Motivation Monday: Manic Meme Edition

Welcome back to the Daily Dumbbell, the newsletter that packages up facts in an easy to digest little package. Like one of those gel packs triathletes always slurp down while racing.

We’re here to fuel your brain for the long haul.

Let’s dive in!

Unfortunate 

Researchers out of Mount Sinai Hospital found the Heart Rate Zone where fat burning was the highest varied quite a bit among the general population. With the average difference being over 23 bpm.

This would suggest the “fat burning zone” often marketed by gyms and “Big Treadmill” wouldn’t actually be accurate for many people.

We however, would suggest not exercising based on what burns the most fat because it has, scientifically speaking, fuck all to do with fat loss. Which is what you actually want.

Confused? We’ll explain.

How much fat you “burn” doesn’t matter if you aren’t in a calorie deficit. “Burning fat” is more accurately described as fat mobilization as that’s what is happening. The body is accessing your fat stores for energy. However, it is going to replace most of it with the food you eat as soon as it can.

Fat loss on the other hand is what we all tend to want. That happens over time as we eat in a calorie deficit.

Our movement & activity levels do of course impact our ability to get into a deficit, but not to the extent most people think they do.

More Fortunate

Researchers found that therapy was effective at improving depression symptoms among patients with problematic relationships with social media.

What is problematic you ask? Nervously thinking about how you scrolled through Tik-Tok hours past your bedtime last night?

According to experts, social media use becomes problematic when:

Ok cool, so that only applies to the vast majority of us. Excellent news.

Although after analyzing 23 studies of social media “interventions” only 39% resulted in improved mood & outcomes… so there’s hope for a little over 1/3rd of our readers. Nice.

Even More Fortunate News

It looks like someone at Science Daily has been reading our weekly emails bitching about correlation not equalling causation. This week a team of researchers at the University of Minnesota published a study linking long term use of antacids to dementia.

Over the course of the study, those who took antacids regularly for more than 4 years at a time were 33% more likely to develop dementia.

Luckily we don’t have to launch into a soliloquy (would you believe we spelled that right on the first try?) about confounding variables, and how the root cause behind WHY they’re taking those drugs likely playing a larger role in the development of dementia than the drugs themselves…

Because they addressed it right in the summary!

Well how about that. The Daily Dumbbell making a difference.

The Most Fortunate News

Walk your way out of an early grave! As little as 4,000 steps a day reduced all cause mortality. Here’s the kicker, every 1,000 step increase after that results in an additional 15% decrease in all cause mortality.

This benefit extends past 20,000 steps, which is where researchers stopped their analysis, meaning we don’t yet know the upper limit of benefits.

Cue the mean girls clip

Your next question. How is this different from the studies you always shoot down and criticize? We’re glad you asked!

In a way it’s not. People who are more active also tend to prioritize other health promoting behaviors. But other studies have isolated activity and step count from other variables.

We’ve written about how exercise protects against negative outcomes even when sleep is poor. The blue zone research also suggests walking to be one of the most important things we can do for health.

But there is one important piece of info here that these other studies don’t have and that is the stepped increase in outcomes.

If walking is good for you, then more walking should be better for you? Right? In many of these shitty studies, this is not shown. In a clear cut relationship you’ll see a stepped increase like this one. For every 1,000 steps walked you receive another FIFTEEN % decrease in all cause mortality. That’s bananas.

This also wasn’t a study done on 400 people in a small community. This was a Meta Analysis of dozens of studies from around the world including more than 220,000 people. The largest ever done on this subject.

The association was seen across populations, controlling for:

• Age

• Gender

• Climate

• Income

Among other things.

How many steps do you get per day? What would be one small change you could make to increase that?

The 2023 Crossfit Games wrapped last weekend with a new man AND woman on the podium for the first time in 7 years.

With Tia Claire Toomey taking the year off to raise her first child, the field was wide open for the women.

If you follow the sport closely though you knew Roman Khrennikov, last year’s runner up, was ready to establish himself as the best in the sport. And for the first 4 days he did just that. Heading into the final day the Men’s side was all but wrapped up.

With 3 events left the crown was his to lose. When Roman limped out and began jumping rope on one foot the crowd groaned. He was obviously hurt.

Roman had broken his foot in the first event of the day.

He ended up in last place in the final two events. Dropping to 3rd place. Jeffrey Adler may have been crowned Fittest Man on Earth, but what everyone will remember from this year’s Games will be Roman’s gutsy performance.

When asked why he didn’t withdraw after the injury, he responded that he never wanted his kids to see him give up or quit.

Should you, in your own fitness pursuit, fight through a broken foot? No. Absolutely not. But the lesson is there for us all to see:

We won’t always prevail in our goals. We’ll be faced with setbacks and disappointments. The outcome isn’t always in our control.

But how we respond always will be.

Will you fight to the end? That’s up to you.

Hope you’ve had a great start to the week! We’ll see you back here on Wednesday for a look into why so many instructional workout videos seem to give you different technique advice.