Fitness Week: Leangains

Welcome to the first post of Fitness Week here on Blogographer! Here is a quick run-down of Fitness Week, as found in my last post:

"So how are we going to work this weight off? Well, by exercise and fitness, of course! This week on Blogographer is going to be Fitness Week, and we will be featuring three fitness blogs on Wednesday the 28th, Friday the 30th, and Monday on the second of January."

Today's subject is about "intermittent fasting and all things related," on the blog Leangains. Some of you may have heard about Leangains before, whether it be while casually browsing the internet or even because you were trying to improve your dieting or training routines. Many of you, however, have probably not heard of it, and hopefully by the end of this post you will at least give it a visit. ;D


Leangains is written by Martin Berkhan, who is a magazine writer, nutritional consultant, and personal trainer. Berkhan seems to take his own ideas, and mix them in with ideas from other realms of thought and subjects to make a more well-rounded routine for his readers. One example is economics and the sunk cost fallacy:

"The sunk cost fallacy is a well-known concept in behavioral economics. Briefly summarized, the more you spend on something, the less you’re willing to let it go. The resource invested can be money, time, mental or emotional energy - it's all the same.

This unwillingness to let go will often lead to continued investments, not rarely in spite of negative effects. Since you've already put your money, time, or energy into it, so you simply keep pouring it on - you're throwing good money after bad, as the saying goes.

Why? You might be thinking that the payoff is just around the corner. If you give up now, all that time and energy will have gone to waste. So you cling on to this sinking ship, as it drags you further into the void."

Berkhan goes on to explain in another post how he, himself, fell for this sunk cost fallacy in fitness, as well, continually trying to make an old diet work that simply did not produce results. He had spent so much time and effort on it, though, that he felt like he could not just give up on it without wasting all of that time and effort; however, all he did was pour more of his life into it without results.

However, the one big problem I have with his blog is the difficulty of reading, as he tries to use more complicated phrases to give the material merit. Instead of saying the word "often," in that excerpt above, he uses "not rarely," which, in context, makes the sentence many times more difficult despite a lack of improvement. If you can look past that, though, Leangains is an excellent blog.