If I wanted to build an app for transportation, and actually use it, it wouldn’t be very smart to make something that looks like a transportation app—you can see your location, see available drivers nearby and book a car—but doesn’t actually connect you to a vehicle and driver. This false app would not only be useless, but also misleading and frustrating. After a few times trying to get a ride and failing, you would likely give up and delete the app. Imagine someone built such an ‘app’ with no intention of it actually working, then spent countless hours and thousands of dollars on the color palettes, font selection, animation, branding and marketing strategy. We wouldn’t hesitate to say this person is misguided.
If I wanted to build a ship and actually sail on it, I would have to do more than make something that looks the part—has a udder, mast, hull, etc.—but wasn’t made with the intention of staying afloat and moving through the water at speed. Imagine someone built such a ‘ship’, then spent countless hours and thousands of dollars on the sail material, deck design and cabin interior. We would no doubt consider this person to be confused.
While these examples might read as absurd, this is exactly the way most treat the central infrastructure of their lives: health, movement, interpersonal relationships, career, and purpose.
Apparent in our contemporary culture is a profound and fundamental failure to think about the deeper qualities of the thing being built, and to predict how those qualities will play out in the future. And it’s not merely failure or absence, in fact, but also a superabundance of incentives pointing in the opposite direction—which is to say incentives to engage in perpetual loops of short-term ‘solutions.’ What would otherwise be opportunities for creativity and growth are framed as mere problems to be swiftly swept aside in order to get to a destination.
The mechanism isn’t complicated. What we’re facing here is an exposition of basic human traits which would have us preoccupied with short-term efficiency and immediate results. If there were an escalator beside a staircase, I’d likely take the escalator. If I had to chose between doing manual labor for eight hours to earn $300 and being handed $300 no strings attached, I’d likely choose the latter. If given the choice between two driving routes, unless there is some other major difference like scenery, you can bet I’d take the route that gets me where I’m going in less time. Biologically speaking, energy is a precious commodity. And if I don’t see how particular actions are in line with what I want, then I’ll be unlikely to spend energy on that action.
So there appears to be a conflict of interest, a contradiction between what I say I want and my actions which lead me in the other direction.
Jack is a strength coach, and he’s tested his one-rep max deadlift four weeks in a row now. He has enough understanding of programming to know this is not only risky but also disruptive to progress. He even injured himself in the past by testing in this way. His goal is to increase his 1RM by 20kg by the year’s end. It’s the end of July; he still has five months to reach this benchmark. There’s no pressing need to test at this juncture. So why does he do it? Jack fears that if he doesn’t meet his goal and maintain significant progress month after month, he won’t be qualified as a coach. He’s associated the amount of weight he can lift, and increasing that weight over time, with his professional qualification.“If I don’t lift heavy, nobody will respect me; if nobody respects me I won’t have a job; if I won’t have a job I”ll go broke and and lose my apartment and have to work a shitty job just to afford to live in a place with seven roommates.” And so on. This isn’t entirely fallacious: having capacity and skill in a particular discipline, or at least having had it at some point, is one facet of what qualifies someone to teach that subject. But, even if he plays confused (“why do I keep doing this to myself?), Jack knows he chose to test his 1RM week after week because his fear of being unqualified as a coach, and his impulse to mollify that fear, was greater than his desire to see safe and consistent progress over time. He knew that testing, if he lifted numbers that lined up with his expectations, could potentially mask this fear—at least for a while. This relief that would come from covering up his fear around being financially unsafe in the immediate present seemed more attractive than the less tangible, less immediate increase in his strength five months down the road. There is no contradiction here, no conflict of interest—only myopia that leads to one incentive dominating his decision-making.
Felicia lives in the city and works as a financial accountant at an e-commerce company. She likes her job because the hours are good and she only works four days a week. So she finds plenty of time to do things she really loves like salsa dancing and mountain biking. She’s 29 and until a few months ago she was single for about 2 years. Recently she moved in with her boyfriend, Shane, but honestly finds him boring and predictable. Yet she can’t seem to break it off with him. He’s very kind to her, and generous. He makes her laugh. But when she would ask to go dancing or mountain biking, he said he wasn’t really into these things. After asking a few times she starting going without him, and ended up meeting other guys there. On a few occasions she posted a photo on Instagram with one of the guys she met. Shane saw these photos and they ended up arguing about it. Honestly she was hoping he would get jealous and see what he was missing, or maybe it could finally be an excuse to end things with him. But each time they argue, it seems she ends up apologizing and asking him not to leave her. Why does she repeat this cycle? Based on past experience, she sees spontaneous and adventurous men as less stable and consistent. She’s already 29, after all, and if she makes the wrong choice and ends up with a restless and unstable partner, she worries time is running out before it’s too late to have kids. Or worse: she’ll start a family and then he’ll leave her. “If I commit to a guy who shares my adventurous physical interests, he’ll abandon me when he gets bored; if he leaves I’ll be alone with no family and no purpose; I’d better stay with a stable guy even if we can’t do everything together.”
This story is more subtle than Jack’s, but the same applies. There is no conflict of interest, only one incentive winning over another. She is actively deciding again and again that having a less than ideal partner now, in the short-term, is better than running the risk of building a new relationship with the potential to fail.
We see both Jack and Felicia’s concerns were short-term and short-sighted. But it wasn’t only this that put them in a bind. Being in a state of reactivity to their fear narratives (“I’m not safe” for Jack, and “I’m alone” for Felicia) made them more susceptible to fixate on short-term thinking and act in desperation.
I used these examples because they’re realistic, and demonstrate the personal nature of the phenomenon. We can easily empathize with how one could fall into these patterns. I think that’s part of the confusion: on the surface we see all of these disturbing patterns on an overwhelming cultural scale, and so try to address the issues also on the level of culture and meta-analysis. But this is a failure to recognize that these cultures are summations of individual moment-to-moment experiences and decisions.
Especially in the online space, wherever we look it seems people are pre-occupied with building their physique (the appearance of capacity and attributes) rather than building actual movement capacity and attributes. People lie about their financial situation and job titles to appear a certain way. Rather than working to develop the attributes required for the civic position they wish to fill, it’s easier to just slap it up in their social media bio and pretend they’ve already arrived. Partners pretend to be someone else in their relationships because they fear confrontation, rejection, or judgement. And even if they knew an alternative, which most don’t, there’s a strong natural incentive to choose the path of least resistance in the short term for the sake of perceived efficiency and safety. What’s more, others are willing and poised to capitalized on this human fallacy.
Take diet for example. “Calories in / Calories out” (CICO) and “If it fits your macros” (IIFYM) seem to dominate the diet discussion in the fitness landscape. First of all, CICO is not a method; it’s a mechanism. It states that weight loss or weight gain will be partially determined by how many calories one consumes vs. how many they expend—expenditure being a more complex equation involving multiple variables. And it’s only one of many mechanisms that regulate body composition. But generally when people refer to CICO, they mean to say that it is the overwhelmingly dominant mechanism determining body composition, so much so that other factors pale severely in comparison. Some have gone even further and employed CICO as a method or strategy, and that’s where we get IIFYM. IIFYM acknowledges that fat/protein/carbohydrate balance is important, but as long as foods stay within given ratios of these categories and total caloric measurement, that’s the only thing that matters.
Now, on the level of biochemistry, this is ridiculous. Though you’ll see shortly why this isn’t my main point, I really only need three questions to deflate this argument.
Can we agree that endocrine (hormones) and immune system function play a major role in regulating adipose tissue?
Can we agree that micronutrients (vitamins, minerals and the subtle qualities contributing their bio-availability) play a major role in endocrine and immune system function?
Can we agree that some foods contain chemicals/toxins which disrupt endocrine and immune function?
If you answer ‘yes’ to these, then you also have to accept that CICO is not the only prevalent mechanism determining body composition. So why are these paradigms so pervasive and persistent in fitness culture? The same reason Jack tested his 1RM four weeks in a row. The same reason Felicia opted for a sort of romantic Pascal’s wager. Most people can only see as far as short-term effects, blind to what waits for them years in the future. And and they are especially seduced by anything that works immediately. And being in a caloric deficit or surplus does work, and work immediately to effect body composition—at least short term. So does managing your macros.
Most fail to realize that a compromised endocrine and immune system—caused by a micronutrient deficient diet, phyto-chemicals, toxins, and highly inflammatory compounds—will also strongly effect body composition long-term. So does sleep. So does psychological health (which is also negatively impacted by the fixation on measuring everything you eat).
And they fail to realize this because, despite what they might say out loud, they don’t actually care about these things. Not enough, anyway. They haven’t connected in a deep way to the values of longevity, endocrine health, immune health, psychological health, etc. They have only seen the immediate and short-term benefits of looking nice naked, or in their favorite pants. This incentive is far stronger and more direct. They want to lose weight three weeks ago; they want to build muscle now, today. It can take much longer to see the effect nutrition, sleep, social environment and lifestyle choices have on immune and hormonal health, and the effect this in turn has on body composition. The chain of cause and effect is longer and less direct.
They buy a junk used car because they think it’s way cheaper, but find out later it costs more in repairs over the first four to five years than a new car ever would have. Like the car buyer, the dieter’s mistake is partially a failure of foresight and partially a failure of perceived resources. They don’t believe they have the resources they need in the short term—time, strength, money, social acceptance— to do it right. And so they fall into a kind of panic and are willing to settle for anything that seems to give them what they want right now.
And now, waiting right around the corner, a few taps and swipes away, are thousands of ‘reputable professionals’ waiting to sell me exactly what I think I need right now, in my moments of desperate hurry to a short-term solution. One might be tempted to be pessimistic about this. But just as most have no awareness of when they themselves are falling into fear-motivated short-sightedness, they see no shame (and might even feel good about) offering others a quick fix in their time of ‘need.’ People are demanding these solutions, after all. So what could be the harm in meeting that demand? For some, filling a role in this way is actually a quick fix for what they perceive as some of their own problems. What I mean is, the whole thing is quite convoluted subjectively speaking; the level of self awareness and intent we might require in any other context to find someone culpable simply isn’t there. Rare is the truly malevolent, psychopathic person who fully knows the harm in pedaling false solutions and pedals them anyway with malicious intent. That might even be more exciting. But as usual the reality is far more pedestrian.
You’re waiting for a solution to the cultural issues I’ve outlined? Want me to sum it up in a few lines? Make it actionable in 30 days or less? Guarantee results? The message is the same as it’s always been with me: the solution is in observing the problem very carefully, then taking personal accountability. All of this consistently and for a very long time.
Statistically speaking, most will fail to make any durable change in this regard. But if you’ve put yourself in a position to read this my guess is you already had an edge; and I can hope now that you’re finished, you’ve gained another.