Every weekday, we help you make sense of the complex world of wellness by analyzing the headlines, simplifying the latest research, and providing quick tips designed to help you stay healthier in under 5 minutes. If you were forwarded this message, you can get the free daily email here.
Today’s Health Upgrade
How to remove unwanted thoughts
The science of strength training shoes
Do zero-sugar drinks make you crave more sugar?
Adam’s Corner: Why health advice that sounds certain is often wrong
From hope to action
Mindset
The Paradox of Mental Control: Why the Harder You Try, the Worse It Gets
Sometimes, the conversations we have in our heads are filled with well-intentioned advice that delivers the opposite outcome you want.
If you ever lie awake in bed telling yourself stop thinking about something, only to watch that thought grow louder with every attempt to silence it, then your brain isn’t broken. It follows a predictable pattern that researchers have studied for decades.
When you try to suppress a thought, it works against you can do far more harm than good.
As Brad Stulberg explained in his new book The Way of Excellence:
“The more we try to suppress or change a certain thought — for instance, I really don’t want to get started today — the stronger that thought becomes.”
A meta-analysis of 31 studies confirmed the "ironic rebound effect." It’s a phenomenon where actively trying not to think about something makes that thought more frequent and accessible once you stop trying. The effect held up across all tested conditions.
And that’s just the start. When you’re stressed and wanting to suppress ideas, that mental fatigue makes it harder to block out those negative thoughts. Unwanted ideas become more intrusive during the suppression attempt itself. In other words, the harder your brain is already working, the worse it becomes at fighting the thoughts you want gone.
Instead, it’s better to redirect your attention to something specific rather than fighting what you don't want to think about.
Here’s how to make it work for you:
Give yourself a specific redirect. Instead of "don't think about the deadline," try "think about what I'll cook for dinner." One concrete alternative beats a vague "anything else."
Accept, then shift. Briefly acknowledge the thought— "there's that worry again" — without judgment, then move your attention to something engaging.
Skip suppression when depleted. Stressed or exhausted? That's the worst time to fight your thoughts. Do something absorbing instead: a walk, a conversation, a task that requires focus.
You can't bully your brain into compliance. But you can learn to work with it. If you want more advice on how to achieve greatness and satisfaction in a chaotic world, we recommend checking out The Way of Excellence.
Together With NOBULL
Are Your Shoes Working With Or Against You?
You track your weights, research your program, and watch videos on squat form. When's the last time you looked down?
Research suggests that your shoes play an important role in stability and strength, and comfortable footwear might be missing the mark if you don’t check the width of the toe box.
When scientists examined how footwear affects lifting mechanics, they found a simple but overlooked factor: toe splay. Think of it like spreading your fingers wide on a table for balance versus keeping them pressed together. A wider base gives you more stability.
When your toes can spread naturally, they create more contact points with the ground, helping absorb impact forces and maintain balance, especially during movements with lateral components like lunges or offset carries. That’s why a wider toe box improves stability on your heavier lifts, giving you a broader base of support, which can lead to more strength.
In addition to shoe width, carbon rubber outsoles (standard rubber reinforced with carbon) last approximately 40% longer than softer alternatives and grip better on various surfaces. And the better the grip, the better the stability, meaning you can generate force better and reduce the likelihood of injury.
Next time you're shoe shopping, check for a few things:
A toe box wide enough that your toes don't feel cramped
A firm (not squishy) sole
Carbon rubber construction (if longevity matters to you)
After two years of testing nearly every gym shoe on the market, we found the one that does the job right for all different members of The Pump Club: The Outwork by NOBULL.
Tested and approved by the APC team, the shoe features a stable sole, keeping your foot closer to the ground and helping you stay rooted under load. It features a wide toe box, allowing your toes to spread and support balance, just as nature intended. And the circular tread outsole locks in your footing during any lift or lateral move, providing the type of stability that is backed by research.
For the next three days, you can get $50 OFF your first order of $125 or more. That means getting the Outwork at a fraction of the retail cost.
This deal is only available for APC readers until the end of the month. Use the code APCFIRST50 to access your savings.
Fact or Fiction
Do Diet Drinks Actually Make You Hungrier?
You've probably heard that diet soda "tricks" your brain into craving more sugar. It sounds believable enough that many people abandon their favorite zero-calorie drinks out of caution rather than proof.
But when researchers tested this idea for an entire year with hundreds of people trying to lose weight, the results were not what you might expect:
Drinking diet beverages did not increase hunger, cravings, or sugar intake, and people who drank them lost slightly more weight than those who stuck to water.
Scientists randomly assigned adults with overweight or obesity to drink either diet beverages or water daily for 52 weeks. They tracked hunger levels, sugar intake from other foods, and body weight throughout the year.
The results went against the popular narrative. Hunger ratings stayed flat in both groups for the entire study. Sugar intake dropped substantially in both groups, with no difference between water and diet drinkers. Weight loss even favored the diet beverage group by about 3 pounds, though the difference fell just short of clinical significance.
So why do observational studies often link diet drinks to weight gain? The researchers point to reverse causation: people who are already gaining weight tend to switch to diet beverages, making it look like the drinks caused the problem rather than the other way around.
If you enjoy diet drinks and they help you cut back on sugar or feel less deprived while managing calories, this research suggests you can stop second-guessing that choice. It doesn’t mean water is worse (it’s clearly not). And if you don’t like diet or zero-calorie drinks or they don’t sit well with you, then don’t have them. There’s nothing “special” about those sugarless sweetened beverages, but they're also most likely not the villain they've been made out to be, either.
Adam’s Corner
From Fat to Carbs to Seed Oils: Why Health Advice That Sounds Certain Is Often Wrong
I try to say it at least once a day.
Sometimes it’s in a meeting, when the conversation starts drifting toward certainty before it’s earned. Sometimes it’s at home, when one of my kids asks a question that doesn’t have a clean answer. Sometimes it’s just to myself, when I feel that familiar itch to sound confident instead of honest.
“I don’t know.”
It sounds small. Almost weak. But I’ve come to believe it’s one of the strongest habits a person can build.
I think about it constantly with my business, as a husband, and as a father. And the longer I do this work, write these emails, and coach people in the app, the more obvious it becomes that this habit might matter most in fitness, nutrition, and health.
Because health is the domain where confidence gets rewarded far more than accuracy. And that’s a big problem.
We are swimming in content now. Not just social media, but AI-generated certainty layered on top of human certainty. It’s harder than ever to tell real from fake, nuanced from exaggerated, careful from careless. And one pattern jumps out once you start looking for it:
People who speak in absolutes tend to be more concerned about proving a point than offering tools and advice that make you better.
Always.
Never.
Only.
Best.
Worst.
Forgive the Star Wars reference, but “only a Sith deals in absolutes” has aged surprisingly well. Absolute framing is a clickbait accelerant at best, and rage-bait triggers at worst. They’re designed to provoke certainty, outrage, or allegiance more than understanding.
And you don’t need bait to get better. That’s how you get hooked into something dangerous.
Instead, you need advice that can ride the wave of real life, not push you toward one extreme or another.
The problem isn’t just annoying content. It’s potentially dangerous advice that leverages extremes to drive behavior rooted in fear and deception.
Researchers have examined popular health advice on TikTok, and the results are bleak: misinformation, exaggeration, and advice that could genuinely harm people if taken literally. That shouldn’t shock us. Social platforms tend to reward confidence and shock, not humility or context.
And this isn’t new, either. Different technology. Different platforms. Same playbook. I’ve said it many times over the years, but the pattern is there for anyone to see.
In the 1980s, fat was the villain.
In the 1990s, carbs.
In the 2000s, gluten, sugar, lectins — pick your enemy.
Today, seed oils sit in the crosshairs. Tomorrow, another villain will appear.
I genuinely don’t care whether you eat these foods or avoid them. But if you take any example and zoom out — if you actually look at the entire body of evidence instead of one side of the story — it’s obvious that treating any single ingredient in any amount as the end-all, be-all cause of modern disease is a mistake.
There’s usually a kernel of truth in these claims. That’s what makes them seductive. But then we overreact. We turn nuance into dogma. We confuse “this might matter” with “this explains everything.”
So what do you do in a world like this? You don’t need stronger opinions. You need better ones and fewer of them.
One of the best filters I’ve ever found comes from Charlie Munger, who said: “I never allow myself to have an opinion on anything that I don’t know the other side’s argument better than they do.”
That’s not fence-sitting. That’s discipline. It forces you to learn before you label, to understand before you dismiss. Most loud opinions collapse under that standard.
Then pair that with Warren Buffett’s approach to decision-making. Buffett doesn’t look for comfort in consensus. “Everybody else is doing it” is a warning sign, not a justification.
In investing (and in health), the skill isn’t knowing everything. It’s knowing what not to react to.
This all sounds like work. And, you know what, it is work. But the greatest things in life and the best rewards require work. And here’s the quiet relief hiding underneath it: You don’t have to have strong opinions about everything.
There’s real joy in curiosity. In saying, “I don’t know yet.” In learning, experimenting, and holding flexible conclusions, so you can evolve. In building beliefs that serve you but aren’t so tightly welded to your identity that changing your mind feels like betrayal.
Because life demands flexibility. This isn’t about flip-flopping or lacking values. It’s about being willing to update your thinking when new information arrives.
Stubbornness, like ego, has a way of locking us into decisions that no longer serve us, long after the evidence has changed.
That’s the real gift of admitting you don’t know. Even when you finally do know something, you stay open enough to learn again.
If I clung to everything I once believed about training, nutrition, or health, I would be less healthy (and less happy) than I am today.
My progress didn’t come from being right. It came from being willing to be wrong, to stay curious, and to evolve instead of defend.
So maybe the habit isn’t about sounding smart. Maybe it’s about staying human.
My question to you is this: What would change for you if “I don’t know” became a strength instead of a threat? -AB
The Positive Corner
From Hope To Action: Meet Jeff
Tell us about yourself:
My name is Jeff, and I’m 41 years old. I work as a firefighter and am married with two sons.
I have been working out for about 20 years, and about 10 years ago, my life changed. I had kids that I wanted to spend my time with, and I thought I had to subtract things to make time for them. I went from working out 5-6 days a week to only 2-3 days a week. I was not pushing myself to improve; I was just trying to stay in shape. But, I did not stay in shape. I gained weight. I was up to 224 pounds and was not happy. I wanted to change and looked for something to help me improve my health. One day, I got an email from Arnold’s newsletter about a new fitness app, and I joined on day one. I haven’t missed a week of workouts since.
In the first year, I turned my fitness around and even improved my diet after reading “You Can’t Screw This Up.” I dropped to 210 that first year and have continued to get stronger and leaner, something I thought was not possible as I was getting older. Last year at the Arnold Sports Festival, in the Pump Club hangout, we did PRs. I decided to go for it, pulled more weight than I ever had, and my confidence soared.
After the PRs, I started talking with Noah about strongman training and competitions. I had not competed or trained strongman since January of 2016. He told me about the world’s strongest firefighter competition that is hosted at the Arnold Sports Festival, and I was interested. Later that day, I talked with some of the firefighters at the booth and developed a vision of competing. I have been working hard since then and am in the home stretch now. I’m just six weeks away from being able to walk out and show off my hard work.
How long did you hope things got better before they did?
It took about 7 frustrating years for me to turn my fitness around. The day I took control was the day I joined the pump app.
What actually made things get better?
The programs in the app and sticking to a routine. The community in the app of people pumping each other up and pushing each other. You feel like you belong in the pump club. I have made friendships in the app that are very important to me.
What was your plan?
When I started The Pump Club App, my original plan was to drop to 185 pounds. Last year, I saw an opportunity for a fun detour from my goal. I wanted to compete in the World's Strongest Firefighter in the U90 (198lbs) class. I have been maintaining my weight around 198 while getting stronger. After I achieve my goal of competing, I plan to continue working toward reaching 185 pounds.
How did you show up on the days when you didn’t feel like it?
I have a lot of support from my family and the friends I made in The Pump Club app. I want to show my boys what hard work can do and what it looks like to chase a vision. When you have people behind you who believe in you, it makes it easier to show up and put the hard work in.
Maintaining a routine with my diet and workouts makes it easier to just go. This past year, any time I woke up not feeling it or not 100%, I would go back to my vision of being on the floor of the world’s strongest firefighter and knew what I had to do.
What’s been the hardest part about change?
The hardest part about change has been my diet. I still have days when I want to eat as I used to. The nutrition tracker in the app helps me stay on track, as well as the book “You Can’t Screw This Up”. I take a day or two and enjoy my food or treats, guilt-free, and get right back on track.
Did you notice that what you learned with this success translates to anything else in your life?
My confidence and self-esteem have improved, and I push myself to be more social. I have made some amazing friends in The Pump Club app and from the Iron ticket. After the Iron ticket, my confidence was through the roof. Being able to train with Arnold and shake his hand was a dream come true for me. When Arnold expressed his support for me in the upcoming World’s Strongest Firefighter competition, I was filled with immense confidence. Adam even described me as “freakishly strong,” which was also a significant confidence booster.
Better Today
Take any of these tips from today’s email and put them into action:
1. Why Fighting Your Thoughts Makes Them Stronger
A meta-analysis of 31 studies confirmed the "ironic rebound effect," which explains how actively trying to suppress a thought makes it more frequent and intrusive once you stop, and stress makes the effect even worse. Instead of fighting unwanted thoughts, redirect attention to something specific and absorbing.
2. A 52-Week Study Found That Diet Drinks Didn't Increase Hunger, Cravings, or Sugar Intake
When overweight or obese individuals drank either diet beverages or water daily, hunger ratings stayed flat in both groups, sugar intake dropped equally, and the diet beverage group lost approximately 3 more pounds. Observational studies linking diet drinks to weight gain likely reflect reverse causation: people already gaining weight switch to diet beverages, not the other way around.
3. The Overlooked Factor in Your Lifting Performance: Toe Box Width and Ground Contact
Research on lifting mechanics found that toe splay (how much your toes can spread naturally inside your shoe) creates more ground contact points, improving stability and force production during heavy lifts and lateral movements like lunges and offset carries. Carbon rubber outsoles last approximately 40% longer than softer alternatives while providing better grip, and a firm (not squishy) sole keeps your foot closer to the ground for a more stable base under load.
4. The Absolutist Trap: Why Health Advice That Sounds Certain Is Often Wrong
Health advice rewards confidence over accuracy: fat was the villain in the 1980s, carbs in the 1990s, and seed oils today, but zooming out reveals that treating any single ingredient as the cause of modern disease is almost always an overreaction to a kernel of truth. The strongest habit isn't having more opinions; it's holding flexible conclusions and staying willing to evolve when new evidence arrives.
—
Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger
Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell
