The 4-Hour Body_ An Uncommon Guide to Ra - Timothy Ferriss [15]
People will think that because genes play a role in something, they determine everything. We see, again and again, people saying, “It’s all genetic. I can’t do anything about it.” That’s nonsense. To say that something has a genetic component does not make it unchangeable.
Don’t accept predisposition. You don’t have to, and we can feed and train you toward a different physical future.6 Nearly all of my personal experiments involve improving something that should be genetically fixed.
It is possible to redirect your natural-born genetic profile. From now on, “bad genetics” can’t be your go-to excuse.
ELIMINATE PROPAGANDA AND NEBULOUS TERMS
The word aerobics came about when the gym instructors got together and said, “If we’re going to charge $10 an hour, we can’t call it jumping up and down.”
—Rita Rudner
One question you must learn to ask when faced with advice or sales pitches is: “If this [method/product/diet/etc.] didn’t work as advertised, what might their other incentives be for selling it?”
Aerobics classes? The reason you’re sold: aerobics is more effective than alternative X. The real reason it’s promoted: there’s no equipment investment and the gym can maximize students per square foot per class. Many “new and improved” recommendations are based on calculating profit first and then working backward to justify the method.
Marketer-speak and ambiguous words have no place in 4HB or your efforts. Both will surface in conversations with friends who, in their best effort to help, will do more harm than good. If unprepared, one such conversation can single-handedly derail an entire program.
These are two categories of words that you should neither use nor listen to. The first, marketer-speak, includes all terms used to scare or sell that have no physiological basis:
Toning
Cellulite
Firming
Shaping
Aerobics
The word cellulite, for example, first appeared in the April 15, 1968, issue of Vogue magazine, and this invented disease soon had a believer base worldwide:
Vogue began to focus on the body as much as on the clothes, in part because there was little they could dictate with the anarchic styles.… In a stunning move, an entire replacement culture was developed by naming a “problem” where it had scarcely existed before, centering it on the women’s natural state, and elevating it to the existential female dilemma… . The number of diet- related articles rose 70 percent from 1968 to 1972.
Cellulite is fat. Nothing special, neither a disease nor a unique female problem without solutions. It can be removed.
Less obvious, but often more damaging than marketer-speak, are scientific-sounding words that are so overused as to have no agreed-upon meaning:
Health
Fitness
Optimal
To eliminate words you shouldn’t use in body redesign, the question to ask is: can I measure it?
“I just want to be healthy” is not actionable. “I want to increase my HDL cholesterol and improve my time for a one-mile jog (or walk)” is actionable. “Healthy” is subject to the fads and regime du jour. Useless.
The word optimal is also bandied about with much fanfare. “Your progesterone might fall within the normal range, but it’s not optimal.” The question here, seldom asked, should be: optimal for what? Triathlon training? Extending lifespan 40%? Increasing bone density 20%? Having sex three times a day?
“Optimal” depends entirely on what your goal is, and that goal should be numerically precise. “Optimal” is usable, but only when the “for what” is clear.
If it isn’t, treat optimal as Wikipedia would: a weasel word.
Calories are all alike, whether they come from beef or bourbon, from sugar or starch, or from cheese and crackers. Too many calories are just too many calories.
—Fred Stare, founder and former chair of the Harvard University Nutrition Department
The above statement is so ridiculous as to defy belief, but let’s take a look at the issue through a more rational lens: hypothetical scenarios.
Scenario #1: Two male identical