It has been a brutal couple of months
I have been and am in the crucible of S&C and life the past couple of months. Opened a new gym which I was working 5AM-8PM Monday-Friday, and then working through the weekend (kind of better now). Add to that: having a newborn plus two other kids, a wife who travels quite a bit for work, and the logistics associated with that. Add to that releasing my third book and launching an app for the Collective.
The last thing I wanted to do was get my blood work done.
I procrastinated on this for a long time. I know what it was going to say – I’m stressed and overall unhealthy. My blood glucose was going to be high, my insulin levels elevated, my lipid panel was going to be off, and my white blood cell count was going to be elevated. If you feel like you know the ending, you don’t need to watch the movie.
I made every excuse you can think of: I am busy, I don’t like needles, I’d rather do the things that change my blood panels rather than get them. There was a day I did a bunch of errands I hate doing to avoid going. Anything was better than the knowledge of where my health was at. It was like not reading or studying all semester, and coming to your finals, you have gotten this far without working, what is the difference?
The ironic part is that I knew I would do this when it came time to get them. I always do this. I pay up front in order to avoid doing this. If you know you will not want to do something, the sunk cost of paying up front is one of the best ways to do something you don’t want to do. But when it came time to actually get my blood panels, I kept saying Ill wait till I’m in better shape to get that.
But is it not best to do something like this when you are at your worst? Blood panels are a reflection of your lifestyle, training, and nutrition over a long period of time. If you are in a bad spot in one or all three of those things, you should be more aware of the consequences.
Waiting for the imaginary optimal is a fool’s errand. You don’t get a trophy for lowering your LDL-P. When you are in a good spot with the big 3, you actually need to run panels even less. It is when we are at our worst that we need to be more aware of the impact.
Fear Avoidance:
The brain’s amygdala (the fear center) may perceive a daunting task as a literal threat, triggering a fight-or-flight response. Avoidance provides immediate, though temporary, relief from this perceived danger.
Neither hard work nor physical discomfort bothers me. I don’t shy away from challenging problems. So why do I avoid outcome measures I know will be bad?
It is the fear of knowing that what I am doing is ineffective or harmful. It is a heavy burden to bear to do something on the pretense that it will be beneficial, only to find out it is causing harm.
What this experience has reminded me is just how hard it is for all of us to do something with the knowledge that it may not work out. To try and fail is worse than not to try at all. It is more appealing not to change and fail than the alternative.
But that is our job as humans and coaches. To face the truth of what we do matters. The choices we make aggregate into outcomes. The more negative the choices, the more negative the outcome.
Robert Sapolsky said: “If free will exists, show me a neuron(s) that just caused a behavior to occur in the complete absence of any influences coming from other neurons, from the neuron’s energy state, from hormones, from any environmental events stretching back through fetal life, from genes.”
I am sure Dr. Sapolsky is right, but I am going to demonstrate some free will and disagree. We are not meant to be unhealthy or unhappy. If that is a predetermined outcome, what is the point of doing anything? We always have a choice. When we live in a binary world of one thing or another, yeah, I agree that the illusion of free will is limited. We live in chaos, and the choices we get to make are infinite. It does not have to be 100% good or 100% bad; it just has to be more good than bad to get closer to the desired outcome.
I prefer to live in a world where my actions and decisions are up to me. I accept the responsibility for those choices. If I am wrong on that, I do not care. I look at the people who entrust their physical development and choose to be bold. I accept the responsibility that I could be wrong. That empowers me to change when necessary.
Regarding my blood panels, I got them, and I improved in literally. I discounted the efforts I made with nutrition and supplementation. I was able to auto-regulate my training to manage the stress. It could have been my subconscious dictating my actions based on how I was feeling. To me, this questions the entire theory that free is a myth. I was afraid of the outcome, and I self-corrected to ensure a better outcome.
When it comes to procrastination or avoidance, acknowledge why and proceed. Blood panels are a metaphor. Plug and play whatever it is you are avoiding. In the process, make better choices, because you have that power. Work your ass off and be as kind to people as you possibly can.
“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
Theodore Roosevelt