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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 another episode of One Day at a Time member question. Scott, I come home from work really hungry, and then I got to make food for my children first, and then I'm even hungrier, salivating, needing to eat. So I nibble and nibble away on the food. Unknown calories, no nibbles, and then when I eat, I'm really hungry, and then I eat a lot in evenings.
Speaker 1:This is a very common and it's very common this happens, but also something we can easily mitigate, basically. So when you look at like eating and what we tend to do is we tend to have sometimes small lunches or no breakfast or a small breakfast, small lunch. You think about going through the entire day, where you're most busy, where you need most energy, you wake up, you get to work, you're moving about, la la la, you get minimal amount of energy, you wait until the evening, and then you consume maybe 50% of your calories in the evening because you've been so hungry all day that it is so easy to keep over consume, and you're in a rush, you're not mindfully eating, you're eating quickly, and the smell of food when you're cooking for your kids and everything, it just adds up, right? And then you're having the food at the end of the day, you're loading the food as opposed to front loading. And one of the ways to improve this is make sure you have a high protein breakfast, make sure you have a high protein lunch, and don't be worried about the calories being like, it has to be 300 calories each meal.
Speaker 1:Make it so that maybe you're eating 30 to 40 grams of protein for breakfast, drinking water, having teas. When it comes to lunch, you're having good quality meal, a mix of protein, carbs, fats, right? You can have a good quality meal, another thirty, forty grams of protein, drinking water and stuff, having cups of teas. By the time you get home later, you shouldn't be starving, you shouldn't feel, and if you do feel the craving to eat something like chocolate and stuff, just know that it's not coming from a hunger base, it's coming from craving, and craving is just a thought, and the thought comes because you are picturing yourself having comfort foods, you want to chill, you want to relax, you're stressed, it's cold outside, you're driving home, it's raining, oh, I just can't wait to sit down on a blanket, get enough chocolate. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:It comes from the pleasure of comfort as opposed to like my body actually needs this. So if it gets to the point where you're always hungry after work and it's genuine hunger and you're trying to lose fat and you've consumed 800 calories, 600 calories throughout the day, that's the evening, you've got to cook for everyone else first, yes, the chances of you overeating on that meal is going to be quite high. And if you eat fast, it's going to be worse. And on top of that, if your sleep is poor and you're having like five hours, six hours a night, the studies show as well that you consume more calories than someone who sleeps better, not in the mornings or in the afternoons, but actually as snacks post dinner. So even after you've eaten food, if you are sleep deprived, you're more likely to be snacking after that in the night.
Speaker 1:So you have like 300 to 400 calories extra a day if you sleep deprived. This is what it comes down to when I speak on the day six of the seven day kind of starter podcast series here is that the stress management element of weight management is just as important as understanding the laws of thermodynamics. The calorie balance, the energy balance is determined if you're going to lose or gain weight, the protein and the steps and the exercise is going to determine what quality of weight loss is it? Is it going to be a mix of your fat and muscle? Or is it going to be mainly muscle?
Speaker 1:Mainly muscle, God, no. Mainly fat. And you've got to then look up, okay, so we know that, but at the same time, we've got the kind of like emotional side and the stress side. We know that if you're chronically stressed, you stress and out about every little thing, you put it on yourself a lot of the time, but also sometimes life is stressful. If you don't have a way to manage this, and you're going to have a high stress state, we know that the hormones caused by this and cortisol and other things increase water retention, meaning even if you are in deficit losing fat, it might be masked by total weight being elevated from more water retention, right?
Speaker 1:So, it's often people see this kind of whoosh effect is called when they do a few weeks on it, they're getting stressed, I'm not losing weight, my work is stressful, my kids are doing my head in. Don't have kids yet, but they probably will do my head in one day, no doubt. And I'm not getting anywhere. And then they say, bugger me, I'm not relaxed, but bugger me, I'm going to just everything is too much. I'm gonna weekend off everything, blah, blah, blah.
Speaker 1:And then they wake up on a Tuesday and they've just eaten a bit not more normally, we should say, like, relaxed a bit, haven't trained, forgot work or like a project's over. Then they're like, three pounds dropped this morning. How does that make sense? I haven't been doing anything. I haven't been training.
Speaker 1:I haven't been doing my routine. What is it that I've done in the last three days that's caused all this fat loss? No. What you've done in the last few days is you've reduced your overall stress, you've stopped putting more stress on your body because training is a stressor. You've given yourself time to probably sleep a bit more and you just let go of it.
Speaker 1:And as you let go and relax in less stressful state, you might see this whoosh effect it's called, where water retention drops. It's just something we see time and time again. So, we need to understand that because if you don't understand these things that can happen, when they do happen to you, you mistake them for something that is not, and that causes problems. Oh my God, I must have done something the last three days that caused all this fat to lose. Oh my God, I've gained three pounds overnight.
Speaker 1:How have I gained fat? What did I do yesterday that's wrong? Oh my God, I had that Oreo ice cream sandwich yesterday that Gemma gave to me. Why did she do it to me? Why did she give me that Oreo ice cream sandwich?
Speaker 1:She's not put three pounds on me. She's made me gain three pounds of fat. You know, that's like the territory we go into. It becomes so irrational with our own weight and our fitness plan. Everyone, people in their 50s and 60s who are managing directors, who have raised a family of five kids, have gone through the most incredible stressors in work and build a family, even they freak out and lose their mind sometimes over their own fitness targets.
Speaker 1:We literally turn into children, teenagers, You know a teenager having a tantrum with stuff, you're trying to talk logic and it's not going through. Sometimes it feels like we do that to ourselves when it comes to this, like we throw logic out the window, become teenagers again, and we just make everything worse. So we need to have a cool head about this. And there's strategies for stress management. When we look at the strategies advised by one of the stress experts of the world, Robert Sapolsky, he talks about having an outlet for stress, and he talks about a study on rats, and maybe we're not rats, maybe we are rats, I don't know, maybe some of us are.
Speaker 1:Talk to my friend Gio, he maybe is a rat, I don't know. You better be listening because he's meant to be using Parapal, and he's meant to be using it for lifestyle changes. Gio, hopefully you listen. Rats that had no outlet to like chew on something when they were stressed by like a shock versus rats that did have something to chew on when they got stressed. They were able to chew on something to release the stress.
Speaker 1:The rats that didn't have any outlet for the stress, so they weren't able to chew anything, they just had to hold the stress in. They developed stomach ulcers and the rats that had an outlet didn't. But often the sad effect of this is that when you look at the sad statistics of men who love football, I think it was a study in Scotland that domestic abuse goes up like twenty five percent if their football team loses, which is pathetic, right? But what's happening is they're getting stressed, their team lost, they're not holding the stress in, the stress has been taken out in someone else, like the rats bite to nothing. They're taking it out on unfortunately their wife or partner, and then their stressors relieved, the partner then takes the stress.
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? So they're doing this release, which is in the most unhealthy way. But that's why we need a healthy way to de stress, right, to have an outlet because when you are stressed, you're basically priming for movement, you're priming to fight, you're priming to run. That is like the mechanism has been evolved. So people tend to do activity, walking, you can do some kind of workouts, there is even some like anger rooms, go to smash things up.
Speaker 1:People have tried that. But you need some kind of outlet. And I think making it a healthy physical outlet can be helpful. That's why people really like working out and stuff. It really gives you a chance to get it out there.
Speaker 1:Martial arts is amazing for this. That's one way to manage stress. Another way to manage stress is he talks about the social connectivity, this community, these people you can talk to, these people you can phone up and say, Listen, I'm going to ramble at you for ten minutes. Don't judge me. I'm just going to get off my chest.
Speaker 1:And for the person and listening, don't try and put your own opinions on it. Don't try and give them your own stories and stuff. Just listen. Maybe ask a few tactical questions to have a few more moments for the person ranting and let people express themselves. Know, that's another way that social connection, that unity we have with other people is important.
Speaker 1:And having predictability is something he mentions as well. So when we know there's something predictable in our lives, we can bring the stress down. So, there's predictability of knowing that you're going to go back to your partner or go and speak to your best friend or have something lined up when you're going home, these routines that improve our health and stuff we have in this predictability can help us because when we're unpredictable, sometimes our life's unpredictable, stress can be higher as well. And yeah, that's the core of it. There's a few more things he mentions, but I think start there, you know, and you might be thinking, I got no one to turn to, Scott.
Speaker 1:I got no workers to do because I don't know what I'm doing. And I've got no predictability in my life. It's chaotic right now. When we start with the basics, we go back to what we can do from now to bedtime. Instead of saying none of that works for me, let's break it down.
Speaker 1:Let's have some predictability in what our plan is per day. Maybe you don't have predictability all throughout the week, but maybe you can say, right, today I got to do this. I'm going to write it down. How am I going to achieve this? I can't achieve all of this too much.
Speaker 1:What one thing can I achieve? Now, that's how we make movements. And when you start having progress on something, you tend to get more motivated. The motivation drives more action and more progress, but it's not always the same each day. And I often find myself when I wake up in the mornings, the first two to three hours after I've had my first cup of coffee are the hours of most productivity, ideas, everything, right?
Speaker 1:So if I want to focus on something important, I think, should I do it in the night when I'm less motivated and I'm less likely to be, you know, my brain switched on? Should I just wait to do these things tomorrow? And then I can do some of the more admin y stuff in the evening. That's how I look at it. I can say in the evenings, can do things like emails, getting back to a few things, reviewing a few documents, whatever.
Speaker 1:But for me to do the creative stuff and the real big hitters, I'm going to hold out till the morning and wake up a bit early, have a cup of coffee, I'm going go for it then. So there's like that predictability of when you do the big things, when you do the small things. And sometimes you got to do the big things all day, it's just part the game. But yeah, to do full circle, I know all of you are dealing with different things. You've got kids maybe, maybe you don't, you've busy jobs, maybe you're looking for a job, maybe you're desperate to lose weight, maybe you've started on GLP-one drug and you're not seeing any results, so you're worried about the drug causing side effects and muscle loss and you need to eat more protein, you don't know what to eat for protein, you've been told a thousand things on social media every day, you're so confused, calm down.
Speaker 1:Let's bring it back to what I just mentioned from now until bedtime. That's the only thing we can do. And really, that's what our goal is, is to calm ourselves down in all of this and focus on the basics and do them well. And that's what mastery is of anything really, isn't it? Showing up every day, no matter if it's a big day, small day, if we got enough energy or not.
Speaker 1:I'm going go to jujitsu after this. I'm not feeling like I want to do jujitsu. I'm not feeling super strong right now. I'm not feeling like I'm going train well. That's what I'm feeling.
Speaker 1:Defeat. I feel like defeated right now before I even get on the mats. But I know I'm going to turn up. I'm going to learn a new technique. I'm not feeling super energetic, but I know and I'll do a few rounds.
Speaker 1:And that's really what matters. I'm going to try and do it because I'm sticking to my consistency on it no matter how I feel. I'm not going to just do it when I feel amazing because I'll go once a week, you know, and I know it was the same time on the other side, I'm not going to do too much for my body to be too stressed, but doing seven times a week. So I know there's a balance in the middle, and right now I'm in the middle and I need to push to do this because then I can be balanced and moderate. Same for you guys.
Speaker 1:You could be motivated at 9AM to work out, you say you're going to work out at six and it comes to six and you think, I can't be bothered, but you think, if I just did fifteen minutes? These are what matter, you know, and that's what LeanShield is all about with our LeanShield tool. You can say to, I've got twenty minutes, I've got a pair of dumbbells, I'm tired, give me something to do to boost my score. I'll try and work my hardest year, just give me something short and it'll give you something short and you'll see the score boost on happy days. But anyway, enough from me.
Speaker 1:Have a good day, everyone. Speak to you soon.