The Mix Tape, Vol. 80
Welcome to this week’s Mix:
🏃This week’s Sprint Essays
📝Write of Passage kicks off
🍺Are sugar, booze, and restaurants the real carbon culprits?
🏋️♂️The value of a three-minute squat
☀️A Florida sunset photo. It’s what we do here.
This week’s Sprint Essays
How Robin Arzón made a mid-career pivot from law to fitness
In just ten minutes a day, Peleton VP of fitness programming Robin Arzón gradually changed her entire life.
The internet’s worst pro-breakfast arguments
In turns out, in fact, that no nutrient expires at noon. They are available 24-7.
Why dark chocolate is “better”
Flavanols are you friend. Turns out dark chocolate is a fine delivery vehicle.
Calories don’t matter. Context does.
It’s not so much the calorie, but the wrapper which contains it.
America is locked in a metabolic health crisis. Blood glucose holds the key.
Only 12% of Americans qualify as metabolically healthy. Somehow, that’s even more disastrous than it sounds.
The very best health and fitness program? Trying stuff.
Be your own personal wellness scientist. Learn. Conduct field experiments. Repeat.
Write of Passage kicks off
I’m honored to be back as a mentor in Write of Passage for cohort 6, which kicked off on Wednesday. Write of Passage is a six-week online writing course, led by the unbelievable David Perell.
Students learn to write online to share their ideas. But most importantly, they learn to destroy the mental barriers that have kept them from pressing publish.
This cohort has around 300 students who meet as single group on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, with an optional writing session on Saturdays.
I am one of 14 mentors who lead smaller breakout groups each week. We are there to:
Facilitate relationships
Help the students lean onto and into each other to push themselves to write and publish
Share some small parts of our own writing journeys to help the students move forward
What a group of mentors we have this time around.
I’d like to tell you I have my six breakout sessions all planned out. I do not.
I do plan to talk about the power of morning pages, and to create a case study out of my adventures with James Altucher to show what can happen when you press publish.
Last time, I believed I would help students with the technical side of writing: using active voice, writing better headlines, etc.
That assumption was laughably wrong.
My job was to instill confidence. To create a smaller, safer environment where students could share their frustrations and fears. And to be vulernable myself, to share my own frustrations and fears in order to set the example.
What students needed from me was not technical but emotional.
Not exactly my forte. I had to stretch.
And it was one of the most rewarding things I’ve ever done.
So I’m back on the rocket ship, and ready to ride for another six weeks.
Are sugar, booze, and restaurants the real carbon culprits?
Those poor cows.
They’ve been demonized, as climate change activists hold their collective noses and point an accusatory finger at, well, clouds of cow gas. Methane from cows is heating up the environment, they say.
Cow demonization has been used to kick off an entire industry of disgusting blobs of vegetable oil poorly disguised as meat.
Delish.
But what if the biggest culprit isn’t cows, but sugar, booze, and processed food?
Families with higher carbon footprints are likely to consume more confectionary, alcohol and restaurant food, according to a new study published in One Earth.
Uh oh.
Eating out was found to contribute on average 770 kg of greenhouse gases per year for those households with a higher footprint, whereas meat contributed just 280kg.
The cows do not emerge unscathed, however:
"Meat is a high carbon footprint food. Replacing red meat consumption with white meat and vegetables will lower a family's carbon footprint," he said.
Of course, consuming less sugar, booze, and restaurant food also improves your health.
Red meat is an easy target because it’s distributed—ranchers aren’t united under a single umbrella with marketing and lobbying power. Sugar, alcohol, and restaurants have high-powered associations with counter-PR capability and legislative sway.
I’ll take red meat on the home grill over just about any restaurant meal. And I’ll continue to do so.
The value of a three-minute squat
Maybe you have tight hips like I do. After 30 years, I stopped jogging and my hips are feeling better with my new sprint-interval training routine. They aren't cramping like they used to. Progress.
Then I saw this tweet:
So I’m trying this to further loosen up my hips.
Early observations:
It hurts. A lot. My hips have a long way to go.
Time is, in fact, an illusion. Three minutes can feel like an hour in certain situations. Like this one.
The first couple of days, my heels wouldn't touch the ground. Now they do. Progress!
Better mobility and pliability are next on my fitness list. I’ll let you know how this progresses.
Florida sunset photo (It’s what we do here)
The sun is hanging around longer these days. It’s getting warmer. And I’m here for it.
Hello to 13 new subscribers this week!
Thank you for reading and sharing.
Please hit reply if you have questions, comments, or open rebuttals. (Or just want to say hi.)