A FOUNDATION OF LIES

As a parent, it breaks my heart how much we have to lie to children in order to educate them, because all you want is to build trust between you and your child so that they’ll have the faith and confidence to come to you in times of need.  Our lies are non-malicious and, in fact, intended to be benevolent, but this does not change the fact that they are lies.  And since these are the lies we tell our children, we build their knowledge upon a foundation of lies, resulting in us having to later go on to CORRECT the lies that we used to establish the foundation once they’re better equipped to handle the truth.  And it’s because our brains develop incrementally, and not at the rate that is best suited for our own survival.  Children aren’t equipped to handle the nuance and, quite simply, barbarism of our history as a species (or our current barbarism for that matter), so we tell them heavily sugar coated stories to the point of being completely inaccurate regarding the founding of our country (which, for the majority of us, the country as ALREADY founded: just by indigenous people that were murdered and exiled by our own ancestors) along with world historical events in general.  When it comes to Christian theology, children are given sanitized stories, because the Bible itself is honestly WILD.  We tell kids not to talk to strangers because we don’t want to explain the nefarious intent of CERTAIN strangers, even though, later in life, talking to strangers is going to be a valuable skill, and the inability to do so is going to severely limit one from being able to have basic social interaction skills.  But therein lies the rub: if we do not, eventually, UNDO these lies, we leave one in a childlike state: unprepared to face the challenges of adulthood and unequipped to succeed.  And it is no different in the realm of physical transformation.  Quite simply, the foundation you build upon is a foundation of lies, and, eventually, the truth will need to come out.

Learning the truth about Santa can cause violent reactions in some...

When we start training, we start with the lie of progressive overload.  And that already upsets many to hear me call it a lie, but like all GOOD lies, it contains an element of truth within it.  We love the story of Milo of Croton and the bull, but that story is FULL of bull…but it’s a good story that helps teach us the lesson of doing more this time than we did last time.  And so we equip a trainee with a basic linear progression program and tell them “this is how you get stronger: you put more weight on the bar this time than you did last time”.  And thus, the foundation of lies is built…but eventually we must put away childish things!

 

We’ve seen this before: a trainee learns ONE program and decides that their education on the matter has stopped.  And hey: some authors DO manage to make that work.  You COULD just buy 5/3/1 Forever, or the 3 Tactical Barbell Books and have all the tools to train for the rest of your life, but even then, you’re still using MULTIPLE programs under one methodology to accomplish this goal.  And it’s because of the principle of periodization: get good at something until you can’t, then pick a new thing to get good at until you’re able to get good at that other thing again.  But a new trainee is such a babe in the woods that simply the act of training in ANY capacity is going to raise ALL of their abilities at the same time.  It’s only once they’ve exhausted that newb superpower that new interventions must be undertaken, at which point the magic of linear progression ends and we must employ different avenues of progression.  But for that trainee who does NOT unlearn the foundational lie, they just keep running the same basic linear progression until they stall, the they reset and repeat, hitting the same stall over and over again.  Like a child stuck repeating the 3rd grade, they never learn the TRUE history. 

Or repeating the 4th grade for 38 years

 

And we fuel these trainees upon a nutritional foundation of lies as well!  The lie of protein, and specifically, its significance and importance.  And once again, a scared cow is slaughtered, but I come here merely to speak the truth: not to make people happy.  Is protein necessary to build muscle?  Indisputable.  Is it as important as we PORTRAY it to be?  This, of course, is a SUBJECTIVE area to refute, but from my lens, the significance has been overstated.  And like the lies we tell children, it was, initially, for noble intent.  This is because it is QUITE possible to go a full day of eating and take in a VERY low amount of protein.  If you have children or have been around children, you know very well this is possible (once again, children the carrier of the lies).  A kid can go a whole day eating cereal for breakfast with toast and jam, possibly even fruit, a lunch of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with applesauce and goldfish crackers, and then a dinner of sauceless pasta and breadsticks, with a dessert of ice cream.  Take a kid to a buffet and see what they pick out…and realize that many adults don’t outgrow these childish tastebuds.  And THEN factor in that we exist in a food environment where junkfood manufacturers have keyed in on the fact that protein and fiber are satiating and work AGAINST making food hyperpalatable so they intentionally engineer it to be low in those properties and that MANY folks live off these foods because they are shelf stable and require no preparation and, once again, it’s clear that one CAN operate in a low protein state.

 

That said, though: as soon as one simply has the AWARENESS to NOT do this, protein’s importance really tends to wane.  It honestly doesn’t take a significant amount of protein in order to build muscle: with every passing day the numbers seem to drop lower and lower.  In fact, what we observed is that those who were pushing at the top end range FOR protein requirements tended to be the same folks who were selling us protein supplements: they were creating a problem and then selling us a solution.  Specifically in the realm of muscle BUILDING, we find that the presence of adequate fuel from EITHER fats or carbs will have a protein sparing effect such that they body won’t be forced to breakdown protein for fuel and, instead, can use it purely for the sake of building muscle.  It’s only in the absence of a fuel abundance (fat loss phases) that protein requirements tend to drive higher, and even then, still to a manageable level.  We tell new trainees the lie that “protein is VERY important” simply to get them to start eating the damn stuff, but once THAT is figured out we can say “ok, it’s not QUITE that important, but it’s still good to have some”, because we soon find ourselves with trainees that are fixated on getting that protein that they don’t care to consider the source NOR do they have awareness of where they are obtaining their other sources of fuel.  They eat protein poptarts and protein breakfast cereal and protein bars and drink protein shakes and all other manner of shenanigans, because much like those strangers we warn children about: companies are predatory, and they found a mark in the new trainee. 

A whole EIGHT grams of the stuff!

 

But think about it: protein ISN’T an energy substrate the body can readily use: WHY would you need a “protein snack”?  A snack is there to address an energy demand: we ran out of energy and need a quick pick me up to get more.  This means, traditionally, a simple carb, but could also be complex carbs and fats (trail mix is a great example of this): it makes no sense for us to need a snack of protein.  That can wait until we can sit down for an actual meal.  And this is the TRUTH about nutrition that is a bit too much for the new trainee to take in.  Do we need to bog them down about energy substrates when they’re ALREADY eating a diet of almost pure fats and carbs?  No: we tell them that protein is important. But once they HAVE that foundational lie established, THEN we start slowly leaking the truth into them.

 

And much like when it comes to your parents, do not begrudge the foundational liars.  They had benevolent intentions.  Do not discover the lie and think to yourself that now you can no longer trust them to provide you the truth.  Do not mistake EVOLUTION in thought for REVOLUTION.  This is not them completely changing their position: this is them allowing you to build up appropriately to where you need to be.  And, in turn, do not doubt YOURSELF when what worked no longer “works”.  You’ve simply grown up.  It’s now time to unlearn the lies and start learning the truth.