Good morning, movers. I spent the weekend at the beach and am currently traveling for work, so I apologize for the less-visually-appealing, bare bones look this week. I hope you still find the content as good as ever!

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Be a Scientist—Experiment on Yourself!

This is one of the most important concepts you could take away from the Move to Improve newsletter: Be a scientist and experiment. The folks at Functional Bodybuilding call this being a “thinking athlete.”

There’s no lack of advice on the internet when it comes to your health. Thousands of people claiming to have found the magic diet or exercise or biohack that will absolutely change your life and solve all your problems.

In all honesty, it may have solved their problems. They may have found exactly what their body needed. But that doesn’t mean it’s exactly what your body needs.

The reality is, everyone’s needs are individual and unique—in most areas, but particularly in the realm of nutrition. While we do have countless studies about the effects of various nutrients, foods, and diets, the conclusions of studies are always based on averages. Average change, average improvement, average participant, average this, average that. But not everyone is average. Far from it.

Often, what works for the “average” person will work for you to an average extent. Sometimes, it won’t work at all. Sometimes a given intervention will actually be the opposite of what you need.

• For example: some people do very well on a high-fat, low-carb diet and have incredible cholesterol and biomarkers. Others have sky-high cholesterol on a high-fat diet and need to reign that in, but can handle a higher carbohydrate load.

  • While some principles remain relatively consistent, there is much in the realm of health—and especially nutrition—that is just not definitive for all people across the board.

Just because it worked for Becky down the street doesn’t necessarily mean it will work for you. Alternatively, just because it didn’t work for Becky doesn’t mean it won’t work for you. You can follow general guidelines and what the factual science says, but in some cases, you just never know until you try.

There are really just a few simple ways to measure effects that lifestyle changes have on yourself without doing a full-blown study. Remember the scientific method? Form a hypothesis, manipulate a variable, test for a given time, and observe the outcome. 

The outcomes we can measure on ourselves are limited but very valuable nonetheless. Primarily, we can track changes in three ways:

1. How we look (objective or subjective)

2. How we feel (mostly subjective)

3. What our biomarkers are (i.e. blood tests, vitals, etc.) (objective)

If you truly want to run an experiment on yourself, don’t change 10 things at once. Because then you don’t know if it was the removal of X or the addition of Y or the combination of Q and Z that led to your outcomes. Be patient, and only change one variable at a time. Then wait. Then measure.

To see the effects of removing or adding something, it very well may take a week, two weeks, or even a month or more. Whether you’re tracking muscle mass, body fat, LDL cholesterol, feelings of fatigue, joint pain, digestive stress, or any other marker that you’re trying to positively change, it’s vital to sustain the “intervention” long enough to see—or not see—any results.

If the outcome is positive, boom, there’s an answer. You can maintain that change if you want. If there’s no change, whatever variable you manipulated likely wasn’t impacting the outcome you’re measuring. And if there was a negative change, you might want to reverse that and change something else instead, starting a new experiment.

It is unlikely you will ever find a singular magic trick to cure all your problems. When you hear or learn something new, consider it alongside alllll the other things you know and think. How does it fit those frameworks? How does it align with what other experts say? How does it align with your personal experience? Then, if you deem it worthy of merit, run a little self-experiment to see if it’s a game changer for you.

Certain changes may make a positive and noticeable impact on your health, while others may not move the needle at all. I am confident that building muscle and strength, improving cardiovascular fitness, eating more protein and whole foods, managing stress, and sleeping well will virtually always have a positive impact on you.

All the rest? Who knows? 🤷🏼‍♂️

That’s for you to find out.

✅ Take Action

Every newsletter's Take Action section will invite you to take small steps to improve your health. Recognizing that we all have different capabilities, I'll offer three different levels of action you can choose to take.

Level 1: What’s a rather extreme piece of advice you’ve heard recently? Reflect on it and see how it stands up to everything else you’ve known and experienced.

Level 2: What’s something you’ve wanted to try but been unsure of? Does it have merit and some scientific or at least significant anecdotal evidence to back it up? Be a thinking athlete and try it out.

Level 3: Run a 2–4 week experiment on yourself. Don’t change a lot at once. Maintain what you’re doing in all areas but one. Stick to this one adjusted variable. Get both objective and subjective data on your body and note the changes!

This newsletter is brought to you by… me!

Interested in becoming a sponsor? Know someone else who might be? I’d love to get to know you and/or your business and see how we can partner together. Reply to this email!

✍️ Drew's Picks:

• Listen: Sorry for a Drew’s Picks Lite this week, but in keeping-it-short fashion, stream Adison Rae’s EP! So good! (One of the songs was written like 12 years ago by Lady Gaga; try to guess which one)

Tooda… Too-da-loo? Toodle-oo? I’ve never thought about how that would be spelled. Anyway, see ya next week! Share with a friend for seven years of good luck! 🤞 

Keep moving,

Drew

The content in Move to Improve is meant to be informative in nature, but it should not be taken as medical advice. It is always a good idea to consult with a trusted health professional before making any major lifestyle changes that could have a significant impact on your health. This is not a medical resource, and any opinions and articles are not intended for use as diagnosis, prevention, and/or treatment of health problems. They are not substitutes for consulting a qualified medical professional. Please think critically and take what I say with a grain of salt (aka don’t sue me).