Tricking Your Body

Your body doesn't know anything.

This concept took me a little while to learn, but it's perfectly true. Your brain is fully aware that you're sitting at a computer reading a blog, but your body has no idea. All it knows is that you're sitting down and that it's comfortable and that you're wearing clothes. Hopefully.

This concept, that your body has no idea what's going on around it, has probably been the most important lesson for me in terms of fitness. Because it teaches you how your body thinks. And it lets you trick it.

Let's take the example of excess body fat. This is by far the most frequent fitness complaint. People like trim waistlines, so extra fat, especially around the stomach, can really distress people. But here's something to keep in mind, that can help ease that distress: when your body has excess fat, it's being nice to you. 

Even though you know where your next meal is coming from, your body doesn't have a clue. It doesn't know you have food stored somewhere. It thinks the last time you ate could actually be the last time you eat. So it has its own storage system. If you eat a lot of food, and your body doesn't need to use all the energy from that food right away, it's gonna hold onto that extra energy for you. Just in case. If the zombie apocalypse happens and food becomes scarce, it's got some energy stored up you can use.

That's really the key to all this: your body isn't trying to be a supermodel, it's trying to stay alive. Any meal could be your last. It only wants to use energy if it absolutely has to, because holding onto those extra calories might help you if you start to starve. It's not gonna burn away that extra energy unless you make it.

That's how you can trick your body when you work out. You have to realize that your body doesn't know you're in a gym. If you start lifting weights, it has no idea what you're lifting. All it knows is "OH S*** THIS IS REALLY HEAVY GOTTA LIFT GOTTA LIFT GOTTA LIFT!" If you go running, it doesn't know the difference between running on a treadmill and running away from a saber-toothed tiger. It just knows it's running, and lets your brain handle all that complicated "why" stuff.

Your body also doesn't know that all of this Working Out stuff is otional. It thinks its lifting a heavy weight because it has to to stay alive. If it doesn't lift the Heavy Thing, the Heavy Thing will fall on you, and that will be incredibly, incredibly painful. And your body really doesn't want that. Because your body likes being a body. It likes being alive. It likes Not Being In Pain. 

So you keep lifting the Heavy Thing. You go higher and higher weights. But eventually your muscles get tired. They can't lift the Heavy Thing anymore. Which signals DANGER DANGER DANGER in your body. Your body's like "WTF MUSCLES, YOU HAVE ONE JOB." But they clearly can't go on lifting the Heavy Thing. Which is a big problem for your body. It doesn't like that. Because it's worried now. What if you had had to lift a Heavier Thing? Or an Even Heavier Thing? It would have failed. The Even Heavier Thing would have fallen on you. It could have injured you. And that goes against the Not Being In Pain rule, which is just absolutely unacceptable. So your body tells your muscles to grow. To get bigger. Because it got lucky this time with the Heavy Thing. But next time it could be a Heavier thing, and your body wants to be ready. 

(This is also true for running. Your body thinks its running away from a Fast Thing, but what if next time it's an Even faster Thing? It's gotta get stronger to stay alive!)

This is how your body thinks. It hasn't got a clue what's really going on, so take advantage of it. Trick your body into thinking that it has to get stronger and faster, because if it doesn't, the Heavy Thing might fall on you. If it doesn't, the saber-toothed tiger will catch up to you and eat you. it's not easy, but damn, it's a lot of fun.