You Are an Anecdote…

The following is from Installment 66 of the weekly Biggest Comeback email that went out this past Sunday. Subscribe here.

Earlier this week a medical doctor called me an “anecdotal bro” in an attempt to deprecate the success I’ve enjoyed over the past three-and-a-half years following a low-carbohydrate diet.

No big deal. I’ve been called worse.

But a few words about anecdotes, and those who treat them with scorn.

An anecdote is defined by Merriam Webster as “a usually short narrative of an interesting, amusing, or biographical incident.”

If the anecdote is YOUR story, don’t let anyone try to convince you it’s not important. Your story and your results are the MOST important.

There are many times when anecdotes involving others can also be extremely useful, especially when they involve people who are similar to you, and when those people have overcome challenges similar to the ones you’re facing.

Anecdotes can be extremely helpful in weighing possible options, especially when mainstream advice hasn’t produced positive results.

For example, it’s unlikely that anyone who’s ever attempted to lose weight hasn’t at least tried restricting calories and exercising more. Most of us have tried variations of that approach countless times with frustrating results.

During my weight loss and fitness journey, I discovered there are many people enjoying life-changing success using different approaches that I’d never before considered. I used their anecdotes as a starting point for my own research, and the results have been transformational.

Using therapeutic carbohydrate restriction, I lost 80+ pounds and have effortlessly kept it off for more than three years.

The experience taught me I could apply the same basic principles to learn how to improve other areas of my life.

Last Thursday, at age 57, I hit a new lifetime best on overhead press, and yesterday morning I ran my fastest five-miler in decades on the Dutchess Rail Trail with my wife Connie.

Don’t let anyone tell you YOUR anecdote isn’t important.

“Cultivate a practice of being observant. I don’t think most people are observant.” — Nick Norwitz, PhD

In my April 11, 2021 Biggest Comeback email, I wrote about some things I learned from Nick Norwitz, after interviewing him for an article on the Society of Metabolic Health Practitioners website. I’ve referred to that email many times since then, and have sent it to several people who asked me how to get started on their health and fitness journey.

Since this email started out on the topic of anecdotes and self-optimization, it seems like a great time to revisit that email:

Nick, who was valedictorian of his class at Dartmouth, earned his PhD at Oxford, and is now pursuing an MD at Harvard, was extremely generous with his time, and he was gracious enough to answer a few additional questions after the formal interview had concluded.

I asked Nick if he had any advice for someone trying to optimize their own health, particularly if satisfactory answers didn’t seem to be forthcoming from their medical provider.

“I think the most important thing overall is to cultivate a practice of being observant,” Nick said. “I don’t think most people are observant.”

He suggests starting with something as simple as using a reflection journal each day, where you record how you’re feeling, any symptoms, what you eat, along with your activities. He then encourages developing a hypothesis you can test.

“It doesn’t need to be a complicated hypothesis. Maybe it’s like, I feel a little bloated, maybe it was cheese, Then cut that out for three or four days, and see how you feel? Do you feel better? Do you not feel better? Do you feel worse. And if you observe something, go down the rabbit hole.”

“If you have an observation in yourself, it’s worth at least Googling and trying to figure something out, because maybe there’s something there that makes sense to you. And maybe that will allow you to progress.”

Nick stresses that you don’t need to know about the precise mechanisms and pathways. You just need to know whether something works.

“I come up with hypotheses about why something might be causing irritation to me, but at the end of the day, I don’t really care about HOW it works. I just care THAT it works. And so if I have an observation of myself, I’m like, oh, this actually makes me feel better. I don’t care about the literature. I care that it makes me feel better.”

“If you have symptoms, there’s something causing it. Just play around with it until you figure out what that is. And don’t lose hope, because there is an answer.”

My health and fitness transformation began in January, 2018, shortly after I asked a friend, Ken Solomon, if there was a book he would recommend for weight loss. The book he recommended, Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes, ended up being the catalyst that led to me sustainably losing 80+ pounds and profoundly changing my life.

That book may not be the book for you, but that’s not the point.

The point, as Nick Norwitz reminded me, is to become observant, get curious, and ask questions. Pay attention to what is actually working for others, try out new approaches, adjust as necessary, and give your health and fitness the attention it deserves.