those all just excuses? Why did the body that wanted to race out the door at 5am no longer wants to get off the sheets?

Whatever the reasons, unless we establish a healthier relationship with our body, which per my uncle is a temple, none of the other relationships can really be healthy. How many times have we struggled to show up in social settings because of having to explain our weight? How many times have we put our kids to nap instead of chasing them down the backyard to teaching them how to run? How many races have we deferred because we are not quite where we should be in our training? Why is this okay or when does it become okay?

One of my theories is that the high variance of those peaks from the valleys is unsustainable unless the peaks and the base are climbing proportionately. Setting reasonable and sustainable goals are key. One cannot go into an ego trip of “proving” that we can lose weight. That is obviously a short term errand, not a way of life. The same thing happens with these fad diets which are super hard to maintain over a long time, so the body furiously slips back into its comfort zone and begins to adjust back up. As with running, strength training or any other physical activity that we pick up, it is important not to go all out and to have steady reps and keep increasing those reps. All basics, but need reminder and a system to track and hold accountability.

This time will be different….. one more time…