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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. So on a weekend, went to the gym, bumped into my jiu jitsu professor, and we were talking about stoicism. So, his main, teacher, very famous guy from Brazil, Fabri Gajel, he essentially spearheaded this new age of jujitsu, and he got into stoicism and how it helped him navigate his life, his business, and stuff like that, because it's very, very up and down for him. These have recently read his book, and it's a crazy story.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I saw my professor. I gave him Epictetus Discourses, a book about a year ago. And this is the lectures of Epictetus, the stoic philosopher, and one of the students wrote down the lectures and then the students q and a, essentially. So we're very fortunate that we've got these lectures, but we've got four of the eight books that were created. So, unfortunately, four lost to time.
Speaker 1:But these books were actually passed down to the very famous, probably the most famous stoic philosopher Marcus Aurelius, who was also the Roman emperor, you know, the philosopher king he was known as, and these books shaped his thinking, shaped his life. Right? So given the book, the professor said, yeah, I love his quotes, love epicitas, but it's very complicated to read the book. I was thinking, you know, let me go back to the book. And I was reading it, and I was thinking, yeah, you know, for someone whose native tongue is Portuguese, learning English, it actually is quite difficult to understand some of the words and how some of the explanations.
Speaker 1:So I was rereading some of my notes and stuff, and there's a few quotes I want to share that really just I mean, they resonate more now than ever, and I think it'll help you guys when it comes to your own fitness journey. Okay. So the first one that he mentions, okay, he's so he's talking to his students. Now remember now, he's talking to his students, he's and he says, it's as if I were to say to an athlete, show me your shoulders, okay, show me your muscles, and then the athlete responds with, have a look at the weights I'm using. And then Epictetus goes, get out of you with your gigantic weights.
Speaker 1:What I want to see isn't the weights, but how you've profited from using them. Okay? So Epictetus is saying, I wanna look at the athlete, and let me see the muscles you gained. And the guy goes, no, no. Don't worry about my muscles I've gained.
Speaker 1:Look at the weights I'm using. No. What use is the weight you've used if the goal is that you've tried to gain muscle? So Epictetus is saying you've got the wrong thing there, buddy. You're thinking about the wrong thing.
Speaker 1:Instead of thinking about the actual results you meant to get, you're thinking about doing something perfectly or doing something impressively, like, oh, look, I can lift a lot of weights. And you this hit me so strong in terms of when it comes to tracking. Okay. A lot of people online think that tracking for you to for you to even bother doing it, you have to weigh every single food out. You've got to do it perfectly.
Speaker 1:Okay? And if you don't do it perfectly, there's no point doing it. But what I'm saying is I don't give a shit how sorry. I don't get I don't care how perfectly well you track in that sense. I care what you're gonna get out of tracking.
Speaker 1:That makes sense? And I know you're going to get more results by tracking, of course, tracking the weight as much as you can, but also not being a perfectionist. If you don't know the weight of something, you can still log your food. As if you're if the day runs away from you, you can just voice log the entire day at the end of the day. Is this all perfect?
Speaker 1:No. But it builds the consistency and the awareness, and you get the results from this, and we want results. I don't want you to walk around the streets going, hey, guys. Listen, I track my I track my calories perfectly four days out of the seven days of the week. Okay?
Speaker 1:I'm just such a good tracker on those days is amazing. Like, I try oh, my God. I weigh everything out. Oh, I prepare it. Oh my god.
Speaker 1:You don't you can't believe how good I track four days out of seven days a week. And you go, what are getting out of this somebody? What do you mean? What results you're getting from me? Oh, well, I'm tracking perfectly, ain't I?
Speaker 1:Yeah. But what are you actually getting out of this? Well, to be fair with you, I'm getting anxiety on the days I can't track perfectly. I'm thinking too much about tracking perfectly. I'm not enjoying the pros.
Speaker 1:You know, there's a lot of negatives that go along with someone who thinks tracking perfectly perfectionist mindset is is the way to go. So don't be a fool. Don't be fooled into thinking that the point of tracking is to track perfectly. The point of tracking and to get our energy is for us to improve our health via weight loss for most of you, higher protein for some of you as well, steps up, okay? Who cares when you speak to someone and they say, you should track perfectly every day.
Speaker 1:There's no benefit. Like people will say, you should track all your micronutrients, you should track all your macronutrients, you should track everything. What's the point? And you go to them, these people, you go, what benefit have you got then from tracking these micronutrients you talk about? Because you for sure don't track this every single day because it's so boring that most people, they lie to this, they'll say, I track it.
Speaker 1:No, you don't. You don't even have enough consistency in the data to see anything worthwhile. So there's a lot of this going on in the fitness industry, especially the comments on social media when people say, what's the point doing it if it's not perfect? You know, it's just ridiculous. When you look at the research studies, okay, the number one factor behind if tracking your food works is consistency of logging food, not consistency of perfect tracking, not perfect tracking three, four days out of the week.
Speaker 1:That's not what makes that's not what is the biggest impact on results. The biggest impact is you bringing awareness to your eating every day. Very simply. If bringing awareness to you means you can voice note, and you don't know all the information, but you say today, I had two pieces of bread, I had a bit of butter, I had few slices of ham. I had three eggs.
Speaker 1:I had a tablespoon of olive oil. I had, you know, I had four Jacob's crackers, like whatever the way you want to log, whatever makes it consistent for you to log your food, you should do it, whether that's voice, whether that's text, whether that's taking a photo, whether it's searching those food database. Okay? Whether it's scanning barcodes or taking photos of labels, whether it's following recipe, whatever it takes for you to consistently log, that's where you're gonna get results from. Okay?
Speaker 1:So listen to these wise words from two thousand years ago that he was talking to an athlete. Don't show me the weights. Don't show me these perfect workouts. I don't give a give a damn about that thing. Okay?
Speaker 1:Show me how you're profiting from such activities. Okay? And if we're gonna be honest with ourselves, okay, if you're really, really honest with yourself, and I really, really hope that you're listening to this podcast that we are going to be radically honest with ourselves. When we try and follow rigid, quote, perfect meal plans and calorie tracking with only weight and thinking we can't go outside this plan, we can only eat quote unquote clean foods, okay? What happens?
Speaker 1:What happens? You don't do it for long enough. You can't do it. I mean, it's not impossible, But for us here, as normal people, we're not elite athletes. But even elite athletes don't do it, man.
Speaker 1:Speak to professional rugby players. You hear you say both eating chicken nuggets from McDonald's. I'm not saying this is you should do this with all your food intake. Right? But let's not put these unrealistic silly standards on ourselves based off social media comments who think you should do this, but the reality is the opposite.
Speaker 1:It's always that way, you know. The reality is never like perception is reality in a sense. Okay. The perception is that you have to do everything perfectly to get results. You have to do five workouts a week, what's the point doing it?
Speaker 1:You know, is this is plaguing us. It's really holding us back from doing the things that matter for our health. Doing the things that matter means consistently doing the fundamentals. You don't need to be perfect and you're gonna get there. Okay.
Speaker 1:I I've used this example before, but a baby walking, know, if a baby can't walk, you don't say I'll give up buddy, you can't walk. But what happens when the baby is learning to walk? Do they just get up and start perfectly walking? Is that the only route? Or do they get up and fall, get up and fall, stumble?
Speaker 1:Takes them a while, man, takes them a while to get their stride and to get in how they walk. They do mistakes, it's not a perfect walk either. Look at the mechanics of walking. Get the doctor in. Get these specialists in.
Speaker 1:Is the mechanics of this baby walking perfect? No. Just don't walk. Don't walk. There's no point.
Speaker 1:You're not walking perfectly like your knees. No. The bone structure. No way. Can't do it.
Speaker 1:Sit down. Don't walk. It's ridiculous. Nothing nothing we do, no process that we do requires perfection to get the end result we want. Nothing.
Speaker 1:It just takes patience, time, trial and error, doing the best we can, okay, and just slowly moving from there. And that's it. That really is it. I'll share more from the book and break it down into simple English, but I think I'll leave it at that today. Just don't be the athlete that says, check out how perfect I track.
Speaker 1:And then you only do it for a short while, get no results from me. I want you to say, do you know what? Sitting on your friends, you know what, guys? They'll go, oh, you've you've you've managed to lose some weight. You go, yeah, you know what?
Speaker 1:Not been perfect, not weighed everything, not eaten 100% whole foods grown in some grandmother's back garden. I have had takeaways. I have had chocolate. I have enjoyed myself, but I've also been good in terms of consistency, I've logged my food, I've just lowered my energy intake, increased my protein, increased my steps, not worried about perfection, really enjoyed being more flexible and loose, and hey, I'm feeling much calmer in my life, Weight's coming down slowly, feeling better about myself, knowing that I'm doing the main things for my health. Happy days.
Speaker 1:And they go, wow, really? Yeah. You know, that's that's the way to be, I think. Anyway, I'm gonna leave you with that, guys. Have a good day.
Speaker 1:I'll speak to soon.