Hi!

Welcome to the seventh edition. Here’s the sixth, if you missed it.

If you like this newsletter and know someone else who also might, please forward it down the line. Also, I want to hear your feedback! What would you like to see more or less of, and what should be on my radar? I’m all ears. You can reply directly to this email.

Alright, now let’s get on with it …

Something I Wrote: Are You Over-Caffeinated?

In November I quit caffeine cold turkey. The first 24 hours off the stuff was like a scene out of Trainspotting. Think: Grown man, balled up on the couch, sweating, feeling like I was about to vomit. I slept 11 hours straight after I was fully caffeine free. Then a low-grade headache that lasted for a week set in. Fun stuff!

But it was worth it. I quickly began experiencing a bunch of pretty wild benefits. For example, I was sleeping longer and sounder, I lost four pounds (likely due to the sleep), and I was less irritable and generally more chill (e.g., didn’t get annoyed by long grocery store checkout lines, used my horn less, etc).

I recently wrote about the experience and the science of your brain and body on too much caffeine for Outside magazine.

I didn’t think I was drinking all that much caffeine before I quit it. About three cups a day. But they were big cups, and when I did the math I discovered that I was taking in north of 1,200 milligrams.

The Mayo Clinic says 400 milligrams is the “safe” level of caffeine. Anything more can have negative side effects like headaches, insomnia, nervousness, irritability, upset stomach, and anxiety. And because caffeine’s half life is six hours, I’d basically been caffeinated since 2001.

It’s not easy to say under that 400 milligram threshold today. Caffeine is being added to an ever-increasing amount of food and drinks and we’re taking in more of it. The humble, medium-sized Starbucks drip coffee contains 310 milligrams. A large light-roast has 475. So if you’re downing multiple cups a day, you’re probably in the same boat I was.

How do you know if you’re overdoing caffeine? You don’t have to run complicated calculations. The man who suggested I try this experiment, Trevor Kashey, a friend and mad-genius nutritionist who has all of his clients go caffeine free their first two weeks working with him, has a litmus test to determine if you might benefit from a breakup. “Ask someone to remove caffeine, and watch the look on their face,” he says. If you see the face I had when he told me to try the experiment—a cross between outrage, shock, and existential dread—you’ll probably benefit from using less.

The Best Things I Read: Non-Problems, Feeling No Pain, Are Friends Overrated?, NBA Fitness Secrets, and Epic Rants. 

• Ever wondered why people complain about dumb, trivial, first-world problems? Your answer: Why the Human Brain Never Runs Out of Problems to Find.
• At 71, She’s Never Felt Pain or Anxiety. Now Scientists Know Why. This finding likely has big implications for how we’ll treat pain in the future.
• You’ve probably heard that being social is the key to a long, healthy life. One study, for example, found being lonely is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day. But new science is showing the rule doesn’t apply to everyone. Smart people are better off with fewer friends.
• The fascinating fitness reason why Luka Doncic, who will probably be named NBA Rookie of the Year, is so good at basketball.
• This resort’s epic rant about social media influencers.

The Best(?) Thing I Heard: A Train Wreck of a Podcast

What happens when you get two nutrition thinkers who disagree wildly and put them on the world’s most popular podcast? Find out here. The episode feels part reality show, part science debate. But it also serves as an interesting look into how divided and messy the world of nutrition science has become.

If people with big platforms who write about nutrition for a living can’t agree on basic facts, is it any wonder why the public is so confused about what to eat?

The Best Thing I Did: Half-Kneeling Windmill

The brilliant Witch Doctor put this exercise in a new workout program that he built me for a long backcountry trip I’m taking in the fall.

Watch how to do the move here.

What it does: It puts your shoulders, hips, core, and torso under weight and runs them through ranges of motion that they’re probably not used to. This does two things: strengthens your weakest points and helps you move better.

The exercise has this other weird intangible: Do it for a couple of weeks and you’ll just feel more solid everywhere

I now do it before any and all workouts, from lifting to running, and you should too. You can use any weight you have (dumbbell, kettlebell, milk jug, whatever). Eight reps on each side.

What I’m Reading: The Inner Game of Tennis

An old colleague a few years back recommended this book to me, and I finally picked up a copy. I’m glad I did.

Despite its name, this is not a book about tennis. It’s a short guide for anyone who wants to improve their performance in, well, anything. The author, W. Timothy Gallwey, is a famed sports-psychologist who uses Zen principles to help you win the mental game and find that elusive “flow state” of effortless concentration where big things happen. And let’s face it: Concentration is something we could all use a lot more of in this age of constantly buzzing electronic devices.

In Parting, One Context-Free Quote:

“A man goes through many changes in 2000 meters. Some are not very pretty. Some make you hate yourself. Some make you wonder if you’ve been rowing for only three or four days. To avoid that fate, we prepared for all possibilities. If a meteor landed 10 feet off our stern, we would not blink. We would be aware, yet impassive, to the outside world. Every ounce of energy would be funneled into the water, and not wasted by looking around, worrying about opponents, wondering about things that didn’t concern our primary goal—to be the first across the finish line.

Pain? Yes, of course. Racing without pain is not racing. But the pleasure of being ahead outweighed the pain a million times over. To hell with the pain. What’s six minutes of pain compared to the pain they’re going to feel for the next six months or six decades. You never forget your wins and losses in this sport. 

Rowing is such a fine sport. Everyone goes backward, and the leader can see his opponents as they struggle in vain.”

Until next, next Thursday …

-Michael