Any time a conversation about food, diet, or nutrition comes up in a mixed group of people someone will inevitably say “everything in moderation” as if they have made the most profound statement that should immediately stop everyone in their tracks to marvel at the profundity that had just been revealed to them.
But does moderation even make any sense biologically?
Moderation is the avoidance of extremes or excesses, and could be either avoiding the extremes in the first place or attenuating them when they do occur.
So when it comes to diet you could say that moderation looks like a flat-line of eating right around your maintenance number of calories of food that we could all agree is real, good food. Spikes or extremes would be extremely low or high calories or foods that are many times lower or higher quality than what is normal for you.
Now, if we were to apply this same type of thinking to exercise we could create a moderation-based fitness regimen. You would never elevate your heart rate beyond, say, a walking pace because going up towards your maximum heart rate would clearly be an extreme, and likewise we’d really want to avoid any excessively low resting heart rates from being totally relaxed. Weight training would of course be done in moderation, but never with weights anywhere approaching your maximal 1-rep maximum capabilities. Using weights that you could do without any spikes of exertion would be better. By the same token, we’d never want to use very light weights because then you could do an extreme amount of volume and we want to keep that down.
Does that seem like it would be an effective training program? Does that even make sense biologically?
Do you even hormesis, bro?
The fact is this type of linear, static, regularity doesn’t exist in nature. We aren’t made for it.
By the same token, we also aren’t made for the profit-engineered hyperpalatable foods that make up the vast majority of the grocery store these days. Having these foods is moderation is probably less damaging, but I don’t know that there is any benefit or hormetic effect either. In other words, let’s call a spade a spade, having them in moderation is just less bad. Which is better than the alternative, but it probably isn’t a real rational philosophy to live by.
And if something is downright so toxic to you that even in low doses you are being harmed more than you are benefiting then it certainly doesn’t make sense to have them in moderation. This is much more common than you’d think, given the relatively completely vacant field of study in auto-immune connections to diet and food.
Finally, it’s worth noting that if someone is even capable of moderation then it’s pretty unlikely that “everything in moderation” is useful advice to them. Even if it did make sense biologically. It’s inherently “just do it” advice.
Just like you would with training it makes sense to have highs and lows, peaks and valleys. Sometimes you eat a lot more than normal, sometimes you eat a lot less than normal. Sometimes you eat something that is more an extreme in terms of your own tolerance, but it hardens you against future extremes. All of that is inherently biological and high variability is a sign of a healthy system. Tamping it down with trite advice isn’t good or healthy.
In part 2 I am going to discuss another, tangential, reason this advice is garbage.
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