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Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. Now then, first things first, seen a few comments, and I think it's important to cover this. So if you know the calories of a food, you enter that with your food, with your entry, okay, whether it's QuickGuard or whether it's texting, voice mail, whatever. Okay?
Speaker 1:Add the calories in if you know the calories. Don't make the app guess or something guess or estimate, okay, if you know the information. It's just pointless. If you know something just make the job easier and pop it in. It doesn't matter at the end of the day, and this is the thing to think about as well, because a lot of people when they first join are like should I track everything into meal types?
Speaker 1:Should I do this? Should I track everything by meal? None of that matters. It doesn't matter how it's saved in your phone, doesn't matter what font it's in, it doesn't matter what colours it's in. What matters is the behavior change that happens as a result of logging food.
Speaker 1:Okay? And the main things that we need to do is we just need to log food daily. We need we need to figure out roughly our total calorie intake, total protein intake for the day, those are the main two for our weight loss. Sorry guys, I got a cough, very annoying. And then obviously step count, okay?
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter how they're saved in the app, whether you've capitalized the meal name, whether you've the perfect name down, Walker's Crisps or Brisk Walker's Crisps, Salt and Vinegar, does it matter? Is it down? Is the calories and protein where it's meant to be for that product? Yeah okay fine. So when it comes to these things, it's 99 calories in the app but 97 calories in the package, you can edit there if you want, but two calories, it doesn't matter, there's no perfect tracking.
Speaker 1:You can get into the targets you have are not absolute, try and get near them. Make sure that you see the tool as something to be used to improve your behaviour. The tool is to bring awareness, you don't need to have super pretty app with super pretty layouts and all this folder la la la la You utilise it day by day. I have one day today, I'm gonna track my food today and I'll let the app save it and I'll crack on. Don't care oh my god but I tracked something down as breakfast, bread for lunch.
Speaker 1:It doesn't matter guys, stuff like this doesn't matter. We want to do this to get progress in our ultimate goal which is improve our character, improve our weight management, improve our health. Okay? Don't get too bogged down with, like, certain things in the app trying to be bang on here and there. Because being a perfectionist in tracking, it just doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:It's not possible. It doesn't mean you can't try your best. And I'm not saying never use weight when you track a serving size. Of course. If you know that, do it.
Speaker 1:Or if you know the calories, can bypass it all and just say, protein bar, 200 calories, 20 grams of protein. You don't even have to say the brand. You can just pop pop it in. It doesn't matter what the brand is, body's not going oh my god, he's had a grenade bar, oh my god it's a grenade bar, it's not a QuestBoss grenade bar, oh my god, it doesn't know, it just knows the energy, the macronutrients, the microbes, it's all it knows. The brand name is it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense to you guys? The philosophy of this app is to free you, is to track to be free, track to bring awareness. Awareness brings behaviour change, behaviour change brings actual progress, that ends up changing your life. I'm reading Epictetus, the famous stoic philosopher, you know, and reading some of his lectures, and he's got one on progress. And he's saying, so we agree that progress is to improve the human character.
Speaker 1:We agree that is the main thing we should focus on, improving our character. He's like, so surely not. Progress is not defined by someone who can read a lot of these philosophical books. That doesn't make sense. Surely, oh well done, you've read all those books buddy, well done.
Speaker 1:But those books, you've read a book on emotional regulation, are you improving your emotional regulation? No. So what use is that book? What use is you walking around going 'I've read this book, I've read this book.' There's no use to it. Haven't taken action from these things.
Speaker 1:You can collect as much perfect data as you want in spreadsheets, in multiple apps, whatever. Unless it gives you a change of behavior change your character, improve your relationship with food, free you, it is pointless. Some of these apps trap people. There's a lot of apps now that track a lot of your health metrics, and people think they're gaining from it. But what they're doing is they're putting themselves in their own prison cells.
Speaker 1:Their day is dictated by what that app is going to say, even though the app doesn't have absolute certainty, but it goes off that. If they don't track it, they get worried for not putting everything in the app. This worry and stress, as we know, can cause adverse effects, long term stress, chronic illness, it's not good. So do we want to be free from technology utilising the right tools to be free, or do we want to be bogged down by trying to be perfect information people and actually it's not being used anyway or it's making us worse? Think of which direction you want to go in.
Speaker 1:For example, when you've got lot of notes or whatever and you're creating a piece of coursework back in school and you've utilised 10 pieces of paper, you pull your ideas down, blah blah blah, you've created your final draft and you submit there, A lot of people have a hard time just discarding the notes. The notes were just steps for you to create the final piece. You utilised them, they were there, they helped you build towards the final piece. You don't, oh I need to put my notes perfectly, blah blah blah, oh my god, because the chances are you've done the work, move on. You don't need to use them again.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? You've done the work, you move on. People have a hard time in just letting go of the steps that they had to do. Each day that you're tracking, you track, you pox it away, job done, the next day, new leaf, new day, I focus from now to bedtime. I don't need to go back and hyper analyse, oh my god, did I have this for breakfast or lunch?' or Oh my god, was it the right way around?
Speaker 1:Oh my god, should I file them differently? You use the tool to make the day better, bring your awareness, improve your behaviour that day, you improve that day based on the tool and you move on to the next day and you do the same again. We don't need to look back in ten years' time and look at it like Some people will like, oh look at this graphic on my weight over the last ten years, fine great. Or look at all these food logs that go, great. Am I going to look back?
Speaker 1:No. Do I care what I've eaten five years ago, one year ago? No. Did the app that day help me bring awareness to my eating and improve my behaviour? Yes.
Speaker 1:And did that change me for my life today? Yes. Am I making sense here? Don't hyper analyse these things. Utilise for awareness brings behaviour change, behaviour change brings progress.
Speaker 1:Don't be like Epic Theatre says, don't try and just read books and accumulate knowledge for the sake of it and actually not utilise it to make any positive changes because that's not what true progress is, that is fake progress. Very, very fake progress. And we've all been there with fake progress, Procrastination, writing to do lists, buying something, saying you're going to do something, messes up, not going do this. All of this is fake progress. It's like, did you do the behaviour today?
Speaker 1:Today is the only day you can act. Today is the only day you can be the person you want to be. You can decide today I'm going be this type of person and I'm going to be this type of person today. That is all you can do. Add more and more together, your behaviour changes and you become that person.
Speaker 1:But you become that person today. Don't care if you're, say I'm three hundred pounds, I'm two eighty pounds, I'm two fifty pounds. How can I be someone healthy today? Well, here's what you do. You track your food intake, you make sure your energy is in a good place.
Speaker 1:You're not over consuming energy, your protein intake is in a good place. Your steps are high, your steps are great. You've been drinking your water, gone to bed early, had a good sleep. That's exactly what someone half your weight would be doing who could potentially be an elite athlete or flying high in terms of their performance in the gym. That's exactly what they'd be doing.
Speaker 1:The only difference is you just need some time for the excess energy you've stored away to go. That's it. The behaviours you're doing are the same and that's the important thing. It'll just take time for the behaviours you're doing to show the end result. You've done, all you are, is anyone who's overweight or obese and you're feeling bad by yourself can be very complex.
Speaker 1:The reasons why you've consumed more food can be complicated. But don't judge yourself too much. You've just consumed too much energy over the last five, ten, fifteen years. That's it. And it's been easy to do so.
Speaker 1:The environment we live in makes it easy to consume more energy than we need. That's all you've done. You're not an evil person, you're not a terrible person, you're not a lazy person. That's all that's happened, you've consumed too much energy, now it's stored away. The body's got away, extra energy, less, you know, got to do something with this.
Speaker 1:Stores it away. It's it's accumulated, and now you've accumulated energy. A lot of accumulated energy you can utilize, you can burn it away, and you're gonna lose it. So now you need to say, I'm gonna give my body a bit less energy than it needs so you can start using the bloody stored energy score. Again these are no moral judgments, I'm not a bad person but that's it.
Speaker 1:So don't say to yourself I'm not a healthy person until I reach my goal weight. No way, the goal weight is a lagging indicator. You can be the person you want to be today. You might not be the person you want to look like today and don't be fooled, once you do lose your weight you will still be unhappy in a sense because you go, well I want to lose more now. Don't be trapped by that.
Speaker 1:So many people get trapped by this, oh if I lost another 10 pounds I'd be happy, another five pounds I'd be happy. No! The behaviour you do today. You do this today from now to bedtime. You go to sleep, you go wow I did it.
Speaker 1:I'm that person. Here you are. Wake up the next day, you go again. You break it down into day tight compartments one day at a time. Results will follow.
Speaker 1:And the results, hey, I can't tell you if it's gonna be nine months, twelve months, fifteen months, eighteen months. I don't know the exact date that your weight target is gonna be hit. That doesn't really matter that much because life isn't so linear. You're going to be hit with illnesses and injuries. Unfortunately, by hope in all family bereavements, big things are going to come into your life and they're going to potentially delay these things.
Speaker 1:That's why one of the ancient philosophies is to be like bamboo, you know? Be flexible. The oak tree in high winds actually snaps and the bamboo much smaller, much weaker in a sense, bends with the winds and is able to sustain these huge hurricanes. So when life is that hurricane, obviously, like bamboo, go with it. You might not be able to be the person you want to be every day, but that's a human being, that's human.
Speaker 1:We just try, we try daily, we do what we can. So that's it on progress, on perfection, on how to see things, and I think this way of living, using these tools to free us up, improve our relationship with food. If it's been useful for us today, the tool is great. Has it helped me be aware today? Brilliant.
Speaker 1:Has it helped me change my behavior today? Brilliant. Has it given me some targets to go for today which are gonna improve my brilliant. Awesome. Is everything anything perfect?
Speaker 1:No. Okay? So don't get bogged down. So have a good day. Speak to you all soon.