Fitness Master: Always engage your mind
Whether or not you believe today’s title to be true at this moment, in the next few moments here’s what I’ll ask you to do. Reread the title a few times.
And give absolutely no thought to my safety.
While I’m about to go out on a limb, it’s a really sturdy one. Not the wispy branch of a tall yellow birch, but the massive thigh of an athletic Barkley — Saquon’s not Charles’s.
I’m going to say that as you kept rereading the title, you never considered one of the ways in which you can use the word “engage.” To enter into combat with an enemy.
As a result, you don’t see it as a suggestion to separate yourself from your mind and perceive it as an independent entity — one that can be an enemy at that. To willingly enter into combat with your mind for the sake of your health when need be.
And when would that need be? Essentially 24/7.
For when you need to decide whether a course of action is beneficial or detrimental to your health, your mind’s like that second Barkley when he’s on a basketball halftime show and explaining why one team is already down 23 points. He’s seeing the situation in blacks and whites and not shades of gray.
But shades of gray are what color your health.
To demonstrate this, I’ll ask you what Dr. Layne Norton asked Rich Roll on a podcast hosted by Roll about one year ago. Norton — who’s regarded as an expert in nutrition, protein metabolism, muscle gain, and fat loss, has written two books on those subjects, and is a former world-record holder in the squat — wanted to know what Roll would say to the following offer.
To do something that immediately increases blood pressure, stress levels, and the inflammation in the body while also producing free radicals — substances that create DNA damage, cell dysfunction, and cell death. All of which play a role in aging; diabetes; cardiovascular diseases, like hypertension and coronary artery disease; neurodegenerative diseases, like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s; and many cancers.
Roll didn’t think for long before saying he’d pass on the offer.
Then Norton explained what Roll would be passing on was exercise. That all this seemingly bad stuff was the body’s short-term response to working out, but that over the long term, as we all know, regular exercise is quite beneficial.
So Norton’s advice to Roll and his listeners about all things related to health and fitness is “to be very careful with equating short-term responses with long-term outcomes.” Add to that what you’ve read in this column at least two dozen times — that your body is unique and often works differently than those examined in studies — and it’s clear what you need to do to become your healthiest self.
It’s the same as what e.e. cummings says you need to do in a world seemingly hellbent on keeping you from being your true self. “To fight and never stop fighting.”
Which, I’m sure e.e. would agree, includes fighting against your mind’s preference for black and white over shades of gray.
Speaking of shades of gray, did you know curiosity — that strong desire to know or learn something — is not only a personality trait but also a state that can be created in a given moment? Or that a recent study focusing upon that difference has lent gray to what used to be a black and white matter?
That study, a joint effort of an international team of psychologists and published in the May 2025 issue of PLoS One, collected data from 1,218 participants between the ages of 20 and 84 by way of an online questionnaire and assessed the responses. Their work reaffirmed an old black-and-white belief: that the older you get, the less curious you become.
But the also study found that’s only true only when older adults are compared to younger adults and both are presented with some idea or thing that’s new. In that case, younger adults were indeed more curious.
Older adults ,however, were actually more curious about ideas or things that could add to their semantic knowledge, their current general knowledge of words, objects, events — in essence, the world — and how things relate to one another.
So the gray in all of this is that you don’t stop becoming curious about things as you age, you just start becoming more selective. You focus your curiosity not on novelty but what has historically been important to you.
So I can only hope that in the past you’ve been interested in your health and fitness, since it will certainly play a large part in your future. A future that can be all sorts of all right if you not only stay abreast of new studies like the aforementioned one about curiosity but also remember Dr. Layne Norton’s warning.
Don’t confuse short-term responses with long-term outcomes.