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My first real job was acting as Fitness Director for Men’s Health magazine. I spent about 7 years there, writing and editing stories on fitness, nutrition, sports performance, health, and more.

In that role, I talked to world-class trainers, athletes, and scientists. When experts sent us an exercise or workout, I was the sucker who tested it to ensure it would work for our readers. I vetted hundreds and hundreds of exercises.

Hence, I discovered many truly effective exercises—and I’ve kept all the best ones in a file ever since.

When I think about what makes a good exercise, I consider a few factors:

• It should deliver many benefits in a single movement, improving our health and fitness in less time.

• It should improve our fitness in a way that isn’t just safe, but also makes us safer in the future by making us more resistant to injury.

• It should help us move better. The better we move, the better we feel and perform—which improves our health and life.

• It should offset some of the harms of living in the modern world, where we spend most of the day sedentary.

• It should translate to the real world and make us better at the activities we love, whether outdoor sports, pickleball, or chasing down dogs, kids, or grandkids.

That’s why I started the My Favorite Exercises series. We feature just one exercise I love and always go back to.

Why just one exercise in each post? One is actionable.

When we get a list of 10 exercises, we’re more likely to cherry-pick. We do some, but not others—and miss out on a lot of benefits. One good exercise, done consistently, is worth more than ten we dabble in.

Today, we have my favorite core exercise. It’s kinda weird, kinda unconventional—but damn does it work.

It’s great at building core strength that transfers to real life: whether lifting weights, rucking, hiking, or sports—it’ll help you do them all better.

Perhaps more important: it’ll help you do them all more safely.

I recently got too aggressive with deadlifts. You know, one of those sessions where I was feeling good and thought: Why not add one more set and really push the reps?

This was a miscalculation. I tweaked my back.

Back pain is what my grandmother would call “a real bitch.”

• 80% of people experience low back pain at some point in their lives.

• 25% of people have had it in the last few months.

• It’s the most common place people experience pain, and the most frequent reason people see a doctor and take a sick day at work.

• People with chronic low-back pain are twice as likely to suffer from depression, anxiety, psychosis, and sleep deprivation.

• When people experience back pain, they reduce their movement. And that creates all sorts of ill health effects that limit our experience of life and reduce our lifespan and healthspan.

When I looked what I’d been doing in the months leading up, I realized I hadn’t been doing today’s exercise as often as usual. My core and back weren’t as resilient.

A team of international researchers called today’s exercise “one of the most effective therapeutic exercises for the prevention and treatment of low back pain.”

So I started doing it again consistently—and the pain subsided. Sometimes you need to get punched in the face to learn how to dodge punches, I guess.

But if you do this exercise, you can skip the punch entirely.

Shoutout to our partners:

• Run or ruck forever with Janji, an independent running brand making gear built for ultra-distance pursuits. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—my favorite kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

• Maui Nui Venison, the healthiest meat on planet Earth. The research on axis deer is incredible, and Maui Nui might be the only company harvesting meat ethically. I’m a massive fan of their venison jerky sticks, and right now, Maui Nui is offering a free 6-pack of their venison jerky sticks with your first order. Go to here to grab yours.

In the rest of this letter, you’ll learn:

• Why standard core moves like planks might leave a gap in your back protection.

• The specific, unconventional exercise a 2025 study found is superior for pain relief, core strength, and resilience.

• Research finding that the movement also improves aging—keeping us mobile and functional as we age.

• Videos of exactly how to perform it to build strength and resilience, including a standing variation you can do at your desk.

Read more

Today’s episode is about work—and how to find joy in any job.

After all, the average person spends 2,184 hours working each year. This episode will help you make them better.

I spoke with a top doctor who found deep fulfillment inside the system, and a guy who walked away from it entirely.

First, Dr. Mim Ari—an internist and associate professor at the University of Chicago—talks about being a “deeply fulfilled workist.” She breaks down why we anchor on the negatives, the 10:1 positive ratio that can reframe our workday, how AI is quietly changing the job of doctors, and how to motivate yourself and find joy at work.

• Note: Dr. Ari recorded from the hospital, so please excuse any audio oddities. We try to speak with people who work in the trenches doing real things.

Then, Robin Greenfield, who once wanted to be a millionaire—then took the opposite approach, living with almost no possessions. He’s an extreme case, but there’s a lot to learn from him about how owning less can make you freer and less bound to work. Robin explains his 100-change checklist for breaking free of consumerism, and what he learned giving away all his possessions, foraging for food, and riding his bike around the US.

We close with an AMA. I’ll explain a phone hack that improved my work-life balance, the truth about exercise recovery, something I’d change in The Comfort Crisis, and the inaugural “Department of Dipshit Questions.” (P.S. Comment below and see if you can beat my answer to our Dipshit Question—or submit your own Dipshit Question for a future episode).

Video version

Audio version

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• Dr. Ari’s University of Chicago Medicine page.

• Dr. Ari’s research.

• Dr. Ari’s piece on : Notes on being a deeply fulfilled workist.

• Robin Greenfield’s YouTube Page.

• Robin’s Instagram page.

• Robin’s 100 changes to live happy, healthy, and sustainably. (Note: I definitely don’t endorse all of these, but they’re worth reading).

• The weird science of recovery.

• The case for diet soda: It gets a bad rap, but the research tells a different story.

Have fun, don’t die, thanks for listening.

-Michael

P.S. Shoutout to the Two Percent team

Today’s episode was produced by Joey Fischground, Robbie Hiser, Dana Brawer and Julia Nutter. From Kaleidoscope, our executive producers are Mangesh Hattikudur and Kate Osborn and Julia Nutter. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina Norvell and Nikki Ettore. Our Head of Video is Maria Paz Mendez Hodes. The episode was edited by Will Mayo, and our theme music is from Heater Manager.

About 55 million Americans are on a diet at any given moment. Half of the country says it’s trying to lose weight. Diet and weight loss books generate about $600 million in sales each year.

This isn’t anything new. Diet books have been around since the 1860s, yet obesity grew 3,900% since then.

A Cornell researcher named Adrienne Bitar decided to figure out why. She analyzed 400+ diet books spanning that entire history.

What she found wasn’t about food.

In today’s post, you’ll learn:

• Why only 20% of diet books are about actual nutrition.

• What fills the other 80%, and what that reveals about us.

• Why certain diets catch on while others die: sales tactics, stories, etc.

• The single most important metric that determines if you will actually lose fat.

• How to use findings from 400+ diet books for the rest of your life, without the marketing fluff.

Housekeeping

• In case you missed it:

  • On Wednesday, we ran Don’t Die: Do Pullups part II. It’ll help you do more pullups, one of the most important exercises you can do.

  • Friday was a deep dive into GLP-1s and muscle loss, based on breaking new research.

  • We had two great podcasts last week: A conversation with and an episode covering a surprising take on alcohol and the shaky research around social media. Listen here.

• Shoutout to our partners:

  • Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

  • Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. You’ll learn critical information that can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

How dieting started

To understand why and how the diet industry started, I spoke to Adrienne Bitar, Ph.D., a professor at Cornell who studies the history of food and health and the author of Diet and the Disease of Civilization.

She told me that dieting is a very new phenomenon for humans.

“To reject food (and go on a diet) is really a privilege,” Bitar said. “For so much of human history, we’ve just been scraping by.” We ate whatever gave us the most calories at the moment.

• Go deeper: Read what 11 hunter-gatherer diets can teach us about what humans really ate in the past—and how that can guide us today.

Then the Industrial Revolution happened. Easier access to calorie-dense food paired with less physical labor led people to start gaining weight.

Obesity first rose among the rich—people with the most food and least physical work.

A man named William Banting had a solution. He was one of those rich people who became obese. To lose weight, he came up with a list of “can eat” and “can’t eat” foods and followed it.

Banting ate only meat, greens, and fruit. He avoided root vegetables, potatoes, butter, milk, pork, salmon, sugar, and beer.

It worked. He lost 35 pounds. He wrote about it in the first large-scale diet book, published in 1863 and titled Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public1. His diet was the first iteration of a low-carb diet.

The book became a bestseller in the US and UK and kick-started a new diet industry.

Soon, doctors and quacks alike began cranking out diet books with fantastic names like “Advice to Stout People” and “Foods for the Fat.”

The advice ranged from odd to dangerous: chew every bite of food 100 times, drink only vinegar (Lord Byron’s idea), ingest a tapeworm, take arsenic pills, pray the fat away.

Over time, obesity moved down the economic ladder and spread worldwide. As researchers at Our World in Data explained, “Obesity is one of the world’s largest health problems—one that has shifted from being a problem in rich countries to a health challenge around the world.”

Diet books are now some of the bestselling books of the 20th and 21st centuries.

The truth about diet books

On the surface, diet books sell us a tangible goal: eat this, not that to lose weight, build muscle, detox our bodies, improve heart health, etc.

But that’s just surface-level packaging. Bitar, the Cornell researcher, analyzed 400+ diet books spanning that entire history.

She gathered these books from historical archives, online auctions, and garage sales. She even stumbled onto a treasure trove via Craigslist from an old woman who’d been collecting diet books her entire life.

She found that the specific advice on what to eat was “mere details.” Nutritional advice took up only 20 percent of the books on average. The books’ most significant features were the stories about the diet.

“It can’t just be a (list of can and can’t eat foods),” she told me. “A diet has to tell a story about ourselves. It has to pick up on bigger currents in our culture that are prevalent.”

This makes sense. Humans are unique because we can tell stories2. Harvard psychologists found that we’re ~20 times more likely to remember information if it’s part of a story.

Diet books aren’t compelling without stories. Bitar found that the books usually tell a “flab to fab” storyline, but the “fab” has less to do with actual weight loss (or other goal) and more to do with getting the life we want but don’t have.

“Diets use the banal, often boring material of breakfast-lunch-dinner and the quest for self-improvement to channel larger concerns about the success or failure of America,” Bitar wrote. “(Diet books) stand in for the bigger debate about history, salvation, nature, money, power, sin, hope, innocence, experience, time, and all the other ideas that make the world worth thinking about.”

She continued. “There’s this belief of perfectibility. Diet books tell us that if we just eat the optimal or the best combinations of foods, we’ll be beautiful, fit, lovable, healthy, well, and vibrant.”

Diets rise and fall based on cultural undercurrents

Bitar found that people often choose a diet based on their underlying beliefs about the world. For example:

• The detox diet, cleanse diet, etc
  These diets were originally inspired by drug and alcohol addiction rehabilitation groups and ideas of removing environmental pollution. We then applied that philosophy to eliminating the toxins in our own bodies. The underlying idea is that modern food technology has poisoned our biology, and certain foods can restore us to purity.

• The paleo diet, clean eating, and eating only organic
  These diets pull from the classic biblical narrative of Adam and Eve and The Fall. They inspire nostalgia for the simpler times of our ancestors before the world was corrupted by the modernity of taxes, traffic, and packaged food (a utopia that, Bitar noted, has scant research to support it).

• Biohacker diets—keto diet, using continuous glucose monitors, precision nutrition, etc
  These diets tell us that by leaning on science and integrating data into what we eat, we can surpass our biology and nature and reach an optimized state. This is probably why these diet methods first became popular in the tech industry.

• The carnivore diet
  This diet relies on a narrative that modern men have become emasculated and that by eating only food we once had to hunt (meat), we’ll be able to reclaim our health and physicality. Unsurprisingly, this diet is most popular among men.

The truth about diets

Humans didn’t come with a manual for the perfect day of eating. That’s a good thing. We can eat all kinds of food combinations and be healthy. If we couldn’t, we probably wouldn’t have taken over the world.

Every diet can help us lose weight. Until it doesn’t.

One extensive survey in the UK found that people quit fad diets after about five weeks. My friend Layne Norton, PhD, explained that six of every seven obese people have lost a significant amount of body weight. But they didn’t keep it off.

“People choose a (fad) diet and think, ‘I’m going to lose weight,’” he said. “But they do not give any thought to what happens afterward. People will say, ‘I want to do a ketogenic diet because I want to increase my fat oxidation,’ and they’re talking about all these scientific mechanisms and everything (ed’s note: stories). And that’s great. But can you do (that diet) for the rest of your life? If the answer is no, you need to rethink what your approach is.”

A meta-analysis3 of 14 different diets found that adherence is everything. The scientists stratified the participants by how closely they followed the diet’s instructions and found that the most adherent people lost more fat, regardless of the diet.

“So what (this meta-analysis) showed is that we need to ask, ‘What is going to be the easiest diet for you to adhere to in the long term?’ And you should probably do that,” Layne explained.

The answer to “which diet can I follow forever?” probably won’t fit neatly into a story about purity, optimized biology, or reclaimed masculinity.

How to diet better

If a diet appeals to you, ask yourself why. Every diet sells a story—about purity, optimization, gender, salvation, etc. Figure out which story is pulling you in.

Then forget the story for a moment. Look at the diet only as a list of foods and behaviors. Can you follow the diet’s food and behavioral rules for the rest of your life?

If the answer is no, it may still be worth trying the diet to learn a few valuable takeaways. For example, testing an elimination diet could reveal foods you’re allergic to, as we learned in Tuesday’s podcast with .

But the key is to then take the parts of the diet you think you can follow forever and ditch those you can’t.

That’s less exciting than any diet book’s ultimate promise, but it’s more likely to stick.

Have fun, don’t die.

-Michael

P.S. If you want to go deeper on this subject, Bitar’s book is a fascinating read.

Welcome to our monthly AMA.

In most AMAs, I answer a bunch of your questions. This month, we’ll go deep on a single question that keeps popping up in my inbox: Do GLP-1s cause muscle loss?

It’s a legit question. Some people theorize that GLP-1s lead to excessive muscle loss compared to diet and exercise alone.

The theory is this: If you were to use a GLP-1 and lose a bunch of muscle, you may actually end up less healthy than if you hadn’t lost the weight.

For example, in one study in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition1, normal-weight adults with low muscle and strength had more than 3x the risk of death compared with normal-weight adults with higher muscle and strength.

Important stuff. And so, today, we’ll explore how GLP-1s impact muscle.

We’ll cover:

• A fascinating new piece of research in Cell Reports Medicine. It made a groundbreaking finding about GLP-1s and muscle loss (it’s the first study of its kind).

• Other data on GLP-1s and muscle loss, and a brief history of GLP-1s and muscle loss.

• Exactly what I’d do if I were to start taking GLP-1s.

• How to understand the upsides and downsides of GLP-1s as they relate to muscle and health.

• A note: Even if you don’t take GLP-1:

  • 1. The post will help you understand them better and help you guide loved ones who are taking them or are interested in taking them.

  • 2. You might take a GLP-1 someday, so you might as well arm yourself with good information now.

Check out our Two Percent-approved sponsors:

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

• Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. You’ll learn critical information that can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

• Maui Nui Venison, the healthiest meat on planet Earth. The research on axis deer is incredible, and Maui Nui might be the only company harvesting meat ethically. I’m a massive fan of their venison jerky sticks, and right now, Maui Nui is offering a free 6-pack of their venison jerky sticks with your first order. Go to here to grab yours.

Read more

Today’s episode is about vices. But not in the puritanical sense.

We’re taking an honest look at the tradeoffs of our “bad habits”—and reconsidering one habit we’ve been told is rotting our brains, making us nuts, and destroying society.

First, I talked to Dean Stattmann, a reporter for GQ. While the rest of the world was doing Dry January, his New Year’s resolution was to drink more. Dean was a social drinker, but he decided to stop after seeing advice online that any alcohol is poison. His reward: worse mental health, damaged relationships, and a creeping sense that the cure was worse than the disease.

Next, . In a world where social media is called the new smoking, she makes a provocative case. She thinks social media isn’t actually addictive, that the panic around it is overblown, and that the new laws restricting kids’ access may cause more harm than they prevent. I don’t agree with everything she said. But she changed my thinking on the topic, which is exactly what a great guest does. Weigh in with your own thoughts on the topic in the comments (just listen first).

Finally, I covered my own current vice. Wellness influencers say it’s killing me. Scientists disagree.

Video version

Audio version

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes

• Dean’s piece in GQ: Why my New Year’s resolution is to start drinking again.

• Why drinking bonds people: Costly Signaling Theory research (here and here).

• ’s Substack .

• Meta and YouTube found negligent in a landmark social media addiction case.

• Taylor’s take on the landmark social media rulings in California and New Mexico.

• Can You Really be Addicted to Social Media? A post by psychiatrist and Yale Medical School lecturer exploring why the dopamine argument fails.

• More on dopamine and addiction: Addiction Fiction: Dopamine is Not Why Kids Love TikTok.

• 256-page consensus report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine finds no support for the idea that social media is harming kid/teen mental health at a population level.

• The Anxious Generation book, which Taylor referenced.

• A review in Nature of The Anxious Generation, titled “The great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?”

• Problems with the research on screens and mental health.

• To read my own thoughts on addiction (what it is, what causes it) read chapter 5 of my book Scarcity Brain. I define addiction as “continued use/behavior despite adverse consequences” and see addiction as a spectrum. But I agree with Taylor that a stricter definition matters enormously in legal and policy contexts.

• The case for diet soda.

Have fun, don’t die, thanks for listening,

-Michael

Want to customize what emails you get? Manage your preferences here. You can toggle Two Percent Podcast on or off anytime.

On Monday, we covered the power of pullups:

• Four reasons why they’re such a powerful exercise for healthspan, lifespan, and real-world strength.

• Misconceptions around pullups (like the idea that women can’t do them).

• How to get your first pullup if you can’t do one.

Today we’re expanding on the topic. Specifically, how to go from one pullup to 5, 10, 15, or even 20.

You might think the answer is obvious: Just do more pullups.

But it’s actually not that simple. The path from one rep to many is counterintuitive. And if you approach pullup training wrong, you’ll stall progress and may even develop some nasty elbow pain along the way.

So that’s what today’s post is about.

I spoke to someone who does more pullups than any other human alive, looked at old Soviet training protocols, talked to doctors, and referenced standards and approaches across different sports, law enforcement, and military groups.

From here you’ll learn:

• A proven and counterintuitive approach to doing more pullups.

• An old Soviet plan that can double the number of pullups you can do in a month, backed by recent observations in military training.

• Tactics for cranking out a lot of pullups in a workout without blowing up.

• How to avoid the injuries that derail many people when they start doing more pullups.

• Pullup standards worth aiming for, based on military and FBI data.

Thanks to our partners:

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

• Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. You’ll learn critical information that can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

Read more

Today I’m talking to , Founder of the Whole30 movement.

If you’ve been to a grocery store in the last decade, you’ve probably encountered Melissa’s work. The “Whole30 approved” label is on hundreds of different health foods (including the Waterloo seltzer I’m drinking as I write this).

The Whole30 is not a long-term diet, a detox, or a weight-loss program. It even asks people not to weigh themselves when they do it.

It’s a short-term elimination plan. Elimination diets have been used since the 1920s to help people with food sensitivities. In short: For 30 days, you eat foods that research shows tend to sit well with people, which can help identify food sensitivities and create new habits and techniques for successfully navigating stress, discomfort, and negative emotions.

Why we should listen to Mellisa: Millions of people have done Whole30, which has given her and her team of researchers millions of data points showing what actually helps people change their habits.

Melissa is incredible because she’s gone through some really challenging life events, but she’s used them to grow and build something that helps others. We covered:

• How traumatic experiences shaped Melissa’s life.

• Kicking heroin.

• How finding a strong group of women to exercise with helped Melissa stay sober.

• The link between eating and emotions, and how people often use food to deal with discomfort.

• The science of the Whole30 and food sensitivities.

• Foods that are most likely to cause issues for people.

• Foods that most people don’t have issues with (i.e. the friendliest foods).

• What we lose when we treat nutrition solely as a means to lose or gain weight.

• Melissa’s reaction to Whole30 getting last place on US News and World Reports’ ranking of the best diets. (And what happened when a reporter from the magazine eventually called her to talk about what Whole30 actually is).

• What Melissa has learned about habit change from millions of data points.

• Why healthy eating is harder for some people (psychology, systemic barriers, etc).

• Controversial changes to Whole30 and how Melissa developed them.

• Melissa’s take on some of the hottest topics in food (seed oils, etc).

• Why Melissa talks about her political views (and why I don’t).

• The best book Melissa read in the last two years.

Here’s the episode in video

Here’s the episode in audio

• This link opens the episode in your podcast player of choice.

Show notes:

• Whole30’s website.

• ’s substack

• New edition of the Whole30 with the controversial—but science-backed and helpful—updates Melissa mentioned.

• Resources for the Whole30. I especially like the “Non-Scale Victories Checklist.” We all need a reminder that nutrition isn’t just a number on a scale.

• Research on elimination diets (here, here, here, here, and here).

• Research on how food insecurity impacts healthy eating.

• Research on how systemic barriers (time, access, convenience) often hurt low-income families’ ability to eat healthy.

• Sociopath by Patric Gagne.

Have fun, don’t die, thanks for listening,

-Michael

Want to customize what emails you get? Manage your preferences here. You can toggle Two Percent Podcast on or off anytime.

Last month, we explored why stepups are such a great exercise.

Today we’re doing the same for pullups.

There isn’t a study that’s tracked how many Americans can do at least one pullup—some info suggests roughly 17% of adult men and fewer than 5% of adult women can manage one rep. But it’s safe to say two things:

1. Most Americans can’t do a pullup.

2. We’d all be healthier if we could do even just one.

There are many reasons why building the ability to do even one pullup can make us healthier, and there are also plenty of misconceptions about who can and cannot do pullups.

Today You’ll Learn

• Four reasons why the pullup is such a powerful exercise.

• Why women can and should do pullups (plus a long-standing personal vendetta I have against the New York Times Well section)

• How to do your first pullup. (If you can already do one, these tips are a good reminder of the basics).

This is Part I of a two-part series on pullups. Part II drops on Wednesday.

Quick Housekeeping

• In case you missed it:

  • On the podcast, we had two episodes. We talked to Donnie Vincent from The Comfort Crisis, and covered marathon training and some surprising upsides of ultraprocessed food. Listen here.

  • On Wednesday, we covered why getting comfortable being alone is as important as human connection, and 8 ways to embrace solitude.

  • Friday’s Expedition covered 25 new ideas to enhance your life, including failures of longevity drugs, controversies in medicine, and exercise tips.

• Shoutout to our partners:

  • Run or ruck far as hell with Janji, an independent running brand making gear built for ultra-distance pursuits. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—my favorite kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

  • David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them a great option for anyone who wants protein on the go without the excess sugar and fat of most bars. Visit DavidProtein.com.

  • Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

Four Benefits of Pullups

1. Pullups are a “body fat test without the dishonor of a skin caliper”

That line is from Pavel Tsatsouline, the Russian trainer who popularized Kettlebells in the US. His point is that it’s hard to do pullups if you’re carrying excess body fat.

The more fat you have, the more you have to lift. Fat doesn’t pull you up, it drags you down.

Doing even one pullup suggests you have a healthy amount of body fat. A review1 in The International Journal of Obesity found that people with high body fat percentages were more likely to die due to any cause.

2. Pullups prove you’re strong for your weight—a key to not breaking Rule 2

Having enough strength and muscle for your body weight increases your odds of living a longer and healthier life.

Those most at risk of death often aren’t the heaviest people in the room. Rather, they’re “normal weight” but have the lowest levels of lean muscle. More on that below.

3. Pullups strengthen your grip

Even just hanging from a pullup bar builds your grip. And grip strength is important.

A massive study in The Lancet2 found that grip strength is one of the best predictors of longevity. The scientists wrote, “Grip strength was a stronger predictor of all-cause and cardiovascular mortality than systolic blood pressure.”

That’s worth pondering. Grip strength may be a more powerful metric than one of medicine’s most-watched vital signs.

It’s not that grip itself is magic. Rather, it’s a proxy for strength and activity. My takeaway: Be strong for your size and do exercises that have a high return on total-body strength. Like pullups.

4. Pullups can decrease pain

Many of us spend hours hunched over a screen, shoulders rounding forward. Over time, that can pull our heads and shoulders forward, which can alter the mechanics of our shoulder blades and increase the stress on our necks and shoulders, leading to pain.

Pullups help strengthen our upper-back and shoulder muscles, which can help fix the problem. Even just hanging from a bar can relieve some pain and make us less at risk of injury when we lift overhead.

That all said, there are a lot of misconceptions about pullups. Which brings us to the next section:

Yes, women can and should do pullups

Few stories have annoyed me more than a 2012 New York Times story with the headline, “Why Women Can’t Do Pullups.” Receipts:

There are some physical tasks were—all things equal—most men will outperform women and others where women may have an edge. This is likely due to a mix of anatomical, biological, and cultural reasons.

But women can do pullups. Exhibit A:

• Melissa Urban doing some really hard, purposefully-slow pullups.

• Former Women’s Health Editor-In-Chief Liz Plosser doing 10(!) pullups.

• Someone’s 60-year-old mom doing pullups

I could blast out thousands more video links, but you get the point.

Notably, women may be better served than men by focusing on pullups, because the movement requires upper body strength, which women seem to be more likely to neglect.

One in five women3 over 60 suffer from dangerously low levels of muscle.

On top of that, a recent study4 of nearly 50,000 Canadian women aged 40 and older. It found that women at the highest risk of death had a “healthy” BMI but the lowest levels of lean muscle. The women with the least amount of muscle were, in fact, more likely to die compared to women with excess fat.

Again: The attempt makes us healthier.

How to do your first pullup

The more body fat you have, the harder pullups become.

If you have a high amount of body fat, start here to get your first pullup:

• Focus on losing fat and doing exercises 1a and 1b (below) to start.

• Big bonus: Do all kinds of other strength training as you lose weight—whatever you can do. As you lose weight, this will help you get rid of more fat than muscle, which improves your health far more.

• (Looking for a good weight loss coach? We recommend the brilliant Trevor Kashey, who you’ll remember from The Comfort Crisis.)

If you’re lean, or at least lean-ish, but can’t do a pullup, jump right into these exercises:

1a. Hang from the bar
Everyone should do this exercise. It offsets sitting, improves your shoulder health and grip strength, and gets you ready to pull.

How to do it:

1. Hang from the pullup bar (when you start this, place a bench or box underneath for safety).

2. As you hang, squeeze your butt and abs so your body is in the shape of a very wide open C.

3. Breathe deeply. You should feel this in your abs. The area on the side of your ribs may also feel a stretch. If this feels too challenging, place your feet on a box or bench as you hang, as shown in the video.

(P.S., Try swinging across monkey bars if you want to level this up. Track and field coaches have noted that monkey bars keep javelin throwers injury-free.)

1b. Hollow holds
Knowing how to brace your core gives you a solid base to pull from. This exercise teaches that.

How to do it:

1. Lay on your back. Now lift your legs and shoulders and form your body into a wide open C while squeezing your abs and butt.

2. Breathe deeply. You’ll feel this in your core.

(P.S., if you want to level this up, do ab wheel roll-outs. Sounds weird, but it’s a similar movement to the pullup.)

Do each of these three times, a few times a week. Once you can regularly hang from the bar and hold the hollow holds for 30 seconds each, add exercises 2a, 2b, and 2c into your routine.

2a. Seated pullup
A 2018 study compared exercises that are supposed to help us with pullups. It discovered that the kneeling lat pulldown was the most effective. This exercise, the seated pullup, most closely mimics that exercise without machines (but if you can find a lat pulldown machine, go for it!).

How to do it:

1. Sit beneath a barbell, rings, or TRX handles that are slightly higher than you can reach if you’re sitting beneath them. (You can use a smith machine, a barbell anchored midway on the rack, or adjusted rings or TRX handles).

2. Grab the bar or handles and hang from it. Your butt should be just above the ground, and your legs splayed out in front of you with your feet on the floor.

3. Now slowly pull yourself up. If you can’t, move your feet into a position that allows you to, making sure that you still feel the exercise in your back.

4. That’s one rep. Do 5 to 10.

2b. Inverted row
This helps you progress into a pullup.

How to do it:

1. You can use a bar or TRX straps for this. The handles or bar should be about the height of your waist.

2. Lay below the bar or handles, reach up and grab them, hanging roughly parallel to the ground.

3. Now pull your chest up to the bar or handles. If this is hard, make your body more vertical by “walking” your feet a bit so you’re more upright. That’s one rep. Do 5 to 10.

2c. Slow lower
Leverages gravity to make you stronger at pullups.

How to do it:

1. Use a bench or step stool so you can easily step up and reach the top position of a pullup.

2. Grab the bar and get into the top position of a pullup. You may have to “jump” to get up.

3. Hold yourself at the top of the pullup, squeezing your shoulder blades together.

4. From there, slowly lower yourself until you’re hanging with straight arms. Jump back up and repeat. That’s on rep. Do 5.

Do those three exercises for their prescribed reps two to three times, two to four days a week.

On Wednesday, we’ll cover part II, which goes deeper into the power of pullups and how to do more once you have one.

Have fun, don’t die, pull up,

-Michael

The Expedition is our monthly journey into thoughts, opinions, ideas, observations, studies, facts, figures, etc.

Good ones, insightful ones, interesting ones, weird ones, and ones you can use to live better and longer.

It’s a roundup of all the worthwhile stuff I’ve discovered in the last month. The Expedition is a bit of an island of misfit toys. But, hey, the greatest journeys are winding.

Check out our partners:

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

• Maui Nui Venison, the healthiest meat on planet Earth. The research on the nutritional quality of axis deer is incredible. I’m a big fan of Maui Nui’s venison jerky sticks, and right now, Maui Nui is offering a free 6-pack of their venison jerky sticks with your first order. Go to here to grab yours.

• David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them a great option for anyone who wants protein on the go without the excess sugar and fat of most bars. Visit DavidProtein.com.

In this month’s Expedition, you’ll learn:

• Numbers on:

  • The junk food calorie penalty.

  • Steps pro golfers take.

  • ’s insane habits.

  • The only acceptable use for a cigarette in professional sports history.

  • The scale of research testing on dogs.

  • Do we work too much? An ancestral perspective.

  • Counterintuitive data on social media, kids, and mental health from a massive expert report.

  • Your brain on reading vs. screens.

  • A new issue with trust in scientific research (hint: thanks a lot, AI).

  • A way women are mentally tougher than men.

  • The truth about low-carb diets.

  • A 93-year-old badass.

  • Why dogs matter.

• Doctors respond to a Tweet saying that MD’s just push pills when they should be telling people to exercise and eat better.

• Why we’re admitted to the hospital: men vs. women.

• The scary downside of two popular longevity drugs: rapamycin and metformin.

• The thrill of sports.

• Sauna vs. steam room: Which is better.

• A very Las Vegas parting shot.

• An important parting quote.

Let’s roll …

By the numbers

500

Extra calories people ate per day when their food was ultraprocessed versus minimally processed. In this NIH study:

• 20 people ate a diet of ultraprocessed or unprocessed food for 14 days each.

• At each meal, they were given plenty of food and told to eat until full.

• The diets were matched for calories, sugar, fat, fiber, and macronutrients—identical in every way except processing level.

• The result: They ate 500 calories a day more on the ultraprocessed diet and gained weight.

The takeaway: Ultraprocessed foods make you overeat without even trying. Unprocessed food does the opposite.

Source.

91,247

Steps Rory McIlroy took during his win at the PGA Masters Tournament last weekend.

1

Cigarette used by Tiger Woods’ caddie Mike “Fluff” Cowan to check the wind direction during Woods’ 1997 Masters win.

20

Miles the insane ran before speaking to me on the podcast that dropped yesterday. Yes, he talked about running. Specifically, the Boston Marathon, training for it, why the race is important, changes in running culture, and more.

Listen to the episode here.

2,000

Dogs that actor and comedian Ricky Gervais funded to be rescued from cruel lab tests.

48,510

Dogs are currently used in lab experiments in the US.

These dogs are kept in small cages and euthanized after experimentation. Beagles are the most commonly used breed, chosen specifically because they’re docile.

Some dogs endure what are called Category E experiments, procedures that cause pain or distress without any relief.

According research1, the vast majority of these experiments produce no worthwhile findings. is leading efforts to stop dog experimentation.

Source.

30

Percent of a person’s life was spent working in 1870. Today, that figure is closer to 10%.

In that period, “Hours fell but, unemployment did not increase. Moreover, not only did work hours fall, but childhood, retirement, and life expectancy all increased.”

Source.

Read more

The 130th Boston Marathon happens this Monday.

And so, on today’s podcast, we’re talking about the race, endurance training, and fueling for endurance exercise.

First, I spoke with the great of the excellent Substack. Brady ran Boston last year. We walked through the marathon, why it’s so legendary, how Brady trained for it, what running Boston is actually like (surprisingly hellish, for reasons that have nothing to do with running!), and how the sport of running is changing (influencers, super shoes, etc).

Then I talked to , an old friend, about the downsides and upsides of ultraprocessed/junk foods. Mike is one of the world’s top nutritionists. He’s worked with professional athletes, Fortune-100 tech execs, and everyday people. He knows what works for real people in the real world, no matter their goals. He takes a nuanced view on ultraprocessed foods and can help us learn when they can be useful.

We end the episode in the Two Percent kitchen, where I gave the horrid details of a food I eat every night during long stints in the wilderness. It’s godawful in real life, but delicious endurance magic in the wilderness.

Video version

Audio version

• Listen through this link.

  • (It magically brings up the podcast on your player of choice)

Show notes

• ’s Substack, which you should subscribe to.

• Boston Marathon qualifying times.

• Nike Vaporly Supershoe.

• Mike Roussell’s 30-day Minimally Processed Food Challenge. It’s free and effective.

• ’s Substack, which sends research-backed and highly useful nutrition info weekly.

• Kevin Hall’s ultraprocessed food study.

• Ultraprocessed foods: A narrative review of the literature.

• More info about the Tsimane tribe, who don’t eat ultraprocessed food and have the healthiest hearts ever recorded.

• Nurri Protein Shakes, Mike’s go-to ultraprocessed food. Note: These are significantly cheaper if you buy them at an actual Costco warehouse. Costco inflates online prices to account for shipping, etc.

Have fun, don’t die, listen to Two Percent.

-Michael

P.S. If you want a transcript, check your podcast player of choice.

On Monday, we covered 1,000 ways modern comfort has hurt human connection. It’s not just phones disconnecting us—it’s how we’ve structured society over the last ~100 years. Read the list here.

We also rattled off stats on loneliness and health. Here’s one more: Scientists at Brigham Young University found1 that it doesn’t matter how old you are or how much money you have. Being lonely increases your risk of dying in the next seven years by 26 percent. Overall, they estimated that it can shorten life by 15 years. That’s roughly equivalent to smoking half a pack of cigarettes a day.

Meanwhile, an 80-year Harvard study found that good relationships are a key ingredient to happiness across your lifespan. They beat fortune and fame.

But here’s the thing: being alone and feeling lonely are not the same thing.

There’s a big difference between loneliness and solitude. Loneliness is wanting connection but not having it. Solitude is being alone, often by choice, and using it for reflection, creativity, and better wellbeing.

Problem is, we generally suck at solitude because it’s uncomfortable. Even when we’re alone, we’re often “with” others through TV, podcasts, and social media.

One University of Virginia study2 found that being alone is so uncomfortable that a quarter of women and two-thirds of men chose to shock themselves rather than be alone with their thoughts. Imagine that.

“You can either sit here without me in the room,” said the researcher, “or I’ll stand here with you, but you have to press this red button that sends high levels of electric voltage through your veins.” And the participants responded with … “hmmm, why don’t you stay put and I’ll just …” ZAP.

But a growing field of researchers believes that embracing solitude may be just as important as forging good relationships. They call it “the capacity to be alone.”

Today, we’re covering the science.

In today’s post, you’ll learn

• The profound biological difference between feeling lonely and being in solitude.

• Why building the capacity to be alone might be equally (if not more) important than connection.

• How to balance solitude and time with others.

• How to achieve the toughness-boosting mental state of “soft fascination.”

• Eight research-backed ways to leverage the power of solitude.

Thanks to our partners

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Here’s why I like them: Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

• Maui Nui Venison, the healthiest meat on planet Earth. The research on axis deer is incredible, and Maui Nui might be the only company harvesting meat ethically. I’m a massive fan of their venison jerky sticks, and right now, Maui Nui is offering a free 6-pack of their venison jerky sticks with your first order. Go to here to grab yours.

• David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them a great option for anyone who wants protein on the go without the excess sugar and fat of most bars. Visit DavidProtein.com.

Read more

On Tuesday, we announced the launch of the new Two Percent podcast and dropped episode one. Here it is if you missed it.

From now on—until I’m banned by the FCC or perish in some outdoor-related catastrophe—you’ll be getting emails every Tuesday and Thursday with the new podcast.

• On Tuesdays, we’ll typically have a longer interview with one fascinating person.

• On Thursdays, we’ll talk about all sorts of timely and practical topics with multiple guests.

The guest for the first long interview is a big decision. Who would it be?

Truly, there was only one answer.

Today’s guest is Donnie Vincent, who I spent a month in the Arctic with while reporting The Comfort Crisis. He’s a massive part of that book, and he’s shaped my worldview and taught me so much.

Donnie and I haven’t spoken publicly, with mics on, since The Comfort Crisis. Until now.

Here’s the episode in video

And here’s the episode in audio

Apple Podcasts link

Spotify link

Show notes

• Donnie Vincent’s website.

• Donnie’s Instagram feed.

• Donnie’s YouTube feed (great videos here).

• A quick YouTube intro to Donnie’s thinking and work.

• Donnie’s new film, The Other Side.

• Donnie’s two other films, The River’s Divide and Terra Nova.

• Gear Donnie loves for Alaskan hunts:

  • Hanwag boots (I also wore these in the Arctic—none of my toes froze off).

  • Fjallraven apparel.

  • Tent Donnie used in The Other Side.

  • Donnie’s go-to beanie.

  • Frontier Gear of Alaska backpack.

  • Wiggies Sleeping Bag.

  • Montana Knife Company Blackfoot 2.0 knife.

  • Maven Optics (spotting scope, rifle scope, binoculars, range finder).

• The Comfort Crisis book.

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Have fun, don’t die, listen to Donnie Vincent,

-Michael

The Two Percent podcast is out now (and we have a great episode coming tomorrow).

I started building the project about six months ago. Unlike my books and this newsletter, the podcast is not a solitary endeavor.

I work with a core team of about five people. And I’ve noticed something: daily interactions with the team have lifted my spirits and made me mildly less insane.

Becoming slightly more sane might be bad for my books (it takes a certain amount of madness to write a decent book). But I recently finished my next book, so I’m calling this a win.

We’ve all heard that people are lonelier, and that loneliness is bad for health. But numbers are useful to understand the trend and its impacts. The World Health Organization1 and US Surgeon General2 both recently released reports finding:

• In the US, time spent alone increased by 24 hours per month over the last two decades.

• In-person time with friends also dropped 20 hours a month.

• Time spent with friends among people aged 15-24 dropped 70%.

• A few of the health impacts:

  • Socially connected people tend to live significantly longer.

    • Loneliness and social isolation increase the risk for premature death by 26% and 29%, respectively.

  • Poor social relationships are associated with a 29% increased risk of heart disease and a 32% increased risk of stroke.

  • Chronic loneliness and social isolation can increase the risk of developing dementia by approximately 50% in older adults

  • The odds of developing depression are more than double for adults who report feeling lonely often compared to those who rarely feel lonely.

We tend to treat loneliness as a personal failing—like we need to get out more, call a friend, join a club, etc. That advice is good, but it misses a much larger phenomenon.

On a long walk last week, I listened to Chuck Klosterman on The Bill Simmons Podcast3. Toward the end of the conversation, Klosterman casually mentioned how a minor shift in sports broadcasting has reduced conversations with strangers. It was a unnoticed shift with a real cost.

Once you start looking, you see this everywhere. Thousands of technological and societal shifts have reduced the interactions we have with others. We adopted each advance because it made our lives more comfortable and convenient. But they’ve collectively eaten away at the small, everyday connections we used to take for granted.

That’s what today’s post is about: A list of ways we’re interacting with others less. And it just scratches the surface.

In most Two Percent posts, I give practical takeaways. But I’m not going to be prescriptive. I’ll just point out the change, and you can judge it for yourself.

Many of these shifts are reversible. You can alter your behavior to find more human contact.

Some we’re stuck with. As the French philosopher Jacques Ellul observed in his 1954 book, The Technological Society, most technologies develop as simple conveniences. But they often reach a point of mass adoption that makes it impossible to live without them, for better or worse.

Quick housekeeping

• In case you missed it:

  • On Wednesday, we looked at a wild new study on a 269-mile endurance event and five lessons it can give us on performance.

  • Friday’s Gear Not Stuff looked at the top running gear recommended by elite coaches, runners, and doctors.

• Check out our partners:

  • Maui Nui Venison, the healthiest meat on planet Earth. The research on axis deer is incredible, and Maui Nui might be the only company harvesting meat ethically. I’m a massive fan of their venison jerky sticks, and right now, Maui Nui is offering a free 6-pack of their venison jerky sticks with your first order. Go to here to grab yours.

  • David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them a great option for anyone who wants protein on the go without the excess sugar and fat of most bars. Visit DavidProtein.com.

  • Do epic endurance feats with Janji, an independent running brand making gear built for ultra-distance pursuits. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—my favorite kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to running short. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

Societal Changes

• Drinking and bar attendance are down. Local pubs used to be important third spaces in communities where people would gather and talk. More on that here.

• Attendance in organizations like Elks, Rotary, and Boy and Girl Scouts is down. In 1970, for example, there were 6 million Boy Scouts. Today, there are 1 million scouts (note: in 1970 the population in the U.S. was 200 million, whereas now it’s 340 million).

• Similarly, unions are also down. They typically had community gathering spaces and a strong sense of community. In 1950, about 35% of workers were union members. That figure is now ~10%4.

• Membership in a church, synagogue, or mosque dropped from 70% in 1999 to 47% in 20205.

• People move out of their hometowns far more often. This has made it harder to develop deep bonds. (E.g., I’ve lived in 6 different states).

• People are having fewer kids, leading to fewer in-person interactions and weaker social networks.

• Air conditioning led people to spend more time inside rather than outside in their neighborhoods during the summer.

• Homes are now designed with fewer street-facing front porches and more private back patios and yards.

• Kids now play outside less often, and supervised, pre-scheduled play has replaced longer-duration spontaneous neighborhood play.

• Smoking is down. This is obviously a net win for health. Still, people did converse with strangers more when smoking outside, bumming a cigarette, etc.

• Cars have reduced the use of public transit and walking to get places.

• Family dinners are on the decline for a variety of reasons.

• A significant amount of education has shifted online.

Commerce

• Goods are now replaceable. Instead of fixing things—which would require hiring and interacting with a tailor, cobbler, or repair person—we buy a new one.

• We can buy pretty much anything online, rather than in a store with other people around.

• Then, to return the purchases we don’t want, we print a label and drop a box into a mail bin rather than going back to the store and interacting with a clerk.

• ATMs and mobile banking replaced visiting the bank teller.

• Online bill paying replaced trips to offices.

• Gas pumps no longer have attendants we’d chat with (unless you live in New Jersey).

• Screen-based food ordering is now replacing in-person or phone ordering. E.g., apps let us avoid interacting with a restaurant worker to order or pick up food. And I recently visited a McDonald’s where I literally couldn’t order with a human. I had to use the ordering screen.

• Online reservations replaced either calling the restaurant or showing up and waiting with others for a table.

• Ticket kiosks replaced clerks at movie theaters, airports, train stations, museums, etc.

• Grocery store self-checkout has killed chats with checkout clerks (my grandfather was the ultimate checkout clerk chatter).

• Streaming has replaced going to the movies, waiting in line for a new record, or walking the aisle of Blockbuster with others (I miss Blockbuster).

• Gaming is now online. This includes everything from betting on sports (which once required going to a casino or bookie) to video games. When I was a kid, if I wanted to play video games with a friend, that friend had to come to my house. Now it happens online. Arcades are now a novelty.

• Getting tickets to events is now done online. (I also miss standing in line for concert tickets and speaking with other fans.)

• StubHub and SeatGeek replaced buying secondary-market tickets from weird street-corner scalpers or newspaper ads where we’d have to meet up with the ticket seller.

• Hotel check-in kiosks and mobile room keys replaced interactions with hotel clerks.

• Drive-throughs—invented in the late 1940s—dropped interactions with workers at fast-food joints, banks, pharmacies, etc. It also dropped our interactions with other patrons.

• Many customer service reps are now bots (no matter how many times you say “representative”).

• Appointments for a haircut, medical or dental check-up, etc. are now made online rather than speaking to a receptionist.

• Toll roads are now managed by EZPass rather than toll booth attendants.

• Telehealth replaced in-person doctor visits—we no longer sit in a waiting room with other patients.

• Mental health apps—ranging from Calm and Headspace to BetterHelp—are replacing community-based and in-person mental health support.

• Venmo, Zelle, etc. eliminated the need to pay someone back in person and the brief exchange that came with it.

Information, Recommendations, and How-To

• GPS killed asking a stranger for directions. Remember when the line, “men never ask for directions,” was relevant and funny because it was true? That joke doesn’t make sense anymore.

• Online reviews replaced asking a friend or neighbor for a good babysitter, landscaper, restaurant, handyman, etc, etc, etc.

• Online recommendations replaced asking a friend or an employee at the record store, bookstore, Blockbuster, etc, for a good album, book, or movie.

• In that same vein, many jobs, such as travel agents and other knowledgeable store clerks, have declined.

• YouTube videos and AI replaced asking a handy friend or family member how to fix something.

• Google and AI have replaced asking a friend for information. Remember when you’d be at dinner and a dumb question popped into your head—“What song is this?” “How old is Ben Affleck?”—and you’d have to guess or ask someone? Now we just Google it.

• Librarians were once like search engines, and libraries were community hubs. They’re now facing a “quiet crisis,” according to Publisher’s Weekly6.

Digital Work

• A mass shift to remote work has led to fewer in-person interactions in the office.

• But even in non-remote offices, there are fewer in-person interactions. E.g., Email and Slack replaced walking down the hall or picking up the phone to ask a co-worker or (insert anyone) a question.

• Commutes on public transit were a pain in the butt, but we’d see the same strangers every day and often chat with them.

• The work lunch hour was once a daily communal moment for many. Now, eating at our desks alone is far more common.

• Many tasks are mechanized rather than done by groups of humans. For example, farming, factory work, etc.

Communication

• Phones replaced more social ways to deal with boredom. For example, while waiting in line, at the doctor’s office, or on a flight, everyone is now on their phone. Because of this, chatting strangers happens less often.

• Headphones and earbuds have become the universal signal of “do not talk to me.” Earbuds are particularly pervasive because they’re so portable.

• Texting and email have led to a reduction in voice calls.

• Personal cell phones reduced speaking to people other than the person you called to talk to. E.g., When I’d call my best friend as a kid, his grandma would usually answer, and I’d talk to her for a couple of minutes before she handed over the phone.

• Group chats and social networking sites reduced the need to speak to others to get information. E.g., Facebook groups and sites like Nextdoor replaced having to meet with or call people to share information about a relevant topic.

• Dating apps replaced having to go out into the world to meet people or meeting via an introduction from a friend or family member.

• Canceling plans is now easier. Before cell phones and the internet, if you agreed to meet a person somewhere, you were more likely to show up, because there was no easy way to cancel. Now we can call or text the person and cancel 20 minutes before.

Insert Thousands of Other Examples

We could go on for days. The more you look, the more you see.

Back to that thing Klosterman observed: televised sporting events used to not post the game score at all times. It would flash randomly. But now, the score is always on screen. Klosterman said:

It used to be if you walked into a bar and the game was on, you’d have something to talk about with [another] person right away. You’d be like, ‘What’s the score here?’ They would tell you. Then you could tell if the person wanted to talk more because they’d be like, ‘Oh, it’s 21-14, but Steve Barkowski is hurt,’ or whatever. [That signaled the other person] wanted to talk ... You now have no reason to speak to the person.

Have fun, don’t die, what’s the score?

-Michael

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In case you missed it: Two Percent has a new podcast. Here’s the full announcement—early feedback has been great. Thanks to all those who listened or watched.

• Listen to the first episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

• Watch it on YouTube.

• Also: Please subscribe on your preferred platform. It helps us get guests.

Now it’s time for Gear Not Stuff. It is the second Friday of the month, after all.

We live in a world of mass consumerism and have more stuff than ever. As I point out in Scarcity Brain, the average home contains at least 10,000 items. Yet minimalism, as I wrote here, has failed us.

When considering how to make smarter purchasing decisions, I’ve started distinguishing between gear and stuff.

• Stuff is a possession for the sake of it. Stuff clutters. We buy stuff impulsively to alleviate boredom or stress, or to solve problems we could have tackled creatively with what we already have.

• Gear, on the other hand, has a clear purpose of helping us achieve a higher purpose. Gear is a tool we can use to have better experiences.

This month: Running gear

April marks the start of running season, with the 130th Boston Marathon happening on the 20th.

Last Friday, we ran a Burn the Ships workout to make you a stronger, more durable runner (or rucker, walker, hiker, rider, human, etc). On Wednesday, we looked at a wild study on fueling for extreme endurance events.

For this Gear Not Stuff, I asked professional endurance coaches, expert runners, and dedicated amateur runners a question: What’s your favorite running gear, and what running gear do you recommend most often?

I got a lot of responses. So I analyzed and ranked them, added my own picks, and included honest caveats so you can figure out what’s actually worth your money for your goals.

From here you’ll learn:

• The fitness watch feature that elite coaches say matters most—and why most people completely ignore it.

• Why the fastest runners in the world pay $250+ for a specific shoe feature, and whether it’s worth it for you.

• The low-impact training tool that consistently produces higher VO2 maxes than running itself.

• Where recovery tools like foam rollers help, but why they ultimately fall short.

• 8 pieces of gear (plus one that isn’t gear at all, yet might make you live longer) ranked and assessed for your specific goals.

Thanks to our partners

• Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. You’ll learn critical information that can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

• David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them a great option for anyone who wants protein on the go without the excess sugar and fat of most bars. Visit DavidProtein.com.

• Do epic endurance feats with Janji, an independent running brand making gear built for ultra-distance pursuits. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—my favorite kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to running short. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

The Gear

Read more

In case you missed it: Two Percent has a new podcast. Here’s the full announcement—early feedback has been great. Thanks to all those who listened or watched.

• Listen to the first episode on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

• Watch it on YouTube.

• Also: Please subscribe. It helps us get guests.

Now onto today’s post: I’ve done multi-week hikes, ultra runs, and 24-hour rucking events. And the biggest problem I usually run into is something I think I’ve solved: eating enough of the right foods at the right times.

When we don’t eat enough during a long effort, our performance and mindset drop, the event gets harder, and we start digging a physiological hole we can’t climb out of.

The solution is simple. Eat enough. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

For example, during a long thru-hike, I thought I was eating enough and had my vitamins and minerals dialed.

But the numbers didn’t lie. Dr. Andy Galpin and his excellent team at Arete (check them out here) became interested in how my body would fare. They tested a bunch of my biomarkers right before, right after, and 45 days after my hike.

By the end of it, everything had gone to hell. Forty-five days after finishing, my body wasn’t back to baseline. Much of that could have been prevented with smarter nutrition.

So how do you actually prevent it? A new, wild study from Sweden gives us tactical answers.

A 37-year-old Swedish athlete recently attempted what’s called “The Tetrathlon.” It pairs all 4 of Sweden’s most iconic endurance events back-to-back.

• 196 miles of cycling

• 2 miles of open water swimming

• 52 miles of roller skiing (basically cross-country skiing on pavement)

• 19 miles of trail running.

Researchers from the University of Gothenburg followed the athlete the entire time—they tracked every calorie he ate, every change in blood sugar, every heartbeat, every drop in performance. They also analyzed his blood before and after, and tested his metabolism the next morning. Then they published the whole thing.

You probably won’t do a Tetrathlon, but you should still care about the findings.

Our recent survey showed that most Two Percent readers do long and hard physical events. Stuff like backpacking trips, marathons, ultras, century rides, Misogis, long walks, or big day hikes with a loaded pack.

Any event over two or three hours starts to look, physiologically and practically, a lot like what this guy did—just slightly dialed back. The fueling mistakes he made and the physiological curveballs his body threw at him are the same curveballs everyone faces.

This study is rare. Most endurance nutrition and performance research is either tightly controlled lab work that doesn’t reflect real life or self-reported race data with massive gaps.

This one tracked a real event in real conditions. It’s a useful and complete physiological snapshot of an extreme endurance effort.

Today you'll learn:

• How burning 15,000 calories triggered an extreme, forced reset in one athlete’s metabolism.

• The exact reason your appetite shuts off when you need fuel the most, and why listening to your body will make you crash.

• Why most endurance eating plans are setting you up for failure during long physical efforts.

• Five specific, science-backed strategies to bulletproof your endurance fueling for your longest, hardest days.

Thanks to our partners

• Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. You’ll learn critical information that can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

• David Protein Bars have the highest amount of protein per calorie of all protein bars. That makes them a great option for anyone who wants protein on the go without the excess sugar and fat of most bars. Visit DavidProtein.com.

• Do epic endurance feats with Janji, an independent running brand making gear built for ultra-distance pursuits. They’re the only brand making gear specifically for 200-plus-mile adventures—my favorite kind. The 7” Multi Short 2-in-1 is my go-to running short. Find Janji at Janji.com and at REI stores nationwide.

Read more

I’ve hinted about something happening today, 4/7, and quietly mentioned that I’ve been overhauling the podcast.

And so, an announcement: The new Two Percent podcast is here.

First things first:

• Here are links to subscribe to the audio feed on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

• Here’s a link to subscribe to the video versions on YouTube (we’ll be doing a lot of cool stuff on video).

And here’s our first episode:

Video version: episode one

Audio versions: episode one

• Apple Podcasts:

• Spotify1:

Episode one is about walking.

Specifically, why humans are built to walk extreme distances, how far we can actually walk—and why you might want to take a very long walk yourself.

The episode is separated into three parts:

• Part One breaks down how far humans can walk without stopping.
  I recently watched The Long Walk, a film adaptation of a Stephen King book. In it, 50 untrained boys are forced to walk at least 3mph without slowing—or they get brutally murdered. Spoiler alert: They all hit 100 miles, and the winner walks 350. My reaction: no f*cking way. I thought they’d only get 40, maybe 50 miles.
  So I chatted with Melissa Ilardo, a University of Utah researcher who studies populations pushing their bodies to extreme physical limits. She broke down the science of extreme walking. It turns out the truth is stranger than fiction—and very useful for anyone who walks on two feet.

• Part Two covers one of the greatest long walks of all time.
  My friend describes himself as “not athletic.” Then something big happened in his life. It led him to grab a 25-pound pack, step outside of his Brooklyn apartment, and start walking—and he didn’t stop for a very long time. What he learned shows us how a long walk can help us break new ground in the mind and body. (P.S. Read Foster’s excellent Substack, ).

• Part Three explains how many steps we really need each day.
  There are two ways to think about this. And, no, the number is not necessarily 10,000.

The podcast: Why

My 45-day desert hike last year gave me a lot of time to think. The type of thinking that only happens when you wander without cell service for weeks on end.

One realization I had: the personal audio reads of Two Percent posts were a nice feature, but they were also massively time-consuming to create and—most importantly—didn’t give us any new information.

I wondered, what if I used that time to give us something new?

And when I surveyed the health/mindset/wellness podcast landscape, I saw a pattern: they had tons of depth, but they weren’t always useful. I’d listen for three hours and go—wait, how do I actually use any of this? I often left more confused than when I started.

And most weren’t fun—more 300-level biology class with a professor who spent too long in school than the type of inspiring conversations I’d had with experts in my own work as a journalist for two decades.

The Two Percent Newsletter has always been opposite of that. It’s about delivering practical, high-impact information in a way we can use now. We mix lab science with real-world experience. We get out into the world, do hard things, and learn important information about ourselves. And we have a lot of fun along the way.

I wanted to bring that ethos to audio and video.

I started developing the idea with Robbie Hiser, an exceedingly wise thinker and audio engineer2. Then, by chance3, I got linked up with Kaleidoscope. They’re the audio and video podcast production equivalent of the 1992 Dream Team (killers, all).

And now here we are.

• Go deeper: Read what Complex said about the Two Percent podcast.

The podcast: How it works

The episode schedule

This first week, we’re running one episode4.

Starting next week, we’ll have two episodes a week. (Because the Two Percent podcast should obviously have two episodes a week).

• On Tuesdays, I’ll have a long (but not Rogan long) conversation with a fascinating person. Authors, athletes, adventurers, amazing everyday people, and scientists (but not boring scientists). The rule: The guest must be interesting, fun, and have solid information we can use after listening to live better.

• On Thursdays, I’ll cover a range of timely topics. Everything from new studies to news events to internet dramas to whatever I think is interesting and useful right now. Think of the Thursday episodes as similar to our Expedition posts, but in audio and video formats.

Three notes:

• If you enjoyed The Comfort Crisis, you’ll love next Tuesday’s episode. I dragged my guest out of the wilderness for this one.

• Check out the video versions. We’re putting a lot of valuable information on screen (not just my stupid face talking).

• Got a topic or guest idea? Send it. Your feedback and ideas will shape the podcast, just like they do the newsletter.

The delivery

I’ll send out each episode on Substack. Emails will include embedded video + audio feeds, as well as detailed show notes.

For example, if the episode mentions a study, Two Percent post, book, or (insert anything), I’ll put it in the show notes.

On Substack, I’ll also jot down a few thoughts after recording that won’t appear anywhere else.

Quick housekeeping

• The audio reads of the newsletters are not leaving. They’ll still live in the audio bar of each post. I.e., Nothing is changing in your Monday, Wednesday, and Friday newsletters.

• The podcasts will be free for all subscribers (not just Members).

  • We will likely begin developing bonus materials for Members only.

Can I ask a favor?

Please subscribe on YouTube and/or your podcast player of choice (Apple Podcasts and Spotify).

I know every damn host ever makes that request. But The Overlords tell me these subscriptions are really important! Subscribing makes it easier for us to get the guests you’d like to hear from.

Have fun, don’t die, listen to and watch the new Two Percent podcast.

-Michael

It’s the first Friday of the month—which means it’s time to Burn the Ships.

On the first Friday of every month, we publish a new Burn the Ships workout for Members only.

If Two Percent is a cult, these Burn the Ships workouts are our Kool-Aid.

Members of the Two Percent community do the workout every weekend—a bunch of us satellites, spread out across the world, all sweating and improving together as one extended network.

Burn the Ships workouts are hard, safe, and effective. They improve your strength, cardio, movement quality, and mindset—and, in turn, your life.

We’ve provided scaled versions and exercise swaps, so anyone and everyone can do them. That is to say, you.

• We’re pushing edges and improving safely. It’s easy to be hard but hard to be smart.

Burn the Ships: April 2026

Running season is here. The 130th Boston Marathon happens on the 20th. The sun is warm. The plants are budding. Birds are singing.

Go outside and run.

Humans evolved to be physically gifted at running long distances—especially in warm temperatures. It’s one of the things we do better than almost any other animal on earth. We were built for this.

The catch: we also get hurt doing it.

Running has one of the strangest injury statistics in all of sports: somewhere between 20 and 80 percent of runners get hurt each year. That range is so wide it’s almost meaningless. But the takeaway is that a lot of runners get injured.

The fix is simple. Researchers recently1 tracked a group of recreational runners over nine months.

• Half did their normal running routine.

• The other half did their normal running routine and a basic, running-focused strength workout 2 to 4 times a week. It took just 15 to 30 minutes.

The finding: The runners who also strength-trained were half as likely to get injured.

And that’s really important. When we get injured, we move less. And when we move less, our health starts to decline.

Beyond studies, it’s also useful to hear what people in the trenches think.

The famed University of Washington Track & Field coach Maurica Powell said, “I’m a big believer in lifting for injury prevention and as a performance enhancer.”

Her team’s strength training focuses on building a stable lower body and core. “With everyone, but especially women, most injuries that happen manifest down the chain with hip instability.”

This month’s Burn the Ships is built around that idea. It will make you a better and more durable runner.

Even if you don’t run, it’s worth doing.

Got knee pain? It’ll probably help you.

Prefer to ruck, cycle, swim, whatever? It still applies.

Just want to be more bulletproof in whatever you do? You’re in the right place.

Here’s our roadmap:

• First, we’ll cover the science of why one tough weekly workout is the non-negotiable sweet spot for both physical and mental health.

• Then, we’ll unpack the story behind You Better Run. You’ll learn why it’s so effective when time is limited.

• Finally, I’ll give you the complete You Better Run workout, with exact steps, full videos, scaled versions, and exercise and equipment swaps to get it done.

Thanks to our partners

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Vitamin and mineral insufficiencies are also linked to sports injuries. Supplementation helps us cover our bases. And if you’re going to supplement, use Momentous. Every product is heavily tested, because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

The case for one tough weekly workout

• Section summary: One challenging workout per week is ideal for health and fitness.

There’s magic in pushing it once a week. First, there are the brain benefits.

Scientists at King’s College London analyzed 58 studies on intense exercise and mental health. They found that harder efforts led to:

“Improvements in mental wellbeing, depression severity, and perceived stress compared to non-active controls, and small improvements in mental wellbeing compared to active controls.”

Translation: hard exercise doesn’t just beat doing nothing (duh). It often beats doing only moderate exercise.

Intense exercise also comes with physical upsides.

It has an edge over less intense exercise for increasing VO2 max—one of the strongest predictors we have for longevity and disease resistance. A rule of thumb: the higher your VO2 max, the farther you are from death, disease, and decay.

In sum: All exercise helps. But going hard—sometimes—matters.

What’s “sometimes?”

The smartest trainers I regularly speak with suggest that one tough workout a week is the sweet spot for health and performance (info on that here).

More than that, and we tend to get burned out and beat down. Less than that, and we miss out on some health and performance upsides.

Enter Burn the Ships.

This month’s workout: You Better Run

The exercises in the workout have been shown in research to reduce injury risk and make you a better, faster runner.

They fortify the most common injury sites, and improve running economy and time to exhaustion (a measure of endurance) in middle and long-distance runners. They also improve efficiency and speed.

That is all to say: They’ll help you get better at moving on two feet and make you less likely to get hurt doing it.

Equipment needed

• One heavy-ish weight. E.g., A kettlebell, dumbbell, sandbag, or barbell.

Time commitment

• This workout should take you 35 to 60 minutes.

• I’ve also included ways to shorten the workout in the Questions and Substitutions section.

What I’m listening to as I do this workout

• Its namesake song: You Better Run by Dr. C.J. Johnson.

  • That old-time religion …

How to do it

Start with the warmup (part one). Then do part two. Once you’re finished, move into part three.

From here, you’ll learn:

• Exactly how to do the You Better Run workout.

• The full breakdown of reps, rounds, and distances for your fitness level.

• Complete videos for each exercise in the workout.

• Substitutions and scaled versions of the workout so anyone can do it, no matter your equipment or fitness level.

Read more

On Monday, we explored the research behind the psychological “toughening” effect. Read it here.

In short: Psychologists used to think that more stress and adversity led to more mental health problems. Then a researcher named Mark Seery dug deeper.

He found that people who face some adversity—but not an overwhelming amount—are more robust, more resilient, and better equipped to handle new challenges than people who’ve been perfectly sheltered.

Today’s post gets tactical. We’ll explore six practices research shows build greater mental toughness.

You’ll learn:

• 6 potent ways to build mental resilience into your daily life.

• Why I ignored Joe Rogan’s advice—and what I did instead (research-backed advice on taking criticism).

• My good friend Dr. Trevor Kashey’s “Frame of the Veteran,” a powerful mindset shift to instantly neutralize the anxiety of anything new and stressful.

• The research-backed, two-step method for dealing with massive problems you have absolutely no power to change.

Let’s roll ...

Thanks to our partners

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Here’s why I like them: Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

Read more

When my strange job puts me in challenging environments and situations—like the Arctic for 30+ days reporting The Comfort Crisis, or Iraq to investigate the drug trade for Scarcity Brain—I notice something interesting: I’m pretty chill afterwards. Stuff that used to stress me out doesn’t. I’m more grateful. I’m happier.

The effect is intense at first, like an afterglow. It eventually fades, but the lessons last in smaller ways forever.

I also see the opposite all the time. In my neighborhood, people who have everything they need but are rarely challenged lose their minds over mild inconveniences, like the trash being picked up late or a weed in another neighbor’s yard.

And so, doing the journalist thing, I’ve studied this phenomenon and talked to experts.

Psychology, for most of its history, was kind of like my neighbors. It assumed that more stress and adversity led to a greater risk of mental health problems. It was a depressing, linear relationship.

But this didn’t jive with the lived experience of millions of people who’d gone through hard things and, in retrospect, thought they’d grown.

And then a psychologist from the University of Buffalo went rogue. He began surveying Americans about their mental and physical health and the challenges they’d faced in life. He even set up lab experiments to test the idea in a controlled setting.

What he found is critical today—because we live in a world where fewer people face legitimate threats and challenges than ever before. And yet mental health issues are worse than they’ve ever been.

Today you’ll learn:

• Why the long-held psychological belief that “all stress is bad” is backwards.

• How a University of Buffalo researcher proved that a “perfect” sheltered life actually leads to worse physical and mental health.

• The sweet spot of adversity we require to build a resilient, steel-trap mind, and why it works.

Quick housekeeping

• In case you missed it:

  • On Wednesday, we looked at the 6 Rules of a Great Workout. Basically: how to build a great strength workout no matter your age, fitness level, or equipment.

  • Friday’s post was our monthly Q&A, where I answered 13 questions about exercising past age 75, whether we should eat less salt, the downsides of fitness trackers, training for big events when work gets busy, and more.

• Shoutout to our partners:

  • Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. Here’s why I like them: Every single product is heavily tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with professional sports teams and the U.S. military. They also sell what works rather than offering a million fringe options that don’t offer benefits. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

The toughening theory

Mark Seery is a psychologist at the University of Buffalo who was always fascinated by the cliche, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”

Little quips like that seem to have a nugget of truth to them. But the thinking in psychology disagreed.

“The literature suggested that there was this clear, straightforward relationship where when a bad, stressful thing happens to you, it’s always bad, and you’re always dealing with adversity and negative consequences,” Seery told me. “And those events have some lingering damage. So this puts you at a greater risk of psychological and even physical health problems down the road. And it was just a very depressing picture.”

Then one day, Seery discovered research on a budding concept called “toughening.”

“It’s this theoretical idea that being completely overwhelmed by negative, stressful things wasn’t good,” he said. “But it also theorized that being totally sheltered shouldn’t be optimal, either. There should be some amount of stress that gives you optimum psychological and physical wellbeing.”

Psychologists at Stanford had already found this in animals. Monkeys who were occasionally separated from their families as babies grew up to be more resilient and capable in the real world compared to their siblings who spent their youth clinging to mom. They were the leaders, the doers.

Seery wondered if the same thing happened with humans.

He surveyed 2,500 Americans—from all ages, genders, races, and economic backgrounds—about the big stressors and challenges they’d faced in life. Like whether they’d faced illness or financial difficulty, death of a loved one, violence, floods, earthquakes, etc.

He also asked them about their health and wellbeing. Are you depressed or anxious? Are you sick or in pain? How often do you have to go to the doctor, and how many prescription pills do you take? Are you happy?

What Seery found1 imploded the existing literature—and confirmed his notion.

Compared to the people who’d been sheltered their entire lives, “the people who’d faced some adversity reported better psychological wellbeing over the several years of the study,” Seery told me. “They had higher life satisfaction and fewer psychological and physical symptoms. They were less likely to use prescription painkillers. They used healthcare services less. They were less likely to report their employment status as disabled.”

By facing some challenges but not an overwhelming amount, these people developed an internal strength that left them more robust and resilient. They were better able to deal with new stresses they hadn’t faced before, said Seery.

From survey to lab

Seery wanted to know if he’d see similar results in a controlled environment. He brought people into the lab and asked them how many trying events they’d had in their lives.

Then he had them stick their hand in a bucket of ice water and leave it there for as long as they could.

“The same relationship comes out,” said Seery. “People report that the pain feels less intense if they have a history of some lifetime adversity. Not a high level, but, critically, not zero. Their mind is also less likely to go to a bad place during the experience—they have fewer negative thoughts during and after the experience.”

He’s since done this with all kinds of stress-inducing tasks. He’s put people through exams, had them give speeches in front of a big group, etc. The findings are consistent.

“People who’ve gone through some adversity show a more positive response,” Seery told me. “They’re more likely to feel like stressful events are an exciting opportunity rather than feeling a sense of overwhelming dread.”

The sweet spot of stress

One of Seery’s key findings is that there’s a sweet spot. He wrote:

“People with a history of some lifetime adversity reported better mental health and wellbeing outcomes than not only people with a high history of adversity but also than people with no history of adversity.”

Think of stress and challenge as a U-shaped curve that looks like this:

Seery told me to think about this like building fitness.

Your body needs the physical stress of running or lifting weights to build endurance or strength. If you never stress your body, you won’t build fitness, and you’ll be more at risk of physical and mental health issues.

At the same time, if you exercise too hard, too often, with little rest, you’ll get injured, and your physical and mental health will suffer for it.

Why it works

Here’s what Seery’s research—and subsequent research—thinks is happening.

1. We learn to cope

When you spend time in the storm, you learn certain facts about storms that help you weather the next one. And the next one. And so on.

The research2 suggests that navigating challenges teaches us coping skills and how to stay on course and not freak out when life goes sideways. We gain a greater sense of control and mastery over our future.

We’re more likely to reappraise future difficulties as manageable challenges rather than catastrophic or overwhelming threats.

2. We learn that our catastrophic beliefs are nonsense

Think of a time you faced a challenge that you thought was going to turn out terribly.

If it went better than expected—and if you’re still alive and reading this, it probably did—that might have taught you something.

Research3 shows that individuals who have faced some adversity are significantly less likely to engage in what they call “situational catastrophizing.” It’s when we fixate on a stressor and believe it will completely overwhelm us.

Because the catastrophe didn’t materialize, our beliefs were violated. In turn, we’re likely to remember that during our next challenge and not spin out into an anxious, sky-is-falling mess.

3. It changes our neurochemistry (maybe)

I’m always skeptical of “neurologizing,” which is reducing complex phenomena to simple explanations about the brain and its chemicals.

But it’s still worth noting: Some research hypothesizes that stress changes our neurochemistry in ways that help us.

When you face a manageable challenge, your brain releases chemicals that spur action. Each time you cope successfully, you reinforce problem-solving pathways—building mental strength the way practice builds muscle memory.

This is one reason why moderate stress is actually beneficial. Studies in animals who were given a medium dose of stress chemicals early in life later outperformed both low-stress and high-stress animals in problem-solving tasks.

This is also why researchers think that uncontrollable, overwhelming stress works the opposite way. The flood of heavy stress hormones may hurt key brain structures, a process closely linked to depression.

4. It’s like mental hygiene

The “hygiene hypothesis4” suggests that exposure to germs early in life helps the immune system develop. If we don’t get exposure, we’re more likely to develop allergies and other issues because our immune systems haven’t been “trained.” In turn, it begins to overreact to seemingly benign stuff (like peanuts).

Some researchers think stress may work the same way. If you have no adversity, you get no inoculation and become hypersensitive to it later on. New stress leads to a sort of overcorrection—and that increases your risk of mental health issues like depression.

Have fun, don’t die, find the upside of problems,

-Michael

P.S., on Wednesday, we’ll explore how to use the toughening theory in daily life.

It’s time for our Q&A.

We had some excellent questions submitted in the Two Percent chat.

I’ll answer the following:

• I think I’m addicted to my Garmin metrics. What are some analog-only ways to track my fitness, sleep, etc?

• I’m 77 years old. How would you adapt my workout for aging well?

• I eat more than the 2,300mg of sodium a day recommendation. Should I be worried? What should I do?

• What are your thoughts on under-the-desk treadmills for those of us tied to a desk for hours at a time?

• What are your thoughts on high-incline treadmills (the ones that go up to a 40% incline) for people who live in flat parts of the world?

• What footwear do you recommend for rucking? I’ve been using my Vivo shoes (barefoot/minimalist shoes), and I’m not sure if that’s the right approach.

• How do you divide your time between writing books and posting on Substack?

• Any practical advice for hiking/trail running in rattlesnake country? (P.S. I had way too much fun answering this question).

• Stones or Beatles?

• What’s the Two Percent approach to creativity (whether writing, art, taking an acting class, etc.)?

• Besides the Grateful Dead, what jam bands are you into?

• I’m a busy college student balancing a mathematically intensive workload with endurance training, with a long-term goal of completing a full Ironman. It’s tough. How should someone think about optimizing across these competing demands?

• What are your nutrition strategies for long outings when you know you need to eat/drink more but aren’t hungry/thirsty, and nothing is appetizing?

Let’s roll …

Thanks to our partners

• Momentous made me feel good about supplements again. They’re heavily tested and trusted by pro sports teams, the U.S. military—and Two Percent. I use Momentous’ Plant Protein Powder, Multivitamin, and Creatine daily.

• Function Health offers 5x deeper insights into your health than typical bloodwork. You’ll learn critical information that can guide you into feeling better every day. It helped me identify a mineral insufficiency—and was cheaper than my insurance. Go to my page here to sign up, receive a discount, and pay just $340.

I’m a tech-addicted ultrarunner, hiker, and triathlete. Lately (for months), my Garmin’s metrics have been bothering me, and I’m overly fixated on them. I’m going to take a holiday from my sports watches and just run and lift and hike for a while without heart rate, maps, and recovery scores. What’s your analog-only, or at least mostly low-tech, approach for assessing training adaptation, sleep quality, and recovery? -Alex

Addiction, huh? In that case …

Step one: We admitted we were powerless over our fitness tracker metrics and that our lives had become unmanageable.

Fitness trackers are a tool. Whether they help you or hurt you depends on how you use them.

For people new to fitness, they can enhance awareness. Some people have a vague sense they’re sedentary but don’t act until they see “4,000 steps” staring at them at the end of the day. That’s useful.

That said, every metric on your fitness tracker is some degree of wrong. Read more about that here. And once you’ve gotten the basics, getting too attached to the data can backfire. Our goals shift from all the wonderful things living healthy can do for us to a neurotic numbers game.

Which brings me to something I noticed in your question: You began your question by telling me that tracking was hurting you, and then asked me for new ways to track.

Why not track nothing for one month? Live your active life as normal. Do your workouts. Eat well. Go to bed at a reasonable time. Pay attention to how you feel. Make fitness fun again.

When the month is up, strap the watch back on. Did your times collapse? Did your fitness fall off a cliff because a device wasn’t telling you your activity score was an 80 instead of a 90?

If nothing has changed, it might suggest you’ve learned everything you need to learn from your tracker and can ride on your own now.

The ultimate goal is to know yourself. When I recently appeared on Rich Roll, he said something that stuck with me:

If you’re outsourcing everything to [fitness trackers], you’re missing an opportunity [to learn]. I just remember in my early swimming days, before heart rate monitors and Garmins, exactly what my heart rate was because I’d made a kind of mental mind-body connection. I could tell you without looking at a pace clock what my split was or what my time was, because you just, I just knew myself that well.

I think these tools are just fancy versions of stopwatches and putting your finger on your neck to figure out your heart rate. They can help you develop a connection with yourself. But if you’re not making that connection, then you become reliant upon them.

P.S.: Here’s that episode:

I’m 77-year-old and do kettlebell presses, cleans, and chair squats Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. I do deadlifts and walking Tuesday and Thursday. What would you change or add? -Harvey Eilbaum

First things first: this is wonderful. Most people your age are driving around a golf course in a motorized cart and calling it a workout. You’re doing legit strength and cardio work.

But since you asked, here’s what I might consider adding:

Read more