Maggie's Farm

The famous psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott came up with the term Transitional Object. His idea had to do with things that symbolically connect with Mom during the process of independence and separation.

Since then the term has expanded to encompass a larger territory. We all understand that humans live in conflict between safety and comfort, and adventure and newness. Winnicott, in his psychoanalytic way, connected it all to connection with Mother but it goes beyond that.

Things and ideas that connect us with our past (which includes our orienting culture in general) are meaningful to those who have strong attachments.

Jordan Peterson often speaks of the importance of the instinctive "orienting reflex" in animals and humans. We all observe how much people vary in their fearfulness and adventurousness.  You could view adventurousness as a way of creating excitement by becoming somewhat disoriented, away from safe, familiar, and orienting things, places, and people.

Then for most people, the somewhat disorienting adventure is finished with a return to the things and symbols which signify, or actually are, safe, comfortable, and familiar. Adults do what little kids do.

"Bad seed."  I recently saw the term "unmotivated malignancy" somewhere, and it made me naturally think of cancer. Cancers are unmotivated malignancies.

As a Christian and as a Psychiatrist, I accept that there is a dose of evil in every human being. The 7 Deadly Sins are not a joke and there is a universal need for mercy. However, I have paid attention to people long enough to learn that there are certain people who are strongly destructively-motivated because they were "born that way."  In casual conversation, "toxic" people who can be well-disguised. You could term it a "talent" like a musical talent which demands expression. Scorpions have a talent.

I am not talking about sociopaths necessarily, or other diagnoses like "Borderline."  Just people who were made with a heavy dose of venom in the soul. It requires no medical diagnosis because it's on a normal spectrum, a normal distribution. Perhaps a spiritual diagnosis. Some people also seem blessed with gifts of unbounded grace, gratitude, love, warmth, and forgiveness in their souls, and thank God for that end of the spectrum. 

Interesting to me is not how powerfully malevolent people make others suffer but how skilled such people can be at rationalizing their malevolence and destructiveness.  "My mother was...."  "My Dad was an...." "I got a raw deal..."  "People didn't like me". "I was too good/enviable/bad/rebellious..." "I was abused or bullied by...." And so on. As CS Lewis dramatically illustrated, the devil is subtle and more clever and manipulative than most of us can imagine. It is up to all of us to stand up and defeat those things in ourselves, and to steer clear of them in others.

Contra lots of today's psychology, I have come to believe that some people are born with unusual doses of destructiveness and malevolence, of scheming and manipulativeness, and who take gratification in it. Not criminal murdering sociopaths. It is "unmotivated," if you accept that many or most rationalizations are baloney and simple efforts to maintain some "self-esteem."  In other words, often the "cause" comes after the pattern of behavior. 

Without wanting to get too evangelical on our readers, the devil comes disguised as a friend, a victim, or in the dress of an angel. I am a skeptic about exorcism but I do believe that salvation through Christ can save, reshape, souls. This is not a common view amongst my profession. I am not a "psycho-utopian" (Trademark, Maggie's Farm) in the sense that we would all be wonderful saints if only for this-or-that misfortune, mishap, etc. That is a crazy fantasy.

Evil thoughts are normal for humans. Just thoughts are the limit because we can't help our thoughts. We are all fallen, but to varying degrees. Just my opinion.

Preventing Muscle Loss as We Age

Same old recommendations: Resistance exercise (weights), adequate protein, and don't quit.

Kavanaugh investigators need to see Christine Blasey Ford's therapy records.

She is free to release her therapist's notes to anybody she wants. I can tell you that, as far as psychotherapy goes, I keep few and minimal notes for a multitude of reasons, mostly illegible, and none at all on electronic medical records. Very often, no notes at all. I just follow the process and the progress.  Typical therapy note of mine:

"Career issues. Mood ok. Needs a hobby. Same meds. Good session." 

I am not sure that it matters much, but intense exercise does reduce appetite.

Sedentary lives increase appetite. What is "sedentary"? Less than 7 hrs/week of exertion. Not activity - exertion. 

Why might it not matter?  Because, as I have asserted in the past, in our world of abundance and temptation appetite has little correlation with nutritional needs in adults. In the world of nutritional scarcity in which our distant ancestors lives, it certainly did. Today, we have recreational feeding. It is fun.

There are many reasons why daily exercise is useless for weight loss.  Among them is the fact that a daily hour of "cardio" or calisthenics does not require additional nutrition from one's normal habit.  People who lift heavy two or three days/week probably can use 60-90 gms of protein daily for muscle repair.

People in serious training for physical competition are another category. A 2-3 -hour daily workout has different nutritional needs. Two hours daily of physical training sounds wonderful to me at this point in life. One hour in the gym and one hour of sports practice. Only college kids and the retired have that luxury.

With nutrition, best thing to do is to set goals for your desired fitness and functionality levels and to pursue those in a disciplined way. Same as everything else in life.

Are humans hard-wired for laziness and sloth?

I would have guessed that there would be a Gaussian distribution, but now I wonder about Pareto instead. The math of it is challenging for me, though. It's been a long time since I have used Functions.

Anyway, adult people do vary enormously in their energy levels, ambition, and physical determination. We all know that because it is obvious in the modern world wherein many people have choices of activity levels.

One thing that I am comfortable asserting is that a one hour workout daily (especially something like the Maggie's Routine) will increase your energy and drive to exert yourself.  It works. Try it, if you disapprove of your slothfulness or lack of strength and physical endurance.

So many myths it’s hard to know where to start.  Useful list of nutritional baloney.

A few simple rules to detect the stench of dubious but published psychological studies

The "Taleb's Grandma" Rule is useful.  Example:

Psychologist: You see, Taleb’s grandma, there’s a clear link between washing your hands and justifying album-ranking choices.

Taleb’s Grandma:"> What the fuck are you talking about?

Fitness people often refer to "metcon" workouts. These fall into our Calisthenics category, provided the Calisthenics hours are high intensity with only several seconds of rest time.

Why term it "metabolic conditioning"?  It sounds cool and technical, and it does stress and thus ramp up all metabolic systems and puts every muscle in the body to work including the heart.

Most typical calisthenics classes  (Cross-train cardio classes, Athletic Conditioning classes, HIIT, HICT aka High-intensity circuit training, AMRAP, TABITA, Crossfit, etc) have goals of building energy and cardio endurance instead of pure strength, with agility, speed, muscle-toning, and general athleticism as side benefits.

If a newbie wanted to "get back in shape" with a simple program, I would recommend 4- 6 of such classes/week before doing anything else if they could handle it. For 99% of people, classes will push you harder than anything you do on your own. For the first few months you will struggle and perform terribly. Endurance builds gradually. If you begin a bit chubby, the classes will be a strong motivator for nutritional rationality because extra fat makes all calisthenics more difficult than they already are.

Although we are believers in weight training twice-weekly for a number of reasons, we see many people in excellent shape whose only fitness work is a near- daily high-intensity calisthenics/metcon class.

For newbies who can not handle a 50-60 minute calisthenics class, spend a couple of months doing ordinary "cardio" to get moving. Then add in the calisthenics, and finally the powerlifts because at that point your body will be prepared to face them. 

Dilbert creator Scott Adams on his daily podcasts frequently refers to peoples' "skill stacks."  He seems to feel that the height of one's skill stack can be more valuable in achieving life goals than the quality of the skills.  That is, a low stack of A-level skills is often less effective than a tall stack of B-level skills. Obviously, there are unique exceptions at the ends of the bell curves.

Scott Adams admires Trump for having a tall stack of B-level skills.  Scott Adams on Trump etc. yesterday.  Quite clever and amusing about underling behavior. He is right. Everybody thinks his/her boss is an idiot. So did I before I quit having bosses. Now, when my boss is an idiot, it is me.

When I am asked to evaluate a person, I evaluate their strengths and weaknesses. It's basic. 

On that podcast, he advertises his weed-smoking. It doesn't seem to hurt his brain much but he is not the average person.

Yes, to a degree, but it's an uphill battle. Sarcopenia is an effect of ageing. Combined with a non-vigorous life, muscle and bone loss is natural decline.

Over 50 or 60, many trainers would make a goal of simply maintaining what you have, but more aggressive trainers like to find out how far "mature" individuals can take their strength efforts. 

As with all aspects of fitness, "use it or lose it" applies. I would be in the category of those who advise people not to give up on strength-building in later adulthood. Advancement is much slower than when 30, and you will not build much visible muscle, but you can be stronger anyway. 

The trick is heavy weights and low reps (ie 8 or less). We're talking men and women.  High reps are better than doing nothing, but they are not strength-building.

One piece of advice: Over 50 or 60, two days/week of powerlifting is enough. 

Some links:

8 Strength Training Moves Women Over 50 Should Do

 Getting older doesn't mean giving up muscle strength. Not only can adults fight the battle of strength and muscle loss that comes with age, but the Golden Years can be a time to get stronger, say experts at the University of Michigan Health System

 Simple test asked 50 to 80-year-olds to sit on the floor and stand up with as little support as possible

 Building Stronger Bones

Can You Regain Muscle Mass After Age 60?

Weight training is the only type of exercise that can substantially slow, and even reverse, the declines in muscle mass, bone density, and strength that were once considered inevitable consequences of aging.

...  because proper strength training doesn't apply stress directly to joints, it is ideal for people with arthritis; indeed, rheumatologists often recommend it. Although it cannot reverse arthritic changes, lifting weights helps alleviate symptoms by strengthening the muscles, tendons, and ligaments that surround joints.

Matthew:  "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."

There is no word for "dostadning" in English. It is "Swedish Death-Cleaning."  I can not do the umlauts. 

The word refers to a human tendency, in their 50s and 60s, to begin to unload possessions and to streamline life. Furniture, clothing, tools, sports equipment, books, cookware and serving stuff, pictures and artwork, various collections, spare houses, time shares, and so on. Things in closets, things in the attic, things in the basement.

At some point, people realize they will not live long enough to use or wear out the stuff they have. Awareness of morbidity and mortality.

Most people fall somewhere in the middle of a spectrum between spartan minimalists to hoarders, collectors, and accumulators, but most people do end up with an excess of stuff, imagining that "I might need it someday" or "It might come back into fashion" or "my kids might want it." Nope. The psychology and psychiatry of it all is interesting, but we can leave that aside.

Inherited stuff is the biggest challenge for many. Things that connect us to our pasts, in general. Memory aids. Narcissistic and neurotic outlets.  Keep what has true meaning while knowing that its meaning will be gone when you die. Death cleaning.

I was raised on this Wordsworth sonnet (among many others- I was thankfully raised on the classics of literature, music, and art by my cultivated parents):

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

The Keto diet is a hot topic these days, but it's really nothing new. It's mainly a weight-loss diet with very low-carb (just those in non-root veggies) and high fat.

The idea is to train your body (it does work) to burn fat for energy instead of carbs. When that happens, you excrete ketones mostly in urine. The high fat diet (greens with plenty of olive oil, juicy meat or fish with plenty of butter, etc) stave off hunger and combat carb addiction. That's the idea.

Adjustment to a keto diet can mean enduring the "Keto Flu" for a week or two as the body readjusts to fat burning. 

Everything about getting in to good shape is difficult. 

When an article begins with those words, be as skeptical as you can.  Journalists know little about medicine, science, or statistics, but they know click bait when they see it. 

New study says new studies are oversold:  A systemic review presents damning evidence that journalists are overselling research.

It's Summertime. People like to get outdoors early to run, bike, or swim in the sea for an hour or so. It feels great, but, other than wholesome recreation and mental health, what is it good for? I will try to discuss these things. 

Our posts about what I term Phys Ed are meant to be about general conditioning for relatively-healthy people of any age rather than training for specific activities. That's why we recommend 1/3 weights, 1/3 "Cardio," and 1/3 calisthenics. With that said, I'll review some general ideas and misconceptions (expecting arguments from readers). People use the term "Cardio" for many things, but we intend it to mean training of the heart muscle.

1.  "Long Slow" exercise, often termed Cardio, is not Cardiac Training. Swimming a mile, jogging 3-5 miles, biking for a few hours, doing 45 minutes on the elliptical or treadmill doing Long Slow do not elevate your heart rate enough to challenge your heart. Ideally, you want to stress your heart because that is what Cardio is meant for. Intensity is more important than time from the heart's standpoint, same as with weight training.

That doesn't mean that those activities are a useless component of general fitness, just that they do not build cardiac strength. If you can run or jog 3-5 miles, you might not be fully fit but you are better than most slobs. 

To strengthen your heart and increase your Cardiac Output, you have to push your heart muscle in the same way that you push other muscles with weights and resistance. That means basically heart rate stress. If you can work your way up to maintaining 80% of your max heart rate for 30 or 40 minutes, I'd say that is very good indeed. How to determine that is at the end of this somewhat lengthy post -

Still, we feel it's a better idea and more efficient to do HIIT cardio training which pushes your heart to as close to 100% for brief periods - 30-60 seconds followed by a slow recovery of 3X the sprints. 20-30 minutes of that once or twice a week is good. This can be on the road, elliptical, rower, in the pool, or on the treadmill or stair machine. Max effort, max sweat.

More below the fold -

Twin studies are always interesting.

Specifically, female sexual arousal.  Can Maggie's readers handle a brief post on this topic?

Women have a much wider range of variation in sexual responsiveness than men. Men are, just, you know, always ready for some fun. Thousands of articles have been written about female sexuality, but, simply, people are different. I have spoken to women who feel hot and who lubricate when husband or boyfriend just say "Let's get together tonight." On the other end of the spectrum, women who take forever to get warmed up in bed whether with a hot new lover or with somebody they love and are used to.

I'll leave out the relationship (or no relationship) aspect because, although that is a factor (see Marital Sex), women vary a great deal in their erotic responsiveness. Some combination of physiological and psychological. 

Years ago I spoke with a 40 year-old with three kids who had felt alienated from her husband for a few years, "but the sex is still great."  This lady would have her first orgasm within 20 seconds of penetration, and go on to have 6 more in a 30-60 minute sex session.  She told me she had been like that with pre-marriage boyfriends too. Told me she got noisy too, which could be awkward. I think I told her she had been blessed. As I recall, she said she was capable of having an orgasm just fantasizing about a guy she saw on the street - no hands.

There's a lot of space between her and women with "arousal disorders" (a real term, but I use it sarcastically). Probably a Bell Curve in female animal nature. Men, obviously, get a kick out of women who get tingles when they see them and are multi-orgasmic. Makes the guy feel good and inclined to come back for more.

It's a bit late in the year up here for this post, but beach wear is basically underwear.  It exposes a person's condition.

We've pointed out that it would take about 2-3 hours moving speedily on a treadmill, elliptical, or stair machine to burn the calories in your breakfast bagel. But it doesn't work like that.

Our bodies preferentially burn glycogen (stored sugar, from carbs) for exertion.  It takes over 40 minutes of higher intensity (eg running and the like) exertion to begin meaningful fat-burning. 

It's true than a daily hour of some exercise (other than walking or slow pool laps) ups your metabolism for a while, but it's not really significant. 

It's a downer for people, but the truth is that exercise is about fitness, while fat loss is nutritional unless you have 3 hrs.day to work out hard (probably not a good idea for people over age 35).

The reason doctors and everybody else talks about nutrition and exercise for fat loss is sort-of to fool people into getting moving and less sedentary because sedentary, regardless of body fat, isn't healthy. In fact, it correlates highly with early cardiac morbidity regardless of body fat %.

Sedentary can be defined, roughly, as less than an hour/day of sweat-producing exertion. Let's face reality: other than walks, most Western people prefer a sedentary, no-heavy-lifting comfortable life, and most do not wish to feel deprived of their appetites in these places where delicious things are in abundance.  I get that, to each his/her own. We all have people we care about, though, who we'd like to stick around for a while.

With proper nutrition, anybody can lose 8-12 lbs/month easily, with or without exercise.  In fact, with difficult exercise (ie heavy weights) it can be a bit harder to lose weight due to the nutritional requirements for muscle repair.

The youth have it easy. It can be difficult for the young (under 30 or 35) to gain weight even if they want to. To gain good athletic weight, the youth have to eat big and work out hard with weights.

You might, but do you really want to bother if it's not commercial? No, you probably don’t have a book in you

Writers enjoy writing, but there are far more constructive ways to spend time. What famous author said "If you don't write for money, you are crazy"? Or something like that.

The only form of exercise which has been convincingly demonstrated to be helpful for depression and/or anxiety problems is resistance exercise, ie weights. The reasons are not known.

What about cardio exercises? There is "suggestive evidence" that it could be useful, but it has not been convincingly demonstrated.

My advice to everybody, regardless of personal emotional issues: Do weights, do cardio, do calisthenics. You will thank yourself. 

EDS, "Excessive Daytime Sleepiness", has become a thing, a real symptom. 

I've been reading up on the topic. Supposedly EDS is a contributory cause for 20% of auto accidents. The list of causes of EDS is lengthy. It includes, of course, Obstructive Sleep Apnea which can reduce sleep efficiency.

In my view, EDS can often be easily dealt with with a brief power nap. I suspect many hard-working people do it but it's difficult to do in a public work space.

After-lunch naps are normal in many cultures, including in China where it is a legal right. 

Is Napping Good or Bad for You? The Science Behind a Power Nap

 The power of the 20 minute nap