Overcoming Gravity – by Steven Low
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The author, a professional gymnast and coach with a background in the sciences, knows his stuff here. This is what it says on the tin: it’s rigorously systematic. It’s also the most science-based calisthenics book this reviewer has read to date.
If you just wanted to know how to do some exercises, then this book would be very much overkill, but if you want to be able to go from no knowledge to expert knowledge, then the nearly 600 pages of this weighty tome will do that for you.
This is a textbook, it’s a “the bible of…” style book, it’s the one that if you’re serious, will engage you thoroughly and enable you to craft the calisthenics-forged body you want, head to toe.
As if it weren’t already overdelivering, it also has plenty of information on injury avoidance (or injury/condition management if you have some existing injury or chronic condition), and building routines in a dynamic fashion that avoids becoming a grind, because it’s going from strength to strength while cycling through different body parts.
Bottom line: if you’d like to get serious about calisthenics, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out Overcoming Gravity, and do just that!
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6 Lifestyle Factors To Measurably Reduce Biological Age
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Julie Gibson Clark competes on a global leaderboard of people actively fighting aging (including billionaire Bryan Johnson, who is famously very focused on such). She’s currently ahead of him on that leaderboard, so what’s she doing?
Top tips
We’ll not keep the six factors a mystery; they are:
- Exercise: her weekly exercise includes VO2 Max training, strength training, balance work, and low-intensity cardio. She exercises outdoors on Saturdays and takes rest days on Fridays and Sundays.
- Diet: she follows a 16-hour intermittent fasting schedule (eating between 09:00–17:00), consumes a clean omnivore diet with an emphasis on vegetables and adequate protein, and avoids junk food.
- Brain: she meditates for 20 minutes daily, prioritizes mental health, and ensures sufficient quality sleep, helped by morning sunlight exposure and time in nature.
- Hormesis: she engages in 20-minute sauna sessions followed by cold showers four times per week to support recovery and longevity.
- Supplements: she takes longevity supplements and bioidentical hormones to optimize her health and aging process.
- Testing: she regularly monitors her biological age and health markers through various tests, including DEXA scans, VO2 Max tests, lipid panels, and epigenetic aging clocks, allowing her to adjust her routine accordingly.
For more on all of these, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Age & Aging: What Can (And Can’t) We Do About It?
Take care!
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How To Manage Your Mood With Food (8 Ways)
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It is hard to be mentally healthy for long without good diet. Food can not only affect our mood directly, but also indirectly because of how our brain works (or doesn’t, if we don’t have the right nutrients, or it is being sabotaged in some other dietary fashion).
Selecting the food for setting the mood
Mind, the mental health charity, have these advices to share (with some bonus notes of our own):
- Eat regularly: blood sugar peaks and troughs can heighten feelings of tiredness, irritability, or depression. Instead, enjoy foods that are high in energy but low in glycemic index, such as nuts, seeds, and oats—that way you’ll have plenty of energy, that lasts longer.
- Choose the right fats: omega-3 fatty acids are essential for the brain. So are omega-6 fatty acids, but it is rare to have a deficiency in omega-6, and indeed, many people have the ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 far too imbalanced in omega-6’s favor. So, focussing on getting more omega-3 fatty acids is important. Nuts and seeds are again great, as are avocados, eggs, and oily fish.
- Get a healthy amount of protein: and importantly, with a good mix of amino acids—so a variety of sources of protein is best. In particular, if you are vegan, paying attention to ensure you get a full spread of amino acids is critical, as not many plants have all the ones we need (soy does, though). The reason this is important for mood is because many of those amino acids double up as the building blocks of neurotransmitters, so they’re not entirely interchangeable.
- Stay hydrated: our bodies are famously made of mostly water, and our brain will not work well if it’s dehydrated. The human body can squeeze water out of almost anything that has water in it, but water from food (such as fruit, or soups) is best. If enjoying actual drinks, then herbal teas are excellent for hydration.
- Eat a rainbow of fruits and vegetables: these have many nutrients that are important for brain health, and the point of the colors is that most of those pigments are themselves nutrients. Additionally, the fiber content of fruits and vegetables is of topmost important for your heart, and as you’ll remember (we say it often, because it’s true): what’s good for your heart is good for your brain.
- Limit caffeine intake: for many people, excess caffeine can lead to feelings of anxiety, disrupt your sleep, and for everyone who has developed an addiction to it, it will cause withdrawal symptoms if stopped abruptly. Cutting back on caffeine, or even eliminating it, may improve your mood and sleep quality. Note, however, that if you have ADHD, then your brain’s physiological relationship with caffeine is a little different, and stimulants will be more beneficial (and less deleterious) for you than for most people. If unsure, speak with your doctor about this one.
- Support your gut health: because of the gut-brain axis (via the vagal nerve), and also because nearly all of our endogenous serotonin is made in the gut (along with other neurotransmitters/hormones), getting plenty of fiber is important, and probiotics can help too.
- Consider food intolerances: if you know you have one, then keep that in mind and tailor your diet accordingly. If you suspect you have one, seek a nutritionist’s help to find out for sure. These can affect many aspects of health, including mood, so should not be dismissed as a triviality.
For more on all of this, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
The 6 Pillars Of Nutritional Psychiatry
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Little Treatments, Big Effects – by Dr. Jessica Schleider
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The author, a clinical psychologist, discusses how mental healthcare has come a very long way, yet still has a long way to go. While advocating for top-down reforms, she does have a stopgap solution:
Find ways to significantly improve people’s mental health in a single-session intervention.
This seems like a tall order, but her method is based on good science, and also, most people will agree from experience that big changes can happen to someone in the space of moments, at pivotal turning points in life—they just have to be the right moments.
Dr. Schleider recommends that therapists train in (and then offer) this method, but she does also give comprehensive advice for self-therapy of this kind too.
These self-therapy directions, ways to induce those life-pivoting moments for the better, are perhaps the greatest value that the book gives us.
Bottom line: if you’d like a lot of the benefits of therapy without getting therapy, this book can definitely point you in the right direction, in a manner that won’t be a drain on your time or your wallet.
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Tilapia vs Cod – Which is Healthier?
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Our Verdict
When comparing tilapia to cod, we picked the tilapia.
Why?
Another case of “that which is more expensive is not necessarily the healthier”!
In terms of macros, tilapia has more protein and fats, as well as more omega-3 (and omega-6). On the downside, tilapia does have relatively more saturated fat, but at 0.94g/100g, it’s not exactly butter.
The vitamins category sees that tilapia has more of vitamins B1, B3, B5, B12, D, and K, while cod has more of vitamins B6, B9, and choline. A moderate win for tilapia.
When it comes to minerals, things are most divided; tilapia has more copper, iron, phosphorus, potassium, manganese, and selenium, while cod has more magnesium and zinc. An easy win for tilapia.
One other thing to note is that both of these fish contain mercury these days (and it’s worth noting: cod has nearly 10x more mercury). Mercury is, of course, not exactly a health food.
So, excessive consumption of either is not recommended, but out of the two, tilapia is definitely the one to pick.
Want to learn more?
You might like to read:
Farmed Fish vs Wild Caught: Know The Health Differences
Take care!
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Your Future Self – by Dr. Hal Herschfield
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How do you want to be, one year from now? Five years from now? Ten years from now?
Now, how would you have answered that same question one, five, ten years ago?
The reality, according to Dr. Hal Herschfield, is that often we go blundering into the future blindly, because we lack empathy with our future self. Our past self, we can have strong feelings about. They could range from compassion to shame, pride to frustration, but we’ll have feelings. Our future self? A mystery.
What he proposes in this book, therefore, is not merely the obvious “start planning now, little habits that add up”, etc, but also to address the underlying behavioral science of why we don’t.
Starting with exercises of empathy for our tomorrow-self (literally tomorrow, i.e. the day after this one), and building a mindset of “paying it forward”—to ourself.
By treating our future self like a loved one, we can find ourselves a lot more motivated to actually do the things that future-us will thank us for.
The real value of this book is in the progressive exercises, because it’s a “muscle” that most people haven’t exercised much. But when we do? What a superpower it becomes!
Bottom line: if you know what you “should” do, but somehow just don’t do it, this book will help connect you to your future self and work as a better team to get there… the way you actually want.
Click here to check out Your Future Self, and start by gifting this book to future-you!
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Bold Beans – by Amelia Christie-Miller
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We all know beans are one of the most healthful foods around, but how to include more of them, without getting boring?
This book has the answer, giving 80 exciting recipes, divided into the following sections:
- Speedy beans
- Bean snacks & sharing plates
- Brothy beans
- Bean bowls
- Hearty salads
- Bean feasts
The recipes are obviously all bean-centric, though if you have a particular dietary restriction, watch out for the warning labels on some (e.g. meat, fish, dairy, gluten, etc), and make a substitution if appropriate.
The recipes themselves have a happily short introductory paragraph, followed by all you’d expect from a recipe book (ingredients, measurements, method, picture)
There’s also a reference section, to learn about different kinds of beans and bean-related culinary methods that can be applied per your preferences.
Bottom line: if you’d like to include more beans in your daily diet but are stuck for making them varied and interesting, this is the book for you!
Click here to check out Bold Beans, and get your pulse racing (in a good way!)
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