[SB 197] Dubious health claims, Taylor's triumph, summer grilling

Hi, I’m Matt. Welcome to Steady Beats, a newsletter about chasing the good life at midlife: exercise, education, and eighties music.

It’s Memorial Day Weekend in the US, the unofficial start of summer. Seeing as it’s a holiday—and I’m recharging after an intense two months in Write of Passage Cohort 10—let’s go with some lighter fare today.

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Health Beats

There’s lots of good fitness advice on social media.

There’s also a heaping pile of disingenuous garbage. Let’s go through some trash, just for fun.

1. What does this even mean?

This meme accumulated over 9,000 likes on Twitter. What does it mean?

Nothing, really.

Fasting, it seems, can help clear old and dormant cells and regenerate new ones. But fasting is not an episode of Fixer Upper. We don’t take our immune system down to the studs and start over.

Again: 9,000 likes. Twitter is wild.

2. Why would anyone ditch coffee?

“Give up this perfectly safe and spectacular beverage which may even carry health benefits and buy my drink instead!”

To you and your mullet, sir, I say a hearty “No”.

3. Speaking of coffee, check out the second “fact ” here.

You go on ahead and chomp that Red Delicious to start your day. I’m quaffing black coffee and cinnamon, 18.3 seconds after waking, every day forever. Let’s see who’s more ready to roll 10 minutes later.

Why are we trying to defeat coffee?

It’s like seeking an oxygen alternative. What nature has provided works great. All substitutes pale in comparison.

And what’s with the dual banana thing?

What will happen if you don’t eat two bananas before an intense workout, as I’ve evidently forgotten to do for 30 years?

Nothing.

In fact I nearly always exercise fasted these days. No bananas, no carrots. Plenty of energy. Who knew.

Instead of any of this stuff, let’s strength train consistently. Do cardio. Prioritize protein. Then, welcome to the fittest 5% of humankind.

I’ll drink (black coffee) to that.

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Music Beats

I don’t seek out Taylor Swift. She finds me.

Swift winds her way through my car speakers and the home Sonos system, nimble journeys enabled by my daughter who hacks through my fortress of 80s tunes.

Don’t get me wrong: Taylor’s great. I just don’t listen to her music unless my daughter strong-arms it into the rotation. Which she often does.

Said daughter and my wife had a blast at one of Taylor’s Tampa shows recently, and Rob Sheffield’s review of one of Swift’s New Jersey shows showed me why:

One of the central paradoxes of Taylor Swift — and this woman is nothing BUT paradoxes — is how she writes songs about the tiniest, most secretive agonies, the kind you wouldn’t even confess to your friends, except the only way she knows how to process these moments is turning them into louder-than-life stadium scream-alongs.

That alchemy creates a unique dynamic:

I heard voices and thought the security guard near me was arguing with a fan. It turned out they were just trading friendship bracelets. It’s THAT kind of show. That’s the world this woman and only this woman creates, on an epic scale, night after night. There’s no experience in music like being part of that world Taylor Swift creates for a few hours.

If the shows are as good as Sheffield’s writing about the shows, then I missed out.

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Food Beats

Summertime grilling season is here.

Pro tip: double up the cheeseburger.

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Thank you for reading.

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