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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.
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the one day at a time podcast. Someone mentioned in the WhatsApp group that they love the one day at a time mentality, and I remember a conversation I had actually with one of our members few years ago. I think, who was it? Maybe it was Jackie, maybe it was Sriya.
Speaker 1:I think it was Jackie. They were saying that they didn't quite get this one day at a time mindset, And I was explaining to them, there's not much to get about it. It's simply that if you can focus your, activity and your thought process and everything on today from now till bedtime, what can I do from now to bedtime? Because we can think about things we've got to do for the rest of our lives. Humans are weird, right?
Speaker 1:We can think, think about this, we can think about what's going to happen to us after we die. We actually are concerned about this. Some people are concerned about their legacy, what they leave behind, their name, their reputation, right? A lot of people actively work towards making sure their name lives on beyond their death. And this is something we can do, we can extract ourselves out of the now and we can really push ourselves all the way forward to infinity and then we can go all the way back in the past.
Speaker 1:And on this continuum of time this is where a lot of pain happens. A lot of anxiety kicks in, a lot of like what ifs come in, a lot of wasted energy really, a lot of procrastinating, daydreaming, that type of stuff, a lot of kicking ourselves, and it happens on our continuum. But when we say to ourselves, you know what, I'm just gonna do what I can till till bedtime. What can I do now? What's the one key thing I gotta do today?
Speaker 1:You know, haven't been tracking my calories and protein. I haven't been tracking. I haven't been getting my steps in. I haven't done any workouts yet. Like, I'm frustrated.
Speaker 1:It's like, hey. What's one of those things today that's gonna make it a better day? Sometimes it might be a workout, know, you might be like after the workout, I get an endorphin rush. Sometimes it's like I'm just gonna track today, you know. Some people you say I'm gonna track, but then you end up getting your steps in and then you end up doing a workout as well because things start compounding, you know, like there's in James Clear's Atomic Habits and in Tiny Habits that is kind of fork in the road when it comes to the morning, that there's a specific activity all of us do that if we do it daily, it tends to take us down the good path for that day that we build momentum on it, right?
Speaker 1:So for some people, if they don't get their morning walking or their morning workout in or their morning reading, the day tends to go the other way. But once they do those things in the morning, the day tends to go in a in a good direction, right? And I don't know what it is for you, but there's definitely something there. Right? So this one day at a time, and then you speak to Jackie.
Speaker 1:It's like, get it now. No. I get it. And it's kinda like sometimes it takes time, but I think it is important that we do focus on today. You know, this it is it is the only day you can act.
Speaker 1:You can plan the best worker program next week. You can plan to eat the best tomorrow. You can plan to do anything you want. You can plan to start a business next week or to do things next week. You can plan anything in the future.
Speaker 1:It's a procrastination mechanism. You can only act now. That's really the secret is the action is the results, right? You can't change if you're not changing your actions day to day. And this kind of wisdom has been passed down over the years, over the ages, it's been around since the ancient times up until today.
Speaker 1:And, you know, this is because it's useful. It's because it's true. And I think that a lot of people realize this, like living in the present. You see, you read this all the time. There's there's many books about this.
Speaker 1:There's a book called The Power of Now, for example, that kind of dows into this, and there's there's there's books that go into this in a deep way. But for our our well, like, for our practical purpose, when you can just focus on doing one thing, the anxieties doing multiple things kind of washes away, and that's why we do it. And that's why we focus on it. Anyway, I thought I'd share that because some people might be like, yeah, but I gotta you this doesn't mean you don't plan for the future. Of course you need to do plans and stuff, it's just about not dwelling too much on the plans and being an action taker instead.
Speaker 1:Much better to be an action taker, right? So I'm going cover a study today, does exercise reduce exercise activity? So there's calories burned through exercise. So if you look at this over a week now, now we look at it over a week as opposed to a day, because you know, some days you might walk more, some days you might walk less, maybe you'll have two workouts a week or three workouts a week. In the grand scheme of a week, it doesn't really make much of a difference if you do two workouts a week or three workouts a week, hell, even even two workouts to four or five workouts, right?
Speaker 1:Because you're only going from one to three to 4% of your waking hours in the gym or doing exercise. But really what the question is is that we burn calories for exercise, say that's 5% of your calories burned throughout the week, and then you burn between, you know, sometimes five, up to 30 to 40% of your calories, over the week from your NEAT, which is your non exercise activity. This is just standing up, moving about, walking, cleaning, fidgeting, anything you do is like movement, there's no exercise, right? And you'll notice like there's a lot of people when they drink coffee or have food or whatever, you can see their radiating energy, buzz in, they're on the move all the time, they can't stop, they're always moving, right? And you're like, how much energy they got?
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're subconsciously moving a lot, fidgeting a lot, and they're they're burning a lot of energy doing this throughout the entire day. You got to think of this as throughout the entire day. They're like really, you know, hyperactive we'd say back, you know, when you have those when you're in school and you have kids that just can't sit still, right? So, know, there's these like subconscious behaviors we do, and this research wanted to look at if you do exercise does your non exercise movement subconsciously reduce? I'm not saying you're consciously reducing it, but some people do, they go I've had a workout now, I sit on the couch all day, you know, I in a workout, that's enough, and that's not how it works, but there is a compensatory effect that happens right?
Speaker 1:And in this study they looked at it. So it's called energy compensation right? So when you exercise you expect your total energy expenditure to increase by the number of calories you burned in your workout. Right? This is what a lot of people think.
Speaker 1:They think, I've burned 350 calories in my workout, so I've burned 350 calories more today. Right? And your Apple Watch or whatever might say it and even though it's not that accurate and calories burned, apps like MyFitnessPal will say, hey, eat back those calories now. Right? You can eat back those calories because one, we think they're accurate, and two, that's what you should do.
Speaker 1:Right? And this is a big problem. This is a big problem. So the research team behind that behind the finding, they found that 72% of the calories show up in your total daily energy expenditure. So say no, I burned 100 calories from workout today.
Speaker 1:MyFitnessPalad said you can eat that back, but actually only 72 calories have been net burned extra, not a 100. It's not a 100%. It's 72%. Right? So what happens here is they they they call it energy compensation where your basal metabolic rate slows down in response to increased physical activity, and you also move less unconsciously, right, or deliberately in the hours or even days after a workout.
Speaker 1:Think of this. You go to a workout. You go, say they're a PT class and they they they kill you. You are dying in this workout. You can't move after it.
Speaker 1:You think that was horrible. Right? You are now You are so worn out that you need to eat. Afterwards, you're like, need something. I need I need water.
Speaker 1:I need all I need fruit. I need everything. Right? And I've been in that state loads of times after training, and you eat and you eat and you eat because you're so low on energy. You wake up the next day, you can't move, you're stiff, you're in pain, you're in DOMS, DOMS are know they're there for two or three days, you you've never felt pain like this in your legs before, you're not moving much on those those next three days.
Speaker 1:You feel sometimes a bit of a flu symptom because you are so inflamed, you feel like wow what the hell has happened. Right? This is where a lot of people go down. A lot of people go to, these worker classes and stuff, they get pushed to the pushed to the end and it ends up affecting you for days and your your total energy output goes down because you're so stiff and tired. And that's not really where we wanna be.
Speaker 1:Obviously, wanna push ourselves sometimes, but we want our workouts to gradually increase that they're manageable and they're not really impairing our energy out. Right? So it's important that we look at this. When they looked at more reviews of this study, they said that sixteen of the 24 studies they looked at found a decrease in non exercise physical activity in response to exercise. So basically, more studies did.
Speaker 1:Right? So it's important to notice, like, you you know, what we don't think about when we do workouts is we think about well, if I'm gonna do start doing three, four, five workouts a week, I need to start thinking one, I'm not gonna burn as many calories as I think. Two, how hard are they? Because I probably would be stiff for days and my total energy expenditure goes down. And three, my hunger levels will shoot up after these workouts because I'm gonna be so tired that my I'm gonna be quite ravenous actually.
Speaker 1:And these kinda go against your goals of fat loss. Now this isn't to say you shouldn't work out when you're trying to lose weight. No way. But it's not something you have to do to start with. Like, nothing is permanent here, you don't have to jump in and do all of these things at once.
Speaker 1:If you just want to focus on your energy intake, right, and you want to focus on it and your calories and protein in steps, that those three together mega powerful. You can just do those. Get them right. Get those going for weeks, maybe months. Then start incorporating some strength training, and it's like two workouts a week, and it's something easy and manageable for you.
Speaker 1:Right? You do that for a few months, you're feeling stronger then you go, I don't know I might do a weekly class or something like where they it's more high intensity stuff and I'll give that a go and you do that once a week and it doesn't push you to you know the brink but you really enjoy it You build up, there's no rush into all this stuff. When you rush into doing trying to do all these things, you just get worn out, get chewed up and spat out, it's not good, you're gonna be like, oh I'm feeling terrible. And this is what happens to a lot of people I speak to, they go all out, right? So if fat loss is your goal you've got to remember that sometimes exercise makes it more difficult because of your hunger and you're not gonna burn many calories do you think?
Speaker 1:Please don't look at your watches and go, I've burned 450 calories today, and then start second guessing your deficit and your total calories burned that week, are my calories right? Your calculation for your energy, your calorie targets are based on your weekly average, you're put into segments, know, it's not not much changes from two workouts to four workouts. If your job is still on a desk, you're literally sitting down all day, you were moving for two to three hours a week is not going to change your segment you're in. It just doesn't, that's not how it works. If you went from a desk worker to a construction worker and you're moving bricks all day, got a massive change in your energy expenditure, you are going to be burning way more calories.
Speaker 1:Right? So you've got to be honest with yourselves. I'm a desk worker. You know, when we look at the average person, we we sleep, we wake up, some people will, sit down again on the couch maybe until they go to work or they will drive to work for an hour, they'll get to work, they'll sit on a desk and they'd be on the desk for about seven hours and at lunchtime they're still on the chair, they're not really going for a walk, they drive home, they move about for a bit, and then they're on the couch six till nine before bed literally sitting down all day. Yeah?
Speaker 1:That's the lifestyle. Some people might be a bit different where maybe they're on their feet for another hour or two a day, but it's not much of a difference. Right? You gotta start thinking of how different your lifestyle has to be to be moving up in a segment of going from a low activity person to a moderately active person. And that's why 10,000 steps is a good place to start.
Speaker 1:It could be 8,000, it could be seven, it could be 10, it could be 12. Sorry. Because it gives you a certain step, like, you can't cheat the step count. Do you know I mean? Like, you you gotta move to get those steps in, and that's movement saying you're you're on your feet, you're moving about, you've been more active, some people do 20,000 steps, you know, that's a more of an indication that you're more active than that you're doing and starting to do two or three workouts a week.
Speaker 1:Right? That's why steps in our sense is more important for fat loss than the workout you're doing, which is true. Right? So these are things to think about. Another thing to think about as well is like, there's a difference between fat loss and weight loss.
Speaker 1:I've got a few questions. People are like, I'm losing weight. I'm I'm great. I'm not losing weight. What's going on?
Speaker 1:So your calories you're given, put you in a a roughly a 500 calorie deficit. The app will automatically change your target. So in my in some weeks, you might have your deficit might have dropped to two two fifty to three fifty, 400, then your calories got adjusted, and it goes back to around the 500 range. Unless you're very, very short, your deficit's gonna be a bit smaller. So for you, when you gain if you're if you genuinely are honest in hitting your targets, right, and you are you know most of the weight of your food, maybe you're even if you don't, you you are you're doing a good guess of it.
Speaker 1:If your weight's going up and hitting targets and steps, you're not gaining fat. Right? If you get worried about this, you still think you're gaining fat. This is the first thing to get. Once you see the truth of this, there's no going back.
Speaker 1:You can't go you can't be worried about your weight going up, right, when you know it's not fat. You only get worried that your weight's gone up on the scale from day to day because you think it could be fat. But if your targets have been hit and your steps have been hit and your weight's gone up, fine. Your body is 60 to 70% water. Right?
Speaker 1:If you don't drink enough water for one, you can hold on to more water subcutaneously. So you eat the food, your bowel movements might be slower, you might not be peeing frequently, you're holding more this food in. Like, for example, if you drink a 500 mil bottle of water, that's 500 grams of weight you've just added to your body. If you drink one liter of water, you've just added one kilogram of weight to your body. Right?
Speaker 1:That's not fat. That's just one kilogram of water has been added. Right? When it comes to how do you hold on to less water, there's a lot of tactics here that people use. You know, when it comes to weight, weight categories in fighting or in in sports or whatever, you know, people trend tend to drink more water.
Speaker 1:So their their peeing frequency goes up. They're holding less water in the body, and they're holding on to less water subcutaneously. So even though it feels like counterintuitive really, I'm gonna drink more water, should be weighing more because I got more water than me. It tends to get flushed out quicker, so you're holding on to less. And then you start realizing then when you drink more water, like two liters a day, that you might be holding on to less water and your weight starts moving down.
Speaker 1:And this is not fat loss. I'm never going to say, yeah, well done, you've now lost fat. No, you've just, you know, hold on to less water and because water is such a big percentage of your body, you can see some quite radical changes in your body, in your total body weight here. There's no need to manipulate this in a sense. Drinking two liters of water is good, is fine.
Speaker 1:There's no need to go to and drink five, six, seven, eight liters just to get an even bigger bigger, impact. Does that make sense? So patience is the name of the game. Right? You need to think about this.
Speaker 1:You've been trying to lose weight for maybe decades. Right? And you've yeah. You might have lost weight before. You might have lost a lot of weight before and you put it back on.
Speaker 1:Because on this journey you went on, you didn't learn the tools. You didn't become the person you needed to be that didn't ping pong back and forth between weight. You didn't become a scientist. You didn't learn anything. You simply wanted to lose weight at all costs.
Speaker 1:And you did that, but the costs are dear. And the costs mean you're gonna bounce back. Right? And you've probably lost muscle mass on the way as well, which isn't great. So you've got to think of these things.
Speaker 1:Like, on this journey you go now slow and steady, the frustration you feel from the weight not coming down instantly within a week or two and really not baking into your brain that it's likely just water weight, These are the challenges you need to overcome, that need to become part of your character as a person. You need to be able to steady yourself and be still and be calm in this chaotic part of the day for you because loads of things flood the brain. The old conditioning from Slimming World or Weight Watchers, this person said this, this person said that, I read about this diet, that diet, all of these things come and swarm in and trying to they basically come and attack you and they try and switch they try and swing you away from your calmness and then you start panicking and then you start thinking this isn't working, I should be losing, no no, that should be and you catastrophize and before you know it, you're in a full blown worry, you've canceled the app, you've gone, oh, it's not working, you've you've gone nuts, you've gone online, you've bought some juicer or whatever and you're gonna do this.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna go back to what I did before because that worked. I lost loads of weight doing a juice only diet, I'm go back to this. Silly. Obviously, not gonna work. You've just yes, you lost weight with it before, but it you didn't you you did it through essentially eating no calories and just, you know, starved yourself and you end up doing a slow and steady way.
Speaker 1:So when you have these moments of panic or worry, these are part of the process to really look at them, be patient with them, look at what's actually happening, look at why you're feeling pulled in by these things, and they're just part of your thoughts, and they're just part of your memory. You can't really get rid of your memory. You can choose sometime. You you can choose really to delete the memory, can you? Like some memories just pop out of nowhere.
Speaker 1:So these memories you've had from these old clubs and these old, you know, diets of them, they're they're always gonna pop into the brain. It's how you manage them. So you look at them. You know, is why stoicism is so important on this journey. It's like, it's not the things that disturb us.
Speaker 1:It's not my memory that disturbs me. It's my opinion about the memory that does. It's not the weighing scales number that disturbs me. It's my opinion about the weight and the scales that does disturb me. You know, that that that's really the where the power lies.
Speaker 1:And you have to become a person that doesn't get swung into the storm with these things. That's the way you free from this diet culture conditioning. It's the only way to break free. It's this patience. Right?
Speaker 1:It's doing the right thing. It's being cool and calm and steady, being collected in these moments of chaos. That's where the power is. And I promise you, once you've got that, no daily increase in the weighing skills can impact you. No.
Speaker 1:I've had I've I've gone over my calorie. I've had I've had a weekend of celebrations, like, I've ruined it. No. You you know you you haven't gained much from now. You might have gained no point two pounds of fat.
Speaker 1:It doesn't disturb you. You understand the numbers. You're logically thinking about these things. But we're not very logical thinking overall, I would say, is part of the problem we are we are in. So think about that.
Speaker 1:Think about that. Being cool amongst the chaos, stillness is the key as they say, and this journey becomes one of interest to you and you become a scientist and these obstacles become things you want to look through and work through actually becomes fascinating in a sense. Get fascinated by how the brain works and how all of this comes together. So remember the lessons from today. My voice is gone.
Speaker 1:Sorry, guys. Every time I compete, I've done two jujitsu competitions now. I did one in January. I won that one, and I got and then I did one last weekend, and it was a big one. I got silver.
Speaker 1:I noticed that because I put because of the card, you were so tough that my my voice scores are weirdly after them. Yeah. I don't know why that is. It's probably something to do with, like, my lungs collapsing or something. My lungs being inflamed or something like that.
Speaker 1:But I have an old assist, but it's bit strange. But I tell you what, you gotta be calm in the chaos in a in a in a in a martial arts fight. That's something I've learned a lot. You know, you can learn all all the moves you want, but it's about being able to apply them when you're face to face with some danger, face to face with something that's trying to take you away. It's a similar thing to this whole food stuff.
Speaker 1:Can you remain calm and take what you've learned from this journey so far and apply it in the moment when no one's watching or when people are there, whatever, and apply the right things. That's really what it's all about. But have a good day. Get your one big thing done, I'll speak to you all soon.