I can tell you the exact moment when I started thinking about longevity in a serious way. It happened on March 10, 2023, at 10:20 P.M., in a hospital delivery room ablaze with overhead lights. I stood bedside, my hand crumpling under my wife鈥檚 grip, as a tiny, screeching alien, an eggplant with eyes鈥攐ur daughter, Esme鈥攕lipped into the hands of the attending ob-gyn. At 56, I became a father for the first time.

Until Es arrived, the grand total of my thoughts about aging could be summed up in a line my father likes to say: 鈥淚t sucks getting old, but it beats the alternative!鈥� Now as I stared into her little purple face, I wanted every healthy minute I could get. I began to imagine all the things I鈥檇 be able to show her鈥攎ountains, rivers, books (made of paper), and how to mix the perfect margarita. By the time we got home, I was no longer the center of my universe. She was.

With this new cosmology in mind, I sat down with Peter Attia鈥檚 book, , cowritten with 国产吃瓜黑料 contributing editor Bill Gifford. The book has clearly resonated with a lot of people. It sold more than a million and a half copies in less than a year and has been a fixture on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly as long.

I approached it with trepidation. I鈥檝e been writing about health and fitness for more than two decades, and most things that promote 鈥渓ongevity鈥� give me hives. Why we die, and why we don鈥檛, involves enormously complicated science that鈥檚 difficult if not impossible to research conclusively. Dudes鈥攊t鈥檚 almost always dudes鈥攚ho claim they鈥檝e got it figured out are suspect by default.

Outlive, I soon learned, isn鈥檛 about death per se but about decline. Attia believes that you can prevent decline鈥攐r, as he puts it, 鈥渟quare the longevity curve鈥濃€攖hrough an aggressive combination of exercise, lifestyle (nutrition, sleep, etc.), and elements from personalized health care, or what he calls Medicine 3.0. Can getting old suck less? He says that the answer is a resounding yes.

Attia, 51, is a licensed physician who runs a concierge telemedicine practice from his home and fitness HQ in Austin, Texas. To be a patient of his is rumored to run into the six figures annually. (He won鈥檛 disclose this number.) He鈥檚 also a rising star on the self-improvement influencer circuit, appearing frequently on podcasts hosted by Rich Roll, Andrew Huberman, Tim Ferriss, Joe Rogan, and Rhonda Patrick, among others.

In addition to his guest appearances, Attia produces his own podcast, The Drive, along with a weekly newsletter and a robust stream of social media content. He has a million followers on Instagram alone. You might even have caught him as the doctor on the Disney+ show Limitless with Chris Hemsworth, a.k.a. Marvel鈥檚 Thor. Want more? You can sign up for the expanded, members-only version of Attia鈥檚 output for $149 a year. Or splurge for his online longevity video course, Early鈥攅ssentially an enhanced, interactive version of the book鈥攆or $2,500.

I spent months immersed in Attia鈥檚 ideas, including his book, podcast, newsletter, and the Early program. Some of the advice in Outlive鈥攇et vigorous exercise, don鈥檛 eat too much or too little鈥攕eemed like it had been around since Jack LaLanne pulled on a stretchy unitard and started doing push-ups. But overall I hadn鈥檛 seen anything as comprehensive and visionary as Attia鈥檚 approach.

In Attia鈥檚 view, Medicine 3.0 is a paradigm shift from the pills-and-procedures protocol (Medicine 2.0) that is the current health care status quo. It鈥檚 heavy on prevention and arranged into five pillars: exercise, nutrition, sleep, emotional health, and what Attia calls 鈥渆xogenous molecules鈥� (pharmaceuticals, supplements, and so forth). They鈥檙e all important and get appropriate play in the book, but exercise reigns supreme as 鈥渢he most potent 鈥榙rug鈥� in our arsenal,鈥� he writes in Outlive. 鈥淭he data are unambiguous: exercise not only delays actual death but also prevents both cognitive and physical decline better than any other intervention.鈥�

Exercise breaks down further into subcategories: strength, stability, aerobic efficiency, and peak aerobic capacity. The goal is to obtain optimum fitness in each of these, since they鈥檝e been shown to form a powerful shield against our biggest health threats: cardiovascular disease, cancer, metabolic dysfunction, and degenerative neurological disorders鈥攚hat Attia refers to as 鈥渢he four horsemen.鈥�

Fitness sounded like good medicine to me, but the emphasis on exercise also prompted a lot of questions: What kind? How much? How hard? I reached out to Attia鈥檚 camp, asking if I could essentially become a patient for a few days and write about his methods. They said no to that鈥�herr doktor is extremely busy鈥攂ut after months of back and forth they agreed to let me come out for a couple of days last April, to meet him and go through some fitness assessments. I felt like I was doing pretty well鈥擨 rode my mountain bike and lifted weights regularly, among other things. But what was I missing? What should I be doing going forward?

The timing was good, because Attia was preparing to open a new facility in Austin called 10Squared, a sort of hybrid testing lab and training center that will cater to his existing patients and a new cohort of select members. His team sent me an NDA ahead of my visit, with the caveat that this would be a black-box project until I鈥檓 informed otherwise. This struck me as over the top for what sounded like a fancy private gym, but sure, why not? If that鈥檚 what it took to finally get a taste of the secret sauce behind Outlive, show me where to sign.

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The Rescue, an extraordinary 2021 film from Jimmy Chin and Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi鈥攖he power couple behind Free Solo鈥攖ells the story of 14 teenagers who got stranded deep inside a flooded cave in Thailand and their improbable, high-risk extraction. One of the film鈥檚 most compelling scenes occurs early, when the girlfriend of a rescue diver is describing their courtship鈥攖he attraction, the dates, the sweet notes. The interviewer asks: 鈥淒id you fall in love?鈥� After a pause and a sheepish grin, she nods vigorously and says, 鈥淵es!鈥� It鈥檚 a small moment of warmth and vulnerability in a thriller that otherwise unfolds at breakneck pace, and it connects us to the characters in a way that even their heroic actions do not.

The Rescue is just one of many impressive adventure documentaries that have created considerable buzz in recent years. Of course, everyone has seen Free Solo, but The Alpinist and 14 Peaks also made a splash. And how about HBO鈥檚 100 Foot Wave鈥攁 series following Garrett McNamara鈥檚 attempt to ride a monster swell that made me shout at my TV in amazement? Or , about the rise and fall and rise of Scott Lindgren, one of the world鈥檚 greatest whitewater kayakers? The list goes on: The Dawn Wall, Torn, Meru, Sunshine Superman, Icarus, , , , and , to mention just a few. These came from filmmakers who had to work very hard to bring their projects to life.

As a writer who has spent several decades refining my own craft, I can appreciate how challenging it is to get such stories right. And as a movie buff with a yen for adventure鈥攁mong other things, I鈥檝e served as a moderator at Mountainfilm and as a judge at the 5Point Film Festival, both eagerly anticipated annual gatherings in Colorado鈥擨 can say with confidence that there鈥檚 never been a time as rich in high-quality adventure documentaries as right now.

Some reasons behind the success are obvious: bigger budgets, smaller cameras, better production and editing technology, more distribution platforms, from Netflix to YouTube, and expanding audiences hungry for outdoor-focused entertainment. Less obvious is the evolution of nuanced storytelling techniques, which made these projects special.

鈥淲ith core action-sports films, it鈥檚 always been about the most high-end capture possible,鈥� says Todd Jones, cofounder of Teton Gravity Research (TGR), which produced Lindsey Vonn: The Final Season and the acclaimed Kissed by God, on the life and death of surfer Andy Irons. 鈥淏ut when you give us a really good story, and you let us apply our craft and tactics of filmmaking to it, and when we bring the high-end visuals and mix that with story, you get this really beautiful and sophisticated 颅documentary.鈥�

I grew up watching ski and snowboard flicks as well as edge-of-your-seat adventure movies from Brain Farm, Matchstick Productions, Sherpas Cinema, TGR, and others. They were slick, myopic, and mostly devoid of narrative. I loved them. Eventually, though, I sought deeper, more meaningful fare鈥攁ward-winning features, critics鈥� picks, historical films. I fed my growing appetite at film festivals, tracked down rare DVDs, ferreted out classics: , A Sunday in Hell, , and many more. There were some vintage standouts, like Kon Tiki, the Oscar-winning 1950 documentary about Thor Heyerdahl鈥檚 epic voyage across the Pacific on a wooden raft. I also enjoyed , a moody, introspective tale of Yuichiro Miura鈥檚 1970 descent of the world鈥檚 tallest mountain. But finding really great adventure documentaries was like panning for gold.

For me, the movie that ushered in a new level of empathy and narrative mastery was , a 2004 docudrama based on Joe Simpson鈥檚 bestseller about two climbers who struggled to survive a horrific 颅accident on Siula Grande, a 20,000-foot peak in Peru. Because there was no footage from the expedition, Scottish director Kevin Macdonald鈥攁lready an Oscar winner for the 2000 documentary 鈥攗sed actors to re-create the events. Weaving the action with interviews from Simpson and his climbing partner, Simon Yates, the film dances around a central moral dilemma: When do you leave your injured friend to save yourself? When do you cut the rope?

Touching the Void works well because it connects the dramatic details of alpine climbing with universal, relatable qualities that make us human. 鈥淚t was the loneliness, that sense of being abandoned, which was there all the time,鈥� says Simpson in the film鈥檚 penultimate scene, the camera pulled in tight. 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 crawl because I thought I鈥檇 survive. I think I wanted to be with somebody when I died.鈥�

Our current crop of creators must have been taking notes. 鈥淧eople sign up for the adrenaline rush of watching someone push the edge, but they connect with the story through those human moments,鈥� says Max Lowe, whose 2021 documentary Torn explores how his family has coped with the loss of his father, the storied climber Alex Lowe. When Alex Lowe鈥檚 body was discovered in Tibet 17 years after his death in an avalanche on 26,335-foot Shishapangma, his wife and children were forced to confront many unresolved feelings, not the least of which were those of the filmmaker himself.

Some subjects offer easy access. Others, not so much. In Lindsey Vonn, getting past the ski-racing superstar鈥檚 surrounding crowd of friends and handlers鈥攖he 鈥淰onntourage,鈥� as Teton鈥檚 Todd Jones puts it鈥攑roved to be one of the trickier parts of the endeavor. To capture scenes that the filmmakers couldn鈥檛 get near, they attached a microphone to Vonn and shot from a distance. Pieces of footage were even filmed on an iPhone by one of Vonn鈥檚 trainers, in closed-door sessions. The result is a documentary that resonates with honesty and raw emotion, a moving portrait of a great athlete navigating the end of her career.

国产吃瓜黑料 filmmakers also understand that, at times, you might need to shoot without any crew at all. In The Alpinist, Sender Films鈥� gripping profile of Canadian climbing phenom Marc-Andr茅 Leclerc, some of the most compelling material comes from Leclerc himself while he鈥檚 pinned down in the middle of a big solo ascent. 鈥淭here鈥檚 that kind of intimacy you get of Marc-Andr茅, thousands of feet up on the headwall of Torre Egger in the teeth of a Patagonian storm,鈥� says director Nick Rosen. 鈥淗e鈥檚 bivouacked on this ledge and pulls out the camera to give this message to his girlfriend. It鈥檚 maybe my favorite part of the whole film.鈥�

In a certain sense, this is the kind of thing Hollywood has always aimed for, and frequently missed, in scripted films, defaulting to laughably sensationalized dramatic action in lieu of authentic characters and scenes. (Looking at you, Cliffhanger and Vertical Limit.) Even the better efforts, like Sean Penn鈥檚 adaptation of Jon Krakauer鈥檚 or Jean-Marc Vall茅e鈥檚 version of Cheryl Strayed鈥檚 Wild鈥攂oth terrific books鈥攈ad less impact than, say, The Alpinist or The Rescue. But that, too, may be changing soon: for their next project, Chin and Vasarhelyi have signed on to direct Nyad, a feature film based on the story of long-distance swimmer Diana Nyad, which will star Annette Bening as Nyad and Jodie Foster as her manager.

It wasn鈥檛 long ago that I felt adventure films were routinely falling short. But with so much talent behind the cameras these days, that鈥檚 no longer the case. New adventure documentaries are living up to their potential, with dazzling, sometimes daring cinematography and a deep sense of character, tackling the existential questions that our exploits in the natural world often provoke.

The forthcoming feature about Nyad may elevate the scripted Hollywood movie to new heights, but some cool new adventure documentaries are on the horizon, too, including a series from TGR on extreme sports, which is in production for HBO. I鈥檓 already on the couch, popcorn popped, ready to catch the next wave.

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In December 2021, it had been snowing for weeks in the Monashee Mountains of British Columbia when Trevor Kennison arrived at Eagle Pass Heliskiing eager to make some early-season powder turns. Kennison, 28, is a paraplegic from Winter Park, Colorado, who attacks slopes on a sit ski, an adaptive device with a single board attached to a bucket chair and two outriggers strapped to his forearms. He lost the use of his legs after breaking his back in a snowboarding accident near Vail in 2015 but has gone on to become one of the raddest skiers in the sport. His 65,000 Instagram followers know him as #sitskiboss, a moniker he earned, in part, after 听at Kings and Queens of Corbet鈥檚, a freeride event听in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in 2019.

Kennison, a brawny, bright-eyed guy with a mop of brown hair, charges hard, but his gear hasn鈥檛 always been able to keep up. Very little technical outerwear is designed for sit skiers, so he has spent much of the off-season collaborating with his main sponsor, Eddie Bauer, to develop apparel that caters specifically to adaptive skiers like him. The result鈥攍imited-edition ($499) and a听 ($549)鈥攍aunched to the public January 26.

His day out at Eagle Pass in December was a final, full-conditions test drive and the snow was waist-deep and still dumping. Because Kennison rides lower than standing skiers, he porpoises through the powder in conditions like this, almost disappearing completely as he plunges into each turn. When he finally comes to a stop at the bottom of a run, he laughs and shouts鈥攕now is packed in every nook and cranny of his kit.

Building high-performance outerwear for sit skiers is far more challenging than it might seem. The ensemble for Eddie Bauer, dubbed BC Flyline, consists of the jacket and bib overalls, but similarities to traditional ski clothing end there. 鈥淭he most difficult part was the shaping,鈥� says Dave Mertes, the project manager for Flyline. 鈥淲e needed to craft the pieces for a sitting-only position.鈥�

While a few small European companies produce technical outerwear for sit skiers, those garments often require custom fitting for a finished product. Engineers at Eddie Bauer decided to start from scratch to make an off-the-line kit for hard-ripping sit skiers, with heavy input from Kennison. Creating a functional fit didn鈥檛 just enhance performance and comfort, however; since spinal-cord injuries limit sensation below the waist, sit skiers can develop skin sores due to unnoticed irritations鈥攁 problematic issue during cold, damp winter sports.

鈥淚f I develop a pressure sore on my butt, I can be out for months,鈥� Kennison told me. 鈥淚 have to let it heal completely before I can start skiing again.鈥�

That meant the Flyline kit needed to accommodate the contours of a seated skier while eliminating seams, pockets, zippers, and any excess fabric that could bunch up in the chair. Early prototypes from partner factories in Asia didn鈥檛 incorporate sufficient articulation, so Eddie Bauer turned to its in-house pattern maker, Leanne Walters, to refine the design. Under normal circumstances, Walters would have met with Kennison in person, allowing her to drape fabric and build patterns directly off his body. But the pandemic prevented that, so she had to get creative. Walters used her husband as a model to approximate the correct shape, draping him with fabric panels while he sat on the couch watching TV. The method got them close enough; when the prototype was shipped to Kennison for testing, it only required minor refinement to get it exactly right.

With the form and proportions dialed, the designers turned to other primary issues, namely how to keep the wearer warm and dry. Sit skiers tend to be less aerobic than standing skiers, and thus generate less body heat, so Eddie Bauer lined the bibs and jacket with polyester insulation. To keep Kennison dry, it built the kit out of the brand鈥檚 proprietary WeatherEdge Pro鈥攁 seam-sealed, waterproof-breathable material used in its flagship outerwear.

Other unique details followed. Kennison wears winter hiking boots to ski, so the pant legs taper down to the boot cuff, with insulation extended to his ankles. The top of the bibs rises almost to his collarbone, to help keep the shoulder straps from slipping off. The front of the jacket is trimmed well above his waist to avoid bunching. And the sleeves are cut long, similar to jackets made for alpine climbing, because Kennison requires extra range of motion to swing his outrigger poles.

Eddie Bauer is producing 100 BC Flyline kits this season, 20 of which will go to the , a nonprofit based in Truckee, California, that supports mountain athletes with serious injuries, including many sit skiers like Kennison. Mertes says they don鈥檛 really know how big the market may be for this type of apparel, but making the outdoors more inclusive takes precedence over profit. 鈥淚f we want to be outfitting people for these kinds of activities,鈥� he says, 鈥渢his is just the cost of admission.鈥�

The Flyline kit passed the Canadian Rockies powder stress test with aplomb, keeping Kennison warm and dry in the deep conditions鈥攁nd it has continued to perform. He wore the bibs and jacket when he at the Winter X Games as the first adaptive athlete to hit the event鈥檚 big-air jump in Aspen earlier this month, and he鈥檒l sport them on a return trip to Eagle Pass in the spring to film with Level 1 Productions. On January 27, the kit won the 鈥� Product of the Year. Whether throwing a huge backflip in the B.C. backcountry, bashing gates on a slalom course, or cruising groomers at Winter Park, this outerwear lets him focus on what he does best: flying down snow-covered mountains. 鈥淚鈥檓 pretty hard on my gear,鈥� Kennison says with a laugh. 鈥淚 know if it鈥檒l work for me, it鈥檒l work for anyone.鈥�

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A 2006 Toyota Tundra floated above us on a hydraulic lift. Next to me, a hirsute mechanic named Cliff, who was wearing a Harley-Davidson T-shirt and carrying a nine-millimeter pistol in a hip holster, aimed his flashlight at a suspicious bulge on the frame. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 where they patched it,鈥� he said, pointing to a rectangular piece of steel that had been welded across the original material, epoxied, and then painted to match. 鈥淚f it were me,鈥� Cliff said, 鈥淚鈥檇 run from this vehicle as fast as I can.鈥�

This was the third truck I鈥檇 run to鈥攁nd from鈥攊n as many weeks, the latest flop in a long, madcap 2020 mission to acquire my dream rig: a legendary first-generation Tundra, or FGT in forums. Cliff, who owned a small garage in eastern Pennsylvania, had agreed to a last-minute prepurchase inspection after I鈥檇 tracked down the truck at a used-car lot nearby. I鈥檇 convinced myself that this was the one: a sweet burgundy-colored four-wheel-drive double cab with just a smidge over 100,000 miles on it. I hastily arranged a trip; first-gen Tundras were in high demand, and you had to move fast when good ones turned up. The dealer was asking $14,500, a fair price by current market standards if the truck was everything it appeared to be. But it wasn鈥檛. It was a turd鈥攁 Turdra.

To understand why I was so willing to venture out into COVID country on a series of fool鈥檚 errands, hoping to nab a 15-year-old, mass-produced Toyota, you need to understand a little about the original Tundras. Produced from 1999 to 2006, Toyota鈥檚 first full-size pickup was designed to compete with juggernauts like the Ford F-150 and Chevy Silverado in America鈥檚 burgeoning truck market. Fast-forward to 2020 and pickups were outselling cars for the first time in the U.S. Ford鈥檚 F-series pickups have been the top-selling vehicle here for the past 39 years.

From the start, the early Tundras enjoyed a warm reception, though they never outran the popularity of Chevy, Dodge, and Ford. It wasn鈥檛 until 2007, when the supersize second-generation Tundra replaced the original, that the FGTs began to acquire a cult following. Toyota was already famous for its 4x4s; classics like the FJ series, Land Cruisers, and 4Runners were coveted by enthusiasts. After their short production run, FGTs quickly joined the ranks of those vehicles, distinguished for their reliability and longevity. Using a basic body-on-frame design, with a sturdy 4.7-liter V-8, the drivetrain worked so well that it was used in several other Toyota vehicles, including the Sequoia SUV and the Lexus GX470.

By today鈥檚 standards, FGTs are small for a full-size pickup, but that鈥檚 partly what makes them so desirable. In 2015, responding to the monster sizing and pricing of new trucks, the website Jalopnik said of the FGT, 鈥淸It鈥檚] an inexpensive pickup truck that鈥檚 capable, comfortable, seats more than two, fits in your garage and gets vaguely reasonable fuel economy: that鈥檚 the dream.鈥�

Before their popularity mushroomed (thanks, Jalopnik!), you could find used first-gens in good condition for less than $10,000. By 2020, low-mileage FGTs in mint condition were going for twenty grand or more.

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In November 2014, Jim Harris, a photographer from Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and two friends arrived in Punta Arenas, a large town in southern Chile. They were there to embark on a bold adventure: a monthlong, 350-mile ski traverse of the Patagonia ice cap. The plan was to utilize kites attached to their harnesses to help aid locomotion, effectively towing them across the frozen landscape. The day before the expedition, Harris was testing his kite in an open field when a gust of wind lifted him up, carried him the length of a football field, and then, in a fluid, violent action, swept him up and over the sail and tomahawked him into the ground, knocking him unconscious.

When Harris came to, he couldn鈥檛 feel anything below his sternum, and he lay in the field, unable to move. 鈥淚 just stared at the sky and tried to focus on my breathing until help arrived,鈥� he told me. By that night he was in a local hospital, stable but seriously injured. He had shattered nine vertebrae and almost completely severed his spinal cord. It seemed unlikely that he would ever walk again.

I met Harris in February 2020. Not only . It was a powder day at Snowmass Resort, not far from his home, and I鈥檇 arranged to connect with him that morning to check out a device that enabled him to shred all day, despite his disability. We met up at a demo center run by , a San Francisco鈥揵ased company that has developed a battery-powered exoskeleton designed specifically for skiers. Called the , it looks a little like an elaborate knee brace, with an articulating frame and pneumatic air chambers that function like shock absorbers. The frame buckles around your lower and upper legs and attaches to a small compressor, carried in a backpack, that controls the air pressure. Proprietary artificial-intelligence software that runs the compressor 鈥渓earns鈥� how much support is best for your level of skiing. It鈥檚 wearable tech on steroids.

I鈥檇 first seen the Elevate a year earlier, at a press event at Eldora Ski Area, near Boulder, Colorado. There, Roam鈥檚 founder, Tim Swift, introduced the media crew to the product and outlined the company鈥檚 ambitious plans for a public rollout through demo centers at premier resorts across the West, including Snowmass, Big Sky, Park City, and Sun Valley. The Elevate, he said, wasn’t just for disabled individuals. It could help any able-bodied skier who wanted an extra boost鈥攆rom seniors with achy knees to young guns looking to charge from bell to bell. 鈥淲e provide magic,鈥� he said several times.

I didn鈥檛 get to try the device that day, but the reviews had been mixed from my media colleagues at Eldora鈥攕kiers of various ages, all with experience, ranging from intermediate to expert. Some felt it was too cumbersome and didn鈥檛 enhance their skiing. But others liked it. One tester, Lisa Dawson, said chronic knee pain had derailed her skiing, but using the Elevate felt like strapping on a new set of legs. 鈥淚 slowly made a turn, then another and another, each faster and more fluid,鈥� she wrote later on the website . 鈥淚 kid you not: no pain at all. By the end of the run, I was making the carefree turns of my youth.鈥�

In the year since, Roam had made some updates to the Elevate鈥檚 design. The one in Snowmass looked slightly more refined. I buckled into the product and headed for the lifts, alongside Harris and Johnnie Kern, Roam鈥檚 director of product marketing. It was strange and confining to walk in the apparatus, but once we clicked into our skis and started sliding over snow, the device came to life. In the lift line, other skiers stared at the cyborg powder bros, and we fielded a lot of questions about what the hell we were wearing.

鈥淔or me, it makes a pretty substantial difference, minimizing my disability,鈥� Harris, who had used the Elevate previously, told me as we rode the chairlift. 鈥淚 wouldn鈥檛 say I鈥檓 a rad skier now, but I can ski at moderate speed and feel confident and not like I鈥檓 a hazard to myself or to others.鈥�

There was about eight inches of new snow that day, and I was eager to plunge into it. We traversed to the top of a low-angle run near the lift. Would the promise of augmented legs turn a good day into an epic one, or would they just get in the way? I was about to find out.

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One day in May, feeling bored and bummed out by the pandemic, I launched into a home-improvement project that I hoped might ease my unease: building a bar.

Bars are good places for bad times鈥攐r at least they used to be, before they were canceled along with everything else. My last public drink was consumed on March 6: a Bud Light at the Hogs and Heifers Saloon in Las Vegas, possibly the least socially distanced place on earth, where the all-female staff wear Daisy Duke shorts and dance on the bar top. I was in town for the Mint 400, the desert off-road race immortalized by Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and Hogs and Heifers was hosting an event for teams and sponsors. Across the counter, a bartender held a bottle of vodka in one hand and a megaphone in the other, which she aimed where I sat on a stool a few feet away, blaring: 鈥淵ou going to do a shot, or what?鈥�

I miss bars. Less the rowdy ones, where it feels like a fight is going to break out at any moment, than the quiet local establishments where you can talk to the person next to you. Such places have long been woven into the writing life. In the nineties, when I was in grad school at the University of Montana, no one in the writing program would take you seriously until you鈥檇 made at least one trip鈥攁nd better yet, many鈥攖o the now closed Milltown Union Bar, which was located a few miles east of Missoula and was the legendary haunt of the school鈥檚 late poet laureate, Richard Hugo. The wood-paneled watering hole was known for its blue-collar clientele and quirky decor, like the goat and sheep heads mounted on the wall and encased in clear plastic. 鈥淵ou need never leave,鈥� Hugo wrote about the joint in one of his most famous poems. 鈥淢oney or a story brings you booze.鈥�

When I鈥檓 not writing, I like to build things. Construction is therapeutic in many ways: the hard labor, the feel of wood and metal, the cuts and calluses, the heft and roar of power tools. In Santa Fe, where I鈥檝e lived for more than 20 years, I鈥檝e renovated three old houses鈥斺€渄umpitos,鈥� a realtor friend called them鈥攊n a historic neighborhood. The most recent, in 2015, was a 900-square-foot adobe cottage that I dubbed the CrackShack, because I鈥檇 purchased it from a notorious local drug dealer who inherited the place along with his five siblings and couldn鈥檛 quite handle maintaining it.

My latest project emerged from piles of scavenged lumber that had been left around the property鈥攁n unfinished two-bedroom adobe on three acres in the Santa Fe foothills鈥攂y the previous owner, an artist and anarchist who was also something of a hoarder. But one person鈥檚 junk is another person鈥檚 building-supply store, and soon I was sawing and hammering away, becoming the latest participant in a long tradition of bros creating backyard dream spots. I figured I鈥檇 be done by five.

At one point, my girlfriend and the property鈥檚 co-owner, Madeleine, who goes by the nickname Maddawg, walked up and assessed the progress with folded arms. I鈥檇 hoped she would approve of my rustic addition to our home. I was in luck.

鈥淲ow,鈥� she said. 鈥淚鈥檓 impressed. When do we start drinking?鈥�

鈥淪oon!鈥� I said, optimistically.

A week later, I鈥檇 constructed a ten-by-six-foot L-shaped structure, bracketed by three posts crowned with old wood corbels鈥攄ecorative supports鈥攖hat I found in the junk pile. I finished the counter using four one-by-eight fir planks that I sanded and sealed with two coats of marine-grade spar varnish and then buffed to a glossy shine. When I started, the wood looked gray and sad, but after it absorbed the polyurethane, the color deepened into a rich caramel, bringing the structure to life.

I splurged on a dremel ($60) to make a sign, the only money I spent except for the purchase of a few six-inch lag screws to secure the posts. The dremel, a rotary power tool used for grinding and engraving, was awkward to handle, like drawing with a dentist鈥檚 drill, and it took me a few practice attempts on some scrap before I wrote, in my best looping cursive: Cholla Bar. I hung the sign from two hooks twisted into a crosspiece above the bar counter.

Cholla (pronounced 鈥渃hoy-yah鈥�) are shrubby cacti common to New Mexico. Undisturbed, they can reach eight feet tall. Until I moved to the foothills, where they grow in abundance, I鈥檇 never really taken notice of them. But they soon became some of my favorite flora. In early summer, bright-purple flowers burst joyfully from the ends of their tentacles. When chollas die, they leave behind twisted honeycomb-like skeletons that are nearly as haunting and beautiful as the living plant.

Another bonus about construction projects: they鈥檙e a great workout. Gyms around Santa Fe were closed, and the idea of doing burpees in my living room made my eyes cross. So I kicked it old-school: working shirtless and alone in the searing New Mexico sun, dredged in a fine coat of sweat and sawdust, my shoulders turning a startling crimson. I imagined that I looked like Brad Pitt in Fight Club, until I saw the pictures Maddawg took on her phone. Alas, my Brad bod was more like a dad bod.

No matter; I wasn鈥檛 doing it for the 鈥檊ram. I was doing it because I hoped a cool al fresco space might lure friends to hang out. I had barely seen another human for months, and those were mostly fellow face-masked shoppers on furtive grocery missions. Every excursion from my home was a new kind of masquerade ball, where the guests were afraid to get too close, or even make eye contact, as if an errant glance might blast you with COVID-19. The tension and anxiety were palpable. I thought we could really use one big, collective drink, maybe a toast to human connection, in real life.

It worked! I strung up decorative lights, some friends showed up, and we sat around in a carefully spaced circle drinking blueberry-basil margaritas. (Don鈥檛 @ me; they are good, and they will flatten you.) One pal brought two whole chickens from his home smoker, and we shredded the tender meat, added coleslaw, and piled everything between slider buns. Someone else made guacamole that we shoveled into our faces with tortilla chips. We swapped stories of the old days, when people gathered in large groups, without a single piece of PPE, to listen to concerts, watch sports, or frolic on a beach.

Was our gathering safe? There are always risks, of course, but in this situation they seemed pretty low. Was it necessary? An emphatic yes. After my friends went home, I lingered in a lounge chair, staring at the Milky Way, which arced brightly above the Cholla Bar, and pondered the Big Questions: What if Trump gets reelected? Was the pandemic a kind of cosmic reckoning for years of profligate and uncharitable behavior? How much had I had to drink?

By the end of June, many bars around the country reopened鈥攁nd then promptly closed again, in the wake of surging infections. In Florida, you could go to a bar, but you couldn鈥檛 buy a drink. In Texas, angry citizens descended on the state capitol, brandishing ill-advised signage: 鈥淏ar Lives Matter.鈥� Was drinking a right or a privilege? It wasn鈥檛 clear. What was clear is that bars were dangerous grounds for COVID-19 transmission.

鈥淏ars,鈥� remarked Anthony Fauci, the embattled infectious-disease expert, during an interview on CNN. 鈥淩eally not good.鈥�

As July crackled away, the understanding that our grim new reality wasn鈥檛 going to change anytime soon took on renewed weight. An older woman in my neighborhood was verbally assaulted for not wearing her mask correctly while walking her dog, and she felt threatened enough to call the police. Entire industries鈥攔etail, restaurant, and travel among them鈥攚ere imploding. Parents were frayed, strung out, and staring at the prospect of home-based school indefinitely. Kids were going stir-crazy. And still it appeared that things would get worse before they got better. In mid-July, Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said that the impending fall and winter could be 鈥渙ne of the most difficult times that we have experienced in American public health.鈥� Zoiks. I was going to need cases of tequila.

A week or so later, I sat outside in a chair by the Cholla Bar on a cool morning, reviewing my handiwork and trying hard not to doomscroll on my phone. A vicious heat wave had finally broken with the arrival of an afternoon monsoon pattern. I sipped coffee, enjoying the birdsong and blue sky, and admiring a silver-lace vine that had coiled around a nearby bentwood fence and frosted over with tiny white flowers. 鈥淣ature, man,鈥� I Lebowskied.

That morning brought the first whiff of changing seasons. I knew I鈥檇 need to put a roof over the bar by fall, to protect it from the rough weather ahead. Where we live, at 7,500 feet, conditions can get intense. I found some paper and sketched out a crude design鈥攕hed style, a simple two-by-four frame, with a top layer of corrugated tin. If I started now, I was sure I could be done by five.

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In 2017, when Kilian Jornet summited Everest twice in one week, the news emerged to widespread confusion. He did what? It took him how long? The details were fuzzy at first, but more specifics emerged in the weeks that followed: yep, he鈥檇 climbed it twice.听(Though not without some controversy.)听Round trip from Base Camp. Without Sherpas听or supplemental oxygen. His first ascent took place on May 20, and听because he鈥檇 had stomach problems on the initial climb and believed he could 鈥渄o it better,鈥� he made a second ascent on May 27. Did we mention he had also climbed 26,864-foot Cho Oyu two weeks earlier?

The accomplishments seemed not only improbable听but impossible. You don鈥檛 need to know much about the world鈥檚 tallest mountain or high-altitude physiology to appreciate how difficult鈥攁nd occasionally deadly鈥攃limbing above 8,000 meters can听be, even with canned oxygen and lots of help. I鈥檇 听in 2008 about the mountain and never heard of anything like what Jornet had done鈥攏ot by guides, veteran mountaineers, or even Sherpas, whose ability in the high mountains was legendary.

Jornet, 32,听writes about his Everest experience, and more, in his new memoir, , which came out last month. You come away from the book realizing that the Spaniard is less a runner鈥攖he sport that made him famous鈥攖han a climber, though one of unusual pedigree.

Jornet鈥檚 forte is 鈥渃ontinuous movement over technical terrain,鈥� as he puts it, and through the years he has parlayed that into his own unique brand of physical performance. Jornet is competent, even exceptional, on steep rock and ice, but those kinds of routes don鈥檛 jibe as well with his type of uphill endurance. Traditional mountaineering, by comparison, with its tedious acclimatization schedule and plodding pace, is boring and insufferable.听

His preference is something in between: dashing over summits, whether in running shoes, crampons, or on skis, often linking multiple peaks and ridges, as quickly and efficiently as he can. When he began visiting the Himalayas, in 2013, he wanted to 鈥渃limb like we do in the Alps,鈥� by which he means bolting to the top and back in a single push, light and fast, from a base camp or village. To pull this off on the biggest mountains on earth is the fullest expression of his craft.

鈥淲hat made me fall in love with traversing mountains at high speed is the synergy that emerges between the body鈥檚 movement and the shapes of nature,鈥� he writes, 鈥渢he feeling it gives me of being naked and inconsequential, unrestrained. It brings me freedom and connection, something I can鈥檛 find if I go to the mountains any other way.鈥�

Above The Clouds adheres to a loose chronology of Jornet鈥檚 life. However, like a long, winding mountain trail, the narrative dips and wends through flashbacks and flash-forwards with little warning. Jornet stans won鈥檛 find much that is new. We hear about his early childhood living in a mountain hut in the Pyrenees, his shy and withdrawn adolescence, his enrollment听as a tortured teen听in the Centro de Tecnificaci贸n de Esqu铆 de Monta帽a鈥攁 Spanish academy for aspiring ski-mountaineering racers. What does emerge with renewed clarity, though, is the depth and degree of his development as a mountain athlete.听

Without question, Jornet is genetically gifted鈥擮K, fine, he鈥檚 from another planet鈥攂ut it鈥檚 the sheer volume and continuity of his training since grade school that may be the secret sauce behind his ability. By his mid-twenties, he was trouncing everyone in sight, winning and setting course records at some of the most grueling endurance events on earth, including the Hardrock 100, UTMB, Sierra Zinal, and Pierra Menta.

For all his preternatural ability, Jornet seems to feel almost guilty about his talents. He doesn鈥檛 like the spotlight success has turned on him, and he wrestles with the meaning and value of competition, fame, and public exposure. Racing pays the bills and keeps his sponsors satisfied, but he鈥檚 happiest alone, tackling some epic enchainment near his home in Romsdal, Norway, or bringing his skills and experience to 8,000-meter peaks in the Himalayas. Above the Clouds is at听its best when Jornet is working to articulate this paradoxical relationship: 鈥淔or me, running is easy, and doing it fast is too,鈥� he writes. 鈥淲inning, on the other hand, is harder and demands many hours of training and effort. But without wanting to seem arrogant, winning has also become relatively easy for me over the years. In the end, I do virtually nothing else all day, and I hardly think about anything else either. 鈥� I accept that, inwardly, running is everything to me. On the other hand, outwardly I鈥檝e come to terms with the fact that it鈥檚 pointless.鈥�

Despite these philosophical high notes, the book can听be a frustrating read at times. I found myself craving more鈥攎uch more鈥攇ranular detail about his daily life, his training and recovery, his personal relationships and inner demons. Where does nearly three decades of unwavering motivation come from? How does he avoid injury and overtraining? We hear very little about his romantic partnership with elite skyrunner and ski-mountaineering racer Emelie Forsberg, and even less about his blood relatives. His father, Eduardo, a mountain guide who divorced his mother,听Nuria, and left the family when Jornet was a boy, is barely mentioned. Close friends who he lost to the mountains, including Ueli Steck and Jornet鈥檚 skimo mentor and hero Stephane Brosse, are treated respectfully but briefly. We sense how profound these people are to him, but are allowed only a glimpse of their role in his life and growth and as an athlete.

As the title suggests, Above the听Clouds is about Jornet鈥檚 lifelong journey to rise above the fray, not just as an elite competitor but as an individual trying to find his moral bearing in a world that pulls him in other directions. On this topic, Jornet is impressively astute.听鈥淎n athlete is an athlete twenty-four hours a day and, on top of training, has to live 鈥榓uthentically鈥� and have a 鈥榯ake鈥� on everything,鈥� he writes. 鈥淎nd since he鈥檚 no longer just talking to four freaks who understand him鈥攖he audience is no longer a minority but global鈥攅verything he says must be straightforward and simplified, to quickly catch the attention of a public that consumes information at the speed of a machine gun firing a round of bullets. 鈥μ齏e do it to 鈥榬each鈥� people, but then we realize that by trying to reach everyone else, there鈥檚 one detail we鈥檝e neglected: we can no longer reach ourselves.鈥�

Above the Clouds is entertaining and engaging, but I wish he had written it for the four freaks who understand him rather than the adoring worldwide fan base听that听devours his Instagram feed. As one of the most fascinating athletes on earth, one who repeatedly surprises us with outrageous feats of speed and endurance like his solo Everest double, he could never bore us with what might seem like the trivial minutiae of his life. Until that book arrives, we鈥檒l have to be content with a breezy survey of his youth, some gripping (but thin) accounts of near-catastrophe in the mountains, and a few broad conclusions about his place in the brave new world of influencer-athletes.

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On a chilly morning last October, Jim DeBattista, 47, came trundling across the finish line of a one-mile run looking gassed. DeBattista, a youth football coach from Philadelphia, is a contestant on ,听the infamous weight-loss game show that rebooted on January 28 after being abruptly canceled in 2016. The mile run is one of many fitness challenges contestants tackle, and DeBattista is dead last. There is good news, though. His time has improved the most among all the players since their last mile run two months earlier, from 20 minutes to around 13, which has helped move him a little closer to the show鈥檚 $100,000 grand prize. When he hears the results, he gives a little fist pump. DeBattista may have lost the race, but he wins the day.听

I鈥檝e come to check out the new Biggest Loser, which purports to have been 鈥渞e-imagined for today鈥檚 audiences鈥� by taking 鈥渁 holistic, 360-degree look at wellness,鈥� according to a press statement circulated a few months before its premiere. That could just be marketing boilerplate, but it鈥檚 in sync with a fast-changing fitness industry that has recently been retooling itself to be more inclusive, less abusive, and more focused on whole health than听looks听and performance. Or so its proprietors would have you believe.听

The episodes were being filmed just a few miles from my home in Santa Fe, on a 2,400-acre recreation complex called Glorieta 国产吃瓜黑料 Camps. The run ends on a grassy campus at the center of the facility. Nearby is a large man-made lake surrounded by clusters of outbuildings. Pi帽on- and juniper-studded hills听laced with hiking trails听rise in all directions under a cloudless sky. As the contestants race toward the finish line, the show鈥檚 two new trainers鈥擲teve Cook, 33, a former bodybuilder from Utah,听and Erica Lugo, 33, a single mom who runs EricaFitLove, an online personal-training business鈥攑ace them, shouting encouragement.

The show鈥檚 new host,听former trainer听Bob Harper, stands nearby, ready to announce the results. At 54, he looks like a pillar of health, especially for a guy who听almost听died听a couple of years ago. In 2017, Harper had a heart attack midworkout at a gym in Manhattan. He went into cardiac arrest, but a doctor happened to be at hand听and initiated CPR, saving his life. His close call, Harper later told听me, increased his empathy for The Biggest Loser contestants鈥攁fter his heart attack, he says, he 鈥渃ouldn鈥檛 walk around the block without getting winded.鈥澨�

In keeping with his newfound feelings of empathy, the revamped show is what he calls a 鈥渒inder and gentler鈥� version of the original. Gone are the infamous temptations,听demeaning听stunts like digging through piles of doughnuts for a听poker chip worth $5,000听or being forced to carry around a slice of cake for a day. When Harper鈥檚 not lording over the weigh-ins with wizened commentary, he gathers the contestants for heartfelt therapy sessions. At the end of each episode, contestants are no longer dismissed by a group vote, as in the original, but are let go based on the percentage of their weight loss that week. Those who are sent听home are set up with an aftercare program that includes a one-year Planet Fitness membership, a personal dietitian, and access to a support group.

When The Biggest Loser reboot aired earlier this year, its most striking quality was not what had changed听but how much had stayed the same. I watched the premiere with a mix of disappointment and dismay as the contestants grunted and cursed their way through workouts, barfed into buckets, and got yelled at by Cook and Lugo. There was virtually no mention of diet, stress, sleep, meditation, or any other staples of the wellness revolution. Instead, in the first episode, the contestants were told by Harper that they had, variously, Type 2 diabetes, sleep apnea, high cholesterol, and a 鈥�90 percent chance of dying from an obesity-related complication.鈥澨�

The public response to the revised show has been less than kind. 鈥�The Biggest Loser is a vile fat-shaming shit-show that science (and human decency) says never should have been reborn,鈥� 听Yoni Freedoff, a family-medicine doctor and an obesity expert in Ottawa, on January 28. The next day on Jezebel, : 鈥�The Biggest Loser is an amazing illustration of how鈥� America treats fat bodies as grotesque or tragic failures and exploits them for entertainment.鈥澨�

On the New Mexico set, when I asked what had changed and improved since the original, there was almost a winking acknowledgment from Harper and others that, hey, this was cable TV. While they had abandoned or toned down the show鈥檚 uglier antics, why would they alter a formula that worked? 鈥淲e have weigh-ins every week, just like we did before,鈥� Harper told me enthusiastically. 鈥淚 mean, The Biggest Loser without a scale is like American Idol without a singer.鈥�听

When The Biggest Loser debuted in 2004,听obesity听was being branded as a public-health crisis in most developed countries. By the early aughts, two-thirds of the adult U.S. population was overweight or obese. In May 2004, the World Health Organization released its to address the 鈥済rowing burden of noncommunicable disease,鈥� of which being overweight and/or obese was listed as one of the top six听causes. Much hand-wringing ensued about how, exactly, to overcome this听rising trend, but one thing seemed indisputable: losing weight was paramount.

At the time, diet culture was going through its own transformation. Carbohydrates were out; dietary听fat was in. Low-carb diets had been around for a while鈥攖he Atkins Diet, perhaps the best known, first appeared in the 1970s. But popular interest in this new paradigm surged after Gary Taubes鈥檚 story, 鈥淲hat if It鈥檚 All Been a听Big Fat Lie?,鈥� appeared in in 2002, challenging, if not upending, the low-fat dietary standard that had been promoted by doctors and medical associations since the 1960s. Other fads were also underway鈥擫oren Cordain鈥檚 The Paleo Diet was published in 2002, followed by The South Beach Diet in 2003鈥攂ut the pitch was always the same: if we just ate the right stuff, like, say, bacon and eggs, the pounds would melt away and good health would return.听

Into the fray came The Biggest Loser. Plenty of weight-loss programs teased us with dramatic before and after images, including Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, and Body for Life. But no one had showcased those transformations on television听while we watched. As the , around听2003, J.D. Roth, at the time a 35-year-old reality-TV producer, approached NBC听with the idea of a show about obese contestants transforming themselves into thin people by burning off huge amounts of weight. How much weight?听the network execs wanted to know. 鈥淎 hundred pounds!鈥� Roth told them.听

Prevailing medical wisdom advises that the most weight it鈥檚 reasonable and responsible to lose is about one to two pounds a week. But The Biggest Loser participants lost much more鈥攊n some cases, more than 30 pounds in a single week. The dramatic changes were听driven by calorie-restricted diets and unrelenting exercise. The show enlisted a pair of charismatic trainers鈥擧arper and Jillian Michaels, the fiery fitness coach from Los Angeles鈥攊ncluded plenty of real tears, and featured humiliating challenges听that made fraternity hazing rituals seem quaint.

Critics were appalled. 鈥淭here鈥檚 a loathsome, mock-the-fatty undertow to The Biggest Loser,鈥� Gillian Flynn 听when the first season premiered. 鈥淏ut what鈥檚 the point of making them squeeze in and out of car windows too small for them? Or forcing them to build a tower of pastries using only their mouths?鈥澨�(When reached by 国产吃瓜黑料, NBC Universal declined to comment on past or current criticisms of the show.)听

The point, of course, was ratings. Audiences, as well as the show鈥檚 participants, seemed willing to shrug off the abuse, given the end results. The first season鈥檚 winner, Ryan Benson, who worked in DVD production, shed an astonishing 122 pounds during the six-month production, going from 330 to 208. Some听11听million viewers tuned in to watch the season-one听finale, according to Nielsen ratings. The program was a hit and would carry on for 17 seasons, making it one of the longest-running reality shows of all time.听

Things changed in the early 2010s. In 2014, Rachel Frederickson won the 15th season after she lost 155 pounds鈥�60 percent of her body weight, since she started the season at 260 pounds. When she appeared in the finale, she was unrecognizable next to the hologram of herself from the first episode. According to her new body mass index听of 18, she was, in fact, clinically underweight. Many viewers were aghast. The show seemed to have become some sort of dark, dystopian comedy.听

Audience numbers had been slowly shrinking since The Biggest Loser鈥檚 peak viewership in 2009, but between 2014 and 2016, they dropped sharply, from about 6.5听million to 3.6听million average viewers per episode. Then, in May 2016, the show was dealt a nearly fatal blow. Researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) 听that followed 14 former Biggest Loser contestants over the course of six years. The participants had gained back most of the weight they lost on the show, and in some cases, they put on even more. Almost all had developed resting metabolic rates听that were considerably slower than people of similar size who had not experienced rapid weight loss. Although, on average, the participants managed to keep off some 12 percent of their starting body weight鈥攚hich makes the show a success relative to most diets鈥攖he study indicated that the kind of extreme weight loss hawked by The Biggest Loser was听unsustainable. It was also , given the risks associated with weight fluctuation. (NBC Universal declined to comment on the results of the study.)听

The study may have emboldened former contestants to speak out about their experiences on the show. In an incendiary New York Post piece published shortly after the NIH study appeared, 听that they had been given drugs like Adderall and supplements like ephedra to enhance fat burning. Reeling from controversy, and with ratings down, The Biggest Loser quietly vanished. There was no cancellation announcement. It just didn鈥檛 return for season 18.

The Biggest Loser may have imploded on its own accord, but it may also have suffered collateral damage from a cultural shift that was undermining its entire premise. Even as the show was gaining popularity in the mid-aughts, health researchers and activists were questioning the effectiveness of a conventional diet and exercise鈥攍ong assumed to be the unassailable solutions to weight problems. Maybe we were going about this all wrong; maybe our body weight wasn鈥檛 the issue. The problem was our obsession with losing it.听

Uncoupling weight and health is a tall order. It鈥檚 a medical fact that body fat can infiltrate organs, especially the liver, where it disrupts insulin action. Diabetes and cardiac-risk factors soon follow. But that doesn鈥檛 always occur, and since at least the mid-nineties, there has been ample evidence that there are听individuals who, while still at heightened risk for cardiovascular disease,听are what researchers call metabolically healthy obese鈥攖hat is, fat but fit.

The idea that being fat might not be so bad鈥攐r at least less bad than our frenzied efforts to be thin鈥攈as been around since the fat-acceptance movement of the sixties. More recently, movements like ,听or HAES, which grew quickly during the nineties, have leveraged a growing mass of research suggesting that body size in itself poses fewer health risks than some popular approaches to weight loss. HAES proponents point out that, while body fat correlates with poor health, the role of weight itself as the sole cause of chronic disease is exaggerated. What鈥檚 more, they argue, weight cycling (losing fat and then regaining it) tends to result in more problems than remaining at a higher but stable weight. Hardcore diets and draconian exercise regimens can also lead to eating disorders, body dysmorphia (hating the way you look), and risky interventions like using weight-loss drugs.听

鈥淭here is such a sharp disconnect between what we know from scientific research and what is transmitted to the general public,鈥� says physiologist Lindo Bacon, author of the 2008 book Health at Every Size. 鈥淚t鈥檚 appalling, and I think The Biggest Loser represents the worst of it.鈥� HAES has plenty of critics, who contend that the movement attempts to normalize obesity听and therefore poor health. But the larger point may be this: losing weight can be so difficult that it often thwarts听efforts听to develop better habits, like eating nutritious foods or being regularly active.

It took a while for market forces to catch on. Many听folks still put their trust in diet and exercise programs to get and stay fit. But the myth of transformation was largely created by marketing agencies鈥攖hat is, before the government stepped in to enforce more transparency in advertising. The diet industry has been slapping disclaimers on products since 1997, when the Federal Trade Commission required Jenny Craig to inform consumers that dramatic weight loss 鈥渨asn鈥檛 typical鈥� for those using its program.听

But such caveats hardly slowed down the industry. The diet business doubled between 2000听and 2018, according to the market-research firm Marketdata. By 2018听it was generating around $72听billion a year. It took a whole new generation to realize that none of it was working.

鈥淭erms like 鈥榙iet鈥� and 鈥榳eight loss鈥� just aren鈥檛 cool anymore,鈥� says Kelsey Miller, author of the memoir Big Girl and creator of the , which launched in November 2013 on the online publication Refinery 29. 鈥淧eople were ready to hear something that wasn鈥檛 about changing their bodies or manipulating their bodies听but rather accepting their bodies. A lot of beauty standards were ridiculous, and we were starting to listen to this rational part of our brain that was saying, Let鈥檚 just drop all this nonsense.鈥澨�

The market began to tilt in the 2010s, and many weight-loss companies struggled to stay relevant. Dieting had left such a wide wake of disordered eating, stress, and anxiety鈥攁long with more intractable issues like anorexia and bulimia鈥攖hat many people started to reject the approach altogether. (One popular recent book is Caroline Dooner鈥檚 The F*ck It Diet.) The anti-diet movement champions intuitive eating, which lets natural hunger and satiety signals guide food intake as opposed to calorie counting and macronutrient experiments. Weight Watchers, which essentially created modern diet culture back in 1963, rebranded itself as WW, a wellness听company, in 2018.听

When the body-positivity movement gained momentum around 2013, largely thanks to social media, it spread the message that teaching overweight people to hate themselves as a motivator was a bad idea. One reason the rebooted Biggest Loser has met such strident blowback is that it brazenly reinforces those prejudices. Shaming and scaring overweight people about their weight has been shown to exacerbate issues like overeating and depression, not resolve them. The show听also reinforces weight bias. In one small听but well-publicized 2012 , viewers who watched only a single episode of The Biggest Loser came away with increased negative opinions about large听people. In 2019, scientists at Harvard 听that looked at public attitudes toward six social factors鈥攁ge, disability, body weight, race, skin tone, and sexuality鈥攁nd how they changed over time. Their results concluded that when it comes to implicit (or relatively automatic) biases, body weight was the only category where people鈥檚 attitudes worsened over time. However, explicit (or relatively controllable) biases听improved in all six categories. Because lower body weight also tends to correlate to higher levels of socioeconomic privilege in the United States, fat shaming functions as a kind of classism.

Still, there have been noticeable changes in some public opinions, thanks to influencers, models, athletes, and brands that have taken a more weight-neutral position. When Ashley Graham became the first plus-size model to appear on the cover of Sports Illustrated鈥檚 swimsuit edition, in 2016, the photos of her were heralded as a听victory for body positivity. In January, when Jillian Michaels 听expressing concern that听the pop singer Lizzo听might develop听Type 2 diabetes, she was swiftly denounced for 鈥渃oncern trolling鈥� and body shaming. Lizzo听responded听that she 鈥渉ad no regrets鈥� and 鈥渄eserved to be happy.鈥� She probably was.听She鈥檇 just won three Grammy Awards and was on the cover of Rolling Stone.

During my second visit to The Biggest Loser set, I watched the contestants grunt through a Last Chance Workout鈥攖he final fat-blasting gym session before the weekly weigh-in. The high-intensity circuit involved treadmills, rowing machines, battle ropes, free weights, and other torture-chamber accoutrements. The trainers barked. The contestants slogged away. I didn鈥檛 see anyone throw up, but they looked like they were about to.

This scene wasn鈥檛 a one-off: workouts and fitness challenges fill most of the show. It鈥檚 easy to see why they鈥檙e the most prominent. Who wants to watch people eat a salad听or sleep really well听when you can watch them doing box jumps until they crumple?

If dieting has fallen out of favor in recent years, so, too, has our frustrating and often fruitless attempts to sweat our way to thinness. Physical activity has many extraordinary benefits and is arguably the first line of defense when it comes to personal health. But research has taught us that working out is a weak strategy for sustainable weight loss. In 2009, in the wake of several prominent studies, a Time magazine cover story blared, 鈥淲hy Exercise Won鈥檛 Make You Thin.鈥� Ultimately, this wasn鈥檛 an argument to stop going to the gym, but it was a reason to stop flagellating yourself听in a quest to shed pounds.

Part of the problem is that many people understand weight loss to be a thermodynamic issue. This may be fundamentally true鈥攖he only way to lose weight is to burn more calories than you consume鈥攂ut the biological reality is more complex. Researchers have shown听that the more aggressively we take weight off, the more fiercely our body fights to put it back on.听One of the insights provided by the 2016 NIH metabolism study is that such听metabolic effects persist for years after the听initial weight loss;听the body听lowers the听resting metabolic rate (by as much as 600 calories a day in some cases) and reduces the production of leptin, a hormone that helps us feel full. 鈥淭he metabolic slowing is like tension on a spring,鈥� says Kevin Hall, a senior NIH researcher who led the study. 鈥淲hen you pull on the spring to stretch it, that鈥檚 the lifestyle intervention, the weight loss. The more weight you lose, the more tension there is, pulling you back.鈥�

A popular theory suggests that we have a body-weight set point that works like a thermostat: your brain recognizes a certain weight, or weight range, and adjusts other physiological systems to push you there. How, when, and how permanently that weight is set is a matter of much debate. It鈥檚 fairly well understood that genes play a significant role in determining our body mass鈥攕ome of us simply put on weight easier than others鈥攂ut around the late 1970s, the average weight of Americans began to climb significantly听relative to previous decades. It wasn鈥檛 our genes causing the uptick.

One of the thorniest problems in obesity research may be that we live in bodies engineered for a very different world than the one we inhabit now. Scientists often refer to our modern surroundings as an 鈥渙besogenic environment,鈥� where a host of factors, including food supply, technology, transportation, income, stress, and inactivity, contribute to weight gain. For many years, the weight-loss industry has convinced us that, by disciplining ourselves to embrace the right diet and exercise, we could听whittle ourselves back down to a more socially acceptable weight. But it has failed to produce the kind of health outcomes we might expect. The reality is that the twin forces of genetics and environment quickly overwhelm willpower. Our weight may be intractable because the issues are so much bigger than we realize.

When I talked to trainer Erica Lugo on The Biggest Loser set, she seemed less fixated on weight loss than she鈥檚 portrayed to be in the show. 鈥淭he fitness industry is so hung up on being a certain size or having a six-pack, and I鈥檝e struggled with that on the show a couple of times,鈥� she told me. 鈥淔itness is a mindset. I want people to know that, and I want everyone to feel accepted. I don鈥檛 want them to be embarrassed or feel like they can鈥檛听do things or even try.鈥�

A few weeks later, while I was watching early episodes, something surprising happened. While I fully understood how the show can manipulate my emotions, I still found myself caught up in the stories. I got misty when 400-pound Robert Richardson was sent home in the first episode because he had 鈥渙nly鈥� managed to drop 13 pounds in a week. When Megan Hoffman, who鈥檇 been struggling since the start, started flinging tractor tires like a beast in the second episode, I was thrilled.听By episode seven听(of ten), the show hits its emotional peak when the five remaining contestants get video messages from home. The stories are human and relatable鈥攁 son with a recovering-addict mother,听a distant husband wanting his wife to 鈥済et healthy.鈥� The message is clear: gaining weight may be as much psychological as it is physical.

Despite The Biggest Loser鈥檚 wellness head fake, and regardless of its woefully outdated tone and thinly veiled fat shaming, I now understood why, for its millions of fans, the show was a beacon of hope. How many of them, when faced with unrelenting negativity about their weight, yearned for inspiration and motivation, for agency, for the belief that they could reclaim ownership of their bodies?

I wasn鈥檛 sure how to reconcile this in our bold new world of woke fitness. How could you endorse a show conveying听the idea that self-worth was tied to BMI? On the other hand, anything that prompted positive change, no matter how small, seemed like a step in the right direction. Obesity never warrants discrimination, but acceptance and compassion shouldn鈥檛 eclipse听concern for听health risks either鈥攁 in The New England Journal of Medicine concluded that, by 2030, nearly 50 percent of Americans will be obese.听

About a month after the show wrapped, I talked on the phone with contestant Jim DeBattista, the youth football coach. I wondered how his experience had been听and how he was doing now that he鈥檇 been home for a while. 鈥淚t鈥檚 going great!鈥� he said cheerfully. 鈥淢y big goal was to make this work after the contest was over. I knew I wasn鈥檛 going to be living in a bubble. But so far, I haven鈥檛 put any weight on, and I鈥檓 eating more and working out less.鈥�听

I asked what had been his biggest takeaway. 鈥淵ou have to surrender your old habits,鈥� he said. 鈥淭he old me led me to be almost 400 pounds. I had to completely change who I was, and the show helped me do that. I can鈥檛 lie. Now听when I see a Dairy Queen, I hit the gas.鈥�

The new Biggest Loser wants us to believe that the journey of transformation is internal and individual, that we can shape our bodies to our will. But what if it鈥檚 not us we need to transform听but the world we鈥檝e built? Real wellness鈥攔egular movement, nutritious food, social connection, access to health care, and quality rest and relaxation鈥攃an鈥檛 be at war with the way we live. It has to be baked into our lives, our schools, our work, and our cities. It may not prevent us from getting heavier, but it would certainly make us healthier. And that would be a big win for everyone.

The post There Are No Winners with ‘The Biggest Loser’ appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

, launched in 2014, takes its name from the town of Tincup, Colorado, a once wild mining outpost turned summer tourist destination tucked into a scenic valley at 9,000 feet, about 30 miles from Crested Butte. One day in late summer, I joined a group of whiskey enthusiasts鈥攊ncluding a small corps of Instagram influencers, media folk, and professional climbers Max Lowe, Renan Ozturk, and Sam Elias鈥攐n the deck of a Tincup cabin to try a few of its听spirits.听

Having spent the last 20 years in New Mexico, I鈥檇 become a tequila snob鈥攅r, devotee鈥攄rinking it almost exclusively. I was overdue to broaden my palate听a bit. The weather was glorious as Jess Graber, Tincup鈥檚听founder, poured samples, including the new limited-release听Tincup 100-percent Rye (available nationwide in early 2020). Standing behind the outdoor bar, Graber dished some tips on the best way to appreciate the nuanced flavors.

鈥淚 like to take a small sip听and just let it sit at the tip of my tongue for a few seconds,鈥� he told us. 鈥淭hen I let it slide to the back of my mouth, where you can really start to notice the characteristics. What are people noticing?鈥�

鈥淐aramel,鈥� someone said.

鈥淎pricots,鈥� said听another.

鈥淧eaches!鈥澨�

鈥淵es!鈥� said听Graber.

I took a swig of the rye and swirled it around. At first it was warm, even hot鈥攁 signature quality鈥攁nd then came hints of caramel and vanilla. The all-rye whiskey was a little harsher than bourbon, but the flavors were potent. The fruit notes showed up in the finish, maybe instilled by the barrel or the听rye itself. The characteristic of any whiskey is built from its unique combination of mash, water, and aging, a process that can be carefully controlled and replicated, even though the final outcome is a little mysterious. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 entirely know how the flavors are created,鈥� Graber says. 鈥淭he end product is a kind of magic.鈥�

Tincup isn鈥檛 quite a craft whiskey, although it has that vibe (Graber, the founder of Stranahan鈥檚 Whiskey, is sometimes credited with helping launch the craft-spirits trend in Colorado). The mash comes from a large Indiana-based producer, but it鈥檚 finished near听Denver, where the distillation is cut to proof鈥攊n Tincup Original, about 84鈥攚ith water from Eldorado Springs, near Boulder. Then it鈥檚 aged in oak barrels, the insides of which are scorched to 鈥渃har level 3,鈥澨齣mparting听much of the flavor.听

Technically, Tincup whiskey鈥攅xcept the new 100 percent rye鈥攊s bourbon, meaning the mash is at least 51 percent corn. Graber dubbed it 鈥淢ountain Whiskey鈥� to help with branding and to avoid competing with other bourbons, which have been enjoying a bit of a moment. Given its mountain heritage, the Tincup producers want it to be your go-to adventure hooch. In other words, bring it camping, hiking, biking, hunting, whatever. Tincup comes with a tin cap, reminiscent of the old mining town鈥檚 original barware, durable and great for shots by the campfire. And the bottle itself is hexagonal, which, according to the website, 鈥減revents it from rolling too far away鈥� and 鈥渘ot only looks great, but adds functionality to improve trail performance.鈥�

That seemed like听hype, but I couldn鈥檛 deny that Tincup and outdoor adventure went well together. The next day, I pulled off a Colorado trifecta: fly-fishing in the morning, rafting the splashy Class III听Taylor River in the afternoon, and hustling out for a sunset mountain-bike ride. I returned to Taylor River Lodge that evening to find the group milling around the bar, enjoying an aperitif听of whiskey cocktails. I opted for a Manhattan, featuring Tincup, of course. I knew the drink well, as听my parents had mixed themselves a Manhattan every evening for 50 years: whiskey, vermouth, a few maraschino cherries with a splash of juice. My Tincup version was drier than my parents would have liked, but it was still delicious and refreshing after my day of sun-soaked funhogging.

Our hosts fired up the barbecue, and after a feast of elk and bison, we adjourned to a bonfire near the lodge. Tincup flowed generously, as did stories of high adventure, especially from the climbers. Ozturk was recently back from Mount Everest, Lowe was working on a film about his late father, Alex Lowe,听and Elias was pushing some hard new routes in Utah. Typically, I鈥檇 be passing around a bottle of mescal about now, but somehow an agave spirit didn鈥檛 seem right. Instead, I was content to sip a lowball of Tincup 10 Year, which was going down as enjoyably as the mountain tales.

A dozen or so of us sat and gabbed around the fire late into the night鈥攐r, more accurately, early into the morning. It was, by any measure, a perfect night, the conversation oscillating between earnest and silly, lubricated by the warm spirits. At last I hit char-level three myself and snuck off to bed, resolved to add a good whiskey to my backcountry kit.

The 国产吃瓜黑料 Manhattan:

• 2 ounces听Tincup Original
• 3/4 ounce sweet vermouth
• A dash or two of Angostura bitters
• Maraschino cherry

Add the first three ingredients to a shaker听with ice. Shake and strain into a martini glass. Garnish with a cherry.

The post The Tequila Lover’s Guide to Whiskey appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.

Is 50 the new 30? Or is 30 the new 50?

A New York City鈥揵ased biotech company, ,听believes it can help you figure that out with unprecedented levels of accuracy using a simple, though spendy ($500)听at-home saliva test called Index. You spit in a vial, send the sample back to Elysium, wait four to six听weeks for processing, and鈥攙oil脿!鈥攔eceive a report indicating whether your biological age is younger, older, or the same as your chronological age.听

Chronological age is, of course, all those trips you鈥檝e made around the sun. Biological age, on the other hand, is how well you鈥檝e held up during those trips鈥攁 measure of your physiological health. Scientists have been trying to determine biological age for at least 50 years, using various biomarkers (like cholesterol, blood glucose, skin elasticity, and vascular function, to name a few) and mathematical modeling. Only recently have researchers started using our DNA to evaluate age.听

Elysium鈥檚听Index calculates your biological age by looking at DNA methylation (DNAm), which is one of the ways genes are turned on or off. Methylation occurs when methyl groups鈥攃lusters of hydrogen atoms surrounding a carbon atom鈥攁ttach to the DNA and prevent their expression. Some patterns of methylation are inherited and occur naturally with age, but others are triggered by environment and lifestyle factors, like smoking, stress, exercise, and exposure to chemicals. DNAm isn鈥檛 the only way genes may be modified, but it is the most common and has become an important player in the broader field of epigenetics, the science of gene expression. Epigenetic researchers听have found that DNAm profiles correspond remarkably well with age-related biomarkers. So a researcher looking at a blind DNAm profile sample could conclude that it represents someone who is 50 years old鈥攁lthough the actual subject might be 40听or 60.

鈥淚ndex came from asking two questions,鈥� says Elysium CEO Eric Marcotulli. 鈥淔irst, can you measure aging itself?听And second, what is the most accurate way to do that?鈥澨�

The answer to that first question appears to be yes, and the science behind it gained a lot of ground in 2011, with the creation of the 鈥渆pigenetic clock.鈥� That clock听was actually a formula for calculating age based on cellular health using DNAm听data, which was then correlated with large data sets like the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, the largest study ever conducted on population health. By comparing new DNAm samples with established patterns drawn from large studies,听scientists听could estimate biological age, give or take a few years.听

To answer the second question鈥攈ow to measure biological age with enough accuracy to be relevant for individuals鈥擬arcotulli tapped Morgan Levine, an assistant professor of pathology at Yale and a rising star in the field of aging research, to lead the Index project for Elysium. As a postdoc at UCLA, Levine worked with Steven Horvath, a human-genetics and biostatistics professor largely credited with creating the first epigenetic clock. With Horvath鈥檚 help, Levine developed a more advanced version of the epigenetic clock. Where early versions gathered data from a few hundred DNAm sites on the genome, Levine鈥檚 was able to read data from 100,000 sites (Elysium is heralding this as 鈥渞evolutionary鈥�), allowing them to more reliably and consistently pinpoint biological age, along with your 鈥渃umulative rate of aging鈥濃€攖hat is, how fast you are getting old.

Levine says she has put Index to the test herself, but her initial results weren鈥檛 as good as she鈥檇 hoped, even听though she鈥檚 a lifelong runner with a pretty healthy lifestyle.听She听believed she could score better听and decided to add high-intensity and strength training to her workout regimen. When she retested six months later, her biological age had improved. 鈥淪trength and high-intensity training is one thing I thought might make a difference,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 not a scientific study, because it鈥檚 n听of one, but in my own life, I want to figure out how to take control of aging and stay physically functioning for as long as possible.鈥�

Currently, Index only offers basic information on biological age鈥攁 kind of overall health score. But future editions, says Levine, will be able to highlight different biological systems, where you may want to apply more effort toward improvement, like certain types of exercise or diet. Traditional health care听may only flag a health issue once it becomes a problem, like the onset of disease. Levine says Index may help people get a jump on health issues before they occur.听

It鈥檚 hard not to approach听a new biotech product making grandiose claims with a large beaker of skepticism. The field is swamped with hucksters and marketing hype, forever stigmatized by megascandals like that of Theranos, the infamous biotech company that falsely claimed it could conduct advanced blood tests with tiny samples. Elysium insists it鈥檚 bringing new standards of scientific rigor and legitimacy to the marketplace, but there鈥檚 reason for pause.听

To date, Elysium has released just one other product: Basis, a supplement that increases听NAD+, a molecule essential for cellular health that diminishes with age. Basis was developed by MIT heavyweight , an Elysium cofounder. Since its release in early 2015, Basis (which costs听$50 a month) has received , who have reported everything from renewed energy to side effects like sleeplessness and body aches. Elysium has conducted several double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trials鈥攖he gold standard鈥攁nd shown that the supplements raise NAD+ as much as 40 percent. But molecular science is exceedingly complex, and the notion that a single supplement will provide miraculous anti-aging benefits is itself a large pill to swallow. It鈥檚 worth noting that neither Basis (a supplement, not a pharmaceutical) nor Index听required FDA approval.听

Still, consumers are increasingly interested in taking more control of their health, and biotech companies are eager to provide tools that, they claim, will help them do so. The problem is that the line between science and marketing gets squishy fast. Index not only complements Basis, it drives sales of the supplement:听Doubt our claims? Take our test to see if it鈥檚 working!听听

And if it does work, then what? Like a lot of biotech for consumers, a central question is what to do with the information. Index results will come with some lifestyle recommendations, though it鈥檚 unclear what those will look like听exactly. Will they be any different than general advice we鈥檝e already heard? Move a lot, hydrate, eat whole foods, get some decent sleep, go outside, spend time with loved ones. You know the drill.

Whether consumers will embrace their own epigenetic clock in a box is anyone鈥檚 guess. The novelty alone may give it at least an initial splash; you can almost imagine a new crop of younger-than-their-chronological-age bio influencers popping up on social media (save us now). But who knows. The science is certainly compelling, and Index could prove to be an insightful way to test lifestyle tweaks, dietary experimentation, and other interventions that might improve health. And if it does really make 50 look more like 30, five hundred听bucks may seem like a bargain.

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