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What You Can and Cannot Control

In the vein of my discussion of why it’s incorrect to exclude the middle, I want to write about a slightly different topic which has to do with what you can and cannot control. I suppose the impetus for this piece is one particularly (take your pick from the following list): consistent, repetitive, irritating, moronic folks that regularly troll my comments section.  No, I won’t name him, he doesn’t deserve the attention which is what he clearly so desperately craves.

Among his other amusing looniness, one thing he often asserts regarding the weight loss/fat loss/dieting issue is the role of genetics, and physiology, and stuff that falls well outside of the realm of diet and exercise.   Often accusing me of ignoring many of those biological realities.

He also appears to be illiterate since anybody who’s read this site or my books knows full well that I don’t ignore them.  Since the discovery of leptin and my first interest in it over a decade ago, the underlying biology and physiology of the body weight regulation system is one that has alternately fascinated and aggravated me. … Keep Reading

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Excluding the Middle

This is an article that both does and doesn’t say much.  It’s something that I’ll likely link back to a lot in the future so I might as well just put it down once.   Want I want to talk about is the common habit of excluding the middle, more formally called “the false dilemma”,  the “either/or fallacy” or a whole host of other things.  It’s one of those things that I see people using all the time in Internet arguments.

Excluding the Middle

The idea here is that people have a tendency to play this cute little game where a given situation can either be exactly one thing (their preference) or exactly one other thing where that other thing is some ludicrous stupid-ass extreme example that they use to attempt to prove their preference simply by how extreme (and dumb) it is.  But compared to something stupid, anything is better by comparison.… Keep Reading

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Can Hard Work Beat Talent: Part 4

Finishing up from Part 3, let me try to finally address the question “Can hard work beat talent?”.  I’ll look at this within a couple of different contexts since that does determine what the answer is or might be.

Can Hard Work Overcome a Genetic Limit?

Coming out of Part 3, you can probably imagine that my general answer to this question is simply no.  If we take talent to include what are clearly genetic limits, then no amount of work, hard, smart or otherwise can overcome them.  Because that’s not what the word “limit” means.   By definition a genetic limit is one that cannot be surpassed naturally.

Simply, the most that proper, hard and smart work will ever do is let a given trainee maximize their inherent talent.  Obviously if you don’t put in the work like the “always gonna” athlete, you’re never going to accomplish jack squat.  But assuming you put in the work, the most you will ever do is achieve your own inbuilt genetic limit.… Keep Reading