Exercise and stress. The most important Peat thing I’ve learned

[aquila2009]

Probably the most influential thing I’ve done to help fix my health has been to completely stop lifting. I had pushed myself years never missing a workout. I had a strength coach I would workout 4 times a week and increasingly high intensities and volumes, and dont get me wrong, I gained a ton of muscle and strength. How could building muscle be unhealthy? I thought I could recover if my diet and supplements were good enough.

But after a year of Peating, my sex drive was zero, I was still losing my hair and my blood pressure was 145/90 and I still felt like a zombie and wasn’t losing fat. I couldn’t lift anymore. Ive quit lifting for about a month now, and every one of these negative trends has reversed. Most importantly, I’m feeling better.

LESSON LEARNED: Don’t under estimate how stressful exercise can be. I plan on getting back into lifting eventually, but from a position of good health! Probably also limiting volume and intensity as well.

 

[JamesGatz]

Yep - same with me

When I was in my bodybuilding phase - my muscles grew but bones didn't

Now that I stopped completely - my bones grew but muscles didn't

I'm convinced that the former is the less ideal Anabolic phase and the latter is the Androgenic phase and is ultimately healthier/more ideal

 

[YourUniverse]

I was literally going to create a thread stating the opposite.

Concentric-only lifting is THERAPY, it creates new mitochondria. It creates energy and capacity instead of draining it.

Kettlebell swings and clubbell swings. Swinging a weight and not trying to decelerate it.

I have a history of recreational bodybuilding and powerlifting (and overtraining), and the effect of swings is 180 degrees the effect of "standard" slow-tempo lifting. The more I swing, the better I feel, basically dose-dependently (at least I haven't reached a worsening threshold).

Swings, chin tucks for posture, and releasing the psoas are the 3 physical things I think EVERYONE should be doing.

Here are some resources if anyone is interested:

KB swings (forward-backward, and up-down planes of motion)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIyOdqTf3r8


Clubbell swings (side-side plane of motion)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBOi-8in9sw


Neck bridges (functions as a posture-reset for modern life)

View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8jj87jJIIt0


Psoas release (practicing TRE, or laying on a pso-rite or peanut [peanut is 2 lacrosse balls taped together])

-TRE

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeUioDuJjFI&t=652s
-pso-rite/peanut

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GReGKB8RvZQ

 

[lvysaur]

I always felt like workouts were intended for homosexual men. I've just never seen a woman specifically attracted to a super muscular physique. There are some that are, but they're attracted to skinny guys too in my experience

 

[GreekDemiGod]

I can feel how I'm falling apart lifting weights, I just can't get myself to stop doing it or tone it down, I don't want to be skinny and insecure with my body again.

 

[sunny]

I was literally going to create a thread stating the opposite.

Concentric-only lifting is THERAPY, it creates new mitochondria. It creates energy and capacity instead of draining it.

Kettlebell swings and clubbell swings. Swinging a weight and not trying to decelerate it.

I have a history of recreational bodybuilding and powerlifting (and overtraining), and the effect of swings is 180 degrees the effect of "standard" slow-tempo lifting. The more I swing, the better I feel, basically dose-dependently (at least I haven't reached a worsening threshold).

Swings, chin tucks for posture, and releasing the psoas are the 3 physical things I think EVERYONE should be doing.

Here are some resources if anyone is interested:

KB swings (forward-backward, and up-down planes of motion)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIyOdqTf3r8


Clubbell swings (side-side plane of motion)

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBOi-8in9sw


Neck bridges (functions as a posture-reset for modern life)

View: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8jj87jJIIt0


Psoas release (practicing TRE, or laying on a pso-rite or peanut [peanut is 2 lacrosse balls taped together])

-TRE

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeUioDuJjFI&t=652s
-pso-rite/peanut

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GReGKB8RvZQ

Those are great videos. Thanks for posting. I've been trying to do concentric only , but have nowhere that I can throw my weights down, lol.

 

[Ritchie]

Using your body, your muscles and movement shouldn't be "stressful". Even if it is high intensity. In fact quite the opposite. There may be an argument for long distance, endurance marathon type stuff.. but short bursts of muscle firing and interval type movement/sport is beneficial on so many levels metabolically, systemically. The idea of people becoming sedantary or only doing concentric movements for fear of over taxing their muscles and their metabolism is... ummm... the words don't come to me. Of course concentric focused movement is great, but not for a fear of doing anything else but rather as an addition or different component to movement. There is something going wrong systematically if you are finding that training is causing you to deteriorate metabolically and that should be addressed, it's not the training itself. Of course if you are sick, malnurished, under nourished or unhealthy in general training can be a problem. If you are well and nutritionally sound it shouldn't be.

Sedantation will cause more problems in the long run, your body and mind are designed to move, to be active. Muscles are there to be used and there is a reason that inherently and intuitively we see strong, fit, toned people as powerful, strong, attractive and healthy. Of course this can happen via stressful means (ie keto/carnivore type diets), but if you are fueling your body effectively with high energy foods, and eliminating the foods that are problematic, getting good sleep etc.. your metabolism will thrive with training. Sometimes it's important to remember that supermarkets, cars and screens are quite recent phenomena.

 

[golder]

I always felt like workouts were intended for homosexual men. I've just never seen a woman specifically attracted to a super muscular physique. There are some that are, but they're attracted to skinny guys too in my experience

Women like strong, powerful men. Not necessarily 6% body fat, capped side delts and a guy that channels insecurities through his body composition.

 

[Tom K]

Wow! This is great. Exercise is so full of opinion and Bro science. Every opinion presented above can be rebutted with data and studies. Those of us that have spent careers (earned our living) often do not agree on this subject, but much of the nonsense present above is not what I expected on this forum.

Most exercise programs are meaningless, reminding me of the days when people stated, "This is what Arnold does." Yet, of the thousands that employed Arnold's programs, few if any produced Arnold like results. One comment I especially enjoyed from above was, "Kettlebell swings and clubbell swings. Swinging a weight and not trying to decelerate it." I have treated many patients with lateral epicondylitis and shoulder impingements following such advice. Aquilla, your trainer meant well. He is using the usual playbook of more is better. If he advised you that you needed fewer workouts because your progress enables you to challenge your recuperative ability, he would have made less money by reducing your frequency, an obvious conflict of interest. Though his workout program may have worked for other more adaptive trainees than you, his "Program" was your problem. The most important component of any exercise is to choose your parents wisely. That tongue in cheek phrase is meant to reveal that there are no programs, only principles. These principles can serve as the foundation for an individual program, which should be modified based on the trainee's reaction to the stimulus. Person A may need 2 days of recovery between workouts, while Person B may need 4 recovery days. These recovery parameters can be measured physiologically, which some of us have performed. In one HIT study in which I participated, muscle biopsy of the vastus lateralis revealed some trainees recovered in three days, while other took 10-12 days. The same program and same variables produced totally different outcomes. I will leave with only one recommendation, "Do not underestimate the value of rest."

 

[GreekDemiGod]

Sedantation will cause more problems in the long run, your body and mind are designed to move, to be active. Muscles are there to be used and there is a reason that inherently and intuitively we see strong, fit, toned people as powerful, strong, attractive and healthy. Of course this can happen via stressful means (ie keto/carnivore type diets), but if you are fueling your body effectively with high energy foods, and eliminating the foods that are problematic, getting good sleep etc.. your metabolism will thrive with training. Sometimes it's important to remember that supermarkets, cars and screens are quite recent phenomena.

Agree.
Sedentation = Degeneration
Movement = energy.

I got a friend who is a personal coach. Lifts heavy weights 4-5 times/ week, and also does runs like 12 miles/ week, has even participated in a marathon. Obviously he is more healthier than me. He feels great doing it. His body has the energetic demands to cover that level of activity. And I guess he also enjoys doing it.

When you have an excess of energy, movement only feels natural.

 

[Phaedrus]

I agree, I could never go back to lifting like I used to - every other day splits, progressive overload, constantly being in recovery and dealing with nagging injuries.

My sweet spot is very low intensity lifting maybe twice a week, no later than mid afternoon. I’ll do something like a couple sets of 5 barbell squats or deadlifts, some bicep curls, overhead press, maybe some pushups. Usually no more than 3 of those lifts per session, 20-30 minutes total which includes breaks between sets. It makes me feel good without getting super out of breath or sweating like crazy. I feel like I also maintain decent muscle mass while rarely increasing the weight.

The other thing I used to do is deprive myself of any carbs or protein until after I lifted - under the pretense that they would assimilate better. Now I always sip on a protein smoothie (milk, sugar, casein powder, and hydrolyzed gelatin) before, during, and after my light lifting sessions to minimize stress hormones.

Listen to your body. If some exercise feels appealing, go for it and be smart about it. If you’re sick or short on sleep or just not feeling it, don’t feel guilty for skipping it.

 

[redsun]

Probably the most influential thing I’ve done to help fix my health has been to completely stop lifting. I had pushed myself years never missing a workout. I had a strength coach I would workout 4 times a week and increasingly high intensities and volumes, and dont get me wrong, I gained a ton of muscle and strength. How could building muscle be unhealthy? I thought I could recover if my diet and supplements were good enough.

But after a year of Peating, my sex drive was zero, I was still losing my hair and my blood pressure was 145/90 and I still felt like a zombie and wasn’t losing fat. I couldn’t lift anymore. Ive quit lifting for about a month now, and every one of these negative trends has reversed. Most importantly, I’m feeling better.

LESSON LEARNED: Don’t under estimate how stressful exercise can be. I plan on getting back into lifting eventually, but from a position of good health! Probably also limiting volume and intensity as well.

So your body is basically giving out on you following a "Peaty" diet and your solution is to stop exercise. It just goes to show you whatever variant of the Peat diet you are doing is failing you. Because you should never follow a diet that does not take into account every micronutrient. You can still consume sugars, avoid excess PUFA, and still be strong. But you have the strength, stamina and vitality of a little boy because you trust that your diet is adequate even though it isn't. You have bad blood pressure control, sex drive is nill. The most grave mistake this forum makes is fear of acetylcholine and fear of PUFA.

Consequently because of these two reasons, egg avoidance is a common thing here because of these two reasons. There is no hope for any of you to be physically strong ever if you do not understand the important of choline and acetylcholine in muscle strength. Your body will feel like its falling apart when choline intake is low because it quite literally is. You will have no muscle tone (look flabby), no strength, you will have low libido and sexual function, you will be less resilient to stress and have more inflammation, if choline intake is ***t which I guarantee 99% of you who have these problems (especially dysautonomic symptoms, intolerance to exercise in general, severe muscle weakness) have an absolutely ***t intake of choline. I recommend a minimum of 700mg a day. Many of you will do better with much more than that up to a gram or more a day. 3-6 eggs a day as well as half a pound or more of meat is the simplest way to do this.

This is especially a problem for men because we have very little estrogen so we cannot make much of our own endogenous choline when we don't get much in our diet. Estrogen induces PEMT which makes phosphatidylcholine which can then be cleaved to make free choline for acetylcholine synthesis. As if this was not bad enough, PEMT mutations are common in europeans so you could even be more unfortunate if your man of european descent and have these enzyme mutations. One of the negative variations is common in 50% of europeans. Read about it here:

Selfdecode

Use SelfDecode to get personalized health recommendations based on your genes. Get started today with an existing DNA file or order a SelfDecode DNA kit!

selfdecode.com

For those of you who have a genetic test done such as 23andme, you can input your raw data into Chris masterjohns tool that will calculate the optimal choline intake for you based on your genes.

How Much Choline Should I Eat? The Genetic Calculator

The Masterjohn Genetic Choline Calculator is a free tool you can use to turn your raw data file from Ancestry or 23andMe into a precise recommendation of how much choline you should aim to get from food! Click here to start using it: The Masterjohn Genetic Choline Calculator

chrismasterjohnphd.com

Its comical that so many men here have accepted how fragile and physically weak they have become and just decide to roll over and give up. Good thing I am here to enlighten you all. Of course you don't have to listen and try my advice at all and you can continue being fragile and slowly get worse in every health measure because you are afraid of some PUFA and choline in eggs due to misinformation. Your loss in the end. It is honestly ridiculous just how many men seem to deal with this progressive exercise intolerance and the answer is always to just cut back or stop completely.

I can feel how I'm falling apart lifting weights, I just can't get myself to stop doing it or tone it down, I don't want to be skinny and insecure with my body again.

That's because you are falling apart. Try eating 4 eggs in the morning and at least a half pound of meat if not more daily and observe how much more capable you are in your lifts.

 

[aquila2009]

So your body is basically giving out on you following a "Peaty" diet and your solution is to stop exercise. It just goes to show you whatever variant of the Peat diet you are doing is failing you. Because you should never follow a diet that does not take into account every micronutrient. You can still consume sugars, avoid excess PUFA, and still be strong. But you have the strength, stamina and vitality of a little boy because you trust that your diet is adequate even though it isn't. You have bad blood pressure control, sex drive is nill. The most grave mistake this forum makes is fear of acetylcholine and fear of PUFA.

Consequently because of these two reasons, egg avoidance is a common thing here because of these two reasons. There is no hope for any of you to be physically strong ever if you do not understand the important of choline and acetylcholine in muscle strength. Your body will feel like its falling apart when choline intake is low because it quite literally is. You will have no muscle tone (look flabby), no strength, you will have low libido and sexual function, you will be less resilient to stress and have more inflammation, if choline intake is ***t which I guarantee 99% of you who have these problems (especially dysautonomic symptoms, intolerance to exercise in general, severe muscle weakness) have an absolutely ***t intake of choline. I recommend a minimum of 700mg a day. Many of you will do better with much more than that up to a gram or more a day. 3-6 eggs a day as well as half a pound or more of meat is the simplest way to do this.

This is especially a problem for men because we have very little estrogen so we cannot make much of our own endogenous choline when we don't get much in our diet. Estrogen induces PEMT which makes phosphatidylcholine which can then be cleaved to make free choline for acetylcholine synthesis. As if this was not bad enough, PEMT mutations are common in europeans so you could even be more unfortunate if your man of european descent and have these enzyme mutations. One of the negative variations is common in 50% of europeans. Read about it here:

Selfdecode

Use SelfDecode to get personalized health recommendations based on your genes. Get started today with an existing DNA file or order a SelfDecode DNA kit!

selfdecode.com

For those of you who have a genetic test done such as 23andme, you can input your raw data into Chris masterjohns tool that will calculate the optimal choline intake for you based on your genes.

How Much Choline Should I Eat? The Genetic Calculator

The Masterjohn Genetic Choline Calculator is a free tool you can use to turn your raw data file from Ancestry or 23andMe into a precise recommendation of how much choline you should aim to get from food! Click here to start using it: The Masterjohn Genetic Choline Calculator

chrismasterjohnphd.com

Its comical that so many men here have accepted how fragile and physically weak they have become and just decide to roll over and give up. Good thing I am here to enlighten you all. Of course you don't have to listen and try my advice at all and you can continue being fragile and slowly get worse in every health measure because you are afraid of some PUFA and choline in eggs due to misinformation. Your loss in the end. It is honestly ridiculous just how many men seem to deal with this progressive exercise intolerance and the answer is always to just cut back or stop completely.


That's because you are falling apart. Try eating 4 eggs in the morning and at least a half pound of meat if not more daily and observe how much more capable you are in your lifts.

Bro this doesn’t describe my situation at all. Thanks for the input though.

 

[redsun]

Bro this doesn’t describe my situation at all. Thanks for the input though.

You don't have low sex drive, high BP, exercise intolerance? Are you not the OP?

Your lesson you learned is wrong.

Am I mistaken? You get at least 700-800mg of choline a day from foods?

 

[aquila2009]

You don't have low sex drive, high BP, exercise intolerance? Are you not the OP?

Your lesson you learned is wrong.

Am I mistaken? You get at least 700-800mg of choline a day from foods?

You are mistaken and I certainly do.

My point was simply one can build up stress from exercise that is significant. Overtraining is a thing.

 

[redsun]

You are mistaken and I certainly do.

My point was simply one can build up stress from exercise that is significant. Overtraining is a thing.

I see now you were really just overtraining. My post applies though to the ones below you who posted about barely being able to exercise at all.

 

[YourUniverse]

One comment I especially enjoyed from above was, "Kettlebell swings and clubbell swings. Swinging a weight and not trying to decelerate it." I have treated many patients with lateral epicondylitis and shoulder impingements following such advice.

Inform your patients on proper technique. The above videos would be helpful.

@sunny no problem. Have you heard of pavel tsatsouline? He recommends an "anti-glycolytic" protocol using swings. Essentially, an EMOM (every minute on the minute), doing no more than a few reps, with a weight you can easily recover from doing those reps in that minute... usually 16kg is recommended as a starting point, and 5 rep EMOM for 15 minutes.

I was seeing a physio therapist for a year for hip and shoulder problems and it was only when I canceled my appointments with him, purchased the clubbell, and started doing these type of swings that I've noticed any improvement in symptoms, along with releasing the psoas and the neck. I've noticed my posture is straightening out in multiple areas at once: my glutes can fire more fully, probably from the psoas releasing, my shoulders round backwards MUCH more effortlessly, from using clubbell swings around my head and the neck release, most likely. Here's just hoping these trends continue

 

[Vileplume]

Hey OP, can you describe a little more what your workouts were like that led to such a bad state?

I think I've fallen into a bad habit of overtraining.

I have lifted intensely for over a year--two-hour lifting sessions every other day--missing only a handful of workouts. Even though my body composition has reached its best ever, my sleep has been terrible for most of that time, my digestion has been chronically bad, my dental health has eroded, and my hair has been thinning.

My workouts usually include 6 sets to exhaustion of each: pushups, pullups, shoulder presses, rows, sit ups.

Now that I write it out, it sounds ridiculous--I think I've been wrecking my health.

I've noticed that on vacation, the few times I've missed a day or two of exercise, I get better. I never considered that lifting could be causing my digestive problems, but I'm gonna do an experiment now and take 2 weeks off heavy lifting, just to see how my body responds.

 

[Krigeren]

My workouts usually include 6 sets to exhaustion of each: pushups, pullups, shoulder presses, rows, sit ups.

That is way too much volume / intensity in my experience. At age 55 I was capable of Legal Depth Squat: 430x5, Paused Bench: 355x5, Deadlift: 435x5 and Standing Press: 225x5. 5'6", 210lbs, about 18% BF. No drugs. I simply lifted M-W-F, 3 sets of 5 (1 set for DL's), alternating Bench & Press and alternating DL's with Chin-ups. Small but consistent jumps in weight workout to workout or week to week are key. I would usually reset the weights about 10% and try to eat / rest more once I got to the point where I had only 1 or less reps left in the final set w/ 5 minutes between sets.

Over-training is far worse than undertraining, and I believe you can make better progress never going to failure, but still the weights need to be relatively heavy.

ETA: And you will eventually over-train on that program as well. I honestly consider that to be about the limit of volume for strength training. Aesthetics I never really cared about.

 

[FitnessMike]

I always felt like workouts were intended for homosexual men. I've just never seen a woman specifically attracted to a super muscular physique. There are some that are, but they're attracted to skinny guys too in my experience

mate you are so weird