For years Arnold Schwarzenegger was the golden boy of the health and fitness industry.
His techniques were copied across literally 100’s of different health and fitness programs and became the benchmark for how to look and feel great across the world.
In 2002 the movie “Collateral Damage” came out, Arnie looked great and at 55 really seemed to be beating the game, he looked incredible.
Then Arnold got a job.
He moved from a world where his job was to look great and look after his body (and could spend as long as he wanted dedicated to this pursuit), to a world where his job was to govern, and his time to look after himself went to pretty much zero.
In just 2 years he went from pin up boy for the Health and Fitness industry to Governor of California with a dad bod.
Why?
Because his system didn’t work in the real world.
Sure, it worked fine when he could pack himself into a gym all day and spend hours recovering in the sauna after his workout, eat expertly prepared food following a meal plan laid down by a top nutritionist …
But when the pressures of a real job combined with the normal process of ageing caught up with him, it all fell apart.
Now before I go any further I want to state that Arnie is a personal hero of mine and has provided inspiration for me my entire life…I’m not bashing Arnie, what I am bashing is the system we now follow without question which has failed its creator.
Why did the system which worked so well for Arnold, the icon of the system itself, so suddenly fail when he became Governor?
To answer this we have to address the underlying belief, centred right at the heart of the health and fitness industry which is causing us normal people a huge amount of pain.
The belief that because something is good for a top athlete or movie star it’s good for us.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Sauce for the goose in this case, is NOT sauce for the gander.
While following a fitness lifestyle is effective, as Arnold found right up to getting a job.
It is not very efficient.
Meaning we need to dedicate a HUGE amount of time to it if it is to work properly, even more so as we pass 35 and the natural role of ageing starts to have an effect.
The truth is, as Arnie discovered, as soon as we don’t have that time, this system fails us.
Comparing a pro athlete or movie star to a busy CEO or a stay at home mum with kids to look after, who often simply doesn’t have ANY time to hit the gym, to meal prep, to go to the sauna, is not comparing like for like.
We have been copying their workouts for years….but we haven’t been copying their lifestyles.
And it’s their lifestyle which allows the effects of their workouts to compound.
So What Can We Do?
Well just so you know I go into this in a lot more detail in my coaching course which you can find here >>
But for now I’m going to talk about the first and possibly most important step which I cover with people who don’t have the lifestyle of a movie star, to solve this problem…and that’s to get someone else to do all the heavy lifting for you.
…
Every animal on the planet is built from DNA.
DNA itself comprises chromosomes which themselves contain genes. Genes are basically factories which produce “goods” the body uses for repair, building, signalling and thousands of other day to day tasks.
Think vitamins, hormones, proteins etc.
Humans have got 23 chromosomes.
Dilated protozoa have 16 000 chromosomes…
WTF?
How on Earth is it that we, the most the most advanced creatures on the planet have only 23 chromosomes and these little guys, who couldn’t even make a cup of tea, have got 16 000?
The answer is pretty incredible.
We’ve outsourced our genetic complexity.
We rely on our bacteria to do the jobs for us that other animals use their genes for.
So instead of having a gene to produce Vitamin B we eat a certain food and specific bugs in our microbiome break the food down and the metabolites they produce (think of this as the stuff they poop out) contains Vitamin B.
It’s the perfect relationship, it allows us to shift our genetic potential simply by adjusting the populations of bacteria in our gut.
It also means we can afford to be much simpler genetically and thus much more genetically stable which again is vital for a species to survive long term.
However this relationship has gone hideously wrong.
To allow our bacteria to produce these essential vitamins, minerals and other “goods” for our body we have to feed them the right food.
Otherwise the good bugs starve, bad bugs take over and they start pooping out stuff which actually harms out body, which causes us to gain weight, to become Insulin resistant, to get cancer and more.
You have to realise in a perfect human diet a lot of what we eat isn’t for us, it’s for our bugs. We eat foods the good bugs like to eat and they help us out in return by producing the “goods” our DNA can’t.
This leads us to totally rethink the nutritional values of food and is why it’s a lot more complex than just saying,
“This food’s got X amount of calories and contains these vitamins and minerals, so must be good for me.“
As long as we know what we are doing it is possible to eat a food which may appear pretty nutritional empty but is superfood for our bugs. Allowing them to produce a huge amount of vitamins and minerals from it.
It also explains why 2 people can eat exactly the same diet and get completely different results…
…because they have different bugs.
So what is an example of such a food?
Resistant starch.
This is a type of carbohydrate found in cold (cooked and then allowed to cool for at least 15 mins) legumes, starchy tubers such as potato, cassava, sweet potato and in plantains and squash.
On the surface a lot of these foods don’t seem that nutritionally dense, certainly not superfoods. But this is exactly what our good bigs love to chow down on.
How much should you eat?
It’s difficult to say exactly as individuals all differ, but the best answer I can give you is…
A LOT.
Anything from 40 – 400g a day!
Is this an insta cure…no.
But do this for a few months and, especially if you combine it with fermented foods (sauerkraut, kefir, miso etc) so you’re getting a steady stream of new species into the gut, you are starting to build the factories in your gut which will do the hard work in building your health for you.
