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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 there's a good post in the group I wanna share. And I think it's a great post because there's a lot of self awareness involved and, it's a long journey as well. So Rainey or Rainey.
Speaker 1:Sorry if I've messed the name up. So she says on day seven of the trial, and I'm totally a fan of this app. I'm a retired fitness professional and have counted calories before smartphones existed, then the creation of smartphones, then on my smartphone with the Lose It app, then got into figure competitions and had to be specific about macro counting, so I went to MyFitnessPal for that. I retired from all personal training because I got burned out on it all except the training myself. I got tired of weighing and counting every single thing that went into my mouth.
Speaker 1:At this point, I started my menopause journey. If you know, you know. I started gaining weight. So again, I got an online coach and lost 20 pounds. But again, I was carrying my food everywhere I went, refusing to go out and eat my friends, bringing my skills on vacation.
Speaker 1:I was once again miserable. Gained that weight back, still going through menopause, no energy, depression. All I could do was my workout for the day and then just lay around all day unhappy. Last year, I was determined to get my hormones under control. Took about six months.
Speaker 1:Started feeling more myself, better workouts, but still wasn't tracking because I didn't wanna have to live that life. I did lose 20 pounds on my own, just making sure I was eating enough protein and not overeating, but still not tracking. I've done it for so many years, just kinda know. I then came across the app, maybe in a Facebook ad, and thought I'd give it a try. I was about to spend $80 to renew my fitness pal, but just thought it's too much money because I don't I know I wouldn't be faithful with it.
Speaker 1:Scott does a wonderful job at making you calm down about food. It makes sense and the tracking is so easy. I'm a total fan. I'll be signing up tomorrow for the year. I've already started telling my friends about it and the price point is not bad at all.
Speaker 1:I feel the freedom. You know, obviously, it's nice to hear these words and thanks for sharing it. Yeah, it's always nice to see nice things being said. But this is exactly why the philosophy is even What can I explain? This is why this philosophy is the one that really changes your life.
Speaker 1:It's not necessarily okay. The piece of technology you're using is great, and it makes tracking a lot easier. But the philosophy that comes along with the piece of technology you're using is what makes it the makes it different, you know? And I think if you guys are missing out on obviously, if you're not listening to the podcast, you're not gonna listen to this because you're not gonna listen to the podcast. But, you know, there's a lot of mindset work to be done.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of psychological work to be done. This is not just a physical game. It's not like, I've lost 20 pounds and magically my life is better. I've just shared that story with you. And Randy lost my weight but was still miserable, wasn't going out to need and go with her friends, taking weighing scales on vacation.
Speaker 1:You know, this is where people go because this is what the fitness industry tells you you need to do. The fitness industry has come If you think about where the fitness industry evolved from, okay, this is the important part. Weightlifting, bodybuilding was very niche. Okay? Very small.
Speaker 1:It was a subset of very, very, very crazily addicted people to building physiques. Okay? So when you go back to the sixties and seventies and eighties and you go to Alice Schwarzenegger era, you've got these people who are obsessed with sculpting the best physiques humanity's ever seen, and you gotta you gotta applaud these people. It's a crazy journey it takes. You have to dedicate your entire life to it.
Speaker 1:Okay? Their methods have been passed down to us today. Even today, we still live off the methods they were trying back in the day. But we're not them. We're not going to be Mr.
Speaker 1:Olympia or Miss Olympia. We don't have two, three, four hours a day to train. We don't need to be super dialed in on every gram we eat and nutrition. We don't need to be taking our workouts like it's a military operation. Okay?
Speaker 1:But, of course, what happened was the magazines saw these bodybuilders, know, took photos of them and said, hey, let's promote a supplement brand, and this is where the bad reputation from whey protein comes from because all of these bodybuilders were saying, yeah, I got massive from this Myoplex three thousand, and it increases my muscle mass by 3000%, you know. Stuff like these were literal claims they were making. I remember listening watching a DVD by a brand called Gospari Nutrition because they sponsored a Welsh bodybuilder, Flex Lewis, one of the most accomplished bodybuilders of all time. And they were like, Gaspari Super Pump improves, increases muscle protein synthesis by 1200%. And you know, as a kid, you're 16, you're like, oh, wow, Jesus.
Speaker 1:No wonder these bodybuilders are so big. And a lot of the content was around the supplementation, but the dark side is obviously anabolic steroids. Right? So that's not spoken about. So when it comes to present day, yes, the bodybuilding industry, even in terms of drug sense, were ahead of time in terms of the protocols they were doing and how they were mitigating side effects.
Speaker 1:They were really the lab rats out there, and they were putting things in their body, they were testing out training regimes, testing out eating things, they were doing everything, you know, fasted cardio, tried all sorts of things. And when it came through the magazines of promoting them in the 90s, you know, kind of pre Internet, and then the early two thousands, bodybuilding.com, it was like when other people started wanting to go to the gym, the advice was coming from this core group of people or this core industry. Does that make sense? Because it really was Americanized and the American really, it was like American culture. You had, like, fitness DVDs and they would, they would hire really genius marketing agencies.
Speaker 1:And these marketing agencies come up with they would like to coin, as I would say, coin the term. You need to become known for something. So P90X was one of these DVDs. I don't know if you remember it. It was like this crazy hardcore workout.
Speaker 1:They showed like older people doing it. Sorry. Still got a cough going there. And they were saying Muscle confusion is the secret. You've to confuse the muscle.
Speaker 1:Okay? So they were doing these workouts, crazy things, changing it up all the time. And this plagued the fitness industry for It's even today, some people say, I'm gonna have to go confuse the muscle. It doesn't exist, guys. The muscle isn't a brain.
Speaker 1:The muscle is a mechanical tension. It's just it does a few things. It's not you can't confuse it. It does a and b, you know? You're not gonna confuse it.
Speaker 1:Your muscles are going, oh my god. He's doing dumbbell press today. But he's he took bench press last week. Oh, shit. That better grow.
Speaker 1:No. Come on. Just it grows through the mechanical tension. If you're gonna put more load in the muscle, you know, pushing it to its limits, it's gonna need to adapt. That's what a human, basically, life human kind of evolution is, is an adaptation.
Speaker 1:You know? So, yeah, you got this bodybuilder influence, you've got the P90X and these big American companies with the big marketing budgets with these crazy terms. Then you get to the mid to late 2 thousands, and there's a big culture shift. More and more people are going to the gym. More and more women are going to the gym.
Speaker 1:Women are now going to do lift weights. Okay. Obviously, some women lifted weights before. But you see the women lifting weights today, Wow. You go back twenty years ago, it's not it wasn't like that at all.
Speaker 1:More women are in the weight room now doing CrossFit, higher ups, doing these things, but this wasn't a thing. Hardly saw any women doing these types of workouts in the gym. Women tended to stick to cardio, treadmill workouts, yoga, pilates, boxercise. They didn't really dive into the bodybuilding world, know, the weightlifting world. It's been a huge change, but we still are plagued by these old concepts.
Speaker 1:So when it comes to women's health and women's advice today, there's still a lot of people that believe that you have to live like a bodybuilder to get results because the bodybuilders, for them to be the level they were, okay, yes they had to be, you know, everything had to be weighed up, everything. But the false, the logical fallacy here is that if you don't do that, you get zero results. Okay? That's the big mistake the fitness industry has made for many years. Research is now coming out, meta analysis, randomized control trials, all these high quality research studies coming out now.
Speaker 1:And they're basically saying, you don't have to do much to improve your health and get them most of the gym. Okay? I was reading a study the other day. One set, one big set is actually better in this research study than doing three sets relatively hard. So just being able to do one set hard and going on to the next exercise, doing one set hard, pushing until you fail, you know, that showed more strength improvements than the other than other method are.
Speaker 1:So you don't have to stay in the gym for so long. You don't have to do five, six workouts a week. This is a fact now. For you to get sixty, seventy percent of the gains from doing weightlifting, you can do one or two sets on your on your quads, for example, once a week or twice a week, up to you. You don't have to do five or six sets.
Speaker 1:You don't have to be in the gym for an hour. You can go in for twenty, thirty minutes. And it's the same when it comes to fat loss. We know a lot of these concepts of you know, you start off with a with a with a prediction. You start off with a set of numbers.
Speaker 1:So we're trying to figure out what your total daily energy expenditure is. Okay. We use our sorry. We use our own calculation. We figured out, okay, you know, very active.
Speaker 1:You do a roughly three or four workouts a week on average. La la la la la. And, okay, food labels, they can round up. 20% of calories in The UK, 20% in The USA. Okay.
Speaker 1:Yes. And that's not ideal. When you eat at restaurants, they say it's a thousand calories, could be 1,002. We know that some studies on this are showing that they could be up to 50% difference. Ah, the wearables you're wearing, 20 to 91% overestimation in calories burned on these wearables.
Speaker 1:That's not accurate. So you got all these numbers coming in, but we don't have absolute certainty in these numbers. It's not possible. So what really is the main thing that we do tracking for? Is it that we're doing tracking to try and become the number one trackers in the world?
Speaker 1:No. Because there's no extra benefit for us as average normal people because we're not gonna try and be Miss Olympia. So why is tracking such an important tool even if it's not bang on? Well, the first thing is getting within range over a long period of time is more than enough. Okay, one.
Speaker 1:The second, probably the most important one is the awareness it brings to you. Like, wow, I can't believe I'm eating this amount. But it might not be exactly that amount, but wow, it's in that range. And you start looking at your behavior, changing your behavior. And then you do this over time.
Speaker 1:So you do the awareness. The awareness, you have realizations, and the realizations, you change your actions. You know? And you're stress free because you understand you don't need to be perfect. There's no such thing.
Speaker 1:Perfectionism doesn't exist in this game, but you don't need to be perfect. You can just be good enough over time. And that's really it. You know, when you think of building a business, for example, do you have to be a perfect worker every day for a successful business to happen? Obviously not.
Speaker 1:Even in your line of work, whatever you do as a job, if you're working right now. Do you have to have perfect workdays every day for your project to be a success? Yes or no? Obviously not. Some projects, maybe 20% of the days are write offs.
Speaker 1:Overworked, ill, it's not that. Oh, well, you didn't have a 100% perfect days. Project's failure. Obviously, no, man. Come on.
Speaker 1:Obviously, no. We've been fooled in the thinking when it comes to health and fitness. And it is just a rare lick from Basque in the past. It's just still with us. The ghosts of these hyper focused bodybuilders of the eighties, seventies and eighties and nineties and pushed onto the online world, and we still we still stuck to the with these with these viewpoints.
Speaker 1:And you see a lot of these young personal trainers on Instagram and TikTok about 19 years old, you know. Oh, if you don't track every gram, you don't have the willpower. What's the point doing? Are you lazy? I'm like, you got a lot to learn, young man.
Speaker 1:A lot to learn. So there's no point taking advice from people, really, at that point in their life because they're still in school, they haven't dealt with a stressful job, potentially of kids, you know, bereavement, all these things are coming. So anyway, I wanted to share that story from one of the members because this shows a kind of similar approach, know, from the early days of the bodybuilding days and the personal trainer. She managed to get results, put weight back on, go through. She knew what she was doing, but she just needed accountability.
Speaker 1:And then menopause comes and blah blah blah. And really the end goal, the end thing that works is to be free from these limitations placed upon you based on the industry forty years ago. It doesn't serve us. It served the bodybuilders back then, but it doesn't serve me and you and everyone else because we don't live that life. Okay?
Speaker 1:So food freedom is the most important part. Once you're free from the food, once you're free from weight dictating if you feel good about yourself or not, once you feel free from good and bad thinking of food, you can start making better choices. You can understand they're gonna have Mars bars, they're gonna have chocolate bars, and have takeaways and all that's fine. Mostly what I need to focus on calories and protein is steps and just get on with my life. That really is the secret philosophy that is gonna break you free.
Speaker 1:But if you want to go down the other path and think, I have to measure everything, I can only eat certain foods, you gotta cut out all this and this and this, try it out and see how it works in your mindset. It's a cycle you're putting yourself in a psychological jail, and it's not something that's enjoyable as mentioned in the court earlier. So, yeah, I wanted to share a bit more about, the background of this because I think, like, how do we get where we are today? Why is this the mindset? Why do people struggle with food today?
Speaker 1:It's based on all of that. There's no specific one person to blame, but for us to understand the history that's happened, And I think to understand that, like, luckily for us, the research coming out and stuff is, you know, it could be in another universe. It could be that you have to be perfect trackers to get results. Imagine that. Imagine I said, yeah, you know, actually the research says, guys, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:You've got to weigh everything to the 1%. And if you don't, you're never gonna get results. Imagine that was the truth. Oh my god. That would be a sad universe to live in, but luckily it's not our universe.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, have a good day. If you are feeling behind or stuck or whatever, on Monday, starting something called a twenty one day lock in challenge, and it's just 15 pounds. So basically, what this challenge is, every day, you're gonna track your food. You don't have to hit your calorie target. Just track your food.
Speaker 1:We have to hit your steps target within 85%. So you're gonna check-in daily and say, look, I I track my food. Don't have to be perfect or tracked, and I hit my steps. Monday, Wednesday, Friday mornings, we're gonna do something sorry. Something called the morning radio.
Speaker 1:So I'll just be on an audio. You can all join. You can come on and talk, and I can have a chat with some members, and you can share your stories. You can listen and all this. So every morning, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, you get involved with the community, share some stories.
Speaker 1:Tuesday evenings, I got PhD, Paul Rimmer, who I've worked with for many years in my career in health and fitness to do a q and a with you guys. So it'll be on Zoom or Clubhouse, the audio platform. So you can come on, ask questions, get answers, and he's a no BS guy, you know, so you're gonna just get shoot questions. It's gonna come back, and you're gonna get answers quick. And if you've got anything lingering in your brain, like, oh, I'm not sure about this and that, he'll answer it for you.
Speaker 1:And then yeah. So if you manage to do twenty one days in a row of just tracking, not hitting your targets, just tracking, getting your getting your steps in. For those people that do that, at the end of the twenty one days, you'll end up a draw, and two people will win £100. So it's one of these small accountability challenges. I know some people are thinking, oh my god, the year is getting away from me.
Speaker 1:But in q two, as they say, I haven't got results. I feel behind. This is a chance to lock in twenty one days, super manageable. Yes, 15 pounds, but that's to just get you going, you know? Few live sessions.
Speaker 1:I'll be doing daily podcasts on the stoic philosophy by Epictetus, a lot of psychological stuff, short things. And we're really just gonna lock in for twenty one days and get some habits built, and we're gonna feel awesome at the end of it, all of us who do it. So I look forward to it. So, yeah, that starts on Monday. I'll post a link in the group.
Speaker 1:But guys, have a good day. Go for a walk. Don't be so don't be so hard on yourself, and I'll speak to you soon.