Body Optimization

Notes regarding health and fitness. And beyond being just healthy or in decent shape, this is about what can you do to optimize your body.

What changes can you make to make yourself not just healthy, but as healthy as possible, and not just fit, but as fit as possible?

How can you realize your maximally optimal physical potential?

Metrics and measurements

The best way to optimize something is to choose one or more appropriate metrics to improve, and then measure them regularly.

Some metrics to consider optimizing.

Get a physical from a medical doctor and establish baseline numbers for all physiological metrics ASAP.

Check with your medical doctor for optimum levels as the numbers vary according to age, weight, height, gender etc.

Ask your medical doctor what your physiological metrics SHOULD be (i.e. an "acceptable" level), and what would be the "ideal" level.

Consider some performance metrics (measurable physical activities) as well.

See BodyOptimizationMetrics for more detail.

Techniques

Environmental risk factor reduction

By avoiding sources of harm from your surrounding environment, you can decrease risk to your health.

Intelligent Consumption

Simply by making small, scientifically informed choices about dietary intake, many metrics can be improved.

Physical Training

With minor improvements in physical training over time, it is possible to ramp up physical capabilities and thus make steady forward progress per active measurements.

See BodyOptimizationTechniques for more detail.

Public Site

Body Optimization wiki for more public discussions and contributions. I will probably be moving/copying a lot of the general thoughts on my pages to the public wiki.

Presentations

2007:

2007-11-11-Body-Optimization

2008:

SXSW2008BodyOptimization

Reference

2007-05-14 The smartest (or the nuttiest) futurist on Earth - interview with Ray Kurzweil. quotes:
- The man literally intends not to die. With an acute memory of his father's early death, he's been getting weekly blood tests and intravenous treatments. He also takes pills - lots of pills, more than 200 vitamins, antioxidants, and other supplements every day. It's all part of his effort to "reprogram" his body chemistry and stop growing old. "I've slowed down aging to a crawl," he claims. "By most measures my biological age is about 40, and I have some hormone and nutrient levels of a person in his 30s."
BodyOptimizationHistory

Discussion Elsewhere

Most recent first.

View blog reactions

Apollo on Test Run Alpha (2007-07-29). Apollo documents his plans for getting back into good physical condition.

others related pages

Matthew Levine: Brain Optimization

1999 Stress and Food Choice: A Laboratory Study
2004-05-14 WebMD Weight Loss Clinic - Medical News: Why We Eat So Much at Buffet Tables
2004-10-05 WebMD Medical News: People Eat More When They Are Served More
2007-08-28 Science Blog: Correlation Between Obesity and Poverty: Healthy People 2010 Should Increase Attention On Those In Poverty
2007-11-16 CBS News 60 Minutes Expert: Many Underestimate Calories
- "obesity epidemic is caused by many factors, but nutritionists say one main reason is how dependent we've become on eating out. "
- "When people are eating in a restaurant that they think is healthy, people grossly underestimate how much they eat by about 50 percent" - Brian Wansink, a nutrition and marketing professor at Cornell University, author of "Mindless Eating"
- "But what's healthy for consumers may not be healthy for business. In 2003, the chain Ruby Tuesday tried listing calories on its menus. Sales dropped. Soon, most calorie numbers vanished. "
- "Subway decided to do it for real. Over the (2007) summer they began posting calorie values on their menu boards in New York City."
- New York's health commissioner, Dr. Thomas Frieden "forced smoking out of city bars and artery-clogging trans-fats out of city restaurants. Both those bans spread nationwide... "
- calorie compensation "Do you ever see people ordering the low-fat meal, main course, and then saying, 'Well, I didn't eat anything,' and then ordering a hot fudge sundae for dessert?" Stahl asks. "Well, absolutely. And actually, this is called calorie compensation," Prof. Wansink says. "And what happens is you think you're doing yourself good, and so you reward yourself later on. If they believe they ate this nice, healthy lunch, they're more likely to eat snacks and eat more calories of it later on it the day," he explains.
- There's little scientific evidence that posting calorie numbers will make people eat less, but Commissioner Frieden says it’s worth the try. And he says there’s the shame factor -- he hopes that restaurants will be embarrassed into being more responsible. "Obesity is a terrible epidemic. We don’t understand all the causes of it, but we do know that it is undermining the health of our society in so many ways," Frieden says. "We need to take action. This is one measure that we think will make some progress in this area. It's not going to solve the problem, but it's part of a solution."
2007-11-21 Reuters Health: Eating more fish may improve seniors' memory (alternate: ~goldcoast.com.au).
2007-11-22 HealthDay: Many Americans Can't Afford to Eat Right (alternate: ad laden 3 page version).

BodyOptimization