Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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, and welcome to 2025. Now you might be thinking, oh, maybe today's podcast will be some big motivational one about the entire year, new you, new me, all this type of stuff, a lot of things to get cracking on with, but really it's the opposite. I want you to think of doing the opposite of what you think you need to do for new years. And really, it's not about doing big plans and big goals and thinking you're super ambitious, writing these things on paper, all this manifesting stuff.
Speaker 1:You might wanna do that once in a while maybe if it makes you feel better, but it doesn't do anything right now. And only right now you can actually act on something you wanna do. So if you wanna be healthier, if you wanna get better at a certain thing, a certain skill, it's great visualizing yourself here and it's great thinking about big plans and buying the best and needing everything, but just crack on today. Just get going with something really, really small that gets you moving towards that goal. So what's the first thing?
Speaker 1:You want to learn a new language. Alright, go and do ten minutes of Duolingo today. Well done. Job done. Imagine doing ten minutes of Duolingo every day for the next year.
Speaker 1:You're gonna learn so many words of a new language, and you will think, well, I was only ten minutes a day. Yeah. Because you're not gonna do two hours a day of learning a new language. No matter what you think you're gonna do in the New Year's, you say, yeah. I'll do two hours of two hours of lessons a week in new language.
Speaker 1:I'll do three hours or four hours of exercise every week, and you and you're starting from zero. Do you honestly think you're going to stick to it? The chances are slim. Unless you change your entire kind of environment or habitat or whatever, it's not going to happen. Unless you start living in a different household where it's completely different and with athletes and big changes, different country, then maybe there is a big drastic change to lifestyle.
Speaker 1:But don't fool yourself. Don't fool yourself. And actually if you fool yourself and you plan these big things, you're not going to get them done. You feel worse in a few weeks and you just stop doing things. So when it comes to fat loss, most of you listening will wanna lose weight.
Speaker 1:The only way to lose weight and keep it off is to do it slowly, most of the time. There's some cases people have lost weight quickly and kept it off and stuff, but most of the time you have to do it slowly so you can observe your own behavior, you can learn about yourself whilst the weight is coming off. You start realizing your life can be better by improving small things daily. Even if your weight doesn't come off, can still live a healthier, happier life. And then you start detaching a bit from your weight and you say, do know what?
Speaker 1:My weight will come off over time. It doesn't mean I can't live confidently today. Then you start pulling away from the pressures online, the pressures in person, quick weight loss, quick this, quick that. You start realizing that's all of Fugazi and you pull away from it. And then you start realizing these people online saying demonizing food, demonizing this, demonizing that, this is terrible, this is terrible, making you feel bad because you actually like those foods, you start realizing those people aren't worth listening to either because they're not saying truth, they're just scaremongering you into buying a pill, buying a certain supplement.
Speaker 1:And on a supplement note, guys, whilst it's great you wanna research supplements and stuff, the best thing you can do for your health is a consistent, good sleep routine, your steps going up, if you're overweight, reducing your calorie intake to make sure your weight's coming down steady, and a higher protein. If you're not doing those things consistently, no supplement is gonna come and save your ass. Okay? No. It doesn't it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 1:There's a few supplements, you know, that have been tested for a long time, creatine, for example, but really whey protein is a great one. You know, it's more like a food, so you add whey protein to boost your protein. Other stuff, unless you're deficient or unless you think, you know, well, unless you've had tests and you're deficient, maybe try them. But don't think it's a supplement stock you're missing or it's the specific training routine you're missing or it's a specific way you're training you're missing or it's a food you've been eating. Those are all wrong conclusions.
Speaker 1:None of them are the things that's gonna unlock or cause your problems. What does cause your problems is small things you do every day. The small things you do every day either make you great over time or they're gonna work against you. It's hardly a maintenance. You hardly maintain.
Speaker 1:You're either moving slowly one way or slowly the other way. And even when we look at studies of weight gain, people do gain a lot of weight over time, but it really does creep up on them. It's like a pound a month, half a pound a month. And that half a pound a month is six pounds a year or pound a month is 12 a year, then that's 24 pounds in two years. The UK terms it's like a stone a year, one stone a year, five years you put five stone on.
Speaker 1:How the hell did I put five stone on? Yes, you did it slowly over time, you didn't see it coming, you didn't realize it was compounding against you. There's a famous book called The Compound Effect and it talks about this and it's quite a powerful thing, it's like can you compound in the right direction and you need to know what you're doing Because if you're not focusing on the small stuff and doing those daily, you're probably missing out on small stuff that's going against you daily and they're gonna compound against you. So I don't want you to be stressed right now thinking of big changes, If you're looking to lose weight, if you're looking for fat loss, hit your calorie target today, that's it. Or just log your food today.
Speaker 1:Maybe you've been eating so many chocolates and so many foods that are delicious, you're finding it really hard to keep your calorie intake down. You've got loads of sweets left in the house, so you're trying to hit your calorie target and you haven't been able to achieve it. So how's about just track super honestly today? If you think you're capable of more, how's about tracking and hitting your calorie target today? Capable of more, track your calories and hit your protein target.
Speaker 1:And if you're capable of more, track your calories, hit your protein target, and get your step target done. Then spend the rest of your energy on other things in your life. That's the key part here. You need to read the book of yourself. You need to understand yourself.
Speaker 1:You need to learn why you behave or you behave. You need to learn why you turn to certain foods at certain times. You need to capture it in the moment. Oh my god, I got a message I didn't like and I was going to eat some ice cream to feel better. You can catch that in the moment if you don't panic and you start reading yourself like you're reading a book that's really interesting to you.
Speaker 1:You're not trying to judge yourself and this is a key part of, behavior change, and one of the main behavior, top behavior scientists in the world, BJ Fogg, says this. You have to be objective. You can't be, demonizing things. You can't be saying this and that. For you to truly understand behavior and change it, you have to be observant but you have to detach yourself.
Speaker 1:So it's like you're watching yourself in the third person. You're not saying, Oh my god, you're an idiot. Oh my god, you're great. You're just going, That's interesting. That's interesting.
Speaker 1:That's interesting. And from that, you're gonna gather the correct information and the problem the answer is in the question. Okay? Like the problem, the answer is there. It's already there.
Speaker 1:You don't need to say, like, I wonder why I ate a tub of Ben and Jerry's last night. If you become this observant of your behavior and you want to learn about yourself and maybe you start writing a journal and stuff, you go, Well, was clear. I had a bit of bad news. I didn't think for three or four minutes. I didn't sit with it for a bit.
Speaker 1:I didn't try and see it from another perspective. I didn't try and do some kind of CBT therapy like what will my best friends say about this, is this factual, do I have to respond now, can I respond tomorrow, how can I look at it and because maybe you let yourself get heated and worried about it, you had a really strong response to some bad message you didn't like and from that you felt really bad? And when you feel bad you want to feel not bad and we try and escape the feeling of bad through the escapes we've created. A lot of them, people smoking, people vaping and food is a big one. So you go, I'm going eat some and I'm to feel better.
Speaker 1:And it helps you for three or four minutes and then you're back to yourself and you're back to that problem and maybe it makes you feel worse. But the answer is there, the answer is that you've tried to cope with the piece of news, you haven't given yourself time to sit with it and you've turned to something to try and cope with it. And food is something we use to cope. So once we start learning these behaviors we can start interrupting them, just interrupt them, hey hold on, what's going on? Victor Frankl who wrote the book Man's Search for Meaning, he has a famous quote and he went to the hall of, he was in the hall, you know, the Auschwitz and he he's a he's got an amazing book, Man Search for Meaning, read it guys, it's amazing, it's like 150 pages, one of the most powerful books you'll ever read.
Speaker 1:And he says in his famous quote, There's a gap between stimulus and response and that's where your power lies or that's where the gold is. So the stimulus is the message, the response is how quickly you just jump onto it. There's a gap between stimulus and response. The longer you can have a bigger gap between stimulus and response, the better you're gonna manage your situation. So you are gonna respond and not react.
Speaker 1:Okay? There's a difference. Do you wanna be a responder or do you wanna be a reactor? If you're gonna be a reactor, everything's gonna set you off. Everything's gonna piss you off.
Speaker 1:Everything every smell of a nice food you're gonna wanna eat there, you're gonna eat it straight away. Every every impression you have, again, this is like the ancient Stoics would say them, impression. Every thing that hits you through your senses, something you see, something you smell, something you hear, something you touch. Okay? Once they hit you, there's time for you to be like, yeah, that smells amazing.
Speaker 1:I love brownies. Now I feel like I wanna eat a brownie. But let me just sit for a minute or move out the way, drink some water, and I don't have to respond to that smell. I'm not a slave to things that impact my senses. But what most people do is, oh my god, I can't, I smell so nice, I need some now.
Speaker 1:We've all been there. Was thinking the other day, was on the beach and I was thinking, I'm sorry I'm on the beach, I'm in Brazil guys, I'm sorry for you in the colder weather. But I was thinking, sitting there and all the noise, I was like wow, I can't stop this noise hitting my brain. I know it sounds weird but I like alright, can hear this noise, all this chatter see blah blah, I was like wow, It really imposes itself on you, you can't turn off the noise, you can't turn off your hearing, you can't turn off your smelling, you can't turn off your eyesight unless you can cover your eyes. Just hits you So we have to be responders and not reactors because if we're reactors we are really gonna be slaves to our environment or we're gonna be controlled by our environment because our environment is designed to hit our senses and make us act, when it comes to food and the marketing on food and you go into a supermarket and they send a whiff of a fresh bread over the entrance, you smell bread and you wanna go and buy some bread and bakery and nice bagels, Happy days.
Speaker 1:Okay? So going on a bit of a rant there. I want the main thing today if everyone is serious about long term change is to start small, read the book of yourself objectively, don't beat yourself up, don't try and judge your behaviours because we all eat from, all eat like sitting on TV, we all eat a bit too much sometimes, we're all a bit greedy, we're all a bit of that. That's the fact. The fact that we're bit greedy, we're a bit this, a bit selfish.
Speaker 1:We like our comforts la la la la la of course. So be observant, read the book of yourself, don't panic about things and try and be a responder today and not a reactor. And if you're a responder like Viktor Frankl says, gap between stimulus and response that is where we want to go and that's what the Stoics said as well, ancient Stoics two thousand five hundred years ago would say that's really where your control is. You can't control not smelling something really, you can't control not hearing something or things coming into your senses, you can't really control that. But what you can control is your response and that's why stoicism is seen as a preventative type of philosophy for people.
Speaker 1:Instead of being able to cure your depression or whatever, it can help you potentially before it happens so you can start responding better. And that's the goal today, respond better. And that's it guys. I hope you had a good Christmas, I hope you had a good New Year, don't be stressed out if you've gained some weight, for you to gain a pound of fat, the recent research indicates you have to eat like six to 7,000 calories over your maintenance, so there's 3,500 calories in one pound of fat, okay, roughly. But if you eat 3,500 calories over your maintenance, not all of that energy is gonna be stored as fat because it's gonna go to building muscle, other things, digestion, all that stuff.
Speaker 1:So it's not a perfect conversion. So think about that for a second. Did you eat like eight to 10,000 calories many days in a row? Probably not. So if you've gained five pounds over the whole festive period, you haven't gained five pounds of fat, likely three, four pounds of water, it's gonna take some time to come off and a pound of fat, that's fine.
Speaker 1:Some of you maintained, which is great, some of you might have lost a bit great, but look, don't beat yourself up, it's not time for that, it's not time to pity about it, enjoy your Christmas, enjoy the New Year's, having those happy moments is well worth it. I think it's important that we put in the social cost here, it's great socially to be free, not worry about food and stuff all the time, think about how you want to eat better food of course but I also understand socially I don't want to be thinking of my last Christmas as when I was worried about eating five pigs in blankets not three or I wanted another slice of cake, I didn't, I felt bad all day. Those things ruin memories when they should be happy memories and if you do eat a bit more than you wanted to, absolutely fine, normal, you're a human being and you are flawed. Like me, like you, we're all flawed. Anyway, that's it.
Speaker 1:Start small, let's go, don't worry and I'll see you all back here tomorrow.