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Metabolsim

Metabolism and the Meaning of Life

In a physiological context homeostasis refers to the body’s desire to maintain equilibrium at all costs.

Why is it that some people can seemingly eat everything and not gain weight. While others diligently eating their weight-watcher salads gains weight if they so much as look at a donut?

Well, it’s complicated, and there’s a lot of variables at play. But perhaps the biggest of these is homeostasis and your bodies desire to maintain equilibrium at all costs.

Now homeostasis might not be a term you’ve heard all that often, but I’m sure you’ve all heard of metabolism. Usually around terms like slow, fast and even broken.

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Just about anything will work

just do workI’ve been working informally with a couple of people of late, helping them build a program to reach their training goals. And it’s been fun.

However, regardless of what route we take, the “split”, the programming, periodization, intensity, loading, volume etc., I always end-up distilling the advice down to the following. So much so, that it’s worth stating here:

At the end of the day, it’s good to remember that just about anything and everything can work in the gym. It’s largely about showing up, working hard, consistently, for months, and eating large amounts of good healthy food.

Sure, there’s a lot of detail I could have added. I could have talked about rest intervals, recovery patterns, dietary intake, macros, supplementation, sleep; the list is pretty much endless. But in the end, 90% of the progress you’ll make in the gym comes down to forming good habits, showing-up regularly and simply doing the work.

Goals + Motivation ≠ Success

running-skyWhen individuals fail to meet their goals, they often attribute it to not being sufficiently motivated enough to see things through. However, in my experience goals plus motivation seldom equate to success.

Consider this common scenario:

  • A goal or desired outcome is conceived, usually as a result of some external influence, and motivation to move toward that goal is high.
  • For a few weeks, concrete progress is made toward the goal and you start to see results.
  • Then, just as everything appears to be going well, life gets in the way: Work gets busy. Events come-up. You travel. Friends and family vie for your attention. Chores need to be done. You get injured. You’re not sleeping well. The list goes on…
  • Slowly but surely, motivation wanes and progress slows to a crawl or even stops completely.

So why is it then that, despite having concrete goals and good amount of motivation, you don’t accomplish your aim?

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