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Today’s Health Upgrade

• How to keep workouts strong, even when cutting calories

• The nutrient that helps you wind down

• How to compartmentalize work stress

• Why do I keep re-reading the same sentence? (And the ways to stop it)

Performance 
Hitting Your Protein Goal Can Still Leave You Underfed

Protein gets plenty of attention during weight loss. But if you’re trying to keep training hard, the amount of food left after you hit your protein goal matters, too.

A randomized trial found that if you focus only on eating enough protein during an extreme calorie cut, your workout performance could suffer. 

In the study, active adults tried three diets for five days each. One gave them enough calories to meet their needs. The other two gave them roughly two-thirds fewer calories, but cut back on different foods. And all participants performed bike sprints.

The best outcomes came from keeping calories higher. This shouldn’t be much of a surprise. But when calories were cut, outcomes changed depending on what they cut.

When protein intake remained unchanged (and fat and carbs were reduced more aggressively), the participants couldn’t sustain as much power during a 30-second bike sprint as when they ate enough. 

But when people cut protein, carbs, and fat by the same proportion (so they had more carbs and fat), researchers saw no clear drop in sprint power compared with eating enough. 

This study didn’t test many things, so we can only draw so many conclusions; other research shows that getting enough carbs is tied to better workout performance.

Your muscles use stored carbohydrates during intense exercise, like hard sprints, but the researchers didn’t measure those stores in this study. A review of low-carb diets found that athletes often maintained their power for a single sprint. But during repeated hard efforts, that’s when intensity and performance are more likely to suffer.

If you want to lose body fat and still train hard, start with a smaller calorie cut that leaves room for both protein and carbs. 

This way, you have more room to adjust your diet when you hit a true plateau, and the gradual approach will be easier to tolerate, which could help you stay more consistent on your nutrition plan. 

Together With Magtein 
Why It’s Hard to Wind Down Even When You’re Tired

You can spend all afternoon looking forward to bed and still have trouble falling asleep. That’s an especially frustrating combination at the end of the year, when a deadline or the details of a holiday trip can hold your attention long after you’d like to call it a night.

One thing you might not think about on those nights is whether you're getting enough magnesium. But a simple adjustment might help your brain put the brakes on nerve activity. 

Some chemical signals tell brain cells to fire, while others tell them to ease off. Magnesium helps keep the first kind in check and supports the second. That gives researchers a reason to ask whether getting more could help people settle down enough to sleep, especially if they’re getting too little to begin with.

In a six-week trial, adults who were unhappy with their sleep took either Magtein® (magnesium L-threonate) or a placebo. Those taking Magtein® reported that poor sleep interfered less with their day, even though their rings didn’t detect longer or deeper sleep. 

Their sleeping heart rate fell, and the time between beats varied a little more, both good signs of quality sleep and recovery. 

Together, those changes suggest the part of the nervous system that helps you relax was more active overnight. 

If you don’t focus on magnesium, a practical place to start is with what you eat regularly. If beans or nuts rarely make it into your meals, try adding black beans to a burrito or keeping almonds on hand for a snack. In a separate trial, a different form of magnesium produced a small improvement in insomnia symptoms. People who reported eating fewer magnesium-rich foods seemed to benefit more, though the researchers had only a rough estimate of their diets.

If you want the exact type of magnesium used in the research, use Magtein®. Multiple studies suggest that it can help with both sleep and stress. The study used 2 grams of Magtein® a day, split between morning and evening, for a total of 145 milligrams of elemental magnesium. 

To learn more, visit magtein.com.

Better Questions, Better Solutions
The Stress That Won’t Clock Out

You promised yourself this week would be calmer. You closed the laptop at 6 and left your phone in the kitchen. For about an hour, it felt like progress.

Then you’re brushing your teeth at 10, rehearsing what you should have said in this morning’s meeting. For the fourth time.

The Old Question: How do I get less stressed at work?
The Better Question: Did my stress end when the stressful thing did?

The old question sends you hunting for a fix at the office. Fewer meetings, maybe, or a new job. Most of that won’t change quickly, so you grit your teeth and decide you’re bad at relaxing.

Look at the timeline instead. The meeting took 30 minutes. You replayed it on the drive home and again in bed. A half-hour problem got a full day of your attention.

Your body felt a lot of it.

Researchers call this perseverative cognition. You probably call it replaying. 

The idea is that most stressful moments end fast. The wear and tear builds when your mind keeps them running, because your body reacts to the memory almost as if it’s happening again.

One study put that to the test. Researchers strapped heart monitors on teachers for four days and had them log what was happening every hour. Their heart rate climbed during worry episodes, reaching about three-quarters of the bump seen during actual stressful events.

Worry about work was linked to the biggest jump: more than three times the bump of a typical stressful moment.

The stress you carry home can be greater than the stress you left.

When replaying turns into what-ifs about tomorrow, most of those forecasts are wrong. In a small study of college students with generalized anxiety, people logged their worries for 10 days and tracked how each turned out over the next month. 

About 9 out of 10 never came true. For about 1 in 4 participants, not a single worry did.

Your brain treats the replay like protection. Usually it’s guarding you from something that won’t happen.

The cost runs past quitting time, too. A follow-up study found the heart effects of a stressful event faded within about an hour, while the effects of worrying lingered up to two hours. Another linked more daytime worry to a heart that stayed on alert through that night’s sleep.

That’s how a “fine” day still leaves you wiped out.

If you want to stop the spiraling, here’s something that might help: Pick a 30-minute slot in the early evening, well before bed. When a work worry shows up during the day, jot it down in a few words and tell yourself, “Later, at [insert the time you’ve scheduled].” Then go back to whatever you were doing.

When the 30-minute appointment time comes, worry on purpose. Go through the list and solve what you can. When time’s up, you’re done for the day.

We know what you might be thinking: “This sounds too simple and it won’t work for me.” 

But it’s been tested directly with good results. In a randomized trial, people with high levels of worry used this setup for two weeks. 

Compared with a group told to let worries come whenever they showed up, the appointment group worried less and reported fewer sleep problems. And a review of seven trials found postponing worry modestly cut how often people worried and how much time they spent on it.

The boundary made the difference. Just letting worry come and go didn’t work as well.

If 30 minutes feels like a lot, start with 15. And if even that won’t happen, keep a note on your phone called “Later” and dump everything there until you’re ready.

When you give your worries a dedicated appointment, it can create a boundary that gives back the rest of your night.

Reader Question
Why Do I Keep Re-Reading The Same Sentence

Is there a way to get your brain to stop reading the same sentence 3-4 times and actually remember what it read? Is it a memory problem?

Rereading the same sentence usually isn’t a memory problem. Most often, your mind wanders while your eyes keep moving. Sometimes the text is just hard, and harder reading makes drifting more likely.

Two adjustments could help you stop re-reading and start making sense of it all.

First, give your attention a job. Read with a question in mind and clear away distractions, because a mind with nothing to look for drifts.

Second, stop rereading and start recalling. After each page or section, look away and put the main point in your own words.

Pulling information back out of your head is one of the most reliable ways to remember it, while rereading mostly makes the words feel familiar.

Recalling can feel harder than rereading at first. That’s normal, and the payoff shows up days later, not minutes later.

Drifting gets worse when you’re tired, stressed, down, or reading something you don’t care about or find difficult. If it’s suddenly happening far more than usual, look at your sleep first, and if it doesn’t improve, mention it to your doctor.

Next time you read, at the end of each page, look up and say or jot one sentence about what it said. If you can’t do that, reread that page once, looking for the part you missed.

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 we use it 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 edit and review our interpretations of the research, ensuring 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 by “Together With”). 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