I can tell you the exact moment when I started thinking about longevity in a serious way. It happened on March 10, 2023, at 10:20 P.M., in a hospital delivery room ablaze with overhead lights. I stood bedside, my hand crumpling under my wife’s grip, as a tiny, screeching alien, an eggplant with eyes—our daughter, Esme—slipped into the hands of the attending ob-gyn. At 56, I became a father for the first time.

Until Es arrived, the grand total of my thoughts about aging could be summed up in a line my father likes to say: “It sucks getting old, but it beats the alternative!” Now as I stared into her little purple face, I wanted every healthy minute I could get. I began to imagine all the things I’d be able to show her—mountains, rivers, books (made of paper), and how to mix the perfect margarita. By the time we got home, I was no longer the center of my universe. She was.

With this new cosmology in mind, I sat down with Peter Attia’s book, , cowritten with șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű contributing editor Bill Gifford. The book has clearly resonated with a lot of people. It sold more than a million and a half copies in less than a year and has been a fixture on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly as long.

I approached it with trepidation. I’ve been writing about health and fitness for more than two decades, and most things that promote “longevity” give me hives. Why we die, and why we don’t, involves enormously complicated science that’s difficult if not impossible to research conclusively. Dudes—it’s almost always dudes—who claim they’ve got it figured out are suspect by default.

Outlive, I soon learned, isn’t about death per se but about decline. Attia believes that you can prevent decline—or, as he puts it, “square the longevity curve”—through an aggressive combination of exercise, lifestyle (nutrition, sleep, etc.), and elements from personalized health care, or what he calls Medicine 3.0. Can getting old suck less? He says that the answer is a resounding yes.

Attia, 51, is a licensed physician who runs a concierge telemedicine practice from his home and fitness HQ in Austin, Texas. To be a patient of his is rumored to run into the six figures annually. (He won’t disclose this number.) He’s also a rising star on the self-improvement influencer circuit, appearing frequently on podcasts hosted by Rich Roll, Andrew Huberman, Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, and Rhonda Patrick, among others.

In addition to his guest appearances, Attia produces his own podcast, The Drive, along with a weekly newsletter and a robust stream of social media content. He has a million followers on Instagram alone. You might even have caught him as the doctor on the Disney+ show Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, a.k.a. Marvel’s Thor. Want more? You can sign up for the expanded, members-only version of Attia’s output for $149 a year. Or splurge for his online longevity video course, Early—essentially an enhanced, interactive version of the book—for $2,500.

I spent months immersed in Attia’s ideas, including his book, podcast, newsletter, and the Early program. Some of the advice in Outlive—get vigorous exercise, don’t eat too much or too little—seemed like it had been around since Jack LaLanne pulled on a stretchy unitard and started doing push-ups. But overall I hadn’t seen anything as comprehensive and visionary as Attia’s approach.

In Attia’s view, Medicine 3.0 is a paradigm shift from the pills-and-procedures protocol (Medicine 2.0) that is the current health care status quo. It’s heavy on prevention and arranged into five pillars: exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional health, and what Attia calls “exogenous molecules” (pharmaceuticals, supplements, and so forth). They’re all important and get appropriate play in the book, but exercise reigns supreme as “the most potent ‘drug’ in our arsenal,” he writes in Outlive. “The data are unambiguous: exercise not only delays actual death but also prevents both cognitive and physical decline better than any other intervention.”

Exercise breaks down further into subcategories: strength, stability, aerobic efficiency, and peak aerobic capacity. The goal is to obtain optimum fitness in each of these, since they’ve been shown to form a powerful shield against our biggest health threats: cardiovascular disease, cancer, metabolic dysfunction, and degenerative neurological disorders—what Attia refers to as “the four horsemen.”

Fitness sounded like good medicine to me, but the emphasis on exercise also prompted a lot of questions: What kind? How much? How hard? I reached out to Attia’s camp, asking if I could essentially become a patient for a few days and write about his methods. They said no to that—herr doktor is extremely busy—but after months of back and forth they agreed to let me come out for a couple of days last April, to meet him and go through some fitness assessments. I felt like I was doing pretty well—I rode my mountain bike and lifted weights regularly, among other things. But what was I missing? What should I be doing going forward?

The timing was good, because Attia was preparing to open a new facility in Austin called 10Squared, a sort of hybrid testing lab and training center that will cater to his existing patients and a new cohort of select members. His team sent me an NDA ahead of my visit, with the caveat that this would be a black-box project until I’m informed otherwise. This struck me as over the top for what sounded like a fancy private gym, but sure, why not? If that’s what it took to finally get a taste of the secret sauce behind Outlive, show me where to sign.

The post Has Peter Attia Found The Fountain of Youth? Our Writer Tries His Program to Find Out. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

The Rescue, an extraordinary 2021 film from Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi—the power couple behind Free Solo—tells the story of 14 teenagers who got stranded deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand and their improbable, high-risk extraction. One of the film’s most compelling scenes occurs early, when the girlfriend of a rescue diver is describing their courtship—the attraction, the dates, the sweet notes. The interviewer asks: “Did you fall in love?” After a pause and a sheepish grin, she nods vigorously and says, “Yes!” It’s a small moment of warmth and vulnerability in a thriller that otherwise unfolds at breakneck pace, and it connects us to the characters in a way that even their heroic actions do not.

The Rescue is just one of many impressive adventure documentaries that have created considerable buzz in recent years. Of course, everyone has seen Free Solo, but The Alpinist and 14 Peaks also made a splash. And how about HBO’s 100 Foot Wave—a series following Garrett McNamara’s attempt to ride a monster swell that made me shout at my TV in amazement? Or , about the rise and fall and rise of Scott Lindgren, one of the world’s greatest whitewater kayakers? The list goes on: The Dawn Wall, Torn, Meru, Sunshine Superman, Icarus, , , , and , to mention just a few. These came from filmmakers who had to work very hard to bring their projects to life.

As a writer who has spent several decades refining my own craft, I can appreciate how challenging it is to get such stories right. And as a movie buff with a yen for adventure—among other things, I’ve served as a moderator at Mountainfilm and as a judge at the 5Point Film Festival, both eagerly anticipated annual gatherings in Colorado—I can say with confidence that there’s never been a time as rich in high-quality adventure documentaries as right now.

Some reasons behind the success are obvious: bigger budgets, smaller cameras, better production and editing technology, more distribution platforms, from Netflix to YouTube, and expanding audiences hungry for outdoor-focused entertainment. Less obvious is the evolution of nuanced storytelling techniques, which made these projects special.

“With core action-sports films, it’s always been about the most high-end capture possible,” says Todd Jones, cofounder of Teton Gravity Research (TGR), which produced Lindsey Vonn: The Final Season and the acclaimed Kissed by God, on the life and death of surfer Andy Irons. “But when you give us a really good story, and you let us apply our craft and tactics of filmmaking to it, and when we bring the high-end visuals and mix that with story, you get this really beautiful and sophisticated ­documentary.”

I grew up watching ski and snowboard flicks as well as edge-of-your-seat adventure movies from Brain Farm, Matchstick Productions, Sherpas Cinema, TGR, and others. They were slick, myopic, and mostly devoid of narrative. I loved them. Eventually, though, I sought deeper, more meaningful fare—award-winning features, critics’ picks, historical films. I fed my growing appetite at film festivals, tracked down rare DVDs, ferreted out classics: , A Sunday in Hell, , and many more. There were some vintage standouts, like Kon Tiki, the Oscar-winning 1950 documentary about Thor Heyerdahl’s epic voyage across the Pacific on a wooden raft. I also enjoyed , a moody, introspective tale of Yuichiro Miura’s 1970 descent of the world’s tallest mountain. But finding really great adventure documentaries was like panning for gold.

For me, the movie that ushered in a new level of empathy and narrative mastery was , a 2004 docudrama based on Joe Simpson’s bestseller about two climbers who struggled to survive a horrific ­accident on Siula Grande, a 20,000-foot peak in Peru. Because there was no footage from the expedition, Scottish director Kevin Macdonald—already an Oscar winner for the 2000 documentary —used actors to re-create the events. Weaving the action with interviews from Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, the film dances around a central moral dilemma: When do you leave your injured friend to save yourself? When do you cut the rope?

Touching the Void works well because it connects the dramatic details of alpine climbing with universal, relatable qualities that make us human. “It was the loneliness, that sense of being abandoned, which was there all the time,” says Simpson in the film’s penultimate scene, the camera pulled in tight. “I didn’t crawl because I thought I’d survive. I think I wanted to be with somebody when I died.”

Our current crop of creators must have been taking notes. “People sign up for the adrenaline rush of watching someone push the edge, but they connect with the story through those human moments,” says Max Lowe, whose 2021 documentary Torn explores how his family has coped with the loss of his father, the storied climber Alex Lowe. When Alex Lowe’s body was discovered in Tibet 17 years after his death in an avalanche on 26,335-foot Shishapangma, his wife and children were forced to confront many unresolved feelings, not the least of which were those of the filmmaker himself.

Some subjects offer easy access. Others, not so much. In Lindsey Vonn, getting past the ski-racing superstar’s surrounding crowd of friends and handlers—the “Vonntourage,” as Teton’s Todd Jones puts it—proved to be one of the trickier parts of the endeavor. To capture scenes that the filmmakers couldn’t get near, they attached a microphone to Vonn and shot from a distance. Pieces of footage were even filmed on an iPhone by one of Vonn’s trainers, in closed-door sessions. The result is a documentary that resonates with honesty and raw emotion, a moving portrait of a great athlete navigating the end of her career.

șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű filmmakers also understand that, at times, you might need to shoot without any crew at all. In The Alpinist, Sender Films’ gripping profile of Canadian climbing phenom Marc-AndrĂ© Leclerc, some of the most compelling material comes from Leclerc himself while he’s pinned down in the middle of a big solo ascent. “There’s that kind of intimacy you get of Marc-AndrĂ©, thousands of feet up on the headwall of Torre Egger in the teeth of a Patagonian storm,” says director Nick Rosen. “He’s bivouacked on this ledge and pulls out the camera to give this message to his girlfriend. It’s maybe my favorite part of the whole film.”

In a certain sense, this is the kind of thing Hollywood has always aimed for, and frequently missed, in scripted films, defaulting to laughably sensationalized dramatic action in lieu of authentic characters and scenes. (Looking at you, Cliffhanger and Vertical Limit.) Even the better efforts, like Sean Penn’s adaptation of Jon Krakauer’s or Jean-Marc VallĂ©e’s version of Cheryl Strayed’s Wild—both terrific books—had less impact than, say, The Alpinist or The Rescue. But that, too, may be changing soon: for their next project, Chin and Vasarhelyi have signed on to direct Nyad, a feature film based on the story of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, which will star Annette Bening as Nyad and Jodie Foster as her manager.

It wasn’t long ago that I felt adventure films were routinely falling short. But with so much talent behind the cameras these days, that’s no longer the case. New adventure documentaries are living up to their potential, with dazzling, sometimes daring cinematography and a deep sense of character, tackling the existential questions that our exploits in the natural world often provoke.

The forthcoming feature about Nyad may elevate the scripted Hollywood movie to new heights, but some cool new adventure documentaries are on the horizon, too, including a series from TGR on extreme sports, which is in production for HBO. I’m already on the couch, popcorn popped, ready to catch the next wave.

The post We’re Living In a Gilded Age of șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Filmmaking appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

In December 2021, it had been snowing for weeks in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia when Trevor Kennison arrived at Eagle Pass Heliskiing eager to make some early-season powder turns. Kennison, 28, is a paraplegic from Winter Park, Colorado, who attacks slopes on a sit ski, an adaptive device with a single board attached to a bucket chair and two outriggers strapped to his forearms. He lost the use of his legs after breaking his back in a snowboarding accident near Vail in 2015 but has gone on to become one of the raddest skiers in the sport. His 65,000 Instagram followers know him as #sitskiboss, a moniker he earned, in part, after Ìęat Kings and Queens of Corbet’s, a freeride eventÌęin Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2019.

Kennison, a brawny, bright-eyed guy with a mop of brown hair, charges hard, but his gear hasn’t always been able to keep up. Very little technical outerwear is designed for sit skiers, so he has spent much of the off-season collaborating with his main sponsor, Eddie Bauer, to develop apparel that caters specifically to adaptive skiers like him. The result—limited-edition ($499) and aÌę ($549)—launched to the public January 26.

His day out at Eagle Pass in December was a final, full-conditions test drive and the snow was waist-deep and still dumping. Because Kennison rides lower than standing skiers, he porpoises through the powder in conditions like this, almost disappearing completely as he plunges into each turn. When he finally comes to a stop at the bottom of a run, he laughs and shouts—snow is packed in every nook and cranny of his kit.

Building high-performance outerwear for sit skiers is far more challenging than it might seem. The ensemble for Eddie Bauer, dubbed BC Flyline, consists of the jacket and bib overalls, but similarities to traditional ski clothing end there. “The most difficult part was the shaping,” says Dave Mertes, the project manager for Flyline. “We needed to craft the pieces for a sitting-only position.”

While a few small European companies produce technical outerwear for sit skiers, those garments often require custom fitting for a finished product. Engineers at Eddie Bauer decided to start from scratch to make an off-the-line kit for hard-ripping sit skiers, with heavy input from Kennison. Creating a functional fit didn’t just enhance performance and comfort, however; since spinal-cord injuries limit sensation below the waist, sit skiers can develop skin sores due to unnoticed irritations—a problematic issue during cold, damp winter sports.

“If I develop a pressure sore on my butt, I can be out for months,” Kennison told me. “I have to let it heal completely before I can start skiing again.”

That meant the Flyline kit needed to accommodate the contours of a seated skier while eliminating seams, pockets, zippers, and any excess fabric that could bunch up in the chair. Early prototypes from partner factories in Asia didn’t incorporate sufficient articulation, so Eddie Bauer turned to its in-house pattern maker, Leanne Walters, to refine the design. Under normal circumstances, Walters would have met with Kennison in person, allowing her to drape fabric and build patterns directly off his body. But the pandemic prevented that, so she had to get creative. Walters used her husband as a model to approximate the correct shape, draping him with fabric panels while he sat on the couch watching TV. The method got them close enough; when the prototype was shipped to Kennison for testing, it only required minor refinement to get it exactly right.

With the form and proportions dialed, the designers turned to other primary issues, namely how to keep the wearer warm and dry. Sit skiers tend to be less aerobic than standing skiers, and thus generate less body heat, so Eddie Bauer lined the bibs and jacket with polyester insulation. To keep Kennison dry, it built the kit out of the brand’s proprietary WeatherEdge Pro—a seam-sealed, waterproof-breathable material used in its flagship outerwear.

Other unique details followed. Kennison wears winter hiking boots to ski, so the pant legs taper down to the boot cuff, with insulation extended to his ankles. The top of the bibs rises almost to his collarbone, to help keep the shoulder straps from slipping off. The front of the jacket is trimmed well above his waist to avoid bunching. And the sleeves are cut long, similar to jackets made for alpine climbing, because Kennison requires extra range of motion to swing his outrigger poles.

Eddie Bauer is producing 100 BC Flyline kits this season, 20 of which will go to the , a nonprofit based in Truckee, California, that supports mountain athletes with serious injuries, including many sit skiers like Kennison. Mertes says they don’t really know how big the market may be for this type of apparel, but making the outdoors more inclusive takes precedence over profit. “If we want to be outfitting people for these kinds of activities,” he says, “this is just the cost of admission.”

The Flyline kit passed the Canadian Rockies powder stress test with aplomb, keeping Kennison warm and dry in the deep conditions—and it has continued to perform. He wore the bibs and jacket when he at the Winter X Games as the first adaptive athlete to hit the event’s big-air jump in Aspen earlier this month, and he’ll sport them on a return trip to Eagle Pass in the spring to film with Level 1 Productions. On January 27, the kit won the ’ Product of the Year. Whether throwing a huge backflip in the B.C. backcountry, bashing gates on a slalom course, or cruising groomers at Winter Park, this outerwear lets him focus on what he does best: flying down snow-covered mountains. “I’m pretty hard on my gear,” Kennison says with a laugh. “I know if it’ll work for me, it’ll work for anyone.”

The post Trevor Kennison Helped Design This Adaptive Apparel for Sit Skiers appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

A 2006 Toyota Tundra floated above us on a hydraulic lift. Next to me, a hirsute mechanic named Cliff, who was wearing a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and carrying a nine-millimeter pistol in a hip holster, aimed his flashlight at a suspicious bulge on the frame. “That’s where they patched it,” he said, pointing to a rectangular piece of steel that had been welded across the original material, epoxied, and then painted to match. “If it were me,” Cliff said, “I’d run from this vehicle as fast as I can.”

This was the third truck I’d run to—and from—in as many weeks, the latest flop in a long, madcap 2020 mission to acquire my dream rig: a legendary first-generation Tundra, or FGT in forums. Cliff, who owned a small garage in eastern Pennsylvania, had agreed to a last-minute prepurchase inspection after I’d tracked down the truck at a used-car lot nearby. I’d convinced myself that this was the one: a sweet burgundy-colored four-wheel-drive double cab with just a smidge over 100,000 miles on it. I hastily arranged a trip; first-gen Tundras were in high demand, and you had to move fast when good ones turned up. The dealer was asking $14,500, a fair price by current market standards if the truck was everything it appeared to be. But it wasn’t. It was a turd—a Turdra.

To understand why I was so willing to venture out into COVID country on a series of fool’s errands, hoping to nab a 15-year-old, mass-produced Toyota, you need to understand a little about the original Tundras. Produced from 1999 to 2006, Toyota’s first full-size pickup was designed to compete with juggernauts like the Ford F-150 and Chevy Silverado in America’s burgeoning truck market. Fast-forward to 2020 and pickups were outselling cars for the first time in the U.S. Ford’s F-series pickups have been the top-selling vehicle here for the past 39 years.

From the start, the early Tundras enjoyed a warm reception, though they never outran the popularity of Chevy, Dodge, and Ford. It wasn’t until 2007, when the supersize second-generation Tundra replaced the original, that the FGTs began to acquire a cult following. Toyota was already famous for its 4x4s; classics like the FJ series, Land Cruisers, and 4Runners were coveted by enthusiasts. After their short production run, FGTs quickly joined the ranks of those vehicles, distinguished for their reliability and longevity. Using a basic body-on-frame design, with a sturdy 4.7-liter V-8, the drivetrain worked so well that it was used in several other Toyota vehicles, including the Sequoia SUV and the Lexus GX470.

By today’s standards, FGTs are small for a full-size pickup, but that’s partly what makes them so desirable. In 2015, responding to the monster sizing and pricing of new trucks, the website Jalopnik said of the FGT, “[It’s] an inexpensive pickup truck that’s capable, comfortable, seats more than two, fits in your garage and gets vaguely reasonable fuel economy: that’s the dream.”

Before their popularity mushroomed (thanks, Jalopnik!), you could find used first-gens in good condition for less than $10,000. By 2020, low-mileage FGTs in mint condition were going for twenty grand or more.

The post My Mission to Find the Best Truck of All Time appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

In November 2014, Jim Harris, a photographer from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and two friends arrived in Punta Arenas, a large town in southern Chile. They were there to embark on a bold adventure: a monthlong, 350-mile ski traverse of the Patagonia ice cap. The plan was to utilize kites attached to their harnesses to help aid locomotion, effectively towing them across the frozen landscape. The day before the expedition, Harris was testing his kite in an open field when a gust of wind lifted him up, carried him the length of a football field, and then, in a fluid, violent action, swept him up and over the sail and tomahawked him into the ground, knocking him unconscious.

When Harris came to, he couldn’t feel anything below his sternum, and he lay in the field, unable to move. “I just stared at the sky and tried to focus on my breathing until help arrived,” he told me. By that night he was in a local hospital, stable but seriously injured. He had shattered nine vertebrae and almost completely severed his spinal cord. It seemed unlikely that he would ever walk again.

I met Harris in February 2020. Not only . It was a powder day at Snowmass Resort, not far from his home, and I’d arranged to connect with him that morning to check out a device that enabled him to shred all day, despite his disability. We met up at a demo center run by , a San Francisco–based company that has developed a battery-powered exoskeleton designed specifically for skiers. Called the , it looks a little like an elaborate knee brace, with an articulating frame and pneumatic air chambers that function like shock absorbers. The frame buckles around your lower and upper legs and attaches to a small compressor, carried in a backpack, that controls the air pressure. Proprietary artificial-intelligence software that runs the compressor “learns” how much support is best for your level of skiing. It’s wearable tech on steroids.

I’d first seen the Elevate a year earlier, at a press event at Eldora Ski Area, near Boulder, Colorado. There, Roam’s founder, Tim Swift, introduced the media crew to the product and outlined the company’s ambitious plans for a public rollout through demo centers at premier resorts across the West, including Snowmass, Big Sky, Park City, and Sun Valley. The Elevate, he said, wasn’t just for disabled individuals. It could help any able-bodied skier who wanted an extra boost—from seniors with achy knees to young guns looking to charge from bell to bell. “We provide magic,” he said several times.

I didn’t get to try the device that day, but the reviews had been mixed from my media colleagues at Eldora—skiers of various ages, all with experience, ranging from intermediate to expert. Some felt it was too cumbersome and didn’t enhance their skiing. But others liked it. One tester, Lisa Dawson, said chronic knee pain had derailed her skiing, but using the Elevate felt like strapping on a new set of legs. “I slowly made a turn, then another and another, each faster and more fluid,” she wrote later on the website . “I kid you not: no pain at all. By the end of the run, I was making the carefree turns of my youth.”

In the year since, Roam had made some updates to the Elevate’s design. The one in Snowmass looked slightly more refined. I buckled into the product and headed for the lifts, alongside Harris and Johnnie Kern, Roam’s director of product marketing. It was strange and confining to walk in the apparatus, but once we clicked into our skis and started sliding over snow, the device came to life. In the lift line, other skiers stared at the cyborg powder bros, and we fielded a lot of questions about what the hell we were wearing.

“For me, it makes a pretty substantial difference, minimizing my disability,” Harris, who had used the Elevate previously, told me as we rode the chairlift. “I wouldn’t say I’m a rad skier now, but I can ski at moderate speed and feel confident and not like I’m a hazard to myself or to others.”

There was about eight inches of new snow that day, and I was eager to plunge into it. We traversed to the top of a low-angle run near the lift. Would the promise of augmented legs turn a good day into an epic one, or would they just get in the way? I was about to find out.

The post A Brief Excursion into Skiing’s Cyborg Future appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

One day in May, feeling bored and bummed out by the pandemic, I launched into a home-improvement project that I hoped might ease my unease: building a bar.

Bars are good places for bad times—or at least they used to be, before they were canceled along with everything else. My last public drink was consumed on March 6: a Bud Light at the Hogs and Heifers Saloon in Las Vegas, possibly the least socially distanced place on earth, where the all-female staff wear Daisy Duke shorts and dance on the bar top. I was in town for the Mint 400, the desert off-road race immortalized by Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Hogs and Heifers was hosting an event for teams and sponsors. Across the counter, a bartender held a bottle of vodka in one hand and a megaphone in the other, which she aimed where I sat on a stool a few feet away, blaring: “You going to do a shot, or what?”

I miss bars. Less the rowdy ones, where it feels like a fight is going to break out at any moment, than the quiet local establishments where you can talk to the person next to you. Such places have long been woven into the writing life. In the nineties, when I was in grad school at the University of Montana, no one in the writing program would take you seriously until you’d made at least one trip—and better yet, many—to the now closed Milltown Union Bar, which was located a few miles east of Missoula and was the legendary haunt of the school’s late poet laureate, Richard Hugo. The wood-paneled watering hole was known for its blue-collar clientele and quirky decor, like the goat and sheep heads mounted on the wall and encased in clear plastic. “You need never leave,” Hugo wrote about the joint in one of his most famous poems. “Money or a story brings you booze.”

When I’m not writing, I like to build things. Construction is therapeutic in many ways: the hard labor, the feel of wood and metal, the cuts and calluses, the heft and roar of power tools. In Santa Fe, where I’ve lived for more than 20 years, I’ve renovated three old houses—“dumpitos,” a realtor friend called them—in a historic neighborhood. The most recent, in 2015, was a 900-square-foot adobe cottage that I dubbed the CrackShack, because I’d purchased it from a notorious local drug dealer who inherited the place along with his five siblings and couldn’t quite handle maintaining it.

My latest project emerged from piles of scavenged lumber that had been left around the property—an unfinished two-bedroom adobe on three acres in the Santa Fe foothills—by the previous owner, an artist and anarchist who was also something of a hoarder. But one person’s junk is another person’s building-supply store, and soon I was sawing and hammering away, becoming the latest participant in a long tradition of bros creating backyard dream spots. I figured I’d be done by five.

At one point, my girlfriend and the property’s co-owner, Madeleine, who goes by the nickname Maddawg, walked up and assessed the progress with folded arms. I’d hoped she would approve of my rustic addition to our home. I was in luck.

“Wow,” she said. “I’m impressed. When do we start drinking?”

“Soon!” I said, optimistically.

A week later, I’d constructed a ten-by-six-foot L-shaped structure, bracketed by three posts crowned with old wood corbels—decorative supports—that I found in the junk pile. I finished the counter using four one-by-eight fir planks that I sanded and sealed with two coats of marine-grade spar varnish and then buffed to a glossy shine. When I started, the wood looked gray and sad, but after it absorbed the polyurethane, the color deepened into a rich caramel, bringing the structure to life.

I splurged on a dremel ($60) to make a sign, the only money I spent except for the purchase of a few six-inch lag screws to secure the posts. The dremel, a rotary power tool used for grinding and engraving, was awkward to handle, like drawing with a dentist’s drill, and it took me a few practice attempts on some scrap before I wrote, in my best looping cursive: Cholla Bar. I hung the sign from two hooks twisted into a crosspiece above the bar counter.

Cholla (pronounced “choy-yah”) are shrubby cacti common to New Mexico. Undisturbed, they can reach eight feet tall. Until I moved to the foothills, where they grow in abundance, I’d never really taken notice of them. But they soon became some of my favorite flora. In early summer, bright-purple flowers burst joyfully from the ends of their tentacles. When chollas die, they leave behind twisted honeycomb-like skeletons that are nearly as haunting and beautiful as the living plant.

Another bonus about construction projects: they’re a great workout. Gyms around Santa Fe were closed, and the idea of doing burpees in my living room made my eyes cross. So I kicked it old-school: working shirtless and alone in the searing New Mexico sun, dredged in a fine coat of sweat and sawdust, my shoulders turning a startling crimson. I imagined that I looked like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, until I saw the pictures Maddawg took on her phone. Alas, my Brad bod was more like a dad bod.

No matter; I wasn’t doing it for the ’gram. I was doing it because I hoped a cool al fresco space might lure friends to hang out. I had barely seen another human for months, and those were mostly fellow face-masked shoppers on furtive grocery missions. Every excursion from my home was a new kind of masquerade ball, where the guests were afraid to get too close, or even make eye contact, as if an errant glance might blast you with COVID-19. The tension and anxiety were palpable. I thought we could really use one big, collective drink, maybe a toast to human connection, in real life.

It worked! I strung up decorative lights, some friends showed up, and we sat around in a carefully spaced circle drinking blueberry-basil margaritas. (Don’t @ me; they are good, and they will flatten you.) One pal brought two whole chickens from his home smoker, and we shredded the tender meat, added coleslaw, and piled everything between slider buns. Someone else made guacamole that we shoveled into our faces with tortilla chips. We swapped stories of the old days, when people gathered in large groups, without a single piece of PPE, to listen to concerts, watch sports, or frolic on a beach.

Was our gathering safe? There are always risks, of course, but in this situation they seemed pretty low. Was it necessary? An emphatic yes. After my friends went home, I lingered in a lounge chair, staring at the Milky Way, which arced brightly above the Cholla Bar, and pondered the Big Questions: What if Trump gets reelected? Was the pandemic a kind of cosmic reckoning for years of profligate and uncharitable behavior? How much had I had to drink?

By the end of June, many bars around the country reopened—and then promptly closed again, in the wake of surging infections. In Florida, you could go to a bar, but you couldn’t buy a drink. In Texas, angry citizens descended on the state capitol, brandishing ill-advised signage: “Bar Lives Matter.” Was drinking a right or a privilege? It wasn’t clear. What was clear is that bars were dangerous grounds for COVID-19 transmission.

“Bars,” remarked Anthony Fauci, the embattled infectious-disease expert, during an interview on CNN. “Really not good.”

As July crackled away, the understanding that our grim new reality wasn’t going to change anytime soon took on renewed weight. An older woman in my neighborhood was verbally assaulted for not wearing her mask correctly while walking her dog, and she felt threatened enough to call the police. Entire industries—retail, restaurant, and travel among them—were imploding. Parents were frayed, strung out, and staring at the prospect of home-based school indefinitely. Kids were going stir-crazy. And still it appeared that things would get worse before they got better. In mid-July, Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that the impending fall and winter could be “one of the most difficult times that we have experienced in American public health.” Zoiks. I was going to need cases of tequila.

A week or so later, I sat outside in a chair by the Cholla Bar on a cool morning, reviewing my handiwork and trying hard not to doomscroll on my phone. A vicious heat wave had finally broken with the arrival of an afternoon monsoon pattern. I sipped coffee, enjoying the birdsong and blue sky, and admiring a silver-lace vine that had coiled around a nearby bentwood fence and frosted over with tiny white flowers. “Nature, man,” I Lebowskied.

That morning brought the first whiff of changing seasons. I knew I’d need to put a roof over the bar by fall, to protect it from the rough weather ahead. Where we live, at 7,500 feet, conditions can get intense. I found some paper and sketched out a crude design—shed style, a simple two-by-four frame, with a top layer of corrugated tin. If I started now, I was sure I could be done by five.

The post I Missed Bars. So I Built One in My Own Backyard. appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

In 2017, when Kilian Jornet summited Everest twice in one week, the news emerged to widespread confusion. He did what? It took him how long? The details were fuzzy at first, but more specifics emerged in the weeks that followed: yep, he’d climbed it twice.Ìę(Though not without some controversy.)ÌęRound trip from Base Camp. Without SherpasÌęor supplemental oxygen. His first ascent took place on May 20, andÌębecause he’d had stomach problems on the initial climb and believed he could “do it better,” he made a second ascent on May 27. Did we mention he had also climbed 26,864-foot Cho Oyu two weeks earlier?

The accomplishments seemed not only improbableÌębut impossible. You don’t need to know much about the world’s tallest mountain or high-altitude physiology to appreciate how difficult—and occasionally deadly—climbing above 8,000 meters canÌębe, even with canned oxygen and lots of help. I’d Ìęin 2008 about the mountain and never heard of anything like what Jornet had done—not by guides, veteran mountaineers, or even Sherpas, whose ability in the high mountains was legendary.

Jornet, 32,Ìęwrites about his Everest experience, and more, in his new memoir, , which came out last month. You come away from the book realizing that the Spaniard is less a runner—the sport that made him famous—than a climber, though one of unusual pedigree.

Jornet’s forte is “continuous movement over technical terrain,” as he puts it, and through the years he has parlayed that into his own unique brand of physical performance. Jornet is competent, even exceptional, on steep rock and ice, but those kinds of routes don’t jibe as well with his type of uphill endurance. Traditional mountaineering, by comparison, with its tedious acclimatization schedule and plodding pace, is boring and insufferable.Ìę

His preference is something in between: dashing over summits, whether in running shoes, crampons, or on skis, often linking multiple peaks and ridges, as quickly and efficiently as he can. When he began visiting the Himalayas, in 2013, he wanted to “climb like we do in the Alps,” by which he means bolting to the top and back in a single push, light and fast, from a base camp or village. To pull this off on the biggest mountains on earth is the fullest expression of his craft.

“What made me fall in love with traversing mountains at high speed is the synergy that emerges between the body’s movement and the shapes of nature,” he writes, “the feeling it gives me of being naked and inconsequential, unrestrained. It brings me freedom and connection, something I can’t find if I go to the mountains any other way.”

Above The Clouds adheres to a loose chronology of Jornet’s life. However, like a long, winding mountain trail, the narrative dips and wends through flashbacks and flash-forwards with little warning. Jornet stans won’t find much that is new. We hear about his early childhood living in a mountain hut in the Pyrenees, his shy and withdrawn adolescence, his enrollmentÌęas a tortured teenÌęin the Centro de TecnificaciĂłn de EsquĂ­ de Montaña—a Spanish academy for aspiring ski-mountaineering racers. What does emerge with renewed clarity, though, is the depth and degree of his development as a mountain athlete.Ìę

Without question, Jornet is genetically gifted—OK, fine, he’s from another planet—but it’s the sheer volume and continuity of his training since grade school that may be the secret sauce behind his ability. By his mid-twenties, he was trouncing everyone in sight, winning and setting course records at some of the most grueling endurance events on earth, including the Hardrock 100, UTMB, Sierra Zinal, and Pierra Menta.

For all his preternatural ability, Jornet seems to feel almost guilty about his talents. He doesn’t like the spotlight success has turned on him, and he wrestles with the meaning and value of competition, fame, and public exposure. Racing pays the bills and keeps his sponsors satisfied, but he’s happiest alone, tackling some epic enchainment near his home in Romsdal, Norway, or bringing his skills and experience to 8,000-meter peaks in the Himalayas. Above the Clouds is atÌęits best when Jornet is working to articulate this paradoxical relationship: “For me, running is easy, and doing it fast is too,” he writes. “Winning, on the other hand, is harder and demands many hours of training and effort. But without wanting to seem arrogant, winning has also become relatively easy for me over the years. In the end, I do virtually nothing else all day, and I hardly think about anything else either. 
 I accept that, inwardly, running is everything to me. On the other hand, outwardly I’ve come to terms with the fact that it’s pointless.”

Despite these philosophical high notes, the book canÌębe a frustrating read at times. I found myself craving more—much more—granular detail about his daily life, his training and recovery, his personal relationships and inner demons. Where does nearly three decades of unwavering motivation come from? How does he avoid injury and overtraining? We hear very little about his romantic partnership with elite skyrunner and ski-mountaineering racer Emelie Forsberg, and even less about his blood relatives. His father, Eduardo, a mountain guide who divorced his mother,ÌęNuria, and left the family when Jornet was a boy, is barely mentioned. Close friends who he lost to the mountains, including Ueli Steck and Jornet’s skimo mentor and hero Stephane Brosse, are treated respectfully but briefly. We sense how profound these people are to him, but are allowed only a glimpse of their role in his life and growth and as an athlete.

As the title suggests, Above theÌęClouds is about Jornet’s lifelong journey to rise above the fray, not just as an elite competitor but as an individual trying to find his moral bearing in a world that pulls him in other directions. On this topic, Jornet is impressively astute.Ìę“An athlete is an athlete twenty-four hours a day and, on top of training, has to live ‘authentically’ and have a ‘take’ on everything,” he writes. “And since he’s no longer just talking to four freaks who understand him—the audience is no longer a minority but global—everything he says must be straightforward and simplified, to quickly catch the attention of a public that consumes information at the speed of a machine gun firing a round of bullets. 
ÌęWe do it to ‘reach’ people, but then we realize that by trying to reach everyone else, there’s one detail we’ve neglected: we can no longer reach ourselves.”

Above the Clouds is entertaining and engaging, but I wish he had written it for the four freaks who understand him rather than the adoring worldwide fan baseÌęthatÌędevours his Instagram feed. As one of the most fascinating athletes on earth, one who repeatedly surprises us with outrageous feats of speed and endurance like his solo Everest double, he could never bore us with what might seem like the trivial minutiae of his life. Until that book arrives, we’ll have to be content with a breezy survey of his youth, some gripping (but thin) accounts of near-catastrophe in the mountains, and a few broad conclusions about his place in the brave new world of influencer-athletes.

The post Kilian Jornet Has a New Book on His Epic Everest Quest appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

On a chilly morning last October, Jim DeBattista, 47, came trundling across the finish line of a one-mile run looking gassed. DeBattista, a youth football coach from Philadelphia, is a contestant on ,Ìęthe infamous weight-loss game show that rebooted on January 28 after being abruptly canceled in 2016. The mile run is one of many fitness challenges contestants tackle, and DeBattista is dead last. There is good news, though. His time has improved the most among all the players since their last mile run two months earlier, from 20 minutes to around 13, which has helped move him a little closer to the show’s $100,000 grand prize. When he hears the results, he gives a little fist pump. DeBattista may have lost the race, but he wins the day.Ìę

I’ve come to check out the new Biggest Loser, which purports to have been “re-imagined for today’s audiences” by taking “a holistic, 360-degree look at wellness,” according to a press statement circulated a few months before its premiere. That could just be marketing boilerplate, but it’s in sync with a fast-changing fitness industry that has recently been retooling itself to be more inclusive, less abusive, and more focused on whole health thanÌęlooksÌęand performance. Or so its proprietors would have you believe.Ìę

The episodes were being filmed just a few miles from my home in Santa Fe, on a 2,400-acre recreation complex called Glorieta șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Camps. The run ends on a grassy campus at the center of the facility. Nearby is a large man-made lake surrounded by clusters of outbuildings. Piñon- and juniper-studded hillsÌęlaced with hiking trailsÌęrise in all directions under a cloudless sky. As the contestants race toward the finish line, the show’s two new trainers—Steve Cook, 33, a former bodybuilder from Utah,Ìęand Erica Lugo, 33, a single mom who runs EricaFitLove, an online personal-training business—pace them, shouting encouragement.

The show’s new host,Ìęformer trainerÌęBob Harper, stands nearby, ready to announce the results. At 54, he looks like a pillar of health, especially for a guy whoÌęalmostÌędiedÌęa couple of years ago. In 2017, Harper had a heart attack midworkout at a gym in Manhattan. He went into cardiac arrest, but a doctor happened to be at handÌęand initiated CPR, saving his life. His close call, Harper later toldÌęme, increased his empathy for The Biggest Loser contestants—after his heart attack, he says, he “couldn’t walk around the block without getting winded.”Ìę

In keeping with his newfound feelings of empathy, the revamped show is what he calls a “kinder and gentler” version of the original. Gone are the infamous temptations,ÌędemeaningÌęstunts like digging through piles of doughnuts for aÌępoker chip worth $5,000Ìęor being forced to carry around a slice of cake for a day. When Harper’s not lording over the weigh-ins with wizened commentary, he gathers the contestants for heartfelt therapy sessions. At the end of each episode, contestants are no longer dismissed by a group vote, as in the original, but are let go based on the percentage of their weight loss that week. Those who are sentÌęhome are set up with an aftercare program that includes a one-year Planet Fitness membership, a personal dietitian, and access to a support group.

When The Biggest Loser reboot aired earlier this year, its most striking quality was not what had changedÌębut how much had stayed the same. I watched the premiere with a mix of disappointment and dismay as the contestants grunted and cursed their way through workouts, barfed into buckets, and got yelled at by Cook and Lugo. There was virtually no mention of diet, stress, sleep, meditation, or any other staples of the wellness revolution. Instead, in the first episode, the contestants were told by Harper that they had, variously, Type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, high cholesterol, and a “90 percent chance of dying from an obesity-related complication.”Ìę

The public response to the revised show has been less than kind. “The Biggest Loser is a vile fat-shaming shit-show that science (and human decency) says never should have been reborn,” ÌęYoni Freedoff, a family-medicine doctor and an obesity expert in Ottawa, on January 28. The next day on Jezebel, : “The Biggest Loser is an amazing illustration of how
 America treats fat bodies as grotesque or tragic failures and exploits them for entertainment.”Ìę

On the New Mexico set, when I asked what had changed and improved since the original, there was almost a winking acknowledgment from Harper and others that, hey, this was cable TV. While they had abandoned or toned down the show’s uglier antics, why would they alter a formula that worked? “We have weigh-ins every week, just like we did before,” Harper told me enthusiastically. “I mean, The Biggest Loser without a scale is like American Idol without a singer.”Ìę

When The Biggest Loser debuted in 2004,ÌęobesityÌęwas being branded as a public-health crisis in most developed countries. By the early aughts, two-thirds of the adult U.S. population was overweight or obese. In May 2004, the World Health Organization released its to address the “growing burden of noncommunicable disease,” of which being overweight and/or obese was listed as one of the top sixÌęcauses. Much hand-wringing ensued about how, exactly, to overcome thisÌęrising trend, but one thing seemed indisputable: losing weight was paramount.

At the time, diet culture was going through its own transformation. Carbohydrates were out; dietaryÌęfat was in. Low-carb diets had been around for a while—the Atkins Diet, perhaps the best known, first appeared in the 1970s. But popular interest in this new paradigm surged after Gary Taubes’s story, “What if It’s All Been aÌęBig Fat Lie?,” appeared in in 2002, challenging, if not upending, the low-fat dietary standard that had been promoted by doctors and medical associations since the 1960s. Other fads were also underway—Loren Cordain’s The Paleo Diet was published in 2002, followed by The South Beach Diet in 2003—but the pitch was always the same: if we just ate the right stuff, like, say, bacon and eggs, the pounds would melt away and good health would return.Ìę

Into the fray came The Biggest Loser. Plenty of weight-loss programs teased us with dramatic before and after images, including Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, and Body for Life. But no one had showcased those transformations on televisionÌęwhile we watched. As the , aroundÌę2003, J.D. Roth, at the time a 35-year-old reality-TV producer, approached NBCÌęwith the idea of a show about obese contestants transforming themselves into thin people by burning off huge amounts of weight. How much weight?Ìęthe network execs wanted to know. “A hundred pounds!” Roth told them.Ìę

Prevailing medical wisdom advises that the most weight it’s reasonable and responsible to lose is about one to two pounds a week. But The Biggest Loser participants lost much more—in some cases, more than 30 pounds in a single week. The dramatic changes wereÌędriven by calorie-restricted diets and unrelenting exercise. The show enlisted a pair of charismatic trainers—Harper and Jillian Michaels, the fiery fitness coach from Los Angeles—included plenty of real tears, and featured humiliating challengesÌęthat made fraternity hazing rituals seem quaint.

Critics were appalled. “There’s a loathsome, mock-the-fatty undertow to The Biggest Loser,” Gillian Flynn Ìęwhen the first season premiered. “But what’s the point of making them squeeze in and out of car windows too small for them? Or forcing them to build a tower of pastries using only their mouths?”Ìę(When reached by șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű, NBC Universal declined to comment on past or current criticisms of the show.)Ìę

The point, of course, was ratings. Audiences, as well as the show’s participants, seemed willing to shrug off the abuse, given the end results. The first season’s winner, Ryan Benson, who worked in DVD production, shed an astonishing 122 pounds during the six-month production, going from 330 to 208. SomeÌę11Ìęmillion viewers tuned in to watch the season-oneÌęfinale, according to Nielsen ratings. The program was a hit and would carry on for 17 seasons, making it one of the longest-running reality shows of all time.Ìę

Things changed in the early 2010s. In 2014, Rachel Frederickson won the 15th season after she lost 155 pounds—60 percent of her body weight, since she started the season at 260 pounds. When she appeared in the finale, she was unrecognizable next to the hologram of herself from the first episode. According to her new body mass indexÌęof 18, she was, in fact, clinically underweight. Many viewers were aghast. The show seemed to have become some sort of dark, dystopian comedy.Ìę

Audience numbers had been slowly shrinking since The Biggest Loser’s peak viewership in 2009, but between 2014 and 2016, they dropped sharply, from about 6.5Ìęmillion to 3.6Ìęmillion average viewers per episode. Then, in May 2016, the show was dealt a nearly fatal blow. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Ìęthat followed 14 former Biggest Loser contestants over the course of six years. The participants had gained back most of the weight they lost on the show, and in some cases, they put on even more. Almost all had developed resting metabolic ratesÌęthat were considerably slower than people of similar size who had not experienced rapid weight loss. Although, on average, the participants managed to keep off some 12 percent of their starting body weight—which makes the show a success relative to most diets—the study indicated that the kind of extreme weight loss hawked by The Biggest Loser wasÌęunsustainable. It was also , given the risks associated with weight fluctuation. (NBC Universal declined to comment on the results of the study.)Ìę

The study may have emboldened former contestants to speak out about their experiences on the show. In an incendiary New York Post piece published shortly after the NIH study appeared, Ìęthat they had been given drugs like Adderall and supplements like ephedra to enhance fat burning. Reeling from controversy, and with ratings down, The Biggest Loser quietly vanished. There was no cancellation announcement. It just didn’t return for season 18.

The Biggest Loser may have imploded on its own accord, but it may also have suffered collateral damage from a cultural shift that was undermining its entire premise. Even as the show was gaining popularity in the mid-aughts, health researchers and activists were questioning the effectiveness of a conventional diet and exercise—long assumed to be the unassailable solutions to weight problems. Maybe we were going about this all wrong; maybe our body weight wasn’t the issue. The problem was our obsession with losing it.Ìę

Uncoupling weight and health is a tall order. It’s a medical fact that body fat can infiltrate organs, especially the liver, where it disrupts insulin action. Diabetes and cardiac-risk factors soon follow. But that doesn’t always occur, and since at least the mid-nineties, there has been ample evidence that there areÌęindividuals who, while still at heightened risk for cardiovascular disease,Ìęare what researchers call metabolically healthy obese—that is, fat but fit.

The idea that being fat might not be so bad—or at least less bad than our frenzied efforts to be thin—has been around since the fat-acceptance movement of the sixties. More recently, movements like ,Ìęor HAES, which grew quickly during the nineties, have leveraged a growing mass of research suggesting that body size in itself poses fewer health risks than some popular approaches to weight loss. HAES proponents point out that, while body fat correlates with poor health, the role of weight itself as the sole cause of chronic disease is exaggerated. What’s more, they argue, weight cycling (losing fat and then regaining it) tends to result in more problems than remaining at a higher but stable weight. Hardcore diets and draconian exercise regimens can also lead to eating disorders, body dysmorphia (hating the way you look), and risky interventions like using weight-loss drugs.Ìę

“There is such a sharp disconnect between what we know from scientific research and what is transmitted to the general public,” says physiologist Lindo Bacon, author of the 2008 book Health at Every Size. “It’s appalling, and I think The Biggest Loser represents the worst of it.” HAES has plenty of critics, who contend that the movement attempts to normalize obesityÌęand therefore poor health. But the larger point may be this: losing weight can be so difficult that it often thwartsÌęeffortsÌęto develop better habits, like eating nutritious foods or being regularly active.

It took a while for market forces to catch on. ManyÌęfolks still put their trust in diet and exercise programs to get and stay fit. But the myth of transformation was largely created by marketing agencies—that is, before the government stepped in to enforce more transparency in advertising. The diet industry has been slapping disclaimers on products since 1997, when the Federal Trade Commission required Jenny Craig to inform consumers that dramatic weight loss “wasn’t typical” for those using its program.Ìę

But such caveats hardly slowed down the industry. The diet business doubled between 2000Ìęand 2018, according to the market-research firm Marketdata. By 2018Ìęit was generating around $72Ìębillion a year. It took a whole new generation to realize that none of it was working.

“Terms like ‘diet’ and ‘weight loss’ just aren’t cool anymore,” says Kelsey Miller, author of the memoir Big Girl and creator of the , which launched in November 2013 on the online publication Refinery 29. “People were ready to hear something that wasn’t about changing their bodies or manipulating their bodiesÌębut rather accepting their bodies. A lot of beauty standards were ridiculous, and we were starting to listen to this rational part of our brain that was saying, Let’s just drop all this nonsense.”Ìę

The market began to tilt in the 2010s, and many weight-loss companies struggled to stay relevant. Dieting had left such a wide wake of disordered eating, stress, and anxiety—along with more intractable issues like anorexia and bulimia—that many people started to reject the approach altogether. (One popular recent book is Caroline Dooner’s The F*ck It Diet.) The anti-diet movement champions intuitive eating, which lets natural hunger and satiety signals guide food intake as opposed to calorie counting and macronutrient experiments. Weight Watchers, which essentially created modern diet culture back in 1963, rebranded itself as WW, a wellnessÌęcompany, in 2018.Ìę

When the body-positivity movement gained momentum around 2013, largely thanks to social media, it spread the message that teaching overweight people to hate themselves as a motivator was a bad idea. One reason the rebooted Biggest Loser has met such strident blowback is that it brazenly reinforces those prejudices. Shaming and scaring overweight people about their weight has been shown to exacerbate issues like overeating and depression, not resolve them. The showÌęalso reinforces weight bias. In one smallÌębut well-publicized 2012 , viewers who watched only a single episode of The Biggest Loser came away with increased negative opinions about largeÌępeople. In 2019, scientists at Harvard Ìęthat looked at public attitudes toward six social factors—age, disability, body weight, race, skin tone, and sexuality—and how they changed over time. Their results concluded that when it comes to implicit (or relatively automatic) biases, body weight was the only category where people’s attitudes worsened over time. However, explicit (or relatively controllable) biasesÌęimproved in all six categories. Because lower body weight also tends to correlate to higher levels of socioeconomic privilege in the United States, fat shaming functions as a kind of classism.

Still, there have been noticeable changes in some public opinions, thanks to influencers, models, athletes, and brands that have taken a more weight-neutral position. When Ashley Graham became the first plus-size model to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition, in 2016, the photos of her were heralded as aÌęvictory for body positivity. In January, when Jillian Michaels Ìęexpressing concern thatÌęthe pop singer LizzoÌęmight developÌęType 2 diabetes, she was swiftly denounced for “concern trolling” and body shaming. LizzoÌęrespondedÌęthat she “had no regrets” and “deserved to be happy.” She probably was.ÌęShe’d just won three Grammy Awards and was on the cover of Rolling Stone.

During my second visit to The Biggest Loser set, I watched the contestants grunt through a Last Chance Workout—the final fat-blasting gym session before the weekly weigh-in. The high-intensity circuit involved treadmills, rowing machines, battle ropes, free weights, and other torture-chamber accoutrements. The trainers barked. The contestants slogged away. I didn’t see anyone throw up, but they looked like they were about to.

This scene wasn’t a one-off: workouts and fitness challenges fill most of the show. It’s easy to see why they’re the most prominent. Who wants to watch people eat a saladÌęor sleep really wellÌęwhen you can watch them doing box jumps until they crumple?

If dieting has fallen out of favor in recent years, so, too, has our frustrating and often fruitless attempts to sweat our way to thinness. Physical activity has many extraordinary benefits and is arguably the first line of defense when it comes to personal health. But research has taught us that working out is a weak strategy for sustainable weight loss. In 2009, in the wake of several prominent studies, a Time magazine cover story blared, “Why Exercise Won’t Make You Thin.” Ultimately, this wasn’t an argument to stop going to the gym, but it was a reason to stop flagellating yourselfÌęin a quest to shed pounds.

Part of the problem is that many people understand weight loss to be a thermodynamic issue. This may be fundamentally true—the only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume—but the biological reality is more complex. Researchers have shownÌęthat the more aggressively we take weight off, the more fiercely our body fights to put it back on.ÌęOne of the insights provided by the 2016 NIH metabolism study is that suchÌęmetabolic effects persist for years after theÌęinitial weight loss;Ìęthe bodyÌęlowers theÌęresting metabolic rate (by as much as 600 calories a day in some cases) and reduces the production of leptin, a hormone that helps us feel full. “The metabolic slowing is like tension on a spring,” says Kevin Hall, a senior NIH researcher who led the study. “When you pull on the spring to stretch it, that’s the lifestyle intervention, the weight loss. The more weight you lose, the more tension there is, pulling you back.”

A popular theory suggests that we have a body-weight set point that works like a thermostat: your brain recognizes a certain weight, or weight range, and adjusts other physiological systems to push you there. How, when, and how permanently that weight is set is a matter of much debate. It’s fairly well understood that genes play a significant role in determining our body mass—some of us simply put on weight easier than others—but around the late 1970s, the average weight of Americans began to climb significantlyÌęrelative to previous decades. It wasn’t our genes causing the uptick.

One of the thorniest problems in obesity research may be that we live in bodies engineered for a very different world than the one we inhabit now. Scientists often refer to our modern surroundings as an “obesogenic environment,” where a host of factors, including food supply, technology, transportation, income, stress, and inactivity, contribute to weight gain. For many years, the weight-loss industry has convinced us that, by disciplining ourselves to embrace the right diet and exercise, we couldÌęwhittle ourselves back down to a more socially acceptable weight. But it has failed to produce the kind of health outcomes we might expect. The reality is that the twin forces of genetics and environment quickly overwhelm willpower. Our weight may be intractable because the issues are so much bigger than we realize.

When I talked to trainer Erica Lugo on The Biggest Loser set, she seemed less fixated on weight loss than she’s portrayed to be in the show. “The fitness industry is so hung up on being a certain size or having a six-pack, and I’ve struggled with that on the show a couple of times,” she told me. “Fitness is a mindset. I want people to know that, and I want everyone to feel accepted. I don’t want them to be embarrassed or feel like they can’tÌędo things or even try.”

A few weeks later, while I was watching early episodes, something surprising happened. While I fully understood how the show can manipulate my emotions, I still found myself caught up in the stories. I got misty when 400-pound Robert Richardson was sent home in the first episode because he had “only” managed to drop 13 pounds in a week. When Megan Hoffman, who’d been struggling since the start, started flinging tractor tires like a beast in the second episode, I was thrilled.ÌęBy episode sevenÌę(of ten), the show hits its emotional peak when the five remaining contestants get video messages from home. The stories are human and relatable—a son with a recovering-addict mother,Ìęa distant husband wanting his wife to “get healthy.” The message is clear: gaining weight may be as much psychological as it is physical.

Despite The Biggest Loser’s wellness head fake, and regardless of its woefully outdated tone and thinly veiled fat shaming, I now understood why, for its millions of fans, the show was a beacon of hope. How many of them, when faced with unrelenting negativity about their weight, yearned for inspiration and motivation, for agency, for the belief that they could reclaim ownership of their bodies?

I wasn’t sure how to reconcile this in our bold new world of woke fitness. How could you endorse a show conveyingÌęthe idea that self-worth was tied to BMI? On the other hand, anything that prompted positive change, no matter how small, seemed like a step in the right direction. Obesity never warrants discrimination, but acceptance and compassion shouldn’t eclipseÌęconcern forÌęhealth risks either—a in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that, by 2030, nearly 50 percent of Americans will be obese.Ìę

About a month after the show wrapped, I talked on the phone with contestant Jim DeBattista, the youth football coach. I wondered how his experience had beenÌęand how he was doing now that he’d been home for a while. “It’s going great!” he said cheerfully. “My big goal was to make this work after the contest was over. I knew I wasn’t going to be living in a bubble. But so far, I haven’t put any weight on, and I’m eating more and working out less.”Ìę

I asked what had been his biggest takeaway. “You have to surrender your old habits,” he said. “The old me led me to be almost 400 pounds. I had to completely change who I was, and the show helped me do that. I can’t lie. NowÌęwhen I see a Dairy Queen, I hit the gas.”

The new Biggest Loser wants us to believe that the journey of transformation is internal and individual, that we can shape our bodies to our will. But what if it’s not us we need to transformÌębut the world we’ve built? Real wellness—regular movement, nutritious food, social connection, access to health care, and quality rest and relaxation—can’t be at war with the way we live. It has to be baked into our lives, our schools, our work, and our cities. It may not prevent us from getting heavier, but it would certainly make us healthier. And that would be a big win for everyone.

The post There Are No Winners with ‘The Biggest Loser’ appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

, launched in 2014, takes its name from the town of Tincup, Colorado, a once wild mining outpost turned summer tourist destination tucked into a scenic valley at 9,000 feet, about 30 miles from Crested Butte. One day in late summer, I joined a group of whiskey enthusiasts—including a small corps of Instagram influencers, media folk, and professional climbers Max Lowe, Renan Ozturk, and Sam Elias—on the deck of a Tincup cabin to try a few of itsÌęspirits.Ìę

Having spent the last 20 years in New Mexico, I’d become a tequila snob—er, devotee—drinking it almost exclusively. I was overdue to broaden my palateÌęa bit. The weather was glorious as Jess Graber, Tincup’sÌęfounder, poured samples, including the new limited-releaseÌęTincup 100-percent Rye (available nationwide in early 2020). Standing behind the outdoor bar, Graber dished some tips on the best way to appreciate the nuanced flavors.

“I like to take a small sipÌęand just let it sit at the tip of my tongue for a few seconds,” he told us. “Then I let it slide to the back of my mouth, where you can really start to notice the characteristics. What are people noticing?”

“Caramel,” someone said.

“Apricots,” saidÌęanother.

“Peaches!”Ìę

“Yes!” saidÌęGraber.

I took a swig of the rye and swirled it around. At first it was warm, even hot—a signature quality—and then came hints of caramel and vanilla. The all-rye whiskey was a little harsher than bourbon, but the flavors were potent. The fruit notes showed up in the finish, maybe instilled by the barrel or theÌęrye itself. The characteristic of any whiskey is built from its unique combination of mash, water, and aging, a process that can be carefully controlled and replicated, even though the final outcome is a little mysterious. “We don’t entirely know how the flavors are created,” Graber says. “The end product is a kind of magic.”

Tincup isn’t quite a craft whiskey, although it has that vibe (Graber, the founder of Stranahan’s Whiskey, is sometimes credited with helping launch the craft-spirits trend in Colorado). The mash comes from a large Indiana-based producer, but it’s finished nearÌęDenver, where the distillation is cut to proof—in Tincup Original, about 84—with water from Eldorado Springs, near Boulder. Then it’s aged in oak barrels, the insides of which are scorched to “char level 3,”ÌęimpartingÌęmuch of the flavor.Ìę

Technically, Tincup whiskey—except the new 100 percent rye—is bourbon, meaning the mash is at least 51 percent corn. Graber dubbed it “Mountain Whiskey” to help with branding and to avoid competing with other bourbons, which have been enjoying a bit of a moment. Given its mountain heritage, the Tincup producers want it to be your go-to adventure hooch. In other words, bring it camping, hiking, biking, hunting, whatever. Tincup comes with a tin cap, reminiscent of the old mining town’s original barware, durable and great for shots by the campfire. And the bottle itself is hexagonal, which, according to the website, “prevents it from rolling too far away” and “not only looks great, but adds functionality to improve trail performance.”

That seemed likeÌęhype, but I couldn’t deny that Tincup and outdoor adventure went well together. The next day, I pulled off a Colorado trifecta: fly-fishing in the morning, rafting the splashy Class IIIÌęTaylor River in the afternoon, and hustling out for a sunset mountain-bike ride. I returned to Taylor River Lodge that evening to find the group milling around the bar, enjoying an aperitifÌęof whiskey cocktails. I opted for a Manhattan, featuring Tincup, of course. I knew the drink well, asÌęmy parents had mixed themselves a Manhattan every evening for 50 years: whiskey, vermouth, a few maraschino cherries with a splash of juice. My Tincup version was drier than my parents would have liked, but it was still delicious and refreshing after my day of sun-soaked funhogging.

Our hosts fired up the barbecue, and after a feast of elk and bison, we adjourned to a bonfire near the lodge. Tincup flowed generously, as did stories of high adventure, especially from the climbers. Ozturk was recently back from Mount Everest, Lowe was working on a film about his late father, Alex Lowe,Ìęand Elias was pushing some hard new routes in Utah. Typically, I’d be passing around a bottle of mescal about now, but somehow an agave spirit didn’t seem right. Instead, I was content to sip a lowball of Tincup 10 Year, which was going down as enjoyably as the mountain tales.

A dozen or so of us sat and gabbed around the fire late into the night—or, more accurately, early into the morning. It was, by any measure, a perfect night, the conversation oscillating between earnest and silly, lubricated by the warm spirits. At last I hit char-level three myself and snuck off to bed, resolved to add a good whiskey to my backcountry kit.

The șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Manhattan:

• 2 ouncesÌęTincup Original
• 3/4 ounce sweet vermouth
• A dash or two of Angostura bitters
• Maraschino cherry

Add the first three ingredients to a shakerÌęwith ice. Shake and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a cherry.

The post The Tequila Lover’s Guide to Whiskey appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.

Is 50 the new 30? Or is 30 the new 50?

A New York City–based biotech company, ,Ìębelieves it can help you figure that out with unprecedented levels of accuracy using a simple, though spendy ($500)Ìęat-home saliva test called Index. You spit in a vial, send the sample back to Elysium, wait four to sixÌęweeks for processing, and—voilĂ !—receive a report indicating whether your biological age is younger, older, or the same as your chronological age.Ìę

Chronological age is, of course, all those trips you’ve made around the sun. Biological age, on the other hand, is how well you’ve held up during those trips—a measure of your physiological health. Scientists have been trying to determine biological age for at least 50 years, using various biomarkers (like cholesterol, blood glucose, skin elasticity, and vascular function, to name a few) and mathematical modeling. Only recently have researchers started using our DNA to evaluate age.Ìę

Elysium’sÌęIndex calculates your biological age by looking at DNA methylation (DNAm), which is one of the ways genes are turned on or off. Methylation occurs when methyl groups—clusters of hydrogen atoms surrounding a carbon atom—attach to the DNA and prevent their expression. Some patterns of methylation are inherited and occur naturally with age, but others are triggered by environment and lifestyle factors, like smoking, stress, exercise, and exposure to chemicals. DNAm isn’t the only way genes may be modified, but it is the most common and has become an important player in the broader field of epigenetics, the science of gene expression. Epigenetic researchersÌęhave found that DNAm profiles correspond remarkably well with age-related biomarkers. So a researcher looking at a blind DNAm profile sample could conclude that it represents someone who is 50 years old—although the actual subject might be 40Ìęor 60.

“Index came from asking two questions,” says Elysium CEO Eric Marcotulli. “First, can you measure aging itself?ÌęAnd second, what is the most accurate way to do that?”Ìę

The answer to that first question appears to be yes, and the science behind it gained a lot of ground in 2011, with the creation of the “epigenetic clock.” That clockÌęwas actually a formula for calculating age based on cellular health using DNAmÌędata, which was then correlated with large data sets like the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the largest study ever conducted on population health. By comparing new DNAm samples with established patterns drawn from large studies,ÌęscientistsÌęcould estimate biological age, give or take a few years.Ìę

To answer the second question—how to measure biological age with enough accuracy to be relevant for individuals—Marcotulli tapped Morgan Levine, an assistant professor of pathology at Yale and a rising star in the field of aging research, to lead the Index project for Elysium. As a postdoc at UCLA, Levine worked with Steven Horvath, a human-genetics and biostatistics professor largely credited with creating the first epigenetic clock. With Horvath’s help, Levine developed a more advanced version of the epigenetic clock. Where early versions gathered data from a few hundred DNAm sites on the genome, Levine’s was able to read data from 100,000 sites (Elysium is heralding this as “revolutionary”), allowing them to more reliably and consistently pinpoint biological age, along with your “cumulative rate of aging”—that is, how fast you are getting old.

Levine says she has put Index to the test herself, but her initial results weren’t as good as she’d hoped, evenÌęthough she’s a lifelong runner with a pretty healthy lifestyle.ÌęSheÌębelieved she could score betterÌęand decided to add high-intensity and strength training to her workout regimen. When she retested six months later, her biological age had improved. “Strength and high-intensity training is one thing I thought might make a difference,” she says. “That’s not a scientific study, because it’s nÌęof one, but in my own life, I want to figure out how to take control of aging and stay physically functioning for as long as possible.”

Currently, Index only offers basic information on biological age—a kind of overall health score. But future editions, says Levine, will be able to highlight different biological systems, where you may want to apply more effort toward improvement, like certain types of exercise or diet. Traditional health careÌęmay only flag a health issue once it becomes a problem, like the onset of disease. Levine says Index may help people get a jump on health issues before they occur.Ìę

It’s hard not to approachÌęa new biotech product making grandiose claims with a large beaker of skepticism. The field is swamped with hucksters and marketing hype, forever stigmatized by megascandals like that of Theranos, the infamous biotech company that falsely claimed it could conduct advanced blood tests with tiny samples. Elysium insists it’s bringing new standards of scientific rigor and legitimacy to the marketplace, but there’s reason for pause.Ìę

To date, Elysium has released just one other product: Basis, a supplement that increasesÌęNAD+, a molecule essential for cellular health that diminishes with age. Basis was developed by MIT heavyweight , an Elysium cofounder. Since its release in early 2015, Basis (which costsÌę$50 a month) has received , who have reported everything from renewed energy to side effects like sleeplessness and body aches. Elysium has conducted several double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials—the gold standard—and shown that the supplements raise NAD+ as much as 40 percent. But molecular science is exceedingly complex, and the notion that a single supplement will provide miraculous anti-aging benefits is itself a large pill to swallow. It’s worth noting that neither Basis (a supplement, not a pharmaceutical) nor IndexÌęrequired FDA approval.Ìę

Still, consumers are increasingly interested in taking more control of their health, and biotech companies are eager to provide tools that, they claim, will help them do so. The problem is that the line between science and marketing gets squishy fast. Index not only complements Basis, it drives sales of the supplement:ÌęDoubt our claims? Take our test to see if it’s working!ÌęÌę

And if it does work, then what? Like a lot of biotech for consumers, a central question is what to do with the information. Index results will come with some lifestyle recommendations, though it’s unclear what those will look likeÌęexactly. Will they be any different than general advice we’ve already heard? Move a lot, hydrate, eat whole foods, get some decent sleep, go outside, spend time with loved ones. You know the drill.

Whether consumers will embrace their own epigenetic clock in a box is anyone’s guess. The novelty alone may give it at least an initial splash; you can almost imagine a new crop of younger-than-their-chronological-age bio influencers popping up on social media (save us now). But who knows. The science is certainly compelling, and Index could prove to be an insightful way to test lifestyle tweaks, dietary experimentation, and other interventions that might improve health. And if it does really make 50 look more like 30, five hundredÌębucks may seem like a bargain.

The post This Company Will Tell You How Well You’re Aging appeared first on șÚÁÏłÔčÏÍű Online.