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Today’s Health Upgrade

• What really happens when you break up with your phone

• Struggle with gut issues? Maybe you need to eliminate less than you thought

• Adam’s Corner: The step back

On Our Radar 
The Real Reason a Phone Break Improves Your Mental Health

Most phone detox advice is framed as a sacrifice: give up something bad and feel better as a result. But a new study suggests the benefit isn't about what you're cutting out. It's about what you're adding back in.

Blocking mobile internet for two weeks improved mood, mental health, and sustained attention. The changes were driven by how people spent the time they got back, not the deprivation itself.

Researchers recruited smartphone users and randomly assigned them to either immediately block all mobile internet on their phones for two weeks or wait before undergoing the same protocol. A verified app tracked compliance. 

Screen time dropped from about 314 minutes per day to 161. Mood, mental health symptoms (including depression and anxiety), and objective attention scores all improved meaningfully. The attention gain was statistically equivalent to reversing roughly a decade of age-related decline on the specific task used. And while screen time partially rebounded after the block was lifted, the improvements in mental health and well-being held.

But the real magic depended on what people did with the extra time. The scientists found that those who blocked their internet spent more time exercising, socializing in person, and being outdoors. And those behavioral shifts were associated with improvements in mental health and well-being. 

The phone wasn't the whole problem. It was filling time that would otherwise have gone to the things that actually matter for how you feel.

Cutting back on screen time will likely have benefits. However, you don't need a two-week blackout. Pick the windows that make sense to use it less, such as before workouts, during meals, and the hour before bed. The goal isn't less phone time. It's making more time for the things that actually fill you up.

Health 
Gut Issues? Maybe You Don't Need To Eliminate Everything

The low-FODMAP diet is one of the most effective strategies for managing GI symptoms. However, it's complicated, restrictive, and can be tough to follow long-term. But can a simplified, less restrictive version still work?

A pilot study found that a modified low-FODMAP diet can reduce stomach discomfort in people with IBS, without the complexity of full restriction.

Participants with IBS were divided into two groups: one following the traditional, highly restrictive low-FODMAP diet and another following a less restrictive version that eliminated only fructans and galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS).

Fructans are a type of carbohydrate found in various foods, including onions, garlic, wheat, asparagus, artichokes, leeks, and Brussels sprouts.

Galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS), a type of prebiotic fiber, are naturally found in foods like legumes (beans, lentils, chickpeas) and some vegetables.

The results were promising. Both groups experienced similar reductions in symptoms, indicating that the simplified approach matched the relief provided by the full diet without the extreme dietary limitations.

In fact, many participants in the simplified group reported greater ease in following the diet, which could make long-term adherence more feasible. These findings are preliminary, so larger studies are needed to confirm them.

If you struggle with bloating, gas, irregular digestion, or have been diagnosed with IBS and have considered trying a low-FODMAP approach, you might not need to go all-in right away.

Instead of eliminating all FODMAP-containing foods, consider cutting back only on the highest offenders, such as onions, garlic, and wheat. This approach might make it easier to manage symptoms while keeping your meals satisfying and nutritionally balanced.

Adam’s Corner
Maybe It's Time For A Step Back

I've been sitting with this for two days, trying to figure out how to say it.

Every year, Ketch (Pump Club Co-CEO, Daniel Ketchell) texts me some ambitious, borderline-impossible goal right before his birthday. I tell him he should have given me six more months. Then we'll go make it happen anyway. Massive deadlifts. Getting shredded at 40. Doesn't matter what it is. The tradition holds. He sets a target. I coach. And we have never missed.

This year felt different in all the right ways. Building the Pump Club together has changed Ketch. Managing a real community does that. Accountability stops being abstract when thousands of people are watching. He's more consistent, more aware, stronger, and fitter than he's ever been, all while raising two young kids.

So when he set a goal to pull 500 pounds from the straight bar, I was supremely confident.

We were going to get there.

Last week, he pulled 470. But on the way up, something was off. He tweaked his back. It wasn’t terrible, but it was noticeable.  

A few days later, Ketch was already feeling better and excited to train. But then, he bent over to pick up his young son.

His back gave out in a different way. The pain was intense.

That's the thing about the body. One day, you're pulling nearly 500 pounds from the floor. The next day, you're humbled by a toddler.

I'm pulling the plug on the birthday goal. But not for the reasons you might think. 

He’s already feeling dramatically better. We could let him heal, pick back up the training block in a couple of weeks, and possibly get the 500 for the sake of keeping the birthday streak alive. 

But that’s the trap. 

Sometimes, the best way to move forward is to intentionally take several steps back. 

The forced stop. The strange limbo between who you were last week and who you'll be when this is over. That space — where you can't do what you were doing and can't yet see what comes after — is the hardest part of any journey or setback. 

The pain can be miserable. But for many, the worst part is the waiting. The feeling that the clock is running while you're standing still.

That feeling has a name. It's apathy. And it's the real enemy.

The Pants-Cutting Method

Here's what I know about how setbacks actually work: the back didn't just give out. It delivered a message that had been building for a long time.

Somewhere in the chain — the glutes, the hips, the mechanics under load — there was a gap. A place where the body was compensating in stealth, without announcing itself. The 470 found it. His son confirmed it.

Most of us only discover these gaps when they become crises. We train the things we're good at, in the ways we're comfortable, and we let the weaknesses accumulate in the shadows until one day they step into the light and introduce themselves at the worst possible moment.

The real question isn't just when we get back to 500 pounds. It's why that gap was there in the first place, and what it means to actually close it.

This is the difference between seeing a setback as a detour and treating it as a map.

While Arnold was building the greatest physique in bodybuilding history, he noticed his calves weren't keeping pace. He had options. He could keep training the way he was training and hope they'd catch up eventually.

Instead, he cut the legs off his pants, so his calves were visible to him every single session. No hiding. No ignoring. Every rep, the weakness was right there.

He didn’t want to avoid the thing that could hold him back. And it wasn’t just in bodybuilding.

Arnold also sat in acting classes and speech lessons before he became a movie star, learning things that felt far beneath what he'd already accomplished. He had won the Mr. Olympia multiple times. And there he was, learning how to deliver a line.

He didn't wait for his weaknesses to find him. He went looking for them first.

That's not a setback. That's a practice. And the people who do it proactively — who hunt their gaps before their gaps hunt them — are the ones who keep getting better long after everyone else has plateaued.

The boring work. The unglamorous rehab. The session that doesn't look impressive from the outside and doesn't make for a great social post. 

The step backs are not detours from excellence. They are the method of it. The step back isn't what slows great people down. It's what keeps them going.

Most people know this in theory. Very few actually do it. Because choosing to go backward — to strip something down, to voluntarily train a weakness when you could be building on a strength — requires a specific kind of honesty about yourself. It requires you to sit with the uncomfortable fact that the thing you've been avoiding is also the thing most likely to decide your ceiling.

The Person Who Keeps Coming

As you know, sometimes you don't get to choose the step back. Life forces it on you.

The injury arrives. The plan collapses. The thing you were building toward gets taken before you were’re ready to give it up. And in that moment — right there, in the middle of the forced stop — something happens to most people.

They slow down. Not with a decision, not dramatically. They just settle into the waiting. The doubt. The fear. The frustration. The impatience. 

They tell themselves they'll get back to it when they feel better. And when I feel better becomes a door that never fully opens.

That's apathy doing its work. It doesn't arrive as defeat. It arrives as patience that isn't patient at all. It's surrender wearing a reasonable face.

But there is another kind of person. The kind who understands that a fall is not a failure. It can only become a failure if you decide the fall gets the last word. 

It’s empowering to be the person who gets knocked back, goes still, figures out what broke, and then comes charging. Who treats the forced step back not as an ending but as the most important training they'll ever do: learning how to rebuild from the floor up, with honesty instead of ego driving the program.

There is no shame in the injury. No shame in the setback, the forced reset, the birthday goal that doesn't get made. The only thing that becomes a problem is letting it be the story.

The stumble isn't the story. The comeback is. And the comeback doesn't belong to the person who waited until they felt strong again. It belongs to the person who started doing the work — the quiet, unglamorous, weakness-hunting work — before they even felt ready.

That's who Ketch is. I know it. He's going to hate pulling the plug on the timing of the birthday goal. In reality, it changes nothing. Because he’s going to hit 500.

But first, he's going to find the weakness. And he's going to go after it with the same tenacity that made him the king of birthday goals. 

So if you're in a forced step back right now — if life has removed something from you that you weren't ready to let go — I'm not going to tell you it doesn't sting. It does. Let it sting.

And then get to work. Not on getting back to where you were. On building something the gap can't reach this time.

Because the people who keep going — who refuse, absolutely and without apology, to be defined by their worst moments — they don't just recover. They come back better and stronger than the thing that stopped them.

And that’s when you realize it: During those “steps back,” you weren’t going in reverse. It was all part of the journey moving forward. -AB

The Positive Corner of The Internet
About Arnold’s Pump Club Editorial Standards

We do things a bit differently here, starting with transparency.

1. The Content: All APC emails are researched, written, and fact-checked by the APC editors (see bottom of the email), with written contributions from Arnold (noted with “Arnold’s Corner”). Links take you to original studies (not second-hand sources).

2. Does AI play a role? Not for the primary content, but it is used in two ways. The main items are original content written by the APC team. The summaries at the end are AI-generated based on the human-written content above. We also use an AI tool to review our interpretations of the research and ensure scientific accuracy. We don’t assume AI is right, but we use technology to hold ourselves accountable.

3. Yes, we have partners (all clearly noted). Why? Because it allows us to keep the APC emails free. We first test products, and then reach out to potential partners who offer ways to help you improve every day. The bar is set high, and to date, we have turned down millions in ad deals. (Example: we will not partner with any non-certified supplements or those without evidence in human trials). If we won’t buy the product, we won’t recommend it to you. And if there’s no evidence it works, then there’s no place for it here.

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Publisher: Arnold Schwarzenegger​

Editors-in-chief: Adam Bornstein and Daniel Ketchell