INTENTIONAL INACTION: WHAT WE DON’T DO

I find one of the most challenging notion for westerners to accept and appreciation is that of NOT doing something.  We are a culture of doing: that is how we know we are BEING.  “I think, therefore I am” ala Decartes was there to resolve an existential crisis, the notion that, because I am thinking, I MUST therefore exist, premised upon the idea that action affirms existence.  Contrast this with an eastern philosophy of duality, wherein action is necessarily balanced by inaction, and this audience can far more appreciate the importance of NOT doing along with doing.  This comes to a head in the realm of physical transformation, because those who embark on this journey with a western mindset are always fixated on what they can DO to achieve results, rather than what they can NOT do.  “What foods do I eat to lose weight?”  Already that question seems so ridiculous on the premise: how will EATING make us LOSE weight?  But it’s the question fired right out the gate.  “What workout do I do to get in shape?”  “What supplements do I take?”  Why do we need supplements BEFORE we even know what’s wrong?  People will ice plunge and detox and juice cleanse and red light therapy themselves to hell and gone, but few will actually STOP doing stuff, because DOING is satisfying, while NOT doing feels like stagnation, decline and death.  But I propose a notion of intentional inaction as a necessary counter balance to action.  To satisfy this western sensibility, we must ACTIVELY practice inactivity.

Nailed it!

What does this mean exactly?  It means to be inactive WITH INTENT.  It’s easy for us to equate inactivity with sloth, what the west considers to be a sin due to puritanical values that praise industry (which Nietzsche would most likely argue is, in fact, slave morality, crafted by the masters, to have a content workforce out there producing goods while the masters enjoy luxury, but I digress), but we can instead turn the act of inactivity (boy that’s confusing) into a form of intentional action.  We CHOOSE inactivity as a means to specifically achieve the effect that the inactivity produces.  Because yes, “an object at rest remains at rest”, but we exist in a system where all the objects have already been placed into motion.  In turn, by placing an object INTO a state of rest, we actually disrupt the system and create effects. Inactivity is not merely the cessation of action, but instead to catalyst for an outcome that can ONLY be achieved THROUGH inaction.  We achieve results that cannot be achieved through action.

 

By INTENTIONALLY fasting, we engage in the inaction of not eating.  We are NOT doing something, but we are NOT doing it for a reason.  Fasting from carbohydrates makes it so that we are NOT experiencing blood sugar and insulin spikes during the day, which, in turn, gives us an opportunity to improve insulin sensitivity.  When we fast from protein, we can increase secretion of the FGF21 hormone, which can improve lipid metabolism and increase insulin sensitivity.  And just fasting in general gives our digestive tract a rest and gives us a chance to trigger autophagy (which, yes, training can ALSO do this, but we’ll talk about training in a bit).  We’re also not triggering mTOR as much when we engage in some intentional fasting, AND we give the metabolism an opportunity to ramp down, which, if you’ve been pounding food in an arms race to put on size and find yourself staring down the barrel of 8000 calories a day just to put on some size, a chance to drop demand is a blessing.  We re-sensitize our bodies to food by denying it some for a little bit.  We’re not simply “not eating”: we’re INTENTIONALLY not eating because of the effect that NOT eating achieves.

Like fame and fortune!

NOT training IS action: it’s the action of letting fatigue dissipate so that we can train HARDER upon our return.  For some reason, it’s become en vouge now to claim that, if you NEED deloads, your training is poorly set up, and this absolutely smacks of the HIT reductionists claims that “if it didn’t work, that means you didn’t train hard enough, because HIT ONLY works if you train hard enough”.  Hey Emperor: hate to break it to you, but you’re naked.  For those of us living on planet Earth, life happens, fatigue builds, and taking a week off of training is a surefire way to let that fatigue go away.  And along with FATIGUE, even IF you have somehow managed to find the perfect balance of training such that you never exceed your recovery abilities, there’s no denying that the sheer act of training itself is an inflammatory activity, and simply allowing your body a week off from constantly exposing it to inflammation can ALSO have some positive effects.   Yes yes: acute inflammation of hormesis and chronic inflammation is the concern, but just from a “making weight class” perspective, taking a week off of training means letting some of that fluid out of your body so you can step on the scale a little lighter.  It means letting your connective tissues have a little break so all those chronic aches and pains can go away.  It means, psychologically, relighting the fire, as the week off should ideally have you champing at the bit to come back to training.  It also means having a light at the end of the tunnel of a hard training block, knowing you can REALLY go all out on that last week, as you’ll have a full week off to recover.  These are all objectives that we CANNOT achieve through DOING: it’s the NOT doing that allows us to achieve this.  The deload is an ACTIVE process: we are actively NOT doing the things that prevent us from experiencing these outcomes.

 

And what’s comical about all of this is I’m discussing intentionally not doing the things that we understand are GOOD for you.  NOT eating foods, no matter how healthy or unprocessed they are.  NOT doing exercise, no matter how effective it is for producing lean mass or positive cardio health outcomes.  Just imagine the benefits from all the NOT doing of things we know are BAD for us.  Not drinking alcohol, not doing recreational drugs, not eating processed garbage, etc.  These are some of the simplest wins we can rack up in the quest for physical transformation, and they’re the most overlooked because they’re NOT doing things rather than doing things.  And then we can go even further and try to NOT do the things that we THINK are good for us but we know are really self-destructive.  NOT making every single training session a max out, NOT trying to destroy ourselves with conditioning but instead let it build us up into something great, NOT focusing on our strengths and ignoring our weaknesses, etc.  If we dedicate some serious effort into NOT doing things, we might actually become something.