The Biggest Mistake

By: Michael Beiter

The single biggest mistake I see in fitness and nutrition is failing to control for a single variable.

Change your calories, macros, what you're eating, and what you're taking all at once. You've got no shot of figuring out what did what.

Add two days of workouts, and change the number of sets and overall intensity all at once—the same story.

To truly learn the best food and exercise plan, you must test using the scientific method. A hallmark of which is to isolate which variable you're testing for.

You'll never learn more about yourself than when you experiment this way.

Each variable you test for, whether nutrition or exercise related, takes about 7-10 days minimum to show its effects. With that in mind, you have about 50 individual experiments annually.

The coolest part? This type of work has a compounding effect - the more you do it, the more you reap.

But it takes patience and discipline, both of which are dying virtues.

We eliminate and reintroduce one food at a time. Lately, many clients have been developing issues with individual foods or ingredients. How do we figure out which ones are causing problems?

I'm usually met with, "DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY FOODS PEOPLE EAT?!"

I respond, "Yes, research indicates that most of us eat the same thirty to fifty foods constantly. Depending on the foods, that can include hundreds, if not thousands, of individual ingredients... Better get to testing."