The Expedition: Step counts, endurance secrets, dirty supplements, the ideal human diet, and more.
The 15 best ideas I found this month.
Housekeeping
Full access to this post and its audio version is for Members of Two Percent. Become a Member and get full access to everything on Two Percent:
Check out our partners:
Momentous Nutrition: The company that made me feel good about supplements again. They’re researched back and tested for purity because Momentous has contracts with most pro sports leagues and the US Military. My picks: Essential Plant Protein + Daily Multivitamin.
Use discount code EASTER for 15% off.
Jaspr air purifiers. I think using a Jaspr is one of the easiest things you can do to improve your health—all you have to do is plug it in and remember to breathe. Having a Jaspr in my room seemed to improve my sleep, and I love watching the Jaspr in our kitchen kick on and filter our air after my frequent cooking disasters.
Maui Nui Venison harvests the healthiest meat on planet earth. Maui Nui is offering Two Percent readers a limited collection of my favorite cuts and products, like the 90/10 Organ Blend. But supply is limited because axis deer are wild. Head to mauinuivenison.com/EASTER to secure your access now.
Audio/Podcast version
(Note the podcast might go out slightly after the written post today).
The post
The Expedition is a monthly journey into thoughts, opinions, ideas, observations, studies, facts, figures, etc.
Good ones, insightful ones, interesting ones, weird ones, and ones you can use to live well and long.
It’s a roundup of all the worthwhile stuff I’ve discovered in the last month. The Expedition is a bit of an island of misfit toys. But, hey, the greatest journeys are winding.
This month, we’re covering:
Numbers on:
A good minimum step count.
Step tracker accuracy.
How often Olympians train hard versus slow.
Sleep and stress.
Bodybuilders versus scrawny outdoor athletes.
Creatine benefits.
The three dirtiest supplements and what supplements I take.
An incredible obituary.
Myths around hunter-gatherer diets and what they can tell us about nutrition.
An easy, delicious health food you’re probably overlooking.
An important parting quote.
8,200
Steps a day that protected people against heart disease. The data is from about 6,000 FitBit users.
3
Number of total days each month the gold medal-winning German track cycling team trained at their most intense speeds leading up to the Olympics.
25
Number of total days each month the German team trained by riding long distances at low intensities.
The lesson: If you want to get fast, you should spend much more time going slow.
38
Percent decrease in your odds of experiencing high stress levels for every additional hour of sleep you get.
0
More reps a pair of giant, jacked bodybuilders could perform of a heavy back exercise compared to a scrawny rock climber.
Takeaway: Find a sport. Ideally one that happens outside. You’ll encounter more unpredictable, uncomfortable variables for longer—and you’ll be fitter for it.
69
Is the percent accuracy of step counts on the average fitness tracker. The analysis also found that activity trackers are on average 76 percent accurate for heart rate and 57 percent accurate for calorie burn.
Read a deep dive on the flaws of fitness tracker data here.
3
Grams of creatine helped people recover from exercise fatigue and muscle damage faster.
If you use creatine, purchase a brand that’s NSF-certified. That ensures the product contains what it says. I like Momentous.
Speaking of that …
The three dirtiest supplements—and the supplements I take
More than half of adults take dietary supplements. It’s a $35 billion industry.
But—surprise!—not all of these supplements contain what the label says.
Poison control receives thousands of calls a year related to supplements (1,000x more complaints than the FDA!). At least 2,000 people are hospitalized each year. A study in JAMA noted:
From 2007 through 2016, 776 adulterated dietary supplements were identified by the FDA and 146 different dietary supplement companies were implicated.
The biggest offenders were supplements marketed for:
Sexual enhancement: 45.5%
Color me shocked that gas station sex pills with names like “Super Panther 7K” and “Rhino 69 Power 500K” aren’t on the up-and-up.Weight loss: 40.9%
Note: Any over-the-counter fat loss product that actually works is … actually meth!Building muscle: 11.9%
A tell: If the bottle at your local GNC features an image of a man who has pumped himself full of steroids, the product within the bottle is also pumped with steroids.
But those categories are all somewhat obvious.
The larger debate is whether taking any supplements at all is “worth it.”
My take: