The best way to exercise and eat
Did the tabloid-like heading catch your interest? Unfortunately, you may have to be disappointed. Unlike claimed at regular intervals, there is no best way to exercise and eat for everybody.
During the first couple of summers of my study years at the University, I studied information technology as my minor. Information technology has for long used the binary numeral system, where the truth value is either 1 or 0. Thus, things follow quite simply the either-or logic. But in many respects, we humans are not bits but rather living still in an analogical time. Or instead of bits, we are, in an advanced fashion, qubits if you wish.
The human body is working so that the dose-response pattern plays a crucial role in nearly everything, and we are therefore not functioning in a dichotomic, black-and-white way.
Water cannot usually be regarded as poisonous as such, but with really large doses it can also be fatal at worst. And while even “life-threateningly” hard physical exercise may be beneficial and greatly enjoyable to someone, for some others it would just increase the risk of injury or mean plain suffering.
Yet, the binary or black-and-white thinking is still strongly present, at least if one ends up in the chatrooms of tabloids. In this line of thinking, for instance diets or ways of exercising are seen as either right or wrong, good or bad ones, and without anything in between. In such cases, people often fall into the argumentation error of false juxtaposition.
Carbohydrates – the same guidelines are not suitable to everybody
Many people blame and generalise e.g. carbohydrates as poisons or at least as the only universal reason for epidemic obesity. If we use sample cases or individual studies as a proof for the truth of such a claim, these are argumentation errors of incorrect generalisation. Moreover, many nations are living with a lot higher than recommended levels of carbohydrate intake and are and beat us western people in .
On the other hand, I make a generalisation error myself if I argue, for example, that carbohydrates are not fattening (to anybody).
In the real world, people are individuals and the same advices that may apply to some people do not apply to everybody.
People often come from vastly different backgrounds. For example, some people are very greedy for carbohydrates and easily eat them in plenty. Also weight control and losing weight are even surprisingly individual matters.
For some people, it may be easier to lose weight by . In the future, it may be possible to develop more reliable personal diets, for example, based on individual data such as or other individual factors.
Individualised guidelines are also needed for physical exercise
Also people’s reactions to physical exercise are individual to some extent. conducted at the Faculty of Sport and Health Sciences, Ģֱ, nearly three hundred subjects were engaged in instructed strength training following an identical training programme for 21 weeks. For some of them, this training increased their muscle size and strength considerably more effectively than for others.
The same instructions, however perfect they might be, do not apply to everybody as such, but it is smarter to keep individuality in mind.
An example of this is published in 2020, where the subjects were training so that for the other leg the amount of exercise was designed according to current average recommendations. For the other leg, then again, the training programme was adjusted individually. Hence, the amount of training for this leg was increased by 20 percent from one’s earlier training levels. The end result was that the muscle size in this individually trained leg grew more than in the other leg that was trained according to a fixed rate independent of the person’s earlier training background.
Like for nutrition, people’s personal differences and goals should be understood better in exercising and training as well. Some people progress but little by a particular way of training but .
People enjoy different ways of action
In practice, none of us is an average person. Some are tall or short, fat or slim, muscular or ” string beans”, skilled or clumsy, gentle or aggressive, patient or impatient, workaholics or lazy, with or without children, rich or poor, naïve or super-sceptical, vegans or heavy consumers of meat, relaxed or control freaks, and anything between these extreme ends. The list could be continued endlessly.
In addition to having different backgrounds, people enjoy different ways of action.
Self-directivity suits to some people, some are motivated by carrot, and some need more stick.
Also our goals are different. Some people want to grow big muscles to show-off at a bar desk , for instance, whereas some others seek to minimise all extra mass in order to optimise their body’s operating efficiency (e.g. energy consumption per running kilometre).
Somebody else may wish to gain or maintain adequate functional capacity for playing with one’s grandchildren. In principle, none of these goals is right or wrong, even if we naturally like to question different goals and values in general.
Why do we live in so black-and-white world? People like to get simple and easy answers and solutions. Ambiguity is irritating. This has to do with cognitive dissonance, where a person seeks to maintain his/her own beliefs by rejecting inconsistent evidence , because it would raise unpleasant feelings. And when disagreeing on issues, people do not even try to solve the problems by reconciliation and discussion, but instead the different parties dig trenches for themselves and fight by shouting obscenities to each other or alternatively relying on sulking.
Why do we live in such a black and white world?
So, there is no ”right” way of eating or exercising for everyone.
On the other hand, to avoid misunderstandings, the basics for training and nutrition do still apply.
Hence, although there is no way of eating or training that would be perfect to all people, fortunately certain rules of thumb are nearly always valid for human physiology, for example.
I wrote earlier on this site about the basics of training and nutrition, which work for nearly everybody. Humans get energy for their bodily functions from macronutrients, carbohydrates and fats as well as to some extent from proteins and alcohol. Unlike plants, we humans are not capable of photosynthesis, or any other revolutionary functions like that. Neither do muscles grow by mere fresh water and holy spirit, but it calls for .
Thus, it usually pays to attempt to do the basics properly, relying on general recommendations prepared by experts and see how these work for yourself. Only after this, it may be advisable to try to do things on a more individual basis.
Juha Hulmi is associate professor in exercise physiology at the Ģֱ.
