Health Volatility

Like markets, the holy grail for good health is a combination of steady gains and low volatility.

October 24, 2021

I remember my Uncle Dav from when I was a kid. He’d take me jogging with him sometimes and he’d wear this reflective weight loss sweat suit that made him schvitz like crazy.

Uncle Dav would go through periods where he’d jog, diet, and lose a bunch of weight. Then he'd stop, get back to the Entenmann’s, and put a bunch of weight back on. 

He didn’t understand how to get and stay healthy and so it was a metabolic rollercoaster.

This is a pattern that remains common today.

Our understanding of how to be healthy continues to get distorted by processed food conglomerates, diet gurus, the government, and, sadly, our own health care providers.

Volatility in Markets

In financial markets, volatility is a measure of how much an asset changes in price over time. 

If a stock goes up and down a lot, it is said to have high volatility. The swings can be hard to stomach, but, sometimes, the stocks with the greatest promise also fluctuate the most so it might be worth the ride.

The holy grail is a stock with high returns and low volatility. One that goes up a lot without ever going down too much. 

These are harder to find.

Health Volatility

I use the term Health Volatility to represent the swings we experience in our physical and psychological conditions over time.

High Health Volatility means we swing a lot from healthy to unhealthy and maybe back again. 

This is different from high market volatility as high health volatility is not only hard to stomach but it is also bad over the long term.

My Uncle Dav was high in health volatility. I’ve been there too and I talk with a lot of people who have expressed this same rollercoaster effect.

We lose a bunch of weight into the Summer only to gain it back and then some in the Winter.

We begin working out with great enthusiasm only to get injured which sets us back more than we progressed.

We eat poorly on vacation and then never revert back to our resolutions. 

Etc etc...

High health volatility is incredibly frustrating and can lead to giving up and feeling like we do not have full control of ourselves.

Like Uncle Dav, we don’t recognize that we are going about trying to get healthy the wrong way

Despite what we’ve been indoctrinated with, moving more and eating less is not the way. 

Low Health Volatility and Resilience

Like markets, the holy grail for health is a combination of steady gains with low health volatility. That is, we maintain, even improve, without significant setbacks.

Unlike markets, this holy grail is attainable and often under our own control.

We can steadily improve our health and/or maintain good health without large setbacks by increasing resilience.

Resilience is a mindset but it is determined by consistent behaviors or habits.

Establish, keep up with, and automatize the right habits and we foster the capacity to maintain good health and bounce back efficiently. 

Sometimes, setbacks are not self-inflicted. We may get injured at work or be faced with a significant illness. Even in these cases, established resilience helps immensely.

I write this newsletter from my own point of view and have developed habits that keep me healthy over time and foster resilience. I didn’t make any of these up but culled and personalized them from people I admire like Tro, Naiman, and Cornell among others.

Here are a bunch of posts where I describe important components to building and maintaining good health with low health volatility:

If you have questions or there are things you would like me to clarify, you can hit me in the Comments Section, reply to this newsletter email, or email me directly at [email protected].

Have a great day.