Post #19: Mistakes During My 9-Year Health Improvement Journey And What I Learned From Them

March 7th, 2024

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In today’s post, I reflect on some missteps I made over the last 9 years of my health improvement journey and what I learned from them. Hopefully, this helps you avoid making the same ones. 

As I embarked on this path, I was clear about a few guiding principles: 

• My changes had to be sustainable for the long term, which meant that while I was willing to make changes that weren’t always going to be easy, I didn’t want to feel resentful about not being able to do things that brought me joy. 

• The impact had to be seen both in terms of my quantitative markers (blood test results, body measurements, etc.) as well as my quality of life (my  energy levels  throughout the day, whether I could continue playing soccer as much as I could earlier without too much of a drop in my performance levels, etc.)

• I wanted to ensure my interventions had a clear scientific basis for them rather than being based on fringe opinions or on urban legends.

While the above guidelines helped me navigate various decisions with clarity, I still ended up making some mistakes that sent me down the wrong path. Fortunately (or unfortunately), being a data geek, I was able to catch my mistakes by analyzing my overall data set and understanding where I went wrong in my hypotheses. Here are my top four learnings: 

1. It is possible to do too much of a good thing:

When I first started walking, I set a goal to increase from the 10K steps I was doing daily to about 20K steps per day over the next couple of years. My objective behind this increase was to reduce my visceral fat levels, as clinical studies suggest it should. As I got to about 14K steps per day, my visceral fat levels came down from about 10 to about 4, which was very good. I continued to increase to about 18K steps per day, and that brought down my visceral fat levels down to a 2 as well as reduced my overall body fat levels (combination of visceral fat and subcutaneous fat) down from 16% to 11% (again very good). However, as I increased further to 20K to 22K steps, my visceral fat and body fat levels remained steady but I noticed that my Heart Rate Variability (HRV) metric, which is a sign of how much stress my body is under and therefore how ready it is to perform well, was beginning to drop (not a good thing). This suggested that I needed to get back to the 15K steps per day to get the best of both worlds (high HRV and low visceral and body fat). 

Between measuring your steps and HRV with a wearable and using a Body Composition Analysis scale (like a Renpho or Withings), you can use the GeneClinicX app to figure out your optimal number of daily steps.

2. It is possible to do too little of a “bad” thing:

I should emphasize why “bad” is in quotes. When I got into the health journey, I kept hearing that carbs are bad and that the goal should be to reduce them as much as possible. So carbs were considered “bad”. In my case, I was definitely having too much of them (especially the refined sugars and simple carbs) and so I can imagine why that was probably said to me as a way for me to take it seriously. With the Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) on, I could clearly see the impact it was having on my glucose spikes and I started reducing this “bad” thing. Over the first few years of making this intervention, my HbA1c reduced from 6.0 down to 5.6, which moved me from being pre-diabetic to normoglycemic, and my fasting glucose also improved meaningfully. However, to be very clear, carbs are not only not a “bad” thing but rather they are a vital source of energy for the body without which our metabolism and energy levels drop dramatically. What I didn’t realize was how I had cut carbs from my diet so much that I was beginning to experience periods of very low energy and lightheadedness due to hypoglycemia. 

As I started tracking my food intake through the app, I realized that I had dropped my carb levels from about 65% of my total calories to 45% of my total calories. Given my goals, activity levels and dietary preferences, I should be at 55%. I figured out that I had gone overboard in the lower direction because I hadn’t appreciated the necessity of carbs: an often abused but very important macronutrient. As I have stated in my other blog posts, the composition of my carbs have become more complex carbs and less simple carbs, ultra processed foods and refined sugars. 

PS I still have my fair share of bakarwadis, strawberry + chocolate chip smoothies and Nutella strawberry crepes (refer to point (a) of my guiding principles at the beginning of this post).

3. There is a tendency to overestimate how much we are doing, especially when it comes to our daily protein consumption.

Protein intake matters for better muscle protein synthesis during strength training workouts and ensures you are not breaking down muscle but rather preserving muscle mass. This, as I have written about in past posts, is important for better insulin sensitivity (to avoid diabetes and heart disease) as well as for long term injury prevention.

When I look at dietary guidelines around the world, the recommendations vary from 2.2 grams per kg of body weight down to as little as 0.8 grams per kg of body weight. The lower end is more for people who aren’t getting much exercise, especially strength training, while the upper end is for athletes who care a lot about their performance. Given my relatively active lifestyle, I have opted for 1.5 grams per kg of body weight which is about 100 grams of protein or so. Let’s assume your number works out to something similar: how close do you think you come to meeting that goal? In my case, being someone who eats chicken and eggs but otherwise being vegetarian, I realized that I was not able to get past 70 grams of protein on most days. However, if you had asked me if I was getting my 100 grams, I would have said I was. I found that most people had the same answer until they started tracking their protein intake and concluded that they were also stuck at about 50 to 80 grams. E.g. Even if you ate 2 eggs, a chicken curry or chicken burrito, two bowls of dal or lentil soup and a bowl of yogurt (some of the leading sources of proteins in our daily meals), you are at about 55 grams. All the other sources will probably add another 25% getting you to about 70 grams. Where do you get the rest? Refer to my past post on some good sources of proteins or speak to a GeneClinicX or your own dietitian but I would consider richer sources of protein to be added, such as Greek yogurt, good quality protein shakes, etc.

However, I would suggest you start by tracking your meals for a week using your favorite food app or the GeneClinicX app to benchmark your existing protein intake.

4. Cardio at the expense of strength training, brisk walking and balance

When I first got started on the health track, I believed (out of ignorance) that cardio activities like soccer and running, were real exercise while brisk walking was for old people (not true as discussed in point 1 above as well as past posts), that strength training was for bodybuilders (not true as discussed in point 3 above as well as past posts) and that balance was something that you automatically had when you were young and that you definitely lost when you got older (not true as it can be learned and maintained as we get older). So I spent my entire exercise budget for the week doing cardio activities and none in the other areas. While I have discussed the benefits of brisk walking and strength training above, I want to point out one very important benefit of strength training that isn’t discussed as much: how much it helps with injury prevention in the rest of our lives. E.g. I noticed that I suffered a lot more minor and major injuries while playing soccer when I didn’t do strength training and balance focused exercises (completely reconstructed tibia and fibula around a titanium rod in my right leg, a reconstructed neck with my discs in my vertebrae being replaced with artificial discs, along with a number of Achilles heel and ligament injuries). While it is hard to quantify the injury rates, I would say that with the right strength training and balance routines, my cardio activities have benefited tremendously, both in terms of injury prevention as well as improving performance. Also, doing the right amount of brisk walking (as mentioned in point 1 above) helps with reducing issues like sprains and stress fractures that undertraining as well as overtraining can lead to.

Make sure to get a good strength training coach who will ensure you are doing the right things in the right way (my elder son has been mine as has the GeneClinicX physical therapist) and a good yoga instructor for balance, flexibility and mindfulness (some of you are experts so don’t need one but for those like me that aren’t, please get one even if it is for a few sessions; I use the GeneClinicX yoga expert). This will ensure you start off on the right foot.

I think I will stop listing down any further mistakes because it isn’t healthy for my mental well being to realize I am a trial and error expert…just kidding…..making mistakes is actually my superpower 😄. Happy reading and I hope this post was practically useful.

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