The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [14]
3. Is it possible that you tested a specific demographic and that other variables are responsible for the difference? Example: if the claim is that yoga improves cardiac health, and the experimental group comprises upper-class folk, is it possible that they are therefore more likely than a control group to eat better food? You bet your downward-dog-posing ass.
The point isn’t to speculate about hundreds of possible explanations.
The point is to be skeptical, especially of sensationalist headlines. Most “new studies” in the media are observational studies that can, at best, establish correlation (A happens while B happens), but not causality (A causes B to happen).
If I pick my nose when the Super Bowl cuts to a commercial, did I cause that? This isn’t a haiku. It’s a summary: correlation doesn’t prove causation. Be skeptical when people tell you that A causes B.
They’re wrong much more than 50% of the time.
USE THE YO-YO: EMBRACE CYCLING
Yo-yo dieting gets a bad rap.
Instead of beating yourself up, going to the shrink, or eating an entire cheesecake because you ruined your diet with one cookie, allow me to deliver a message: it’s normal.
Eating more, then less, then more, and so on in a continuous sine wave is an impulse we can leverage to reach goals faster. Trying to prevent it—attempting to sustain a reduced-calorie diet, for example—is when yo-yoing becomes pathological and uncontrollable. Scheduling overeating at specific times, on the other hand, fixes problems instead of creating them.
The top bodybuilders in the world understand this and, even when in a pre-contest dieting phase, will cycle calories to prevent hormonal downregulation.5 The daily average might be 4,000 calories per day, but it would be cycled as follows: Monday, 4,000; Tuesday, 4,500; Wednesday, 3,500, etc.
Ed Coan, described as the Michael Jordan of powerlifting, set more than 70 world records in his sport. Among other things, he deadlifted an unbelievable 901 pounds at 220 pounds bodyweight, beating even super-heavyweights. His trainer at the time, Marty Gallagher, has stated matter-of-factly that “maintaining peak condition year-round is a ticket to the mental ward.”
You can have your cheesecake and eat it too, as long as you get the timing right. The best part is that these planned ups and downs accelerate, rather than reverse, progress.
Forget balance and embrace cycling. It’s a key ingredient in rapid body redesign.
PREDISPOSITION VS. PREDESTINATION: DON’T BLAME YOUR GENES
The marathoners of Kenya are legendary.
Kenyan men have won all but one of the last 12 Boston Marathons. In the 1988 Olympics, Kenyan men won gold in the 800-meter, 1,500-meter, and 5,000-meter races, as well as the 3,000-meter steeplechase. Factoring in their population of approximately 30 million, the statistical likelihood of this happening at an international competition with the scope of the Olympics is about one in 1.6 billion.
If you’ve been in the world of exercise science for any period of time, you can guess their muscle fiber composition, which is an inherited trait: slow-twitch. Slow-twitch muscle fibers are suited to endurance work. Lucky bastards!
But here’s the problem: it doesn’t appear to be totally true. To the surprise of researchers who conducted muscle biopsies on Kenyan runners, there was a high proportion of fast-twitch muscle fibers, the type you’d expect to find in shot-putters and sprinters. Why? Because, as it turns out, they often train using low mileage and high intensity.
If you are overweight and your parents are overweight, the inclination is to blame genetics, but this is only one possible explanation.
Did fatness genes get passed on, or was it overeating behavior? After all, fat people tend to have fat pets.
Even if you are predisposed to being overweight, you’re not predestined to be fat.
Eric Lander, leader of the Human Genome