Source: Aifaner (ID: ifanr)
Author: Liang Xiaolong
City life
Fitness is good, but it is too late.
On Feb. 23, Scott Murray MacDonald suddenly fell to the ground while cooking dinner at home. Because of heart failure, his life stopped this spring, at the age of 27.
This is a YouTube fitness blogger from Ireland.
Because his chubby figure was ridiculed and bullied by his peers, Scott began to work out from the age of 13 and has devil muscle lines today. His passion for fitness led him to two related degrees at University College Dublin – Health and Performance Sciences (B.A.) and Food Nutrition and Health (M.A.). He is also an ITEC-certified personal trainer.
Scott's videos are always full of energy, and he shares his fitness tips, especially likes to study how to do a fat-loss and muscle-building high-protein diet.
He sells recipes on his personal website, has nearly 50,000 followers on his YouTube channel, and 300,000 followers on two Instagram accounts, and his influencer fitness career is in full swing.
There is a scientific system of knowledge reserves, there are regular exercise habits, there is no congenital disease, but suddenly died of heart failure. This unfortunate news caused a wave of surprise and sighs in the fitness circle.
Extremely disciplined, no buffer lifestyle
Scott's family held a funeral for him on March 1. To this day, the comments section of his YouTube channel is a rip of tribute.
Some have called him the OG (elder statesman) of the Irish fitness scene, while others have thanked him for his efforts over the years. His self-discipline and fat-loss recipes have inspired and helped many fitness whites to achieve their ideal body shape step by step.
In addition to the memory, some fitness bloggers have also begun to reflect on Scott's lifestyle.
For normal men, the body fat rate of 10%-12% already has obvious abs. Scott has maintained a body fat percentage of about 5% – even bodybuilders have to go through a short period of devil training to reach this "fleshy man" state.
The basic metabolism of adult men in a day is about 1500-2500 calories.
Scott, on the other hand, does a lot of aerobic exercise and keeps consuming about 5,000 calories a day. The long-term high-intensity exercise program often makes him sweat and his hands tremble in the video.
He only sleeps 3-4 hours a day, usually falling asleep at 4 a.m., waking up at 8 a.m., and going out for a crazy walk late at night to consume more calories. He exercises 365 days a year, and not a single day falls, which means he never gives himself a real day off.
Fitness blogger Kipp Fit, a good friend of Scott's, believes Scott has a clear problem with sports addiction.
Excessive fitness intensity, lack of daily sleep, dependence on caffeine, and even leading to eating disorders... Scott consumes 4,000-5,000 calories of food a day and then burns calories by doing crazy exercise, which is a very unhealthy lifestyle.
Although I felt a little wrong before, I didn't think too much about it. Because he's a qualified fitness instructor, I'm sure he knows what he's doing.
Calorie-filled macaroni cheese
Fitness blogger @Derek_Fitness believes Scott underestimates the importance of sleep. He sounds like he has the mindset problem "I'll sleep when I'm dead" that entrepreneurs generally have, preferring to stay up late to get more done than think about the consequences of this.
Scott once did a week of experiments, extended sleep time to 7 or 8 hours, claimed that the exercise effect became better, but then returned to the daily sleep of only 3 or 4 hours
Other arguments have been made that the straw that crushed Scott was not just excessive fitness and lack of rest, but also the anxiety and stress of being a creator who updates regularly. From the simple point of view of YouTube and Instagram content, shooting, editing, copywriting, and image production are likely to be handled by Scott.
2 months ago, Scott appeared gaunt in a video, and his weight plummeted into a "skin and bone". Fitness blogger Greg Doucette is concerned about this, with a private message reminding him that it doesn't look healthy.
Noticeable gauntness and emaciation can be seen
Scott replied in a private message that things were getting better, saying he had "seen a light at the end of the tunnel", referring to the anxiety and psychological stress he was suffering from, as well as the excitement and anticipation of developing a new recipe.
Ironically, he has helped thousands of people on his fitness/health path, but he can't help himself.
These extremely self-disciplined, high-pressure, stressful, and unbuffered lifestyles planted a "time bomb" for Scott's heart.
Even more frightening than over-fitness is ignorance
On February 10, Scott released his last video before his death. Netizen @Lee Averne expressed his concerns in the comments section:
A lot of what you do goes far beyond the diminishing marginal utility. I really don't understand what crazy exercise, no rest day can do for you, and that running out for a walk at night without sleep can definitely do more harm than good.
I know that fitness comes with a psychological reward, but you should also ask yourself if you really enjoy it – has fitness made your life better, or do you feel like you just have to get it done?
A 12-year study in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology can probably be borrowed to illustrate the marginal effects of fitness exercise.
The researchers point out that excessive exercise may fundamentally counteract the benefits of exercise. They found that people who ran more than 3 times a week, more than 4 hours, and had a fast and intense pace had about the same risk of death as those who were sedentary and hardly active. People who ran less than 3 times a week for 1-2.4 hours and had a more moderate pace were among those with the lowest risk of death.
Between exercise frenzy and total inactivity, the better option is moderate exercise to maintain heart health, burn excess calories, and control blood sugar levels. Once a certain tipping point is exceeded, it will be too late, leading to problems such as injury or fatigue, and even damage to the kidneys and heart, bringing the risk of sudden death.
The amount of exercise is not as big as possible| "Global Fitness Guide"
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) believes that adults should exercise moderately for about 5 hours per week, or 2.5 hours for more intense exercise. But in Scott's case, the relationship between fitness and life is already seriously out of balance —it is not a part of life, but occupies the whole of life.
However, most people rarely have problems with excessive fitness and sports addiction, but we tend to ignore the role of sleep and rest, and ignore the signals of physical exhaustion, like Scott.
On the same day of Scott's death, a 28-year-old ByteDance employee died suddenly in the company's gym, and finally officially announced that he died after 41 hours of rescue. Although the specific cause of death was not announced, public opinion generally believed that it was caused by improper fitness after overwork.
The source | Unsplash
This is not an isolated case, in December 2020, a 47-year-old SenseTime employee also died suddenly in the gym after 1.5 hours of fitness.
Immersed in the 996 culture of the Internet, employees had to work longer hours and even compress sleep to keep up with the progress of various projects. These physical hazards such as sitting, staying up late, and overworking will be truthfully reflected in the annual physical examination report. On the other hand, the frequent news of sudden death from overtime often makes the workers feel related.
Fitness has gradually become a popular choice for contemporary people to alleviate work stress and health anxiety.
As a benefit for employees, Internet manufacturers often have gyms for free use. The 24-hour gym, which has been launched in recent years, is also popular because it can take care of the schedule of some office workers.
In July last year, the "Summer Fitness Big Data" released by Leke showed that the proportion of fitness people between 22 pm and 8 am the next day was close to 10% of the country; in the Beijing area, this figure reached 12.8%.
Some gym business models are starting to change, super orangutans don't need you to give a year-round card commitment, and the secondary card can be very happy. Open social platforms such as Station B, and fitness bloggers scramble to tell you the essentials and techniques of action. If you don't like the atmosphere of the gym, you can even open Keep at home to practice sweating with paper people.
Keep x ASOUL virtual girl group, fitness has been rolled into the two-dimensional paper people
But compared with the increased love of fitness, the common sense of scientific fitness is still lacking.
More and more people are turning to social networks to learn about fitness, but the information obtained is often fragmented, lacking in system, and not necessarily scientific. The little whites who are half-aware do not even realize that staying up late the next day or when the body is tired is not suitable for fitness, do not understand the importance of warm-up and stretching, and hold unrealistic fantasies of "staying motionless on weekdays and practicing 6-pack abs on weekends".
The injury twisted to the waist is still a small matter, the lack of common sense is still the scalp of the worst result, minutes is the heart surrendered in advance.
The source | Pexels
Fitness requires persistence, and rest is part of a fitness program.
Kristen Dieffenbach, a sports scientist at West Virginia University, makes a metaphor for this, suggesting that the physical and emotional energy needed for exercise be thought of as withdrawing money in a bank.
You only have that much budget, and if you try to overspend, you'll end up exhausted or hurt and you may also become grumpy.
Dieffenbach also made a point of mentioning that your workout budget isn't set in stone. For example, as you age, your body needs more time to recover from high-intensity exercise. Plus, working long hours, traveling, or dealing with stressful things can drain your energy and budget, doubling your risk of sports injuries.
This spring, Scott's health account "went bankrupt" because of a severe overrun. Hopefully, this unfortunate news will be a wake-up call for fitness enthusiasts, and even for everyone.
This article is authorized to be reproduced from Aifaner (ID: ifanr), if you need to reprint it for a second time, please contact the original author.