190: Health Hacks: Hits and Misses

Scot: There's a mountain of health advice and it's available at our fingertips. You scroll by it all the time. And it might be on social media or it could be in the news or maybe it's even somebody you know. It seems like everybody's got a hack or a secret or a quick fix or a surefire way that, "This is how you're going to lose weight," or, "This is how you're going to get better sleep," or, "This is how you're going to get in shape."

But the truth is sometimes those don't pan out. And the only way to really know if a health tip is effective is to put it to test in your own life. Hopefully, other guys you know have used it and maybe it's worked for them so it could work for you.

On today's episode, we're going to share our personal experiences with some health tips we've encountered. We're going to talk about the ones that made the difference, that worked, and we're going to talk about those that, well, maybe didn't quite work.

Welcome to "Who Cares About Men's Health," where we aim to give you information, inspiration, and a different interpretation of your health. I bring the BS. My name is Scot. The MD to my BS, Dr. John Smith.

Dr. Smith: Good afternoon.

Scot: And our health convert, Producer Mitch is on the show as always.

Mitch: Hello.

Scot: All right. So each one of us is going to throw out a tip that we've heard or encountered that we used that worked, and each one is going to throw out a tip that didn't work. The hope is maybe somebody else will discover something that might work for them or, as I said in the intro, sometimes it doesn't.

I think one of the things we've learned on "Who Cares About Men's Health" is this is all very kind of personalized. It has to be something that works for you and in your life. We're all so very different that what works for Mitch might not work for me, but it could with a little tweak. That's what we're going to talk about.

So tips that worked. Let's start out with the positive. Mitch, do you want to share your tip that worked that you're so excited to have everybody know about?

Mitch: I am, but it feels so dumb to say aloud. So my tip, and it is the one that I have found in the past year, in particular, has been the most impactful in all aspects of my life, is to put it on a calendar.

Scot: Yep, that sounds dumb.

Mitch: I know. But the thing is, is that it was actually on a podcast that I was listening to specializing for ADHD folks and they said, "Hey, a lot of times people who have difficulty sticking to a schedule, etc., or you always are writing notes down or something and you can't quite figure out where to put it, well, if you put it on a calendar, there's a higher chance that you're going to use it than if you don't put it on a calendar."

And so what's so weird about this is that I now have shared calendars with groups of friends, with my partner, with a bunch of different people, my parents, etc.

I have found that social obligations, at the very least people I'd like to build connections with, people that I would love to spend more time with, rather than that constant, "Oh, we should do this again sometime. Hey, are you free? Hey, are you free?" instead of doing all of that, you just put it on a calendar and it happens. It happens.

It's the same thing when it comes to my workouts, when it comes to setting time aside for thinking or wanting to make sure that I spend time to do something.

Now, does that mean I have to do every little thing of my day every single day? No, that does not work for me. But I do know when I hop on the calendar, there are sometimes other people that are also following it that are holding me accountable, or it's just a reminder that there is something that at some point in the past, I really did want to do.

Scot: John, do you put it on a calendar?

Dr. Smith: A lot of stuff I do, yeah. And then a lot of the stuff that I don't want to be on a calendar gets put on a calendar for me. And so it makes my life a lot easier. My wife is very calendar-oriented. We have a calendar that I have access to that I can go on and look at what we have going on for kid events, events that she and I are attending, different things like that.

And it's huge, man. It's a game-changer, because then you know exactly what you've got to prepare for and I think it kind of helps me mentally to be like, "All right. I've got to go to this thing."

Scot: Hey, Mitch, question for you. What aspect of your health does putting on a calendar help? So you talked about the emotional because you're hooking up with friends more often. Maybe making sure your workout is on your calendar. Does it just make it more real? Is that why putting it on a calendar works for you?

Mitch: A hundred percent.

Scot: Or is it because the Mitch of the night before and the Mitch of the next day never quite agree on . . . The Mitch of the night before is like, "Yeah, working out at 10 a.m. tomorrow sounds great." And if you don't put it on a calendar, then the Mitch of the next day is not on board with that plan.

Mitch: I know. Past Mitch is a jerk and I don't care for future Mitch. But for real, it's everything from . . . I started when I was having trouble sleeping. I started to put bedtimes in my calendar. And that feels like such a duh thing, but for me it was like, "Oh, I'll just go to bed whenever." Well, now that it's on a calendar, I have to stop for a half a second when my little phone buzzes to let me know, "Hey, you told yourself yesterday that you were going to sleep at this time." I have to actually process through that and think through that. And I'm like, "Oh, yeah, I probably should."

Before then, I was just kind of willy-nilly and free flowing and a free spirit, but that meant nothing really got done and that meant all of my goals never really got accomplished. So put it on a calendar.

Scot: I am on board with that. I think a calendar is a great tool to use when you're trying to develop a habit, before you've developed the habit. How many times do you set out to do something, like you said, go to bed at a certain time, and then by the time it's bedtime, you've kind of forgotten about that? It's two hours later or the next day and you're like, "Oh, that's right. I was going to try to go to bed at 10. Well, I'll try again tonight." And if it's not on a calendar, you don't really start developing that habit. So I think that's good.

All right. I use a calendar a lot, guys, to schedule my stuff and I find that it helps me also with my mental health, because then I don't have to worry about what's next.

There's a little bit of mental energy that's spent on that process of, "All right. I just finished up one project. What's my next one?" So a lot of times I'll take my to-do list and I will translate that onto the calendar and block out the actual time to get it done. Otherwise, it does not get done.

Mitch: That's too much. No, not interested.

Scot: Oh, okay. I'm taking it too far.

Mitch: I think you're taking it too far. No, I'm kidding.

Scot: All right. Well, that's the thing. You've got to find out what works for you.

John, what's a tip that worked for you?

Dr. Smith: So mine was kind of in that same vein and it's kind of what got me to do . . . it gets me doing things, and that's having an accountability partner.

I started working out with a friend of mine probably a little over a year ago, maybe a year and a half now, and that accountability partner gets me out of bed. I know that he's waiting for me, and so if I don't show up at the gym, it's kind of a jerk move, right? He's there and he's waiting and he's like, "Hey, we have a workout." And so we work out together.

That's been the biggest hack for me, was just if I feel that responsibility. I feel a responsibility to him as a friend that we have both decided we were going to do this.

And it works in a lot of ways with . . . I've done it in a lot of other things with work and with personal stuff. My wife and I will be accountable to each other on certain things if we're trying to change a certain habit or we're trying to stop eating after a certain time or things like that, that really will benefit my health. I have an accountability partner that will be like, "Hey, dude, I don't know why you're scooping that bowl of ice cream. It's 8:47. Garbage."

Scot: Is there a past ice cream time in your house? That's too bad.

Dr. Smith: No. I mean, I've tried to stop eating after about 8:30 . . .

Scot: Got it.

Dr. Smith: . . . on a regular basis just to keep my calorie count down. If I don't, I will. I'll just roll in and I'll be like, "Oh, we got rocky road. Oh, that's great. Cookie dough too? Great, man. I'll get me a couple scoops of those and just roll on." And so those are things where it's having an accountability partner or someone to keep you honest on that.

Scot: You know what? The accountability partner, it's a jerk move. But also, for me, there's a certain amount of my own pride. I don't know what the word is I'm looking for, in that I keep my word to people. So if I broke that, I would feel badly.

And sometimes when it comes to exercising or any habits, we're just talking about a little bit of extra energy is needed to make that happen. It doesn't take a lot. It just takes a little. How can you just have a little bit more? So I like that. That's good.

Dr. Smith: Yeah. And for me, there are mornings where my alarm would go off and I wouldn't have gotten out of bed if I didn't have an accountability partner. If I knew he wasn't going to be at the gym waiting for me, then I would have just stayed in bed. I mean, times when I'm just extra tired or whatever, but that alarm goes off, I go, "Man, he's there. He's there."

We've both had episodes where I forgot or he's forgot or we had something where we forgot to tell the other person when we're going to be there. But those are moments where I don't feel bad because I'm like, "Ah, dude, I forgot to tell you that I had to go in early for a work meeting," or whatever. He's like, "Oh, no big deal."

But overall, that's not a normal thing that happens. We both are there, we're accountable to each other, and we're making this thing go better for both of us. And we can push each other in the gym too.

Scot: Right. Sometimes you need that little extra activation energy there too.

Dr. Smith: Or you see him lifting a little bit more than you and you're like, "Damn it. Let's go."

Scot: That ain't happening.

Dr. Smith: Exactly. "Not today."

Mitch: That's interesting, because one of the biggest struggles I think I have in building habits and actually getting through with some of those is that . . . I don't know. I am someone who can't really hold myself too accountable. It's too easy to slip into old paradigms, old dynamics. It's really easy to get back into old bad habits. And yeah, I've found that the couple of things that I do with other people have been helpful. I probably should do some of that more, though.

Scot: Yeah. It can take many forms. Actually having to do it with the other person, or just actually having to check in with the other person or having the other person just have an agreement that, "I'm going to call you out when you're having ice cream at 8:47, because ice cream stops at 8:45 in this house. John. You know that. What are you doing?"

Dr. Smith: Exactly.

Scot: All right. Tip that worked for me. I'm sorry, I always overthink things, so here we go. I think this is a good contrast, John, between yours, because mine has to do also with strength training, going to the gym and doing some strength training.

I've had accountability partners in the past and they have absolutely 100% worked for me. However, it would not work for me right now because I don't have somebody in my life that could serve that role. So I have to find another course of action.

And I think for any of these challenges, there are a lot of different pathways and this just really illustrates the point of this episode. Sometimes things will work for us in our lives, sometimes they won't. That's why you have to experiment.

So what has worked for me? And this is pulling from some past shows. It's a three-step plan to get me into the gym. I wish I could say these steps were funny and short and cute, but they're not.

One, know your why. Why am I strength training? Why does this matter to me? For a long time, it was about physical appearance, looking bigger, looking stronger, feeling more masculine. That's not the case anymore. For me now, it's about I know that strength training is a healthy thing to do. It invests in my future health. It invests in my future mobility. So I know why.

Then you've got to know how are you going to make this happen? This is from a book that I read, and I've been habit-stacking. If anything from what I'm saying here is probably the takeaway, it's the habit-stacking part. And what a habit stack is, is simply taking a new habit you want and putting it up against something else that you already have a habit of or you have to do.

So on my way home from work, I drive right by the gym. So my habit stack is on my drive home, I stop at the gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Not negotiable. And that has changed everything. I don't have to think about leaving the house. Again, just a little bit less activation energy needed. I have my gym bag in my car. I just leave it there. Perfect.

And then you have to make it sustainable. And to me, this ties back into the "know your why." I used to go to the gym, I wanted to get big and muscular, and that requires a lot more effort than is required if I just want to use strength training for its health benefits. To me, the sustainability is above and beyond everything else the most important.

So what does that mean? That means if I drive by and I'm like, "Ah, God, I really don't want to do this. I can't drive home. I've made this promise of habit stacking. I'm going to go to the gym, but if I do one set of exercises and I'm like, 'Ah, forget this,' then I'm cool. I'm cool with that. If that's going to help my sustainability, that's fine."

If not working out so hard one day is what it's going to take, then that's fine. If I only have 10 minutes, if that's all I can give, and I don't have the whole half hour I need, that's fine. You're going to go do the 10 minutes.

So that's what's worked for me, and I don't know if it'll work for you. Maybe there's something in that whole stack. Did that make any sense?

Dr. Smith: I love that.

Mitch: I do like that.

Dr. Smith: I love that. I mean, I was just thinking, "Man, that is a clutch move. I should start doing that."

Mitch: Oh, for sure, because I think the bit of advice that I got or one of the tips that I was contemplating talking about is it is better to do . . . The thing that I really picked up that Scot just said was it is better to do something half-assed consistently than to do it full-assed inconsistently.

And so for me, even hearing that you're like, "Okay, my habit is not that I have to go and work out for an hour. My habit is I stop at the gym and I work out. If that's 10 minutes, great if that's what I have," that makes it easier to build into an actual habit because it's something you're already doing, and you're not putting yourself under this Herculean, Sisyphean pressure to achieve something that you can't do every single day yet.

Dr. Smith: I was just going to say I have another thing that I have tried to do, and this is kind of a hack, I guess you could say. I have a rule that I've been better at sometimes than others, but it's "if it takes less than five minutes, you do it now."

It's non-negotiable, just like your habit-stacking, right? If this is going to take me less than five minutes, I just do it right now because then it's checked off my list and I don't have to go back to it.

And so, to me, when you were saying that, I was like, "Man, that's very similar to my . . . The habit-stacking is similar to my "if it takes less than five minutes, you just do it." It's this habit stack. It's on your way home. Just go to the gym, idiot.

Scot: Right. There was an Instagram post that I saw that really resonated with me as my last thought on this, and that is this guy was talking about, again, exercise, and he's like, "Only ask yourself to give what you can give that day. There are a lot of different variables that might come into play as to what you're able to give in a particular day."

He was talking about physical fitness and he says, "My ideal is I go to the gym, I lift for an hour, I do a half-hour sauna, I get a half-hour swim in." And he mentions a bunch of other stuff. But he goes, "I can't always do my ideal. Maybe I have 10 minutes, I knock out 100 pushups, and call it a day and move on with it."

It's like, "What can I give today?" And I'm just like, "Wow, that's just so cool and just such a great philosophy."

It comes back to what Mitch said. Sometimes you're going to half-ass it, but you're going to half-ass it consistently. And sometimes you're going to get it done exactly the way you want, but I think consistency is the king. Consistency and sustainability for all of these things is so important.

Mitch: The other thing that often trips me up with some of these habits that people swear by on the internet is it's this idea of optimization. There's something about if you're going to do it, you're going to do it right.

And there's something about, for me at least . . . My ideal is one thing, but being able to say that it's going to be the most perfect, the best way, here is the way it ought to be done, is also something that will sometimes stop me from actually picking up a habit. So don't shoot for the ideal. Shoot for what you can do. I try to optimize everything. Just do something.

Scot: Yeah, that's good. All right. Now let's move on to the ones that didn't work. So Mitch, tips that didn't work for us, which one would you like to feature?

Mitch: So this is one that I would like to eventually talk to Thunder about as a full thing, but the biggest dark period of my health journey, I think, was when I tried out the "if it fits your macros" approach to nutrition.

I had some people in my life, some guys in my life in particular, who swore by it, who were sending me onto the Reddit. I was seeing them lose a bunch of weight. It's this idea that you can eat anything you want, but you have to track it and you've got to do all this math and you've got to make sure that you have this much carbs, this much protein, this much fat, depending on what you're doing and whatever.

And I think I ended up doing it with my partner for, like, three months, four months, and we did lose a little bit of weight, but man, it was not really sustainable. I felt miserable. I was finding myself choking down food.

It turned food into a game almost, and not a fun game. A stupid game where I'm like, "Oh my god, how am I going to get any more protein in today? I guess I'll drink another protein shake," even though that's processed, that's not the best way to necessarily get all the micronutrients and things that you need.

It was exhausting to just think about all that stuff. And I didn't really feel great. I found myself obsessing about exactly every little thing that was going in or out of my body because I was trying to get results. And I did see some results, but it was all I was doing. It was all I was thinking about. It took up all of my day.

I know that it works for some people, and I hear that, I get that. But for me, no. I'm not going to do it again. I'm going to just do the slow, tried-and-true methods that we've talked about before on this show, and I'll stick with that.

Scot: This is another instance of time and place in my life. At one time and place in my life, that would have worked, and I could have made that work, and I would have had no problem with it. Now I'm to a point where I just can't. Again, experimentation, knowing where you are at any particular point in your life is pretty key.

John, what didn't work for you?

Dr. Smith: Oh, I've had a lot of things that didn't work for me. Picking one is . . .

Scot: I know, right? I wish I would have gone first because that was my line.

Dr. Smith: Yeah, man. Well, sorry, you can edit that out, and then we can put yours in first.

Scot: No, that's fine.

Dr. Smith: I've tried a bunch of different stuff and just not done well. I've had different diets that have not worked. But I think the big thing . . . I had a couple of them written down. I was trying to debate between which one was probably a bigger fail.

Scot: Do both of them, because mine is lame.

Dr. Smith: Well, I mean, these are lame too but they're just fails. The biggest things were diets. To me, the dieting thing never works because I hate it. I hate being like, "Well, you can't have that." It's like, "Why?" All of these things aren't necessarily bad. I mean, one scoop of ice cream is not bad, but the 30 that I was going to eat is the problem.

That's been the biggest thing. My attitude towards those things was probably the reason that they failed more than anything else. And I think that's probably my one hang-up with a lot of these things. I think a lot of the things that didn't work for me is there was no mental buy-in from me. When I mentally buy in, it's over. I'm locked in and ready to go.

And looking down this list now while I'm verbalizing it, I think that's been the biggest thing for me, is just my mental buy-in. You've got to find something that you actually believe in, not just because all the gym bros are doing it on Instagram and all the Reddit pages are saying it. It's got to be something that you can get on board with and really get in and do.

Looking at this list of stuff that I wrote down, I mean, that's the stuff. I can look down and say, "I didn't buy into any of it." It was the things that people were like, "Oh, you should try carnivore. It's great." Dude, it was like the worst thing for me. But I have three of my buddies, and they did it for a year and a half, and they were like, "I never felt better." Stuff like that. I think my mental buy-in, when I look down, that's the real key for me, and I think that's why I failed at those things, is I didn't buy in.

Scot: My tip that didn't work . . . I don't know, again, John. This was really hard, Mitch. So many of them. So many things I've tried didn't work. I think the ones that say that you have to do something exactly this way or that way are likely to fail for me.

I think I keep coming back to this theme that we're all a little bit different, we're all in different circumstances at different points in our lives, we all can give . . . There are times where there could be all sorts of treats and junk food in this house and I could ignore all of it, and then there are times where I can't in my life.

So I think any time anybody says, "Oh, you've got to do this," or, "You should do this," or, "You have to do this," that's where I usually end up with tips that don't work.

I do have to just kind of generically whine that I feel like, at this point in my life, losing this little bit of extra body fat that I want to lose, it doesn't matter what I do, it doesn't work. Whether it's intuitive eating, whether it's fasting until noon, whether it's . . .

But then I have to be honest with myself and I'm like, "Well, what did you do over the past two months of the holidays? You ate a lot of ice cream and pie and desserts and stuff. So maybe you're not eating until noon, but you're having a couple of dishes of ice cream at night."

So I don't know. I really struggled with things that didn't work, because I felt like everything doesn't work. So for me, I think there's more value in just kind of focusing on the positive, what is working. So I'm going to go back to my strength training. That's working. That's a lame answer. I'm sorry.

Mitch: No, it's a good answer.

Scot: I wish I had a more specific answer. I think the specific answers are more interesting.

Dr. Smith: Yeah, but I think, to be honest, the specific answers . . . We're very similar, it sounds like, on we didn't have the right attitude to buy in. Because you said at a different time in your life, it might have worked.

And I think some of the things that I failed at would have been the same thing. If I would have had buy-in or had that been the right time in my life, those may have been good things.

And that's, I think, the point of this, is sometimes taking two steps back and reevaluating your current situation and going, "Okay. What's working? What's not? What can I change? What can we do to make this work better in my life?"

There are times and seasons of things. Maybe you had a new puppy when you were trying to do this thing and your sleep was really altered, so it was difficult to do. Or you were in your last semester or you were writing your thesis for whatever. These things don't work at that time, but now that you have a little bit more time in your life, they may work better. And so looking back or looking at opportunities that might fit now, I think that's a great tip.

Scot: Yeah. I think the other thing that doesn't work is when you try to change too much at once. And we've talked about that numerous times. I think any tip that involves you being fundamentally somebody that you were not the day before is probably just doomed for failure. I mean, there are exceptions to that.

Mitch: Something that I've learned a lot in this podcast is this idea that a lot of the kind of framing that I think guys are given, either on social media, fitness magazines, etc., is that you need to be strong-willed. If this program doesn't work for you, it is somehow your fault, right? You did not have the willpower. You really didn't want to do this, whatever.

And it's kind of hard sometimes not to internalize that. But I really appreciate hearing from both of you guys this idea that maybe there's nothing wrong with you. It's just that was too much for right now. Or maybe it didn't fit you, your likes, your needs, your wants. Maybe it was too big of a change. Those are all different kinds of ways of thinking than just saying, "Hey, I failed at this." It's, "No, this thing did not work for me and is not working for me now."

Scot: Yeah. And it comes back to just analyzing it and seeing why. Maybe it comes back to my one. It didn't work because I didn't know my why. Why do I care about losing an extra 10 pounds of body fat? Maybe I didn't know my how. Maybe I didn't execute on that properly. Maybe I didn't come up with a way to make it sustainable.

Maybe it's something I really don't want right now. Maybe it's just something I say I want. How often do we say we want things, but really in the whole hierarchy of the things we want, it's really kind of low when it comes down to it, and we've got other priorities at that particular time.

All right. Well, there you go. Hopefully, that helped. Hopefully, the conversation around it helped more. With this podcast, I think that that is oftentimes where the value is. It's not that we give out these tips or these quick little fixes or these hacks.

I mean, I wish that that was the world we lived in. I wish we could wave our magic wand and give you those things, but I think it's a lot more nuanced than that. And I think within the conversation, we all can discover the ways that it's going to work for us and maybe the ways that it's not going to work for us, or the small tweak we can make to make it work.

Thanks for listening. If you have any health tips that didn't work for you, something that worked for you, any reflection on the conversation, or you have other health questions, you can always reach out to us at [email protected].

Thanks for listening, and thanks for caring about men's health.