Sometimes the smart thing to do is……nothing.

That certainly doesn’t hold true for general day-to-day activities; most people do way too much of “nothing” – watching TV, scrolling social, etc. – and far too little meaningful movement.

But the medical field is quite a different thing.  Sometimes, as well illustrated by the attached article, the smart thing is to “wait and see”, or “watchful waiting” as its known in the medical community.

In many cases, especially with slow growing cancers, its virtually impossible to tell when, if ever, they will actually become harmful.   By a certain age, most men will have signs of prostate cancer, but, even if left untreated, something else will kill them before the prostate cancer becomes dangerous.

Here at Global Fast Fit we emphasize active prevention; a host of activities such as exercise, careful nutrition, regular dental care, use of sun screen, that have virtually no downside, and lots of upside.  But all dramatic action, such as surgery, often has substantial risks. Probably hundreds of thousands of men have been rendered completely or partially impotent by prostate surgery designed to remove cancer that would never have become dangerous if left alone.  And once damage is done by surgery, it can’t be reversed. 

People seem to forget that medical care is a business; when a doctor recommends surgery he or she is putting money in their own pocket if they’re the ones going to perform that surgery.  And often quite a bit of money.  Even a well meaning surgeon has a bias to action; they are trained to take action, and that’s what they do.  They are not trained to just wait and see what happens – and they don’t get paid to do so.  But that’s often the wisest course.

The back is another good example.  If you get an MRI of your back, it will probably show lots of “abnormalities” that aren't necessarily causing pain or functional issues. Minor disc bulges, mild degeneration, or small spinal cysts are common findings, especially as people age, but they don’t always require intervention. Often, these findings are incidental, meaning they don't contribute to symptoms and may not need any treatment.  So just because an MRI shows something doesn’t mean surgery is called for.

If you’re in pain or you have trouble functioning you should probably take some sort of action, although the body will often heal itself.  But if you don’t have pain, cosmetic issues, or functional problems, make very sure that action is really required before you take the irreversible step of surgery.  Or, as the old saying goes, “Measure twice, cut once”.

Sometimes staying in shape and healthy seems like a joyless process.  No cake! No drinking! No smoking!

And while its true that you do need a lot of discipline, and yes, it helps to read the labels on the food you eat, in the end remember that its really about increasing the joy and satisfaction in your life.

In the case of nutrition, I’ve added a photo of chocolate milk that I drink after some workouts. It is a perfect drink? No.  It has some added sugars, though not too much. But it also has a lot of protein, as well as some other healthy ingredients.  And, importantly, it tastes good.  Really good.  So it gives me something to look forward to at the end of a hard workout.  And having things to look forward to is important in making a healthy lifestyle sustainable.

If you read a lot of health related articles and books, as I do, you may find the endless discussion of what’s bad for you a turn off. Too much sitting will kill you! Eating bad foods will kill you! Not exercising enough will kill you! And when they’re not trying to scare you, it seems like their main objective is to bore you to death with arcane language, pseudo science, and endless acronyms.

The fact is we’re all going die at some point.  But I want to be healthy as long as I can, and be able to work and move and enjoy my life as long as possible.   I also really enjoy having small goals.  Today I did 7 chinups. Is that a lot? No; I’m sure there are people that do far more, even people my age. But its an exercise I'm generally terrible at, and I started at zero.  7 is more than I’ve ever done before, and I get a lot of satisfaction from being 63 and, at least in some ways, in the best shape of my life.

So if you want to change your lifestyle to lead a healthier life, don’t just think about the things that you’re leaving behind – cigars, candy, beer – but what lies ahead.  If you let your palette adjust, you may find you really enjoy fruit. Find a couple veges you like.  Set small obtainable goals in your workouts.  Take joy in the small victories.  

Being healthy does involve saying no to some temptations.  But mainly it involves saying yes to valuing your own life and potential enough that you’re willing to make the effort to put some pleasures behind you and find new ones.  Because good health is really about joyful living.

I recently was reading about nutrition and, as a result, decided to increase my protein consumption.  I already eat a lot of animal based food such as beef and chicken, so I was looking for an alternative, and came across this protein bar.  What could be better than getting a huge serving of protein – 50 grams! – in a bar that tastes like a chocolate chip cookie?  50 grams is quite a lot – about double what you might get eating a piece of chicken or steak, and equivalent to eating about 8 eggs.

But as in most things in life, what’s too good to be true is generally not true.  As a general rule, nutritionists believe that the simplest foods are best; which means smallest number of ingredients, least processing. Take a look at the attached image; I count about 35 different ingredients, although the list is so complex its difficult to figure out; some of the ingredients are pretty simple, most are not.

If you just look at the left side of the ingredients list, it looks great;  180 calories is a calorie efficient way of getting 50 grams of protein. 2 grams of sugar is very little.  But the right side sounds more like a chemical lab than a kitchen. Would anything on this list kill me? Probably not.  But the danger is that something like this is meant to be eaten on a very regular basis, like every day.  And it’s the cumulative effects of things I don’t really understand that scare me off something like this, given that my goals are based on making progress over years; in fact, decades. 

Of course, most people reading these blog entries will be most interested in exercise, nutrition and other relevant health related topics, and that’s as it should be.

But some of you might also have an interest in the business side of Global Fast Fit.  The birth and then explosion of the Internet spawned non-traditional business models, for better or worse, and we're one of those companies. 

Back in the day, if you wanted to build a business you started small, and hoped to be profitable pretty much as soon as possible.  If you had a hamburger stand in Los Angeles California, you didn’t care too much about somebody else's hamburger stand on the other side of the country, much less on the other side of the world.

But now competition is world wide, in the “flat earth” environment. For digital ventures, its very hard to be successful at a small scale.  You have a few big winners, like Amazon, Google, Apple, Facebook, et al, that operate on a global scale, and tens of thousands of ventures that try but never succeed in reaching large scale.  Sure, there are plenty of successful profitable smaller scale companies that utilize the Internet as a platform, but because of the high fixed cost building and promoting a digital product and low marginal costs of reproducing it, entrepreneurs increasingly shoot for the stars, or, at the very least, the earth.

Profits, even revenues at all, get pushed to a lower priority as global brands are built. If your aim is high enough, investors seem comfortable with waiting even on what should be the most basic starting point – a viable business model.  Rather than starting small, obtaining profits, and using those profits to slowly grow, the impatient digital world seems to focus on trying to take over the world – or at least achieving brand recognition – before you’re even sure how you’re going to make money. This may seem crazy, and to some degree it is.  Real viable businesses should generate positive cash flow.

But its also true that google had no idea how it was going to make money when they first started developing search engines. And even now, as a profitable company, it's only search, of the many things Alphabet does, that is regularly cash flow positive.  Amazon was founded in 1994 and first made a profit in 2003, as Jeff Bezos prioritized growth.  Apple was for years a money losing marginal computer maker and in 1996 and 1997 was on the verge of going out of business.  Tesla was founded in 2003 and first made a profit in 2020.  OpenAi, the creator of chatgpt, was founded in 2015 and is probably no where near making a profit, yet was recently valued at $29 billion. These companies are the big winners.

With a name like Global Fast Fit we’re one of those with great ambitions in this winner take all environment.  We have approved trademarks in the United States and the European Union, and pending trademark filings in most of the biggest countries in the rest of the world.  In search engines our primary term “Global Fast Fit” will come up in first position around the world, and our secondary term, “Exercise Benchmarks” ranks first in many search engines and in the top 5 in most of the world.  People from 26 different countries around the world have done the Global Fast Fit routine, and we have teams in the US, India, China, Kenya, Uganda, Thailand, and Indonesia. And we're just getting started. 

In the Brave New Digital World, if you’re in the game, you’re global.

The answer would seem to be pretty obvious; for health reasons, to improve appearance, to be fit.  But if you dig a little deeper the question becomes more interesting.

Since I was a kid, for 50 years or so, I’ve been  going to gyms.  I generally don’t know the people there or have any interaction with them, so all I can do is observe. 

A gym is a unique environment in that the same people tend to work out at the same time of day as a matter of habit.  I see lots of fit people in gyms where I work out.  I don’t measure their reps or weights, but visually, they don’t seem to get any fitter over time.   In some cases, by the time I see them, they’re already very fit, and just maintaining that level of fitness may be enough.

But to me, working very hard and being in the gym a few times a week is a big price to pay if you’re not actively improving in some way, whether that’s strength, appearance, health – anything.

It also seems terribly boring to me to workout without goals.   Going to the gym and having a clear idea that you’re going to try to get 7 reps instead of the 6 you got in the last session makes things a lot more meaningful, and over time, those incremental results really add up.  I’m terrible at chin-ups, but each workout I try to get one more than I’ve done before, and, eventually I do.  If you don’t reach your daily goal, no big deal; having a goal will make you push harder, and have better workouts even on days you don't hit your targets.  If you set realistic goals, over time you’ll achieve them.

There are countless studies that show that exercise is good for you in myriad ways; Greg's post highlights some of the benefits of exercise.  Just about everyone knows that exercise is good for you. Yet most people don't actually exercise on a regular basis. 

Estimates of how many people exercise regularly vary from 25% globally to 50% in the US, but such estimates are not to be trusted.  First of all, they are based completely on self reported data, and people want to believe that they exercise regularly, so they are more likely to say that they do when asked in surveys.  There is also the question of what constitutes "exercise".  Yes, as Greg says, any exercise is better than none, but I see lots of healthy young men and women using treadmills for walking rather than running, when I’m at my local gym.  A more interesting question might be what percent of people around the world do the type of exercise which yields the most benefits, which is high intensity exercise of some type, like Global Fast Fit.

The globally skyrocketing rates of obesity and type two diabetes, and the general sedentary lifestyles that have taken over the world, and general observation, lead me to believe that those who regularly exercise on an ongoing basis, year after year, is much smaller than reported.

Why don’t people exercise? When asked in surveys, the most typical response is “I don’t have enough time”.  Yet people tend to find the time to watch lots of TV and movies,  and spend hours on social media accounts.  When Arnold Schwarzenegger was governor of California he generally exercised twice a day; a half hour of cardio in the morning and a strength session later in the day.  As president of the United States, Barack Obama could be seen on treadmills or playing basketball. Everyone has the same 24 hours in the day, and most people can find the time if they want to, especially for routines like Global Fast Fit, which only takes a few minutes – there’s a reason I named it “fast’ fit.

The real reasons people don’t exercise are not hard to find.  Most of us have jobs, or work at home.  After a long day of work, or looking after kids, it’s tough to muster the energy to do any exercise, especially a high intensity workout like GFF.  Even someone like myself, with a very high level of commitment to fitness, finds certain exercises like running very dull.  If I’m running, which I often am, I’m either in pain or bored. Unlike eating a sweet, there is no immediate gratification from exercise, beyond the feeling that you’ve done something good.  So exercise, at least for most people like me, is hard and often dull, with little immediate gratification.  Some people, like Nee and Greg, have a completely different point of view; they love doing long, grinding, events that take hours.  That’s great, but I think most people are more like me than Nee and Greg.

So what can be done to get more people to exercise, and exercise hard, on a regular basis? I think the key is providing more immediate gratification in the form of information about how they’re doing compared to their previous performances and also compared to others. We’re working on something along these lines, but in the meantime, please share any ideas you have, however crazy they might be.

Although I created the Global Fast Fit routine,  I don’t have the best form when doing it. Far from it. (People from 26 countries around the world have performed the routine; generally speaking the best form has come from Indonesia and China.)  In fact, a routine I performed in Bangkok earlier this year was disqualified due to poor form on my leg lifts.  Everyone who does Global Fast Fit has to meet our standards for form for the routine to be certified.

But does that mean that those who don’t use perfect form are wasting their time or, worse, potentially going to get injured? No.  About 30% of the routines are not certified, generally due to poor form, although its also possible to be disqualified if the measurement of the running can’t be verified, or you don’t do the full number of reps required by any given routine. But we’ve never had someone who has done the routine encounter any muscular or skeletal problems as a result of doing global fast fit, even when the form has been poor.  This is important, to distinguish GFF from other exercises I discussed on this post, such as deadlifting and squats, where poor form can very easily lead to serious injury.

The 4 exercises that comprise Global Fast Fit; plank leg lifts, pushups, squats, and running were chosen in part because they’re simple and, in combination, they work the entire body.  But also because they’re safe, even if not done perfectly.  Assuming that you’re fit enough to do any sort of intense exercise, and that you’ve followed the normal exercise protocol for warming up, not eating right before exercising, etc, you’re unlikely to injure yourself doing this routine. Sometimes I don’t keep my legs straight when doing the leg lifts; other people don’t go low enough on the squats or pushups. But even in those cases, you’re likely to get a good workout doing global fast fit.  But even better if you follow our guidelines for proper form.

Greg recently made a post talking about form, and I want to address that.  First of all, I wholeheartedly agree that almost any movement is better than no movement at all.  The macro problem today in society across the globe is that people have almost universally adopted sedentary lifestyles with far too little movement. 

For exercising, form is important, but "perfect form" is a vague and often meaningless phrase.  First of all, everyone's body is somewhat different, and to a small degree how you do an exercise depends on your particular situation.  For instance, as an older man, when doing a bench press, I don't bring the bar all the way to touch my chest, which would be regarded as a violation of "perfect form" by most people who understand "proper" bench press form.  My modified bench press, bringing the bar down so my upper arms don't pass a 90 degree angle with my forearm, is designed to save my anterior deltoid, the front part of my shoulder.  Men like myself who have been doing shoulder exercises they're entire life are very likely to develop bone spurs in their shoulder, as I have; in fact, there is a phrase for this, "weightlifter's shoulder". 

Even though I never had surgery to repair this, I no longer have shoulder problems.  I solved this by not doing any exercise that brings my elbow behind my shoulder, so dips are out.  I also modify my pushups so that I don't break that my chest doesn't go below my shoulders, or at least not too much below. Its also important to build opposing muscles, like the posterior deltoids, by doing rows, but that alone won’t solve the shoulder issue.

Beyond the fact that certain exercises need to be modified for personal situations, there is also debate about what actually is perfect form for any given exercise.  As usual, you can find many different points of view when doing an online search.  To return to the bench press, there are different types of guidance given about where you should hold your hands, but this is really more a matter of personal preference and what muscles you are trying to work than a hard and fast rule.  (Holding your hands closer together will focus on your triceps; further apart will focus more on your chest, although in each case you’ll be working both muscles.)

There are some good general rules to keep in mind for form.  You want to be in control, no matter what exercise you are doing.  If your body, or a barbell, is jerking wildly, that’s usually not a good sign. When lifting weights, slower is generally better, particularly on the negative part of the movement, which, if done correctly, actually builds more muscle than the primary movement.  For instance, when doing an arm curl, the negative part of the movement is returning the bar from the curled position back to the hanging position.  Do it slowly and you'll see how difficult the movement becomes.  For building muscle mass, a controlled slow movement with a lighter weight is always better than a fast, jerky movement with a heavy weight. 

Note that everything I say pertains to building general health and fitness, which is the objective of Global Fast Fit.  When playing sports, explosive movement can actually be very important, and that involves a different kind of form.  But to build muscles and strong tendons and joints, you want a slow steady, consistent, controlled movement when lifting weights.

In doing the big 3 powerlifting movements you do have to be very careful about form, as the squat, bench press, and deadlift tax the whole body and often involve very heavy weights. But even here I disagree with the perfect form argument. First of all, let me just state the obvious; if you’re lifting heavy weights on the bench press without a spotter you’re making a mistake; potentially a life threatening mistake.

But even if we can agree on what constitutes perfect form for these 3 exercises – which I doubt – its almost impossible to maintain when going for that last rep on a hard set, or a personal record.  The squat used to be one of my best lifts, as I have strong legs, and I did a 435 pound free weight squat when I was young and a 600 pound Smith machine squat in 2019.  But I rarely do squats now, and when I do I keep the weights low and go very slowly and carefully.  The risk of back injury for both heavy squats and deadlifts is just too high, in my opinion, to justify.  I know there are many who disagree with this, and regard squats and deadlifts as absolutely fundamental, and safe if using “perfect form”.   Again, I disagree.   And I’ve been lifting weights for 50 years without a serious injury, while still maintaining high degrees of workout intensity.

Form in the Global Fast Fit routine? That’s a whole other post.

Articles like this one about electrolytes are a perfect example of why nutrition is such a confusing subject.  I grew up hearing how bad salt is for your health, and how it should be limited.  Certainly not the case from reading this article, which talks about all the benefits of sodium.  Its probably all a question of getting the right amount, which the article does not address. It also doesn't distinguish between hydration without salt and hydration with salt, or how much of each you need.  

Does an average active person's diet typically not contain enough sodium? Or too much?  You won't find out by reading the article, even if you're convinced of the value of electrolytes.  And adding salt to your meals doesn't seem like a terribly sensible suggestion. 

One of the real challenges with health and nutrition is figuring out what labels really mean.  I'll  use a very simple example: let's take a simple gentle face wash, say La Roche-Posay's Gentle Foaming Moisturizing Wash.  Should be super simple, because its a common, supposedly gentler alternative to using conventional soap. 

Let's start with the company; its really a brand, not a company, as its now owned by L'oreal, the biggest cosmetics company in the world, with 36 different brands. Given how huge the company is, the name "La Roche-Posay" doesn't provide any real useful info to consumers; its simply fills a space that L'oreal deems appropriate among its vast array of brands. 

Not hard to find a list of ingredients: 
 AQUA / WATER / EAU (LA ROCHE-POSAY PREBIOTIC THERMAL WATER) • GLYCERIN • PENTAERYTHRITYL TETRAETHYLHEXANOATE • PROPYLENE GLYCOL• AMMONIUM POLYACRYLOYLDIMETHYL TAURATE • POLYSORBATE 60 • CERAMIDE NP • NIACINAMIDE • SODIUM CHLORIDE • COCO-BETAINE • DISODIUM EDTA • CAPRYLYL GLYCOL • PANTHENOL • T-BUTYL ALCOHOL • TOCOPHEROL

But very difficult to figure out what any of those actually means.  Google gives a useful AI overview of pentaerythrityl tetraethylhexanoate:
Pentaerythrityl tetraethylhexanoate is a colorless, oil-soluble liquid that is used in many cosmetics and skin care products. It is also known by the trade names DUB PTO, SALACOS 5408, and SOLDOC VF 4/8. 

Pentaerythrityl tetraethylhexanoate has many benefits, including:

Hydration: Helps the skin trap moisture, which can make it appear smooth and plump

Texture: Thickens and improves the texture of a formula, giving it a silky, non-greasy feel

Protection: Creates a protective barrier that seals in moisture, making it a good choice for dry or dehydrated skin

Application: Improves the spreadability and absorption of cosmetic products, which can lead to a smoother application and a velvety finish 

Pentaerythrityl tetraethylhexanoate is used in cosmetics and skin care products in amounts ranging from 0.06% to 50%. The Cosmetic Ingredient Review Expert Panel has deemed it safe for use in these products. 

But that's for just one listed ingredient.  One would have to search each of the 14 different chemicals listed to understand the product. The bigger challenge is that what really matters is not chemical composition in isolation, but the way in which this particular set of 14 compounds interacts. And that interaction is going to be further complicated by the uniqueness, including unique skin composition of each individual (There's a reason why fingerprints are different for every person)

So answering a seemingly simple questions like "Is this face wash safe" or "effective" is actually incredibly complex.  But we'll attempt to do that sort of thing on the new health studies section of global fast fit.