u/Cautious-Fox9757

I bought some cheap dumbbells from Argos for fifteen quid a while ago and while they were fine for a bit pretty quickly I was doing 25 reps at a time with them and most people I asked said once you’re doing that much it’s cardio not strength training so I signed up for the gym.

Been going more and more and am lifting heavier and recovering quicker. However some days like today where I’ve gone two days on the trot I feel very tight and don’t want to push myself too hard and and be out of the gym for a month or whatever.

People say if you’ve done a heavy leg day don’t just sit around but go for a bit of a mooch the next day to get your blood flowing.

So on days where my chest or arms are destroyed am I better just doing nothing or would I feel better and recovering quicker doing a few curls and chest presses at home with some dumbbells that are about half what I’m using at the gym now?

I work Friday evening to Sunday night so my muscles get rest days then so I always want to make the most out of Monday to Friday to get exercise in when I can.

Anywhere you look these days you’ll see articles about “ultra processed foods” to such a degree they’re now just called UPFs and everyone is expected to know what that means.

The consensus seems to be that UPFs are inherently bad, and you should reduce consumption as much as possible, if not entirely remove them from your diet. There’s comparisons with things like smoking which was obviously a major health issue where lack of knowledge and corporate malfeasance killed millions upon millions of people.

But I just don’t buy it.

First of all, the people who I see moaning about it the most are hippies. Every time I get a Facebook reel or video in my timeline about UPFs being the devil it’s either some lefty hippy of the sort that wants to save the planet but opposes nuclear, or some right wing gym bro hippy who thinks seed oils are making us gay and we should all be subsistence farmers. Every argument I see is just appeals to nature, but lots of things that are natural are bad and lots of things that are unnatural are good for us.

I eat a varied diet that includes UPFs and most of the stuff that I eat that’s UP I thinks quite good for me. I eat turkey bacon which has a lot of protein and is low in fats and calories. I have some little chicken bite things and a protein bar at work which aren’t fantastic in terms of macros to calories, but I’d be looked at a bit weird if I pulled out a tin of tuna and a spoon, or kept a chicken breast in one pocket and a piece of broccoli in another. Similarly, I see lots of microwave meals that are advertised as low in calorie and high in fibre and contain one of your five a day or something and I think they’re overall good for public health despite being UPFs. Could you get something better if you cooked from scratch at home? Possibly, but I worry that sometimes people fill their houses up with turkey mince and carrots and throw out the healthy range diet meals cos someone’s told them they’re evil, and then get home exhausted from work then have to feed the kids and bath em and put em to bed and when faced with the prospect of cooking for themselves just get a pizza in. Taking away a low effort reasonably healthy meal option cos you think everyone should be cooking a homemade meal is both cruel and counterproductive. As well as appeal to nature there’s also a lot of nostalgia present in anti-UPF narratives that depend on cosy images of housewives having slow cooked a leg of beef and some veggies for their hardworking husband. That doesn’t work in a world where most households have two people in full time work, and doesn’t help my suspicions that a lot of this stuff is a wink and a nudge to “weren’t things better when women were in the kitchen all day?”

The right wing of the anti-UPF movement also use it as a cudgel to beat vegans with. I’m not a vegan or a vegetarian, but I frequently eat vegan or vegetarian food for varying reasons and the quality has improved so much. But now you’ve got people filming themselves in supermarkets holding up Beyond Burgers and pointing out how many ingredients they vs a steak. But most vegan burgers have higher fibre, lower calories, lower fat and lower but still decent protein in comparison to a steak. Because it’s the calories and where those calories come from that determine healthiness of foods, not whether something meets your definition of natural. Pork belly and peanuts are high in fat and calories and I’d argue worst for you than many foods with complex ingredient lists that have been produced at industrial scale. The big argument is always “look what’s in this, I can’t even pronounce it”, but I don’t think people should live their lives based on what someone wearing a tank top with bad tribal tattoos can pronounce cos that would mean doing away with all modern medicine, too.

And if the right wing gym bro attitude towards UPFs comes from a mixture of misogyny and nostalgia then the left wing attitude seems to come from a sort of anti-industrial attitude. I’m more sympathetic to these people cos I think they’re nicer people, but I just think it’s rubbish. I’ve been fortunate enough to visit places as diverse as Charlotte, NC (go Panthers! Go Hornets!) and rural Ethiopia, they were both incredible places full of lovely people. One had low levels of industrialisation and the other had much higher levels. While they were equally nice to visit I know which one I’d rather live in. And I think most of the hippies who bemoan our modern world would, after a year of actually living as a farmer without modern industrial tools, probably agree with me.

But it’s not just hippies, I see actual scientists bemoaning UPFs and… it just seems like nonsense. They continually rage against foods being ultra-processed without actually explaining what ultra processing food actually does to it. Chicken is fine, bread’s not great but it’s fine as part of a balanced diet, but if you “process” chicken (mince it, add flavourings, coat it in breadcrumbs) it becomes devil food. Why? What actual science is there here? The argument seems to be that many UPFs are high in fat or low in fibre. But there are many UPFs that are low in fat and high in fibre, and many whole foods that are the opposite. Why not just advocate for keeping a calorie deficit, and that there are many ways to achieve this but high protein and high fibre (and low but not zero carb) diets make it easier to do without feeling hungry. Instead they tell people that UPFs are this blanket evil thing and I don’t think that’s a healthy way to look at food.