I often think back to the most ignorant period of my life.

At the start of my fitness journey I would follow this completely outrageous program.

Squats, deadlifts and a mountain of giant exercises all crammed into one day.

I would fight my way through 2 hour workouts and collapse the second I came home.

And after a few months, I had barely made any progress even though I followed the program perfectly.

I didn’t realize that was exactly the problem.

Because I never deviated from the plan – I never found a better way.

I kept banging my head against the wall because I saw the workout plan I got off some website as absolute truth.

I didn’t realize one simple thing – health isn’t a prescription. I didn’t see the prescribed plan for what it was – a starting point.

Workout plans, diets and lifestyles are only there to give you direction.

But in most cases – it becomes people’s whole lives.

Most people get stuck following:

• One diet ideology

• One workout routine

• One enforced sleep schedule

But as a result, never find the only one that truly works — their own.

• They defend their diet to death even when it’s making them miserable
  

• They follow the same boring workout routine even when they stop progressing

• They go to bed at the optimal bedtime even if they lie awake for hours

They don’t see prescriptions for what they are – a starting point. 

A place to iterate from.

The point of a sandbox game isn’t to go through the motions. 

It’s to do whatever you want.

The predetermined path is a tutorial – but people treat it like the whole game.

They don’t realize that you can’t fit your entire being inside one tiny perspective. That you don’t have to cram yourself into a box just because that’s what’s expected of you.

The only path in life that will truly work for you is the one you create yourself.

But it reveals itself only – after you dare to draw outside the lines.

Limiting Your Infinite Potential Is A Bad Idea

You feel terrible because you’re following someone else’s idea of health.

Your genetic code is one in 70 000 000 000 000.

You would have to scour trillions of alternate universes to find an exact replica of yourself. There has never existed and there will never exist – another you.

Because of this, health is the most individual thing on the planet.

Everyone will respond differently to diets, exercise routines and lifestyles.

We are all biologically unique and require equally unique solutions to our problems

(which is also known as “bio-individuality”).

What works for one person isn’t guaranteed to work for another.

This is the problem with following just one perspective

When you subscribe to one perspective of health – you ignore all the parts of you that don’t fit. 

You limit your health, life and potential:

• You never experience life as vividly as you were supposed to

• You never unlock the energy for the things that actually matter

• You’ll always be trapped in a mediocre life because you refuse to look outside the box you jammed yourself into

Your potential is for all intent and purposes – infinite.

But when you adopt one perspective as the ultimate truth – you lose it.

Health isn’t a prescription – because it can’t be. Life isn’t a predetermined story (despite how most people live it).

The default paths in life are the tutorials – but people treat them like they’re the whole game.

They don’t see them for what they are – starting points.

The default path of going to school for 12 years, college for 6, ending up doing the same meaningless work for decades, marrying a person you despise and finally retiring at the age of 70 (and still don’t know what to do with your life) — isn’t for everyone.

And it isn’t meant for everyone. 

It’s a starting point to iterate from. It’s the starting ground from which you’re supposed to forge your own path.

But the majority of people lock themselves into one perspective for the perceived security it provides. But in trying to avoid risk, they take the biggest risk of them all – not taking any.

In the same way as the default path in life can’t work for everyone – one way of health can’t work for everyone.

By not forging your own path, you limit your entire being to one tiny perspective of the universe:

• One diet

• One training style

• One sleep schedule

• One identity

• One destiny

By forcing your wiggly self into a square box you’re fighting yourself.

You’re fighting the universe.

Your body, mind and soul is fighting to break out of your conditioned way of living – but you won’t let it.

As a result, you end up living life in a constant state of mental civil war. 

Your body and soul tells you one thing but your predetermined health protocol tells you another. 

And eventually your body gets its way. 

• You cheat on your diet because your body is deprived of nutrients.
  

• You skip workouts because your body is completely demolished.

As a result, you feel guilty and disappointed and you reject yourself even more (which only makes the civil war worse). 

Your entire life turns into a cycle of hating yourself for not following your commands and at the same time rebelling against them.

Your potential is infinite – but the way you get there is unique to you.

You won’t get there following someone else’s path because you’re rejecting yourself.

You are a wiggly being and can’t possibly thrive in a square someone else created. 

The universe is wiggly. Trees, animals, flowers and clouds are all completely wiggly and chaotic, yet utterly perfect. The same is true with you. 

The only way to escape the insane perspective of forcing your wiggliness into a square box is to accept the unevenness of your being – and work to change your life around it.

In the words of C.G. Jung:

“We can’t change something unless we accept it. And I am the oppressor of the one I condemn, not his friend or fellow sufferer.”

As we’ve discussed in previous letters, don’t fight your biology – flow with it.

You can’t force your wiggly body into a square box. 

You need a wiggly box.

The One True Perspective

The universe is one thing.

Perspectives divide it into multiple ones.

They are all parts of the bigger picture – but not the whole thing.

This means that all perspectives are true (though some are better than others) because they are all just pieces of the same thing – the universe.

If the best perspective is the one that provides the fullest picture of the universe — then the best perspective is the one that incorporates the most amount of perspectives.

The perspective of using bodybuilding to attract girls is correct.

But doing it for health and longevity is even more correct (because it incorporates more pieces of the universe).

The path to health (and life) isn’t found in one perspective.

It’s found in combining all of them.

The path to health is through relentlessly applying every perspective and pulling out what works while rejecting what doesn’t.

The more you do this, the closer you come to optimal health:

• The more energy & motivation you unlock for creating the things you want

• The more vividly you experience the world and the people around you
  

• The more life will become unrecognizable to your previous self

Life is a science experiment.

The more experiments you make, the closer you come to a life that fits your wiggly self.

When you stop experimenting and lock yourself in a perspective box – you stop growing.

And when you stop growing – you die.

I mean this both metaphorically and literally. 

Life is either growth or death, physical and mental – there’s no inbetween.

The way to health (and to life) is following your own way. 

It’s implementing as many perspectives as possible and pulling out the truths while discarding the flaws.

In other words:

It’s becoming a health polymath.

Becoming a health polymath is the only logical thing if you want to achieve your optimal health and potential (and in a way that doesn’t take away from life).

And if you don’t want to:

• Skip your friend’s birthday for your circadian rhythm 

• Cancel on your significant other for a good night’s sleep

• Never eat at another restaurant in your life

You can do that. 

You just have to experiment and create the systems that allow you to (while still maintaining your health).

There are no right or wrong perspectives. There are perspectives that are more or less right for you.

Health dogma completely misses the point.

As much as I don’t like using this cliché, it’s true; There is no “one size fits all” solution to health.

You don’t have to become either a vegan or a carnivore, a bodybuilder or a marathon runner, stuck in the grind or a buddhist monk.

You can be everything.

You can become (and already are) the entire universe.

The Experimental Method

Becoming a health polymath is the only logical solution to the complexity of life.

Dissecting, understanding and implementing as many different perspectives as you can is how you get closer to your truth.

Which is the same as getting closer to the universe.

When you don’t limit yourself by trying to fit your whole being inside one small perspective box — you unlock a way of life perfect for you.

The fastest way to achieve this is through the experimental method.

It’s the scientific method made simple.

It consists of 3 parts:

• Base

• Add

• Iterate

Without further we do… 

Let’s create a personal health protocol for you.

Base

The first step in crafting your health protocol is creating a base.

This is where you collect all your learnings about health and yourself.

It’s your personal diet, individual training routine and unique sleep schedule.

This is the most important aspect of mastering your health.

If you don’t have a place to collect your learnings and results – you will never make any progress and you’ll just randomly stumble through life.

You need something to improve. And you can’t improve something that doesn’t exist.

You need a first draft.

You create your base by studying and pulling from multiple perspectives, and crafting a worldview that makes sense to you.

Note: Don’t limit your studying. 

That’s how you force yourself into a crammed perspective box. Study everything:

• Study Bodybuilding

• Study Running

• Study the vegan diet

• Study the carnivore diet

• Study night owls

• Study morning larks

That’s the only way to get something close to an accurate picture of the universe. Pull out the truths from different domains and discard the flaws.

Drown your mind in valuable information from all sources. (If you want to shortcut this process I would highly recommend looking through the previous letters, start with this one).

The key is to keep your base as simple as possible in order to make experimentation easier.

If you have a million different foods or exercises, you’ll have to experiment for several lifetimes to get down to the core of what’s causing your life enjoyment (and what’s causing it to suffer).

For simplicity, we’ll use diet to illustrate this process (but it works for everything in your life):

Open a notes page and write down 4 categories:

• Protein

• Carbs

• Fats

• Micro-nutrients

Under each category, write down which whole foods you can eat and at what time, without decreasing your enjoyment of life (emotions, energy, motivation etc.)

An example could be:

• Protein

  • Eggs 8 am

  • Ground beef 12 am & 6 pm

• Carbs

  • Honey 8 am

  • Fruit 2 pm

• Fats

  • Butter 8 am

  • Tallow & butter 12 am

  • Butter 6 pm

• Micro-Nutrients

  • Liver 8 am

  • Cucumber 12 am

This is the foundation of your health protocol.

The goal is to experiment and improve this foundation as much as possible.

This is your starting point. It is meant to be iterated.

Which is the goal of the next step.

Add / Eliminate

The next step is to carry out experiments.

My favorite way of doing these is by removing or adding something to/from your diet every week.

This gives you enough time to notice a pattern while still being short enough for you to rapidly progress with future experiments.

Note: Some foods and behaviors will take a little more time for you to notice a difference. One week is just a set point, but you can expand it to a month or decrease it to a couple of days. Don’t feel obligated to carry out an experiment if you notice it’s making you miserable.

1. The Hypothesis

The first step in an experiment is making a hypothesis.

By looking over your base with the knowledge and personal experiences you’ve collected – what could you change to make life a little bit better?

A good hypothesis can be summarized as an “if, then” statement.

Example:

• If I cut out processed foods from my diet then I will have more energy.

• 2. The Experiment

The 2nd step in an experiment is the experiment itself.

Go through your week as you usually would without altering anything else about your lifestyle. This will make the change in life quality easy to trace back to your diet change. 

3. The Documentation Process

The 3rd step in an experiment is documenting your findings.

Write down how you feel in 3 categories:

• Energy levels

• Mental clarity

• Positive/negative emotions

Do this after every meal and through the day.

Don’t think that negative feelings like anxiety, sadness or anger shouldn’t be paid attention.

Your health influences every part of your being. Whatever you feel – write it down. This will not only help you make sense of your health but of your mind as well. It’s a journaling and health system all in one.

Repeat this everyday for about a week.

Once you’ve given it enough time – you can move on to the last part of the framework.

Changing the foundation.

Iterate

This part requires a little brain power.

Drawing conclusions from your self experiments is not easy.

There are 2 main reasons for this:

1. Dependent Variables

In most experiments you have one independent variable and one dependent variable.

Think of watering a plant to make it grow.

Watering is an independent variable (because it isn’t influenced by anything else).

The growth of the plant is a dependent variable because it’s influenced by a lot of different things (sunlight, temperature, the quality of the earth).

In the case of health, EVERY variable is dependent on each other.

The thing that is you is an unbelievably complex system. And changing one thing might change the very nature of another.

As an example, if you usually eat a piece of bread before working out and suddenly remove it – your workouts might suffer. You won’t push as hard and you won’t get the same mental and physical benefits you usually do.

As a result, the quality of your life suffers. But this doesn’t mean bread is good for you.

You have to be very observant of how your life is constructed to not make the wrong conclusion from an experiment.

You need to use something called critical thinking.

A future experiment might involve replacing the piece of bread with some fruit, because of the hypothesis that it was the carbs that improved the workout.

The amount of dependent variables with your personal health is where things get tricky – but also where it gets fun.

Your systems for life will continue to get more and more complex until you’ve created a lifestyle that just fuels every part of your being.

A lifestyle impossible for anyone else to replicate because it’s perfected for you.

2. The Measuring Problem

The 2nd difficulty with self experimentation is how you measure your health.

The goal of self experimentation with regards to health, is to “feel” better. In other words, to have more energy.

This is where it gets tricky.

Measuring something like energy or how you feel is difficult. Because you have to rely on the memories of your past experiences (which aren’t that reliable).

This is why you need to document how you feel regularly (as we discussed in the last section). As you continue to do this, you will become more and more accurate and gain a better understanding of how your mind and body works.

It’s meditation in a sense.

The 2 problems are difficult to overcome – but they’re not insurmountable. The more experiments you carry out – the better you’ll become at them. As with anything, give it time.

Once you’ve carried out your experiment it’s time to review the result.

Go through the data you’ve collected on how you felt throughout the week. Then use your brain to decide if your experiment Improved, Impaired or Made no difference to your life.

After you’ve made your conclusion, it’s time to iterate on your foundation:

• Add a food

• Eliminate a food

• Change your food timing

Once you have a new (and hopefully improved) foundation — you repeat the process.

Observe your life, do your research and outline a new experiment.

Note: This is an eternal process.

There is no end goal you’ll eventually reach. There is no limit to how good of a health protocol you can create

It can be infinitely perfect.

This is where things become fun.

When every waking second of your day is an experiment – you’re guided by good dopamine.

Everything you’re consuming now has practical application. 

Life itself will turn into a state of flow (which I discuss in “the ultimate goal of life is flow (how to turn life into play)”)

When you’re always experimenting, you’re always progressing and making life more vivid, full and enjoyable.

There really is no limit to how good your health can become, to how much energy you can have and to how vivid the experience of life can be.

Your potential is infinite.

The Cosmos Of Health

Your health is a universe in it of itself.

It’s only mastered by pulling out the truths from every crevice of reality.

It’s a long process of research, experimentation and iteration – but if anything is worth doing – this is it.

It’s how you stop the fight inside your body and unlock the energy trapped inside of you.

It’s how you supercharge life and become closer to the universe itself.

Truth is not found inside one small perspective.

It’s the culmination of as many different perspectives as you can possibly handle and pull out lessons from.

The pieces to the cosmos of your health lie scattered in an infinite amount of perspectives and ideas.

Your job is to find and piece them together and unlock a way of life you previously couldn’t have imagined.

That’s it for this week.

Thanks for reading, press the button down below to not miss out on future posts – and I’ll see you in the next one.

I’m out.