Diet Review Series: Keto
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
Because carbs are the root of all evil… right?
The keto diet has cooled in recent years, but for much of the past decade it was the “it” diet in the weight-loss space.
Keto originated in the 1920s as a medical intervention for epilepsy, especially in children. Doctors noticed that, while fasting dramatically decreased seizure frequency, it was not a viable long-term strategy for growing kids. Dr. Russell Wilder at the Mayo Clinic hypothesized that ketosis might be responsible for the improvement and proposed a diet designed to mimic fasting’s metabolic state while still providing adequate calories.
The original therapeutic ketogenic diet was roughly 80%-90% fat, with carefully controlled protein and only trace carbohydrates. It was highly effective for epilepsy and became a go-to treatment at the time, before fading when anticonvulsant medications arrived in the 1930s and offered a far more convenient option for families. Keto persisted in medication-resistant epilepsy (and a handful of other neurologic applications), but largely disappeared from public view.
That changed in the 1970s when Dr. Robert Atkins popularized low-carbohydrate dieting for weight loss and metabolic health in Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution. His thesis ran counter to prevailing wisdom, which held that dietary fat drove cardiovascular disease and should be avoided. (Even in the pre-internet era, contrarian ideas had their appeal.) Through the 70s and 80s, Atkins simmered in the background while the mainstream food industry pivoted to low-fat everything.
Meanwhile, the obesity epidemic was snowballing. By the mid-to-late 90s, public frustration was boiling over. People felt they’d done everything “right”: high-carb, low-fat, lots of jogging and aerobics, yet they were heavier than ever. When Atkins re-released his book in the late 1990s, it said what many people were already thinking: this isn’t working. It went nuclear, selling over 10 million copies and spending multiple years on the New York Times bestseller list in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
The narrative was simple and provocative. You’ve been lied to, fat isn’t what’s making you fat, carbs are. Here is what to do instead.
Atkins’ approach wasn’t “no carbs forever.” It was a structured reset with four phases.
Phase 1: Induction
Duration: At least 2 weeks
Goal: Initiate weight loss, reduce appetite
<20g of carbohydrates per day from leafy greens
Moderate protein
Higher fat by default
Phase 2: Ongoing Weight Loss (OWL)
Duration: Highly individualized
Goal: Continue losing fat and find carb tolerance
Gradually increase carb intake by 5g/week
Begin to introduce nuts, seeds, berries, and small amounts of higher carb foods
Seek maximum carb intake while still losing weight
Phase 3: Pre-maintenance
Duration: Highly individualized
Goal: Slow weight loss and find maintenance
Increase carb intake by 10g/week
Expand food variety
Identify carb intake for maintenance
Phase 4: Maintenance
Duration: Indefinite
Goal: Maintain weight loss with a less restricted eating pattern
Unlike the caricature of Atkins, the actual diet was a far more nuanced intervention aimed at restoring appetite control and gradually reintroducing carbohydrates. In many ways, that made it a better long-term framework than what it eventually evolved into. But nuance doesn’t go viral.
The early phases produced rapid, visible feedback. But, maintenance required self-regulation without dramatic reinforcement.
As often happens when structure loosens, things slip and weight regain follows. The hardest part of most diets isn’t losing weight, it’s maintaining it. Gritting your teeth and following rigid rules is often easier than learning to moderate when the lines get blurry.
Add in a slew of Atkins-branded processed foods, and the problems multiplied. The diet that was built around whole foods began selling packaged snack bars, and its credibility took a hit.
“Biohacking,” butter coffee, and the rise of KETO 4 EVA
Like a phoenix from the ashes, low carb rose again in a new form. This time with less nuance and more buzzwords.
Ketones! Autophagy! Mitochondrial Biogenesis! Epigenetics!
The early 2010s saw the rise of direct-to-consumer health information and the proliferation of long-form podcasts. With it came keto’s resurgence. The narrative shifted from losing weight to optimizing your biology.
Figures like Peter Attia (rigorously) and Dave Asprey (less so) began discussing ketosis as a powerful metabolic tool, framing it as a path to metabolic optimization.
Arthritis: Ketosis
Eczema: Ketosis
Brain Fog: Ketosis
Depression: Ketosis
ED: Ketosis
Some of these claims had plausible mechanisms. Others raced ahead of the human data.
This time around, the tools to make it data-driven were there: ketone breath meters, urine strips, blood ketone testing. Suddenly there was a quantifiable target outside of calorie counting, a clear biochemical definition of “doing it right.”
Even the framing reinforced the simplicity. Gary Taubes’ book was titled Good Calories, Bad Calories.
Add in highly visible podcasters amplifying expansive claims about ketosis, and you had a recipe for virality.
How Keto Works
In its strict therapeutic form, the ketogenic diet used for epilepsy can reach 80%-90% of calories from fat, with carefully controlled protein and minimal carbohydrates.
In practice, lifestyle keto typically looks like high fat, moderate protein, and very low carbohydrate (often under 50g per day) with the goal of sustaining nutritional ketosis.
Potential Nutrient Gaps
Keto is not inherently nutrient-deficient, but it does remove several food groups that commonly provide fiber and key micronutrients. Without deliberate attention to vegetables, minerals, and seafood, gaps are possible.
Fiber: One of the most common shortfalls on a keto diet is fiber, especially if intake of non-starchy vegetables is low. There are solid low-carb sources such as chia seeds, flax, psyllium husk, avocados, and cruciferous vegetables, but they require intentional inclusion.
Sodium and Potassium: While not inherently lacking, carbohydrate restriction lowers insulin levels, which increases sodium excretion by the kidneys. Water, sodium, and potassium losses can contribute to fatigue, headaches, and the so-called “keto flu.” Being intentional about electrolyte intake, especially early in the diet, is important.
A Note on LDL Cholesterol
One of the most debated aspects of the keto diet is its effect on LDL cholesterol, and specifically the number of ApoB-containing particles in your blood. ApoB (apolipoprotein B) is the protein on the surface of LDL and related particles, and counting it is increasingly viewed as a more precise measure of cardiovascular risk than LDL cholesterol alone. The relationship between elevated ApoB and cardiovascular risk is well established.
Keto doesn’t cause LDL to rise in everyone, but for some it increases LDL and ApoB substantially. ApoB monitoring is the key marker to watch if you’re doing a long-term keto diet.
It’s worth noting that saturated fat intake generally raises LDL and ApoB. Limiting saturated fat and prioritizing monounsaturated fats such as olive oil and avocado may help mitigate that response.
How We Break It (Common Failure Modes)
Keto is largely built around the idea that dramatically reducing carbohydrate intake decreases appetite and, in turn, total caloric intake. For many people, this is true.
But keto is not immune to calorie excess. If you intentionally add large amounts of fat (butter in coffee, butter on ribeyes…) you can override appetite regulation. It’s possible to do this without exceeding your energy needs, but it becomes less likely as energy density rises.
Like any dietary pattern, sustained calorie surplus leads to weight gain. And, as discussed earlier, extremely high saturated fat intake may also negatively affect LDL and ApoB levels.
That said, keto deserves credit here. When adhered to strictly, if the foods are boring and engineered to tamp down your appetite, it’s harder to overeat.
Sustainability Factor
This is where the appetite-control advantage really gets put to the test.
Is keto sustainable? For some people, yes. For others, much less so.
Keto is a highly restrictive diet. Removing most carbohydrate-rich foods significantly reduces variety. Some people thrive within that structure; others find it difficult to sustain.
From a restaurant and convenience standpoint, there are usually workable options: a bunless burger, a salad with added protein, and rotisserie chicken. But long-term social flexibility matters, and for many people the constant modification becomes friction.
The Final Verdict
There are clear contexts where the keto diet has distinct advantages.
If you have type 2 diabetes or prediabetes, carbohydrate restriction can significantly reduce blood glucose and A1C. These conditions are rooted in insulin resistance and impaired carbohydrate metabolism. In that context, removing carbohydrates can produce meaningful clinical improvements.
In its original therapeutic role, keto remains an effective treatment for medication-resistant epilepsy and certain neurological conditions.
But if you already have healthy blood sugar regulation, there appears to be little added benefit (and potentially some downside from an athletic performance perspective) to removing carbohydrates entirely.
The keto diet is not the “optimal human diet.” It may, however, be the optimal diet in certain metabolic contexts, and that makes it valuable.
If you choose to follow a keto diet, monitor LDL and ApoB, prioritize fiber and micronutrients, and pay attention to fat quality. Done thoughtfully, it can be an effective way to manage appetite and support metabolic health. It’s just not the only way.
New to the Diet Review Series? Start with Setting the Table — it lays out the fat-loss lens we run every diet through.
Diet Review Series: IIFYM (If It Fits Your Macros)
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
When lawlessness meets hyper-rigidity, you get a system that feels like freedom… until it doesn’t.
Born in the dark corners of late-90s bodybuilding forums, buried between grainy progress photos and endless debates about meal timing, IIFYM (if it fits your macros) stripped dieting down to its barest components. Macros, short for macronutrients, are the three primary components of food: protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Together, they make up the calories we eat. IIFYM takes this to its logical extreme: if your daily totals for protein, carbs, fats, and calories are on target, everything else is secondary.
Before IIFYM, the dominant belief was simple: to get lean, you had to eat “clean.”
In practice, this meant a narrow rotation of chicken, rice, and broccoli, along with a rigid moral hierarchy where foods were either “good” or “bad.”
The problem with clean eating wasn’t just boredom (although there was that). It was pressure. When every bite carries a moral label, slipping once often turns into abandoning the system.
IIFYM was a direct rebellion against the rigidity. It removed the moral labels and replaced them with math. Foods weren’t good or bad. They were numbers – information.
That shift was liberating. Instead of white-knuckling through weeks of restriction followed by explosive “cheat days,” people could incorporate foods they actually enjoyed on a regular basis and break free from the classic restrict-binge cycle that defined traditional dieting.
The catch is the machinery behind the freedom: food scales, tracking apps, spreadsheets, and the constant negotiation of numbers. Every bite becomes a transaction. Every meal is a budget decision.
Used right, IIFYM is a highly effective fat loss tool. Used wrong, it can break your relationship with food.
How IIFYM Reduces Calorie Intake
This is simple. IIFYM restricts calories by… restricting calories.
Your macro targets create a built-in calorie ceiling. Stay within the numbers and you stay within your energy budget. Overshoot, and you don’t.
No food rules required.
Potential Nutrient Gaps
All of them and none of them at the same time.
Since there are no recommended foods, you could get all of your necessary dietary components in a day or, outside of protein, be eating the most deficient diet imaginable. There are no recommendations for fiber intake, vitamins, minerals, or omega-3s, all of which are important parts of a healthy diet.
The smart play is to eat a wide array of nutritious foods while staying mindful of your numbers. In other words, stick with the intentions of IIFYM.
How We Break It (Common Failure Modes)
This part is a little more nuanced. The IIFYM premise works as far as it goes. Calories, macro distribution, and lifting absolutely drive body composition. Unsurprising, since the diet was built by bodybuilders.
But there’s a real difference between hitting those numbers eating meats, fruits, and vegetables and slamming Pop-Tarts and protein shakes. While calories and macros largely dictate body composition, the rest of what’s in your food shapes overall health, performance, and satiety. Fiber, micronutrients, and fats like omega-3s serve vital functions for overall health. Living on packaged nonsense and a multivitamin doesn’t quite serve the same function as eating whole foods.
IIFYM was meant to loosen the laces on what counted as okay to eat, as long as you still hit your goals. But, as the internet likes to do, recipes for outrageous concoctions and videos bragging about how many Oreos you could eat and still get shredded took over the IIFYM conversation.
What started as flexibility turned into spectacle. This is why we can’t have nice things.
IIFYM also breaks because it takes something genuinely helpful – macro targets – and turns it into the only thing. Exchanging rigid clean eating for spreadsheet gymnastics is just swapping one obsession for another.
And that obsession has unintended consequences. A big one? Losing the ability to tap into hunger cues. Hunger is not constant; some days you’ll be hungrier than others. If your sole focus is hitting your budget no matter how your body feels, you’re going to lose the natural ebb and flow of appetite.
If you get to the end of the day and feel satisfied but the budget says you’re supposed to eat 40 more carbs and you do, you are no longer training yourself to listen to your body. Most people don’t want to weigh food and track calories forever. While gaining awareness of the calorie content of various foods and how it feels to eat different amounts is good, training yourself out of listening to hunger cues might bite you in the ass in the long run.
Sustainability Factor
Like the hook implies, IIFYM is both incredibly flexible and super rigid at the same time.
From a food variety perspective, there are no rules, so boredom is a non-issue. At the same time, food quantity is strictly controlled (you weigh and log everything that passes through your lips). This doesn’t eliminate spontaneity, but it does turn it into a budgeting exercise. If you want something on the fly, you can have it. You just have to adjust for it later.
Where this becomes more difficult is in environments you don’t control. Restaurants, social events, and travel introduce a level of uncertainty where you don’t know the true composition of what you’re eating. You can estimate, but it’s no longer precise. For someone trying to strictly adhere to targets, that can create friction.
Sure, the flexibility makes it easier to navigate day-to-day life compared to more rigid diets, but it still requires a level of attention and planning that not everyone wants to maintain long term. It also has the potential to stir up disordered behavior around food.
IIFYM was never intended to be something you do forever, but rather a tool to gain awareness and reach a specific goal. From a sustainability perspective, it’s a powerful tool that should be used judiciously, but not indefinitely.
The Final Verdict
If you want to ensure success in weight loss, IIFYM is hard to beat. If you want to build a healthy relationship with food and hunger signaling, it can be either helpful or disastrous.
A healthy way to approach IIFYM is to eat a diet consisting of a variety of largely unprocessed foods like meats, vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, and dairy, while also being mindful of the amounts you are eating. (This probably sounds familiar, if you’ve been following along.)
Use the tracking period as a calibration tool. Learn what a 500-calorie meal looks like on a plate. Learn how full 30 grams of protein actually leaves you. Then put the scale down.
Learn the numbers, then learn to operate without them.
New to the Diet Review Series? Start with Setting the Table — it lays out the fat-loss lens we run every diet through.
Diet Review Series: Mediterranean
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
In a region hat swings wildly between fearing fat, fearing carbs, and counting every macro, the Mediterranean Diet calmly pours more olive oil, passes the bread, and washes it down with a nice glass of wine.
The Mediterranean Diet isn’t just a diet. It’s a lifestyle, built on daily movement, rest, and shared meals, which are inseparable from the outcomes it’s meant to produce. (It also has the kind of institutional backing most diets dream about. The American Heart Association, American Diabetes Association, Alzheimer’s Association, National Institutes of Health, and Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics all stand behind it as an evidence-based pattern for cardiometabolic health.)
The foundation of the Mediterranean Diet is fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and olive oil. Add in fish, poultry, and dairy, usually yogurt and cheese, on the regular, with red and processed meats occasionally. Also included: wine, typically in moderation, with meals, and in society with others.
The diet itself was shaped by the environment. Hot, dry summers and mild, wet winters favored olives, grapes, figs, and hardy grains, while coastal access added a steady supply of fish. For most of its history, people in the Mediterranean Basin ate this way not for health, but because it reflected what was locally available.
It hit the American psyche when Ancel Keys’ Seven Countries Study linked eating patterns in places like Italy and Greece with lower rates of heart disease. The study was influential, if imperfect, and Keys remains a controversial figure, but subsequent research has repeatedly supported the diet’s health benefits.
How the Mediterranean Diet Reduces Calorie Intake
The Mediterranean pattern centers on whole, minimally processed foods (like most of the effective diets we’ve discussed). This alone is one of the biggest levers for reducing caloric intake.
What separates it is how inclusive it is. No food group is eliminated, but many are constrained by frequency and portion. Red and processed meats are consumed rarely, dairy is moderate, and wine is included but limited to small amounts with meals.
Rather than labeling foods as “good” or “bad,” the Mediterranean diet operates on a spectrum. Most foods are allowed, but some require more restraint than others.
Another piece that sets the Mediterranean diet recommendations apart: daily movement, appropriate rest, and communal meals are baked in. It’s one of the few dietary patterns that explicitly incorporates activity, sleep and stress management, and social structure alongside nutrition. It’s that kind of holistic approach that makes the Mediterranean diet effective – and sustainable.
Potential Nutrient Gaps
There aren’t any. That’s the upshot of including basically every food group in moderation. When you eat broadly, nothing important gets left out.
Protein is covered through fish, poultry, dairy, legumes, and occasional red meat. Fiber comes from fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes. Omega-3s are supplied by fatty fish, while iodine and B12 are supported through seafood and dairy.
Of course issues can arise if variety is limited or you’re neglecting key components. But when followed broadly, the Mediterranean diet covers your nutritional bases better than most.
How We Break It (Common Failure Modes)
With great freedom comes great responsibility. The Mediterranean diet includes a bunch of foods (Bread! Pasta! Olive oil! Nuts! Wine, for crying out loud!) that are often viewed as no-nos in other diets. All of these – bread, pasta, wine, olive oil, nuts, cheese – are calorie-dense, highly palatable, and easy to overeat. The Mediterranean Diet includes them, but quietly assumes moderation. Ignore the moderation piece and you’ve already broken the diet.
Remember that the foundation is built on large servings of fruits and vegetables with smaller portions of grains, proteins, and fats. Ignoring this is no longer the Mediterranean diet. It’s just eating the foods listed on the diet list.
Sustainability Factor
The Mediterranean diet is a strong candidate. It covers nutritional needs while offering a wide range of foods and flavors.
Bread, pasta, fruits, vegetables, grains, legumes, dairy, fish, poultry, and occasional red meat provide enough variety to avoid monotony. If you’re bored, it’s more likely due to a lack of creativity than a lack of options.
The Final Verdict
The Mediterranean diet isn’t just a list of foods. It’s a pattern of living.
Nutritionally diverse, flexible, and grounded in both biology and culture, it offers a model of eating that extends beyond the plate. Like any approach, it can be undermined by excess and poor execution, but when the structure is preserved, it’s one of the most complete and sustainable dietary patterns available.
Most diets in this series ask you to fight something. Carbs, fats, meat, time of day, your own appetite. The Mediterranean Diet quietly skips the fight. It assumes you’ll move, rest, and share meals with people. It builds around those foundations rather than on restriction. That’s the part institutional backing can’t fully explain, and a part worth taking seriously.
New to the Diet Review Series? Start with Setting the Table — it lays out the fat-loss lens we run every diet through.
Diet Review Series: Vegan
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
Patchouli intensifies.
If vegetarianism is the cousin who shows up late, veganism is the one who brought a PowerPoint. It takes the “no meat” premise and extends it: no leather, no wool, no animal-derived ingredients anywhere in the basket.
Veganism existed as a quiet subcategory of vegetarianism for thousands of years, grounded in the same spiritual traditions. The modern distinction started in 1944 when Donald Watson and others split from the UK Vegetarian Society, defining veganism as avoiding all forms of animal exploitation, not just meat on the plate, but leather on the couch and cheese on the pizza. For most of the next 70 years, that’s what veganism was: a small, ethically-motivated movement piggybacking on anti-war sentiment and environmentalism in the 60s and 70s.
The health framing showed up much later. Forks Over Knives (2011), amplified by Netflix and social media, recast veganism as a cure for cardiovascular disease.Beyond Meat and Impossible Burgers landed a few years later, turning a fringe lifestyle into a grocery-aisle option. Today, veganism lives as half ethics, half wellness (with the ethics often quietly in the back seat).
How Veganism Reduces Calorie Intake
If you’ve been following this series, the pattern should look familiar by now.
Veganism tends to reduce caloric intake largely by restricting food options. Theoretically, vegan diets are built almost entirely from whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds.
The result? When done right, a substantial reduction in calorie intake, translating to lower obesity rates and, downstream, reduced rates of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Potential Nutrient Gaps
Veganism and vegetarianism share many nutritional challenges. But, with fewer fallback options, you need even more intentional planning to make sure you’re getting what your body needs.
Protein
Protein is the battle in the vegan world. Doable, but it takes strategy.
When we talk about protein requirements, we generally assume that most of it comes from “complete” proteins (i.e., ones that carry all nine essential amino acids in roughly the right ratios and are digestible enough to actually count).
What makes the cut? Soy checks all those boxes. So do quinoa, buckwheat, amaranth, and a few seeds (try chia and hemp). Frankly, it’s a pretty short list – and the reason vegans who are serious about protein talk a lot about soy.
Outside of complete proteins, the name of the game is pairing. (Note, it doesn’t have to be in the same meal, just the same day). Most traditional food cultures figured this out centuries ago:
Rice and beans
Lentils and wheat
Hummus and pita
Peanut butter and whole-grain bread
As an amino acid, leucine deserves special mention. It’s relatively scarce in vegan diets, but plays a critical role in muscle protein synthesis. For anyone trying to build or preserve muscle, a vegan protein powder (think soy isolate, or pea and rice blends) becomes less optional.
Vegan diets frequently mean higher total protein intake than omnivorous diets to compensate for lower digestibility and amino acid density. The upside is that these protein sources make you feel fuller for longer, meaning you’re less likely to overeat.
Vitamin B12
B12 is essential for DNA synthesis, red blood cell formation, and neurological function. But, it comes from bacteria. That means animal products or fortification – plants don’t provide it.
Supplementation is non-negotiable. Three working options:
Fortified foods (plant milks, nutritional yeast, fortified cereals) two to three times per day, targeting ~3mcg total
A daily supplement of >10 mcg
A weekly supplement of 2,000 mcg
Any of these work. This is a solved problem; you just have to be sure it’s actually solved for you.
Iron
Same story as the vegetarian diet. No heme iron at all, which means lower absorption and no absorption-boosting effect on the plant iron that is there.And, it’s a bigger issue for women than men.
But don’t supplement blindly. Consider regular bloodwork to understand what you actually need. Too much iron is just as problematic as too little.
Omega-3 fatty acids (EPA & DHA)
Plant foods provide ALA, which the body does convert into EPA and DHA – but inefficiently. As with vegetarian diets, an algae-based omega-3 supplement helps close the gap.
How We Break It (Common Failure Modes)
Twenty years ago, veganism was nearly unbreakable from a calorie-control standpoint. Processed foods were scarce, no one was making vegan snacks, and good luck finding a vegan restaurant outside of California. You practically had to chug olive oil and soda to gain weight.
But now.
Vegan fast food. Vegan junk food. Entire cookbooks are dedicated to hyper-palatable, calorie-dense vegan recipes. This is great for accessibility and sustainability. Less great for fat loss.
That said, sticking to vegan staples like tofu, rice, beans, fruits, and vegetables still generally translates to fat loss. The biggest challenge then becomes muscle maintenance, not fat gain. Again, the solution is strategy – sufficient protein, supplementation, and a solid resistance training program make the problem solvable.
Things fall apart (note the pattern in all of these diets) when ultra-processed foods dominate intake. As Kevin Hall has shown repeatedly, processed foods drive higher calorie intake. Period.
Sustainability Factor
Veganism used to require commitment. Now it doesn’t, and that cuts both ways. Veganism has never been more sustainable socially and logistically, but processed food strikes again.
The Final Verdict
If you’re going to make veganism work, you’ve got to be intentional. Protein intake must be planned. Vitamin B12 supplementation is mandatory. Omega-3s require attention. None of these are deal-breakers, but they do require forethought.
At the same time, veganism has never been easier. Gourmet vegan chefs exist. High-quality supplements are readily available. There are even vegan bodybuilders. Sure, many are on steroids, but that’s beside the point.
I like to poke fun at vegans because they’re an easy target. But the reality is that veganism can be a very healthy way to live. On average, vegans are significantly leaner and healthier than the typical omnivorous American, and building and maintaining muscle on a vegan diet is absolutely possible.
Turns out that eating a largely whole-food, plant-based diet tends to make people pretty lean and healthy. Who would’ve guessed?
New to the Diet Review Series? Start with Setting the Table — it lays out the fat-loss lens we run every diet through.
Diet Review Series: Vegetarian
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
I can smell the patchouli already.
Up next in the Diet Review series, we have the Vegetarian Diet.
Before we go further, let’s get specific. “Vegetarian” is an umbrella term covering several patterns. Broadly speaking, vegetarian diets center around fruits, vegetables, legumes, whole grains, nuts, and seeds, while excluding meat and animal products to varying degrees.
Where Vegetarianism Came From (And What It Wasn’t)
Vegetarianism did not originate as a health or weight-loss strategy. Its roots trace back to ancient India (roughly 1500-500 BCE) within spiritual traditions like Jainism, Hinduism, and, later, Buddhism. These practices are grounded in ahimsa – nonviolence toward living beings. Abstaining from meat became a moral and spiritual act.Vegetarianism didn’t acquire a health-oriented justification until the 1800s, largely through the Seventh-day Adventist movement. Still spiritual, but now with health longevity claims in the mix.
The China Study and the Modern Health Narrative
Enter The China Study, one of the most cited (and often misinterpreted) nutrition studies of all time.
A large epidemiological study examining dietary patterns, blood markers, and disease outcomes across rural Chinese counties, The China Study is frequently referenced in vegetarian circles. Regions with lower meat consumption tended to show lower rates of cardiovascular disease and more favorable lipid profiles.
Vegetarian proponents often point to this and conclude: Meat causes heart disease.
But context matters. The counties consuming more meat were generally more modernized. Think higher tobacco/alcohol use, less physical labor, and more access to meat. These were still relatively active, non-industrial populations, but the lifestyle differences mattered.
None of this “debunks” vegetarianism as a healthy option. It does, however, weaken the claim that meat intake itself was the primary driver of disease differences.
The author of The China Study later made broad claims that meat was inherently harmful, an interpretation that overreaches the evidence. Still, it undeniably cemented the “vegetarian equals healthier” narrative and helped propel vegetarianism into the modern wellness sphere. Add in growing concern about large-scale meat production, and vegetarianism is now both a moral and a health conversation.
Where I Stand
No moral arguments here. I personally choose to eat meat and think sourcing ethically is worth the effort when possible. That said, if vegetarianism is the path you want to take, what follows are the practical considerations needed to make it nutritionally sound, especially if fat loss is the goal.
Diets Under the Vegetarian Umbrella
Lacto-ovo vegetarian: Includes eggs and dairy, excludes all meat
Lacto vegetarian: Includes dairy, excludes eggs and meat
Ovo vegetarian: Includes eggs, excludes dairy and meat
Pescatarian: Includes fish, eggs, and dairy; excludes land-based meat
Vegan: Excludes all animal products, including eggs, dairy, honey, and animal-derived ingredients (vegetarianism’s militant cousin)
For this series, it makes the most sense to split vegetarian diets into three buckets:
Lacto-ovo variations
Pescatarian
Vegan
Here we’re talking about lacto-ovo variations, which center eggs, dairy products, fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, and seeds while excluding any form of meat.
How Vegetarianism Reduces Calorie Intake
There’s a common assumption that removing meat automatically reduces caloric intake. That can be true if “meat” means cheeseburgers, chicken tenders, and racks of ribs.
But meat can also be one of the leanest, most protein-dense foods available. Chicken breast, lean cuts of beef, pork tenderloin, and fish provide a lot of protein for relatively few calories.
So removing meat doesn’t automatically reduce calories.
Potential Nutrient Gaps
Protein (Amount and Quality)
Complete proteins contain all nine essential amino acids. Outside of meat, these are relatively limited, but eggs and dairy help a lot in lacto-ovo patterns.
The practical issue is calorie efficiency.
A whole egg has ~70 calories, ~7 g of fat, and ~7 g of protein. Fat provides 9 calories per gram, while protein provides 4. Eggs aren’t “bad,” but they’re more fat-dominant than protein-dominant. If most protein intake comes packaged with fat, calories can climb quickly.
Full-fat milk, cheese, and yogurt also provide high-quality protein and contain fats that can be nutritionally valuable, supporting satiety, hormone production, and absorption of fat-soluble vitamins. However, fat is still calorically dense, and those calories add up. When protein needs are high, relying primarily on full-fat dairy can make it harder to stay within an overall calorie target.
The good news: Modern options like egg whites, fat-free Greek yogurt, cottage cheese, and other low-fat dairy products dramatically improve protein-to-calorie ratios, making it far easier to hit protein targets while keeping total calories in check.
Vitamin B12
Vitamin B12 is found exclusively in animal foods.
Eggs and dairy contain some, but in much lower concentrations than meat. One egg provides roughly 20–25% of the RDA, while a 3 oz serving of beef provides 100–110%.
This doesn’t make deficiency inevitable, but it does require consistency and planning. Miss a few days of eggs or dairy, and intake drops fast.
Iron
Iron deserves special attention, particularly for women.
Heme iron (from meat) is highly bioavailable
Non-heme iron (from plants and eggs) is absorbed less efficiently
Even more important: Heme iron enhances absorption of non-heme iron. Remove meat, and you lose both the best iron source and the absorption boost.
Dairy complicates this further: It contains little iron, and calcium can inhibit iron absorption. If dairy is doing most of the protein work while iron intake is low, deficiency risk increases.
Because excess iron is also harmful, blanket supplementation isn’t ideal. Bloodwork and targeted supplementation are the smarter route.
Omega-3 fatty acids
Omega-3s are a common weak point across most diets.
There are three forms:
ALA (plant-based precursor)
EPA (cardiovascular support)
DHA (brain and nervous system structure)
ALA converts poorly to EPA and DHA. Since EPA and DHA are found primarily in fish, vegetarians often come up short.
An algae-based EPA/DHA supplement is the cleanest workaround.
How We Break It (Common Failure Modes)
I call this “mozzarella stick vegetarianism.”
Meat gets removed, but it’s replaced with cheese pizza, deep fried mozzarella sticks, Clif bars, and other ultra-processed junk that happens to be vegetarian. Avoiding meat becomes a proxy for “healthy,” even when calories are high and nutrient density is low.
Not eating meat does not prevent overeating. There’s no shortage of highly palatable, calorie-dense vegetarian foods (once again, I’m looking at you, peanut butter).
Sustainability Factor
Lacto-ovo vegetarianism is highly sustainable, especially today. Restaurants and food companies cater to it well, and convenience is rarely an issue.
From a fat loss perspective, it offers no inherent advantage over other diets. You could even argue it introduces a small disadvantage by excluding lean, protein-dense meats. But, that’s easily offset with intentional food choices.
As with most diets, emphasizing fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole foods improves satiety and micronutrient intake, making a calorie deficit easier to maintain.
The Final Verdict
Vegetarianism doesn’t automatically make you lean or healthy.
Calories still matter. Protein still matters. Nutrient coverage still matters. Removing meat doesn’t inherently create a caloric deficit, nor does it guarantee better body composition. What the epidemiological data does consistently show is that vegetarians, on average, tend to be leaner and have more favorable cardiometabolic risk profiles than typical Western omnivores. However, more recent data has added important nuance. The advantages associated with vegetarian diets appear to be driven far more by overall diet quality and lifestyle behaviors than by meat avoidance itself. When confounding factors like physical activity, smoking, alcohol use, and socioeconomic status are better accounted for, the mortality advantage of vegetarian diets becomes less consistent, even though improvements in markers like blood lipids, blood pressure, and diabetes risk often remain.
In other words, vegetarian diets tend to work well when they are built around whole, minimally processed foods and supported by generally health-conscious behaviors, just like every other diet strategy.
From a fat loss perspective, vegetarianism is neither a magic bullet nor a liability. It’s a viable framework that can support leanness and long-term health, but only when calories are controlled, protein intake is intentional, and known nutritional gaps are addressed. Removing meat doesn’t do the work for you. Thoughtful planning does.
New to the Diet Review Series? Start with Setting the Table — it lays out the fat-loss lens we run every diet through.
Diet Review Series: Paleo
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
Eat like our ancestors because they were free from disease… right?
The Paleo diet originated in anthropology. Early researchers studying hunter-gatherer populations observed very low rates of the metabolic diseases common in modern societies: obesity, type 2 diabetes, and heart disease. This inspired thinkers like Walter Voegtlin, who published The Stone Age Diet in 1975. Voegtlin and others argued that humans evolved to eat only foods available during the Paleolithic era (roughly 3 million to 10,000 years ago), and that agriculture introduced grains, sugar, and other foods to which humans weren’t adapted. This “evolutionary mismatch,” they suggested, caused modern metabolic disease.
On vibes, the theory sounds great. History complicates it. Type 2 diabetes and atherosclerotic heart disease didn’t explode right after the agricultural revolution. In fact, they were rare until the late 1700s, when they appeared primarily as diseases of wealth. They still didn’t affect the general population in any significant way until the early 20th century, accelerating dramatically after World War II.
This timing suggests a murkier reality. Rather than “we ate foods we didn’t evolve to eat,” the explosion of metabolic disease aligns more closely with industrialization: less physical activity, far greater food availability, and the rise of highly processed, shelf-stable, energy-dense foods (many developed to feed soldiers overseas) making their way into the general population.
None of this means that a Paleo diet can’t be healthy or effective for weight loss. But it does undermine the claim that modern metabolic disease is primarily a post-agricultural mismatch.
That's enough history. Let’s dig in!
Paleo Defined
Core rule: If it wasn’t available 12,000 years ago, don’t eat it.
Well…with modern caveats. Many current Paleo plans include refined oils like coconut oil, olive oil, avocado oil, and ghee. Strict Paleo purists may disagree.
Included Foods
Meat, fish, and eggs
Fruits and vegetables
Nuts, seeds, and added fats (olive oil, avocado oil, coconut oil, ghee)
Excluded Foods
Ultra-processed foods
Grains
Legumes
Dairy
Refined sugar
Soy
How Paleo Reduces Calorie Intake
Constraint = fewer easy calories. Removing ultra-processed foods dramatically lowers overeating risk. Remember the Kevin Hall study where participants ate ~500 calories per day more on ultra-processed diets? Paleo largely eliminates that exposure. That’s, generally, a win.
That said, a note on “processed.” Not all ultra-processed foods are inherently bad. Convenience foods can be useful tools and help fill nutritional gaps. Whey protein powder, for example, is technically ultra-processed, but can be a highly practical and health-positive way to hit protein targets.
Restaurants become friction. Between seed oils (which may not actually be harmful), butter, sugar, soy, emulsifiers in sauces, dairy-based dressings, and grains hidden everywhere, eating out is a Paleo minefield. From a fat-loss and health perspective, this friction can help. From a convenience and enjoyment standpoint, it can be tough.
Potential Nutrient Gaps
Paleo is generally nutrient-dense: Meat, fruits, and vegetables provide a wide range of vitamins and minerals. Still, there are a few nutrients that require intentional planning.
Calcium
Removing dairy creates a significant calcium gap. That doesn’t mean calcium is unavailable on Paleo, but you have to seek it out.
Good Paleo-friendly sources include:
Sardines with bones
Dark leafy greens like kale, collard greens, and bok choy
Iodine
By removing iodized salt, dairy, and conventional grains, it removes common iodine sources.
Interestingly, iodine in grains largely comes from dough conditioners and dairy iodine comes from iodine in cattle feed and iodine-based disinfectants used in milking.
Without these, iodine intake can drop unless you eat seafood or seaweed regularly.
Fiber
This one surprises people.
Yes, fruits and vegetables contain fiber, but typically in smaller amounts per serving. Grains and legumes are among the most efficient fiber sources, and removing them can significantly reduce total intake.
While you can compensate with more produce, the volume required can lead to GI distress. Speaking from experience: Living on gigantic salads is a fast track to bloating and discomfort.
How We Break It (Common Failure Modes)
Nuts and Seeds
The easiest way to break Paleo is to overeat nuts and seeds. While healthy, nuts and seeds are very calorie dense and incredibly easy to mindlessly eat (as anyone who has sat down with a bag of shelled pistachios can attest to).
Calories per ½ cup:
Almonds: ~410–430 kcal
Cashews: ~430–450 kcal
Walnuts: ~370–390 kcal
Pecans: ~370–380 kcal
Pistachios: ~330–350 kcal
Macadamia nuts: ~500–520 kcal
Brazil nuts: ~470–490 kcal
Sunflower seeds (hulled): ~410–430 kcal
Pumpkin seeds (pepitas): ~360–380 kcal
Sesame seeds: ~410–430 kcal
Chia seeds: ~360–380 kcal
Flax seeds: ~300–320 kcal
Cooking Oils
Olive oil is one of the most health-positive foods on the planet. It also contains ~120 calories per tablespoon.
If you aren’t measuring, the difference between a 200-calorie meal and a 500-calorie meal can be as simple as tipping the bottle a little too far.
Fatty Meats
Fatty cuts like ribeye and pork butt aren’t inherently problematic, but ignoring calorie density while eating large portions at every meal can quickly stall fat loss.
Processed “Paleo” Snacks
Anytime a diet gains popularity, the market responds to fill the niche. Enter Paleo puffs, cookies, crackers, and bars. Essentially a lineup of processed snacks performing ingredient gymnastics to create a less tasty version of everyone’s favorite junk foods that still technically follow the rules of whatever diet is currently in fashion.
Paleo isn’t nearly as hot as it was 10 years ago (or was it 15? Damn I’m getting old), but these products are still very much alive. And, as always, processed foods designed to be palatable, even when branded as “healthy,” can be easy to overeat.
To their credit, Paleo-branded snacks do have a few things working in their favor. They’re generally more nutrient-dense than conventional junk food, often less hyper-palatable, and usually more expensive. All three of those factors can naturally limit intake for a lot of people.
Still, they’re snacks, and snacks that try to mimic indulgent foods tend to invite the same behavior patterns. Paleo rules don’t make you immune to overeating.
Sustainability Factor
If you’re comfortable cooking most of your own food, Paleo can be a plausible long-term approach. Modern access to a wide variety of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and spices keeps it more interesting and satisfying than the name might suggest.
The main challenge is social. Dining out narrows options quickly. As diet dogmas go, you could do worse than Paleo; just know where the friction lives.
The Final Verdict
Building the foundation of your diet around Paleo-approved foods, paired with basic calorie awareness, is a solid strategy. Not because cavemen were jacked or disease-free, but because a base of quality meat, fruits, and vegetables reliably delivers protein, micronutrients, and good satiety.
That said, there’s nothing inherently wrong with including whole grains, dairy, legumes, or even the occasional processed food, as long as overall calories are kept in check. One of the biggest pitfalls of diets built on a “good food vs. bad food” framework is that they moralize eating. For some, those rules fuel cycles of rigid “good” weeks, then “bad” rebounds and binges.
Food choices work best when they’re practical, flexible, and sustainable, not when they carry a moral scorecard.
New to the Diet Review Series? Start with Setting the Table — it lays out the fat-loss lens we run every diet through.
Diet Review Series: Setting the Table
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
Now that we’ve established (and probably beaten into the ground) why body composition matters and how fat loss actually works, it’s time to put some popular diets under the microscope.
In this series, we’ll evaluate well-known diets through a fat loss lens. Not ideology. Not anecdotes. Just: Does it help you lose mostly fat (not muscle) and stay healthy while you do it?
For each diet, I’ll ask a few simple but important questions:
What is it, really?
How does it reduce caloric intake?
Are there nutritional gaps or deficiencies that need to be addressed?
How we break it (common failure modes)?
Is it sustainable long term?
The goal here is to drop the dogma and take a pragmatic look at whether these diets are actually useful tools when fat loss is the objective. Because while diets differ in branding and rules, effective fat loss usually requires a few common elements:
Adequate complete protein
Enough satiety to make adherence possible
Some mechanism to constrain total calories
A plan you can sustain beyond the fat-loss phase
That last point cannot be overstated.
If a diet is something you have to white-knuckle your way through, counting down the days until you can “go back to eating normally,” I have bad news: The weight you lost is likely to return. If the way you were eating led you to need fat loss in the first place, returning to those habits usually leads you to the same outcome.
The reality is that some diets work very well for some people. Others won’t. None will work for everyone. The point is figuring out which one works for you. This series isn’t about debunking diets or declaring winners. It’s about context.
My aim is to explain how a given diet works, who it might work for, and what to watch out for if you choose that path. From there, the individual decision becomes clearer, and far less emotional. Think of it like selecting the right tool for the job, not a new identity to wear.
The Ins and Outs of Fat Loss
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
Fat loss may be the most sought-after health pursuit of all, and for good reason. As we’ve been talking about in the body composition section, excess body fat is strongly associated with worse health outcomes. But scratch beneath the surface and what most people are actually chasing isn't just a number on the scale. It's more energy, fewer aches, a body that keeps showing up for the life they want to live. Fat loss is the lever they've been told to pull. Knowing that, how do you pull it well?
Losing fat without losing weight is rare. It typically only happens in the first year or two of quality resistance training (a great idea for general health and longevity). Outside of that early window, reducing body fat almost always requires losing body weight.
And, the only way to lose body weight is to create a calorie deficit.
You’ll see a nauseating amount of fitness content naming a specific villain – some ingredient, food group, or macronutrient that’s “secretly making you fat.” That’s noise. Fundamentally, weight gain (including fat gain) happens when we consistently consume more calories than we burn, regardless of where those calories come from.
That said, what you eat plays a massive role in how many calories you end up consuming. It’s really hard to overeat broccoli. It’s incredibly easy to overeat hyper-palatable, ultra-processed foods.
Because we’re taking a holistic approach to health and fitness, it’s worth stating clearly: The goal isn’t just weight loss. Muscle tissue is critical for health, performance, and aging well. Sure, we want the weight we lose to be mostly fat, while preserving as much muscle as possible. But if the only goal was weight loss, the advice could stop at “eat less and move more.” To optimize body composition, though, we need a bit more precision.
The Recipe for Fat Loss and Muscle Preservation
A calorie deficit
Adequate protein intake (rule of thumb: .6-1g/per pound of goal weight)
A muscle-preserving signal (resistance training)
Calorie Deficit: The Non-Negotiable
There are two primary ways to create a calorie deficit:
Reduce intake (Fewer calories consumed)
Increase expenditure (more movement)
Using exercise alone to create a meaningful deficit is possible, but inefficient. Take the popular 12-3-30 incline treadmill workout. It’s effective and challenging, and it typically burns ~250-400 calories depending on body size. That’s roughly the same as a slice of pepperoni pizza or a grande pumpkin spice latte.
The most effective strategy is a top-down + bottom-up approach: modestly reduce intake and modestly increase activity.
Approaches to Reduce Intake
Lean Heavily on Real Food
My personal favorite approach to fat loss is simple: eat mostly whole foods. This was one of the primary changes I made when I lost 150 pounds.
A diet centered around minimally processed meats, vegetables, fruits, eggs, beans, dairy, nuts, and grains tends to naturally reduce calorie intake while providing abundant micronutrients, fiber, and protein. When people consistently meet their nutritional needs, body weight and body composition often improve as a side effect.
Processed foods are not inherently “bad.” However, foods designed to be maximally delicious tend to drive higher calorie intake. Kevin Hall’s well-known study on ultra-processed foods found that people consumed roughly 500 more calories per day on ultra-processed diets than unprocessed ones, even when the macros matched. The pattern is consistent: Ultra-processed foods make it easier to overeat. Chronic overeating drives weight gain.
Bliss point: The sugar-salt-fat combo engineered to maximize pleasure and encourage another bite.
The inverse is also true: “Healthy” foods don’t make you immune to overeating. Nuts are nutrient-dense but also calorie-dense. A palm-sized handful might be 140-180 calories, while a generous handful can approach 400. Repeated throughout the day, even “healthy” foods can put you over.
Minimize Restaurant Meals
A restaurant’s job is to make food taste amazing. This usually means generous amounts of butter, oil, sugar, and salt. Read: calorie-dense and hard to stop eating.
I’m not proposing a never-eat-out rule. But it is an argument for awareness. If fat loss is a goal, limit exposure to highly palatable, calorie-dense settings.
If you do eat out, ask to box half the meal upfront. Pre-portioning reduces reliance on willpower once the plate hits the table.
Track Calories (At Least Temporarily)
No one wants to hear this, but it works.
What gets measured gets managed. A clear calorie target beats a vague “eat less.” Even short-term tracking (think a 1-2 week sprint) dramatically improves awareness of portions and sneaky calories (coffee creamer, salad dressings, “healthy” bars…). Food scales and apps like MyFitnessPal, Carbon, or MacroFactor make it simple.
Awareness alone frequently changes behavior, even if you stop tracking.
GLP-1 Medications (Wegovy and Zepbound)
From Oprah to Serena Williams to the World Health Organization, GLP-1 medications are everywhere.
If you have significant weight to lose, talk with your clinician about whether they’re appropriate given your health history, goals, and side-effect profile. They are tools, not magic – and best used alongside strength training, protein, sleep, and movement.
Approaches to Increase Energy Expenditure
The other half of the equation is much more straightforward. Every kind of movement burns calories (yes, even that one…). The options are nearly endless, which is good news – you’re more likely to find something you enjoy (and stick to).
Get to Steppin’
Step goals are one of the most accessible ways to increase daily energy expenditure. Walking is low-impact, convenient, and loaded with health benefits.
10,000 steps isn’t magical. It’s simply a reasonable target. A better approach is to aim for more steps than you’re getting now. If you average 2,000 steps per day, moving toward 5,000 is a huge win.
And, everything counts: parking farther away, household chores, playing with kids. This makes movement feel like part of life rather than a scheduled punishment.
Join a Class
Spin, rowing, yoga, Pilates, dance, OrangeTheory, barre… Classes add structure and a social boost, which can supercharge consistency.
Run, Cycle, or Hike Outdoors
Outdoor activity has been shown to improve mental health outcomes both preventatively and therapeutically. From a personal perspective I never feel better than when I spend time moving outdoors. Moving through open space, fresh air, and nature are hard to beat. Bring a friend and it becomes something you look forward to, not something you dread.
Pair Cardio with a Show
Living in the Midwest means there’s a good chunk of the year when exercising outdoors ranges from unappealing to downright miserable. When Missouri weather shuts the door on outdoor movement, my go-to is incline walking on a treadmill while watching a show.
A show you’re genuinely engaged in turns “endless minutes” into “that episode flew by.” The goal isn’t to suffer; it’s to make exercise pleasant enough that you’ll keep doing it.
Join a League or Play a Sport
Pickleball, disc golf, softball, soccer, kickball…. Once you step away from the idea that exercise has to look like 30 minutes of doing something you hate, an entire world opens up. Movement can be about play, competition, and connection with other people. When exercise is fun, consistency tends to take care of itself.
The Big Picture
Fat loss is often the entry point, but it’s rarely the real goal. What most of us are chasing is better health, more energy, and a body that supports the life we want to live.
Approach fat loss through sustainable habits and it becomes a side effect of living well rather than a constant battle. Strength, movement, nourishment, and consistency form the foundation not just for a leaner body, but for long-term health and independence.
The goal isn’t to win a short-term fight with your body. It’s to build a lifelong partnership with it.
Sleep, Recovery, and Stress Management: Vital Tools for Staying in the Game
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
In a fast paced world that shows no signs of slowing down it can feel crazy to prioritize downtime. But the faster the world gets, the more vital it is to intentionally unplug and recharge. If we get caught in the trap of “more more more,” we end up operating at a deficit – and never see our true potential.
Taking time away can feel like falling behind. In reality, it’s what gives you the energy to keep pace. With the performance benefits of sleep, recovery, and better stress management, the reality is you can’t afford not to make them a priority. Think of these habits as maintenance: a small, regular expense that protects every other investment.
Sleep: The Cornerstone of Physical and Mental Recovery
Sleep is the foundation of recovery, both mentally and physically. From emotional regulation and cognitive performance to actually laying down the improvements you chased in the gym, sleep isn’t an afterthought. It’s the work behind the work.
What It Does
Rewiring Memory and Skills: Brain Performance
Memory consolidation and synaptic “down selection”: During slow-wave NREM, new memories are replayed and integrated. Ditching unnecessary fluff and consolidating the core learnings keeping the brain efficient. Result: better learning and recall tomorrow.
Motor Learning Upgrades: Late NREM sleep predicts gains in fine motor tasks. REM then further tunes sensorimotor programs. Ever get stuck on a skill then nail it the next day? Sleep puts the pieces together after you practice.
Emotional Calibration: Mental Resilience
REM sleep reduces next-day amygdala reactivity to prior emotional events and restores prefrontal control, supporting calmer decision-making under stress.
Physical Recovery: Anabolic Signaling and Tissue Repair
Growth Hormone/ IGF-1 & Testosterone rhythms. Deep sleep is tightly coupled to Growth Hormone Pulsatility; overnight endocrine patterns favor protein synthesis, connective-tissue repair, and training adaptation. Translation: the signal you send in training is built while you sleep.
Metabolic Control: Fuel Use & Body Composition
Even a week of modest restriction reduces insulin sensitivity; a single short night can move you toward insulin resistance. Short sleep lowers leptin (satiety), raises ghrelin (hunger), driving food cravings and making overeating more likely.
Readiness: Autonomic & Cardiovascular Reset
NREM sleep shifts the body into parasympathetic “rest and digest.” Heart rate and blood pressure drop, providing a nightly “cardiovascular holiday.”
Performance: Vigilance, Reaction Time and Injury Risk
Sleep restriction reliably degrades sustained attention and processing speed, undermining decision speed and accuracy.
In athletes, less sleep is associated with higher musculoskeletal injuries. Think slower reaction time, worse motor control, and poorer tissue recovery.
Walking: A Simple, Powerful Recovery Tool
Walking is widely accessible, adds to your recovery bank, and pays off without having to walk 10,000 miles.
Blood flow: Gentle contractions while walking act as a skeletal‑muscle “pump” that pushes venous blood back to the heart.
Short bouts of walking (3-5 minutes) counter endothelial dysfunction caused by prolonged sitting.
A healthy endothelium (the “smart lining” of blood vessels) opens and closes flow on demand and keeps surfaces slick – meaning less plaque and clot risk.
Improved glucose clearance: A 10-15 minute walk after a meal reduces blood sugar spikes and low-grade inflammation risk (think type 2 diabetes, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, and rheumatoid arthritis).
Boosted mood, focus, and creativity
Even short bouts of walking improve cerebral blood flow and mood; symptoms of depression/anxiety decline with both indoor and outdoor walking.
Walking boosts performance on creative tasks (perfect for a quick reset between meetings - or, even consider a walking meeting!).
Nature Exposure: A Low-Friction Stress Relief
Attention: Even a 40-second view of greenery outperforms concrete for improved focus.
Mood: Short walks near trees (even in urban areas) reduce tension, fatigue, confusion, and anxiety.
Recovery: Patients with a nature in view had less complications and shorter hospital stays post surgery.
Proactively Managing Stress Pays Dividends
Stress is part of the game and a necessary ingredient for performance. But there’s a sweet spot. Too little stress means no focus and no action; too much systems start to fray. High stress load is tied to higher risk of all cause mortality (22%) and cardiovascular disease (31%). Plus, it compromises immunity (hello, frequent colds).
It’s not about avoiding stress; it’s about noticing when you start to drift too far out of a healthy range and using simple tools to come back into balance.
The Takeaway
Sleep, recovery, walking, nature, and a few repeatable stress tools aren’t luxuries; they’re vital infrastructure. When you protect them, everything else (from training and metabolism to thinking and mood) works better.
And, you don’t need a perfect routine. Start with one: 10 minutes of walking after lunch, a quick wind-down before bed, or three big breaths between meetings. Small, consistent deposits compound, and they’ll keep you in the game for years to come.
Meaning and Purpose
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
A labor of love is sustainable (nothing else is).
Taking care of your body is work. Forgoing the tasty thing in front of you to keep a healthy body weight. Sweating and grunting in the gym to build muscle. Making time to move so your cardiovascular system runs smoothly. Being disciplined about getting to bed each night so you can recover and do it all again. It can feel daunting, especially at the start.
That’s why I encourage anyone building a healthy lifestyle to start by connecting their fitness and health journey to meaning and purpose. Don’t just do it because you “should.” Tie it to your ability to be effective as a parent/spouse/business owner – the roles that matter most. Then, what seems like a chore becomes the scaffolding for the life you’re building.
Aesthetics are Great, but There’s More to It
We all want to look good. But consider expanding the frame: connect body composition to the functional realities of blood sugar management, inflammation, and longevity. Managing it is a lever to support your performance now and in the future – so you can watch your kids grow up and build families of their own, get down on the floor to play with your grandchildren, or have the physical capacity to do the activities you love decades down the road.
Movement as a Celebration
Find ways to move your body that truly bring you joy: pickleball with good friends, dancing with your spouse, training to summit that mountain you’ve dreamed of. A daily foundation of movement keeps you primed for adventure and fun. When it’s fun, it stops being a task and becomes something you can’t wait to do.
Take Care of Future You
Sleep can feel like it's getting in the way. “More work to be done.” “The kids are finally down – this is my only me-time.” “One more episode.” Every night offers a barrage of choices that either hurt or help your future self. Prioritizing sleep sets tomorrow up to win. Remember how much better you feel. think, and train after a solid night's rest – it might help you resist the scroll.
Putting It Together
Widen the time horizon. One workout, one walk, or one night of sleep won’t make or break you. But ten years of small good choices vs. small bad ones? It’s the difference between creaky and capable. When things start to feel like a grind, zoom out. Re-orient to the things you really care about. Think about how much better a healthy version of you will feel and perform in those situations. Health is the quiet engine behind it all – steady deposits that compound into the life you want.
The Ins and Outs of Building Muscle
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
TL;DR
Lift weights.
Do 5–20 reps per set; the last 2-3 reps should be challenging (with good form).
Train each muscle group with 3-10 sets, twice per week.
Don’t retrain a muscle until it’s no longer sore.
Eat enough protein: 0.6–1g per pound of desired body weight.
Get plenty of sleep.
Stay active with low-intensity movement to support recovery.
We’ve established how important adequate muscle mass is to overall health and performance. Here’s the nitty-gritty of how to actually build it.
The Three Pillars of Muscle Growth
1. Stimulus: Your body needs a reason to grow – a signal that it should prepare for greater demands. Enter resistance training. When you lift weights, tension is placed on your muscles, activating force receptors in the muscle cells. If the tension is high enough, those receptors signal your body to adapt by growing stronger and adding muscle tissue.
2. Substrate: Then, you need raw materials. Protein is essential (without it, your body can’t repair and build muscle efficiently). If you train hard but under-eat protein, your body will cannibalize existing muscle tissue to repair damaged areas – a robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul scenario that stalls progress.
3. Rest: Lifting weights sends the signal, but growth happens during rest. After training, your body enters repair mode – especially during sleep. Without adequate recovery, you simply accumulate damage without adaptation.
Stimulus: Sending the Signal
Muscle growth is driven by mechanical tension.
Useful terms:
Rep (Repetition): One complete movement of an exercise. Each rep includes a concentric phase (muscle shortens, e.g., lifting a weight) and an eccentric phase (muscle lengthens, e.g., lowering a weight).
Set: A group of consecutive reps performed without resting.
Load: The amount of weight lifted.
Volume: Sets × reps × load = total work done.
Intensity: How close a set is to your maximum effort. Measured either as a % of your 1-rep max (1RM) or using:
RPE (Rate of Perceived Exertion): Scale of 1-10 based on difficulty.
RIR (Reps in Reserve): How many more reps you could do before failure.
Frequency: How often you train a given muscle group per week.
Anatomy of a Set
Rep Range: 5-20 (scientific range extends to 30, but practicality and attention span matter)
Intensity: 65%-85% of your 1RM, or sets taken to within 1-3 reps of failure
Cue: Aim for the last 2-3 reps of each set to be heavy but manageable
The sweet spot:
To build muscle, you need all three ingredients in the training signal:
Tension (sufficient load)
Volume (enough total work)
Effort (training close enough to failure)
In practice:
Doing a single all-out rep with a very heavy load gives you plenty of tension and intensity – but it lacks volume, which is also crucial for hypertrophy.
Doing 1000 reps with next to no weight gives you volume, but it lacks sufficient tension. Plus, let’s be honest – you’d probably get so bored midway through that you'd abandon ship long before rep 1000.
Think Goldilocks: enough weight to produce tension with enough reps and sets to create volume. Practically, that looks like working in the 5-20 rep range, where the last few reps are difficult but doable and enough sets that you feel challenged but not so sore you can’t train the muscle again later in the week.
How Many Sets?
Studies suggest a very wide range (from as few as 3 sets up to as many as 52 sets per muscle group per week) can stimulate growth. But that 52-set number comes from studies focusing on a single muscle group in isolation. If you tried to apply that kind of volume across your entire body, you’d likely end up as a pile of mush by the end of the week.
For most people pursuing general health, performance, and aesthetics, a much more sustainable range is:
6-20 sets per muscle group per week
Spread across 2-3 training sessions
Adjust by outcomes. Increase when:
You’re not wrecked when it’s time to train again.
Strength/rep quality improves week over week.
You feel recovered and motivated.
Remember: Volume needs are individual. Some people grow well with fewer sets, while others may need more to see progress. Tinker and adjust.
A Simple Starting Point
When working with beginners, I often start with two full-body workouts per week. Each session includes 3 sets of 4 compound exercises:
Push (chest/triceps)
Pull (back/biceps)
Lower Body: Quad-dominant + Hip-dominant
To save time and boost efficiency, I recommend antagonist supersets: pairing two exercises that target opposing muscle groups (e.g., a push and a pull). While one group works, the other rests, cutting down on total gym time and adding a touch of cardio.
Sample Beginner Program
Day 1:
3x Superset:
Incline Dumbbell Press (chest/triceps) – 8-12 reps
Leg Curl (hamstrings) – 8-12 reps
3x Superset:
Walking Lunge (quads/glutes) – 8-12 reps
Lat Pulldown (back/biceps) – 8-12 reps
Day 2:
3x Superset:
Flat Dumbbell Press (chest/triceps) – 10-15 reps
Romanian Deadlift (glutes/hamstrings) – 8-12 reps
3x Superset:
Goblet Squat or Barbell Squat (quads) – 8-12 reps
Single Arm Dumbbell Row (back/biceps) – 10-15 reps
It’s simple, scalable, and covers all major muscle groups in 30-45 minutes. If you do just this consistently, gradually increase the weights over time, and eat well, you’ll get 80% of the benefits lifting has to offer.
There are endless training splits and exercise variations out there, but for general health, this is more than enough. Get strong. Stay consistent. Build muscle.
Substrate: Building Blocks for Growth
Muscle doesn’t materialize out of thin air. Once you send the signal with training, your body needs raw materials to build new tissue – and that starts with what’s on your plate.
The star of the show here is protein, which provides the amino acids your body uses to repair and build muscle fibers. Without enough of it, you can train perfectly and still get nowhere – your body will just recycle amino acids from other tissues.
How Much Protein Do You Need?
A good rule of thumb:
0.6-1 gram of protein per pound of your ideal body weight.
If you're overweight, use a goal weight to guide your intake.
If you're lean and trying to build, use your current weight or slightly above.
Most people fall in the 100-180g/day range depending on size and goals.
Pro tip: Spread protein evenly across 3-5 meals per day to optimize muscle protein synthesis.
Protein is king, but it's not a solo act.
To support recovery and growth, you also need:
Adequate calories overall – If you’re under-eating, your body won’t prioritize muscle building. But if you’re overweight and trying to lose fat, good news: you already have extra calories on board – in the form of stored body fat. Your body can tap into those reserves to fuel the muscle-building process.
Carbs – Fuel your muscles and your brain. They replenish glycogen stores, which is especially important if you’re training hard or frequently. Carbs have been demonized to death in fitness circles, but if performance is the goal, they’re not the enemy – they’re a powerful tool in a balanced diet.
Healthy fats – Support hormone production, joint health, and overall cellular function. A good baseline is 0.3 grams per pound of goal body weight per day. Dip too far below that, and you may not have enough raw materials for optimal hormone production – especially testosterone and other key anabolic hormones.
You can be flexible with carbs and fats based on your preferences. But, if you’re skipping the protein, you’re leaving gains on the table.
Practical Tips
Track protein intake at least for a week to get a sense of where you stand.
Front-load your day with a high-protein breakfast – don’t play catch-up at dinner.
Use snacks strategically (e.g., Greek yogurt, jerky, protein shakes) to hit your daily target.
Special Considerations: When You May Need a Caloric Surplus
If you're lean and undermuscled, or you’ve been training for a while and want to continue building muscle, there comes a point where a caloric surplus becomes necessary. Gaining muscle requires energy – not just protein, but total fuel.
Beginners can often build muscle without gaining weight (aka "newbie gains").
Overweight individuals can often gain muscle while losing fat, thanks to built-in energy reserves.
But for trained, lean individuals, further progress almost always requires eating more than you burn.
At this stage, you may benefit from a dedicated bulking phase, where you intentionally gain a modest amount of weight (e.g., 0.25-0.5 lbs per week). This gives your body the resources to build muscle efficiently, without excessive fat gain.
For more advanced lifters chasing their genetic potential (not just “enough” muscle for health, but the upper ceiling of performance) this may also mean cycling between bulking and cutting phases over time.
This level of planning isn’t necessary for everyone. But if you're serious about maximizing size and strength, it's something to consider.
Rest & Recovery: Where the Magic Actually Happens
You’ve lifted. You’ve fueled. Now it’s time to grow.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of constantly asking, “What else can I do?” More workouts, more supplements, more hacks. But when it comes to building muscle, sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is… nothing. Or more specifically: rest strategically.
Why Recovery Matters
Training sends the signal. Nutrition provides the building blocks. But recovery is where the actual construction happens.
Every time you lift, you create microscopic damage in your muscle fibers. That’s not a bad thing – it’s the stimulus your body needs to grow stronger. But without adequate recovery, you’re just piling stress on top of stress, and eventually your body stops adapting and starts breaking down.
When you rest, your body repairs that damage, making your muscles stronger, thicker, and more resilient than before. No recovery? No progress.
Sleep: The Underrated Linchpin
If you could bottle the effects of high-quality sleep and sell it, it would outsell protein powder and pre-workout combined.
Most muscle repair and growth happens during deep sleep, particularly during slow-wave sleep stages.
Growth hormone (A key signal for repair) is released in its highest concentrations during sleep.
Testosterone (a key contributor to anabolism) also rises during sleep.
Poor sleep increases cortisol (your stress hormone), which interferes with muscle repair, blunts testosterone, and increases the risk of fat gain.
Aim for 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night. If you’re training hard or under high life stress, lean toward the higher end.
Simple tips that go a long way:
Keep a consistent sleep schedule (yes, even on weekends).
Limit screens and bright lights 1-2 hours before bed.
Cool, dark, quiet room = sleep superpowers.
Active Recovery: Move Light, Recover Hard
Rest doesn’t mean becoming one with your couch. In fact, light movement can enhance recovery by increasing circulation, reducing soreness, and promoting lymphatic drainage.
Think:
Easy walks
Light cycling
Yoga or stretching
Mobility work
This type of movement increases blood flow without adding more fatigue, which can speed up the repair process and help you bounce back stronger.
Bonus: It also helps regulate your nervous system – especially important if you’re dealing with stress (and who isn’t?).
The Big Picture
Building muscle isn’t just about doing more. It’s about doing enough and then stepping back to let your body respond.
If you're constantly sore, dragging through workouts, or not making progress despite "doing everything right," it might be time to train less, sleep more, and move gently on your off days.
Strategic recovery isn’t laziness – it’s intelligent training.
The Dieting Dilemma: Why Finding Your Sweet Spot Matters
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
The Rush to Results
Many of us approach dieting like ripping off a bandage – the faster, the better. I get it, I'm guilty as well. Intentionally depriving ourselves is hard, and the thought of doing so longer than necessary is maddening. So the faster the better…right?
Well maybe. There’s a common theme when thinking about fat loss: Aim for sweet spots, not extremes.
The Slow-and-Steady Struggle
Dieting slowly might be the healthiest move on paper (and for your body), but maintaining a tiny deficit for months can be excruciating. The margin for error is small, meticulous tracking gets tedious, and progress is slow enough that it’s difficult to tell if anything’s changing.
The Danger of Drastic Deficits
The other end of the spectrum is to go hard and rush to the finish line. Tempting, there can be some pretty nasty tradeoffs.
A deep caloric deficit is stressful on our bodies. We’re literally taking away the substrate our bodies use to function and asking our bodies to access the energy we have stored as body fat. Do that at a slow to moderate pace, no big deal. Do that quickly? The body starts to worry. From a survival perspective, an extreme dip in the calories coming in spells big trouble.
Your Body’s Priorities: Survival First
Humans, like all living creatures, have two fundamental drivers:
Survival
Reproduction
When survival is taken care of, we can put resources towards the second (grr baby). But when survival feels threatened, the body reroutes resources toward finding food and away from, well, everything else.
Even when, intellectually, we know that we’re not at risk of starving while dieting, our bodies don't. The deeper and more sustained the restriction of energy, the more generations of biological hardwiring think our survival is at risk. That means the less we’re going to spend resources on anything that doesn't immediately work towards us surviving this (artificial, self-imposed) famine.
In men, testosterone will drop – and with it sexual desire. Women will stop menstruating, and their bodies will no longer prepare for pregnancy each month.
It's a genius design. Without enough available resources around to ensure survival, our bodies put the kibosh on reproducing because the likelihood of offspring surviving in a real resource-scarce environment drops dramatically.
System-Wide Conservation: Body and Mind Under Siege
Sex drive isn’t the only thing affected by the hormonal cascade resulting from a (again, artificial) resource crisis. The perceived threat of starvation triggers a comprehensive energy-conservation strategy across your physiology – including both physical and cognitive functions.
Physical Energy Conservation
Reduced Basal Metabolic Rate: Your body becomes remarkably efficient with calories by lowering your BMR (the amount of energy needed just to keep your organs functioning). The upshot is that you burn significantly fewer calories, even at complete rest.
Decreased Physical Performance: Strength, endurance, and recovery capacity dip as your body diverts energy away from muscle tissue maintenance. Workouts that once felt manageable become increasingly difficult.
Fatigue and Lethargy: Your brain actively generates feelings of tiredness to discourage movement, reducing what scientists call NEAT (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis) – all the small, spontaneous movements that typically burn calories throughout your day.
Cold Intolerance: Body temperature regulation requires a lot of energy. When resources are scarce, your brain reduces circulation to extremities and lowers core temperature slightly, making you feel perpetually cold.
Cognitive Prioritization
While these physical changes are occurring, your brain, which normally consumes about 20% of your total energy despite being only 2% of your body weight, undergoes its own resource allocation strategy:
Impaired Concentration: Your brain rations glucose to essentials, making concentration on anything unrelated to food or immediate survival harder.
Decision Fatigue: Complex decision-making and your capacity for nuanced thinking and willpower dramatically decline, explaining why dietary compliance becomes progressively harder.
Cognitive Narrowing: You hyperfocus on food as your brain prioritizes finding nourishment. Hence why most people on a diet become preoccupied with meals, recipes, and eating.
Memory Issues: Working memory and cognitive processing speed decline as your brain directs limited energy to more survival-critical functions.
Mood Disturbances: Serotonin/dopamine balance can be disrupted, triggering increased irritability, anxiety, and depression. (At least these mood changes aren't character flaws but direct biological responses to perceived threat?)
All these adaptations occur through precise biological mechanisms. Stress hormones like cortisol increase (promoting fat storage and muscle breakdown), while thyroid hormones decrease (slowing metabolism). Blood glucose is carefully regulated to ensure your brain receives adequate, if limited, fuel. Your entire endocrine system recalibrates to preserve your life – at the cost of your quality of life.
The Fat Loss Pendulum: Why Diets Break
Rebound is common. 80% of people who lose a significant amount of weight regain the weight. 30-60% of them end up heavier than before.
Think of a pendulum: the harder you swing in one direction, the more the momentum is going to swing back against you on the return trip. If you’re super aggressive and restrictive with your diet, when you let your foot off the gas your appetite and hunger will be through the roof.
Part of making a sustainable approach is about creating less momentum. That means either reducing the total force, or shortening the distance the pendulum travels.
Finding Your Sweet Spot
I don't like the low and slow approach. I would rather be more uncomfortable for a shorter period than be a little uncomfortable for a long period. But, I also recognize that if I am too aggressive, my mood, thinking, training, and, yes, sex drive all suffer.
Two strategies that balance results with sanity:
Strategy 1: The Undulating Deficit
The undulating deficit is pretty straight forward:
5 days of an aggressive deficit (e.g., 500-750 calories below maintenance)
2 days of maintenance or slightly above maintenance
Real-world example: If your maintenance calories are 2,500, you might eat 1,750-2,000 calories Monday through Friday, then 2,500-2,700 calories on Saturday and Sunday.
This approach allows me to go hard when I'm going, and then take a breather and recharge a little before I go back in. I personally like to do this approach with my weekly schedule. Dieting hard during the week, when I am occupied with work and other responsibilities, and then eating more on the weekends, when I am less busy and more likely to have social events like date nights or family gatherings.
The tricky part is not viewing this as a license to eat anything I want, but rather just having more room for some pleasurable foods or things outside of my typical diet. For example, having that glass of wine with dinner or enjoying dessert after a meal out.
Strategy 2: Diet Sprint/Minicut
If you want to “rip the bandage,” another option is a diet sprint or minicut. Unlike with the undulating deficit, here we’re aiming to keep our calories level through the entirety of the diet. It’s just shorter.
Instead of maintaining a moderate deficit for 12 weeks, aim for a more aggressive deficit for 3-6 weeks. After that, there’s an equal amount of time at maintenance. If you still have more you’d like to lose, do it again.
Real-world example: A 4-week sprint at a 750-calorie deficit (for someone with 2,500 maintenance calories, that's 1,750 daily), followed by 4 weeks at maintenance (2,500), then another sprint if needed.
Both of these approaches allow for a more aggressive approach, but they put limits on the amount of time your body is under higher stress. The idea is to mitigate the stress of dieting by not being chronically underfed. Instead your body gets time to cool off and recover. And, you get a mental break.
The Long Game Approach to Lasting Results
Fat loss is a long game whether we like it or not. Sure it's physiologically possible to lose a ton of weight quickly. But the harder we push, the harder the body tends to push back.
It's okay to be aggressive, but you have to plan for the pendulum: build in breaks, watch your recovery, and adjust when signals (sleep, mood, training quality) slide.
Sustainable progress, even if it's slower than you'd like, beats rapid results that quickly reverse themselves. Find your personal sweet spot between aggressive deficits and strategic breaks, and you'll build a healthier relationship with food while achieving the body composition changes you're after.
Try one of these approaches for the next month and see how your body responds. The most effective diet isn't usually the most extreme one; it's the one you can actually stick with long enough to see lasting change.
The First Principles of Health and Fitness
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
You’re busy. You’ve spent a lifetime dialing in where and how to spend your time, effort, and resources to get the best results: in your business, with your investments, with your family, and maybe in your fitness journey. There’s a lot of noise in the fitness space, and there’s nothing more frustrating than wasting your time and energy on something that doesn’t get you the results you want.
Welcome to First Principles, a series of posts and resources to help you focus on what truly moves the needle so the energy you spend improving your health is as efficient and effective as possible.
We’ll dive into four main pillars – the foundations that provide the greatest return on our investment when it comes to building lasting health. Here’s the quick overview:
Body Composition: What You’re Made Of Matters
You probably know that body composition matters. (Look better? Check. Be healthier? Double check.)
But your ratio of muscle to fat isn’t just about aesthetics or a standalone marker of “health” – it’s metabolic currency. More muscle improves insulin sensitivity, bone density, and resting metabolic rate. Too much fat, especially around your organs (visceral fat), drives inflammation and increases the risk for chronic disease. Improving lean mass while reducing fat is strongly associated with lower all-cause mortality.
Think of muscle as a long-term asset – it keeps you strong, mobile, and resilient as you age. But, we all lose muscle as we age. Building more now helps retain more later, helping you stay upright and independent.
Fat, on the other hand, is the cost of doing business. Sometimes it accumulates as a byproduct of growth. That’s okay – it's part of the process. But eventually, the books need to be balanced. That’s where fat loss phases come in. They’re financial audits – strategic, intentional efforts to trim the excess and keep the health account in the black.
Cardiorespiratory Fitness: The Engine Under the Hood
Often relegated to the realm of endurance sports nuts, cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) is in fact one of the strongest predictors of lifespan. VO₂ max, a key measure of CRF, reflects how well your body delivers and uses oxygen – a capability every cell in your body depends on.
Good CRF helps you think clearly, recover faster, and handle more physical and mental stress. It lowers the risk of heart disease, stroke, and even some cancers. (And, yes, it lets you run that ultra if you want to.)
The best part? You don’t need to run marathons. Consistent zone 2 cardio (think brisk walking, cycling, rowing at a conversational pace), along with occasional higher-intensity sessions, can make a profound difference.
Sleep and Recovery: Your Built-in Repair System
When you’re trying to get healthier, the first instinct (like many people’s) might be to add more: more workouts, more supplements, more productivity hacks. But sometimes the most powerful lever is knowing when to rest.
Without quality sleep and recovery, you don’t adapt – you just accumulate stress. Recovery is when your body rebuilds, your hormones rebalance, and your mind processes the world around you.
Lack of sleep impairs glucose metabolism, weakens the immune system, disrupts mood, and fogs cognitive function. Deep sleep, in particular, is essential for physical restoration.
When you train, you write the check. Recovery is when you cash it.
Stress Management and Purpose: The Psychological Core
You can’t out-lift chronic stress or out-supplement a lack of meaning. (Read that again.)
Stress isn’t inherently bad – if you have goals or care about anything (i.e., you’re human), stress comes with the territory. In fact, too little stress can be just as dangerous, often signaling a lack of purpose or engagement.The real key is learning to manage and channel it.
Chronic stress disrupts your hormones, appetite, sleep, and focus. But when stress is anchored to purpose, it becomes fuel instead of friction. A clear why is a GPS for your nervous system. It helps you reframe discomfort as growth, and it keeps you aligned when life gets messy.
You build resilience just like you build strength: through consistent training. Breathwork, boundaries, meaningful relationships, movement, time in nature – these are essential tools, not luxuries.
It’s a System, Not a Checklist
These four pillars don’t exist in isolation – they support and amplify one another. Better sleep enhances body composition. Cardio improves stress tolerance. Purpose sustains consistency.
Health isn’t about chasing perfection – it’s about mastering the fundamentals and building a system that works for your real life.
This series is designed to equip you with practical tools and mental models to strengthen the core pillars of health. You’ll learn how to filter out the noise, focus on what actually matters, and tailor a system that fits your goals and lifestyle. Whether you want a quick overview or a deep dive, you’ll find both the why and the how, along with a clear roadmap to support not just your health, but your life as a whole.
What You’re Made of Matters
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
Your ratio of muscle to fat isn’t just about looks. Body composition shapes how your body functions and how long (and well) you live. In fact, outside of not smoking, few factors impact your long-term health outcomes more.
There are two main levers to improve body composition: Building muscle and losing fat. Simple, not easy. We’ll hit the “how” shortly; first, here’s why these levers matter.
Why Muscle Matters
Muscle isn’t just for athletes or bodybuilders. It’s a critical asset that protects your health and independence as you age. Call it a “longevity organ.”
Here’s what the research has to say about it:
Lower All-Cause Mortality
Adults over 55 with higher muscle mass had a 20–30% lower risk of death over 10 years. In plain English: more muscle, better odds over time.Better Metabolic Health
Muscle is the primary storage site for glucose. Each 10% increase in skeletal muscle index reduced insulin resistance by 11% and cut the risk of type 2 diabetes by 12%.Cardiovascular Protection
Muscle supports healthy cholesterol, blood pressure, and vascular function. Research has shown a 25% lower risk of cardiovascular events in those with higher muscle mass.Bone Density & Fall Prevention
Muscle strengthens bone and stabilizes joints. Resistance training reduces fracture and fall risk by over 30%, especially in older adults.
Mental & Cognitive Health
More muscle is linked to lower depression and cognitive decline. Multiple studies show reduced risk of depression (20%) and cognitive impairment (30%) in those with greater muscle mass.
Use It or Lose It
Without intervention (i.e., training), most people begin losing muscle mass by midlife (≈30s–40s) at roughly 0.4–0.8% per year, with faster losses in later decades (≈0.6–1%/yr by the 70s). Strength declines more rapidly (≈2.5–4%/yr in the 70s). The result: accelerated weakness and frailty, raising risks to independence.
But it’s not inevitable. Resistance training can not only prevent muscle loss, it can reverse it – even into your 50s and beyond. Think of muscle as your health retirement account. The more you invest early, the more protected and resilient you’ll be later in life. And just like financial savings, it’s never too late to start making smart deposits.
Why Excess Body Fat Harms Health
Carrying excess body fat – especially visceral fat (the kind that surrounds organs in the abdomen) – raises your risk for nearly every major chronic condition:
Increased Mortality
A meta-analysis of 10 million+ people found each 5-point increase in BMI above 25 raised mortality by 31%.High Blood Pressure
Excess adiposity is estimated to account for ~65%-75% of primary hypertension; in Framingham, 78% of essential hypertension in men and 65% in women was attributable to obesity.Heart Disease
A meta-analysis found that higher BMI and larger waist circumference are linked with greater risk of heart failure and other cardiovascular events.Metabolic Dysfunction
Excess fat impairs insulin sensitivity and spikes your risk of diabetes and metabolic syndrome. A 5 kg/m² BMI increase often more than doubles your diabetes risk.Cancer Risk
Excess body fat is linked to 13 types of cancer in epidemiologic research.Mental Health & Cognition
Obesity increases the risk of depression (32%) and increases risk of cognitive decline with aging.Joint and Respiratory Issues
Excess weight stresses joints and narrows airways, raising the risk for arthritis, sleep apnea, and asthma.
How to Improve Body Composition
Reduce Body Fat
Create a modest calorie deficit with food + movement (think sustainable, not crash).
Focus on nutrient-dense, protein-forward meals to stay full and preserve muscle.
Track progress with trend-friendly tools (BIA scales or DEXA scans) – not just weight.
Build Muscle
Stimulus: Resistance training (3–5x per week) is key to signaling your body to grow muscle.
Substrate: Aim for 0.6–1g of protein per pound of goal body weight daily.
Rest: Recovery allows muscles to rebuild stronger. Prioritize sleep and manage stress so you can come back tomorrow.
Bonus: If you're new to lifting, you may experience “body recomposition” – losing fat and gaining muscle simultaneously.
Where Should You Be?
“Optimal” varies, but these are general body fat ranges associated with good health:
Going too low may suppress hormones and impair function – so leanness for the sake of leanness isn’t the goal. Sustainable health is.
How to Measure Your Body Fat
Knowing where you stand is essential for improving body composition. While there are many methods out there, the two most accessible and practical options are DEXA scans and BIA (bioelectrical impedance analysis) scales. Each has its pros and cons – understanding both will help you use them wisely.
DEXA Scan: The Gold Standard
What it is:
A medical imaging scan that measures bone density, lean tissue, and fat mass with a high level of precision.
Pros:
High accuracy: Margin of error is typically around 1–3%.
Regional data: Shows fat distribution (e.g., visceral vs. subcutaneous).
Bone density insights: Valuable information for aging and injury prevention.
Cons:
Cost: Typically $50–$150 per scan.
Access: Must be done in a clinical or wellness setting.
Radiation: Very low dose, safe for periodic use but not for frequent tracking.
Best for: Establishing a reliable baseline 1-2 times per year.
BIA Scales: Convenient, but Often Underestimate
A small electrical current estimates your body fat percentage based on conductivity (water-rich muscle tissue conducts electricity better than fat).
Pros:
At-home convenience: Easy to use consistently.
Affordable: Many good options under $100.
Good for trend tracking over time with consistent conditions.
Cons:
Less accurate: Error margins range from 3–8% or more.
Underestimates BF%, especially in lean or muscular individuals.
Affected by hydration, food intake, and time of day.
Limited detection: Most home devices use only hands or feet, which can miss central fat stores.
Example: If your BIA scale says 12%, you might actually be closer to 15-17% depending on your muscle mass and hydration.
How to Use BIA Effectively
Despite its flaws, BIA can still be a valuable tool if you use it the right way:
Measure under consistent conditions: same time of day (ideally in the morning, fasted, and post-bathroom).
Track the weekly average, not individual daily readings.
Look for trends over time, not absolute values.
Pair with occasional DEXA scans to recalibrate your sense of what your scale is really showing you.
Closing Thoughts
Muscle supports everything from strength and mobility to mood and metabolism. Excess body fat compromises them all. By improving your body composition, you're not just changing how you look (although when you feel good about how you look, you’ll perform better and have more confidence). You're investing in the duration and quality of your life for the long term.
The Engine Under the Hood
It all begins with an idea.
From Director of Health Alex Maples
When most people think of cardio, they think of calorie burn. And while it does burn calories, that’s just one tiny part of the picture. In fact, if your primary goal is weight or fat loss, cardio may not even be the most effective tool (see Body Composition: What You’re Made of Matters).
Here’s the real headline: Cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF) offers a huge return on investment that has nothing to do with calorie burn. From heart health to brain function to how long (and how well) you live, its impact is both broad and profound. It’s not just about burning energy. It’s about building capacity.
CRF and Your Baseline Operating System
Cardiorespiratory Fitness (CRF) is your body's ability to deliver oxygen to muscles during sustained physical activity. It’s a measure of how well your heart, lungs, blood vessels, and muscles all work together as a team. Improve CRF, and you upgrade your default state – not just your workouts. Here’s what that means:
Lower Resting Heart Rate & Blood Pressure
With higher CRF, your heart becomes more efficient. It pumps more blood per beat, so it doesn't need to work as hard at rest. In other words, a stronger engine idles lower:
Resting heart rate often lands around 50-60 bpm in fit individuals.
Blood pressure trends lower.
Blood flow to the brain and organs improves.
This improved efficiency makes everyday tasks (climbing stairs, walking, standing for long periods) feel easier. You’re simply operating with a better engine.
More Resilient Nervous System
Higher CRF enhances autonomic balance, boosting parasympathetic tone (your “rest and recover” system). That means:
You handle stress better.
You recover faster from both workouts and life events.
Heart rate variability (HRV) tends to improve (a marker of adaptability and nervous system health).
Protective Effects of High CRF
Lifespan extension: Significantly lower risk of all-cause mortality, with no upper limit of benefit (i.e., benefits stack as fitness improves).
Reduced cardiovascular risk: Lower risk of heart disease, stroke, hypertension.
Improved metabolic health: CRF improves insulin sensitivity and blood sugar regulation.
Brain benefits: Better mood and memory, plus protection against cognitive decline.
Consequences of Low CRF
Low CRF doesn’t just make life harder – it makes it shorter.
Increased mortality risk: Worse overall health outcomes – on par with major risk factors like smoking, diabetes, or hypertension.
Fatigue and poor recovery: Less energy for daily life and workouts, and decreased stress resilience.
Higher disease burden: Increased risk of cardiovascular, metabolic, and neurodegenerative diseases.
Faster aging curve: Mitochondrial decline, reduced capacity to handle physical and psychological stress.
How to Improve CRF
First and foremost, get moving! Nuance helps, but movement is the foundation of good CRF. And, it doesn’t matter how you do it – you can walk, hike, bike, run, row, paddle, swim, dance, jump rope, or play sports. Explore until you find a few that you actually enjoy. Joy is compliance, and compliance compounds – like steady deposits in a well-run account.
The Takeaway
Cardio is more than a calorie incinerator – it’s a capacity builder. Better CRF means that everything else that matters (thinking, sleeping, training, even stress management) gets easier. If strength training writes the check, aerobic fitness is the cash flow that keeps your whole system liquid.