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.
[object Object]
Speaker 1 00:00:01 Hello everyone! So today is going to be some tough love on the podcast. And I say this and I'm going to be direct, but I do love you all. That's what it comes from. I care if you also want to break through this, this wall and hopefully get through to you guys. So I do get a lot of comments and questions that are very similar. one of them is, you know, my calorie tag is too high. I've changed it. Now, why would you do this if you're if you've if whatever you've done has worked in the past, which you're most likely have, and then the reality is, the more times you've tried to do past forms of diet and the more chances you've, like, regained weight, but not just regained weight, you've overshot and regained more weight because that's how it works. When you do severe diets and low calories, you lose a lot of muscle mass, and then by the time you regain that muscle mass where the body's happy, your hunger levels shoot up until your body recovers.
Speaker 1 00:00:52 Lost muscle mass. Usually you've got to regain more body fat percentage to get that part right. So it's it's a really it's a, it's a bad place to be. So when you give a new targets that are wow, this is higher than usual. That should be great news for you. Not I'm going to drop it because you dropping is doing exactly what you've been doing in the past. What's the point of starting something new if you're going to go back to old ways now, when you think your calories are too high, let me tell you straight, you have been eating more calories than the targets you are given. Okay, all the time. You think you think this is not true? So you say, Scott, to be given a target 2600 calories a day. There's no way I'm going to be losing weight unless I have made it another day for you to weigh, for you to weigh the weight you currently do. You have had to eat 506 hundred calories plus, on top of what the tag has given you.
Speaker 1 00:01:46 That's the reality is. So if you say I've been given a target of, say, 2200 calories a day, you say, no way I'm going to lose weight now. You've been on average consuming at least 2800 calories, maybe 3000 calories a day on average for quite a long time. Okay, and it might be shocking for you to admit it, but that's the truth. The numbers are there. The reason this happens is because a lot of you, you, you, you only think of your calorie intake in terms of your weekly calorie, your your weekday. Yeah, I don't need 2200 calories. No way. Because you're comparing it to Monday where you're motivated and you have nothing for breakfast. If he leaves for lunch and then you have a dinner and then you eat 1100 calories today, how am I not losing weight? Well, what happens is you do that for a few days, and then when it gets to the weekend, you are annihilating 34000 calorie again. Sometimes Fridays, Saturdays, Sundays are huge calorie intake days, right? So on average over a week, your intake is beyond what you think even or 1 or 2 days of the week you can think of.
Speaker 1 00:02:52 And this is cherry pick and this is a confirmation bias. You look at some of the days that you remember. Yeah, that was a good day that Monday three weeks ago and that Tuesday two weeks ago. And then you omit the fact and you don't want to accept the fact that the weekends are way heavier. Okay. Way heavier. God, I've been tracking my weekends honestly, most of this year and the majority of my weekends. The social I'm easily clearing 4000 calories, some days about 5000 calories. But you know what? It didn't feel like that. It didn't feel like I was eating 5000 calories because these foods are so hyper palatable, right? That you can eat them all day. Like you think about things like this. You you have a share bag of Doritos, 1200 calories, right? You have in your Starbucks Massive Frappuccino with the creams of five, six, 700 calories. You have a few digestive biscuits, you know, 300 calories cause you haven't even had a meal yet.
Speaker 1 00:03:50 So in your brain, you're thinking, there's no way I've eaten how many calories I'm not actually had any meals, but it doesn't matter. Your body's not going. That's a meal. That's a snack. No, that's not how it works. Your body doesn't know brands. It doesn't know names. It just goes macronutrient composition and energy. So it doesn't matter if you think something is a snack therefore less calories. This again that's something we mistake, right? Go on. Go and eat some of the other calories on the menu. And don't tell me you're not shocked by what you see. There's some starters in places I've been, 800 to 1000 calories. Starter all of the focaccia starter, please. Yeah, yeah, it's only 850 calories. Okay, great. And then can I have the double cheeseburger? with fries in here for the for the thing. Okay. 1300. Okay. We've already had 2000 calories. And can I have two glasses of wine, please? Large. Okay, that's another 400 calories.
Speaker 1 00:04:43 Say, well, I've cleared I've done 2500 calories there. That's one meal. And on a Friday night. Saturday you do this Saturday mornings you got you got so many other meals in the weekend. Does that make sense? So we and there's even research on this when they when they asked people to to to to estimate the calories they consumed. On average we were underestimating calorie intake by 1000 calories a day. And these were trained people. Some of these are dietitians and nutritionists. Okay. So what do you think you consume is way, way more okay than reality. You consume them. Not that's the first thing. So you're given these targets. You goes to high and dropping them first mistake. Come on. Let's not go down that route. Give yourself at least a few weeks of data to to put your put your own hypothesis to the test. If you really think you haven't been eating how many calories, why don't you actually eat that many calories tracked properly and then see what happens? Because if changes to happening, there's only 1 or 2 things that's happening there, right? Right.
Speaker 1 00:05:51 Are the calories magically changed meaning and value since the last time, or you are eating more calories than you thought before? And let me tell you, human error. We are definitely guilty of that. We don't like to admit these things because they're hard truths, but it's just the fact of it. It's the fact of it. and the sooner you accept that, the better is going to be for you. Okay? This is not a attack on anyone's character. We are all flawed. We are all greedy, greedy human beings. Desires run our lives. We want more, we want more. It's so nice. This. And our emotions are turbulent. And we eat with emotions dependent on other things. We are very messy people. All of us have got these coping mechanisms and they really don't serve us that well. so we start from that fact. I'm not saying, you know, you're going to be a saint and let's move towards being a saint. What I'm saying is acceptable for greedy buggers.
Speaker 1 00:06:50 Okay, simple. And once we accept that we can actually work from the facts and work from the truth of things, as opposed to thinking you're a saint of eating and these things, there's no way these things are true because you are bang on with calories and have never, ever eaten in your life, blah blah blah. Come on, come on, come on. We can't be going down that path. It's, We're just lying to ourselves. So start from the facts. That's the best form of self-love we can give ourselves. And then that's it. So that's the calories part. The next part is people thinking is about, adding more complications for the sake of it. Should I track my carbs and fats and salts and unsaturated fats and this and that and this and this and this and that and that and this. When was the last time you tracked all of those pieces of information for a long enough time and actually made a decision of it that actually helped you? The chances are slim unless you got medical condition or you don't need an elite athlete.
Speaker 1 00:07:50 Okay? The chances are, you know, in all that piece of information it's not going to be doing. Oh well. Last week I was 15g on average, high in carb. Okay, great. What do we do with this? Do you feel better? Maybe subjectively, maybe you and I. Okay, well, how many weeks of data have you got on this? Oh, well it's patchy, I got I did a week of it, and then three weeks ago it was too much. I didn't track because it's overwhelming. And then like seven months ago I did a week again. All right. So we really go I need long term consistent data to go off. You have way. So instead of thinking of like tracking everything, let's focus on tracking things that really are the important ones. Your energy intake measured via calories, your protein intake, and your step count. If you could have those three pieces of data for a consistent amount of time, most of you don't need anything more.
Speaker 1 00:08:43 Because if you're going to be losing weight, for example, your car is there, your protein is going to be there, help you with keeping your muscle and maybe building if you're doing weight training and satiety, and your steps are going to be a much bigger factor in your in your how active you are. Okay, those three if more if everyone in the world could just get those three in line consistently, everything will change. Everything will change now. So stop trying to add things that you think you need to add because you're not going to track it anyway. Again, this comes back to the fact of us as greedy, lazy human beings, which we are. I mean, of course we're not all lazy. And there we've got things we work hard on, but when it comes to nutrition or health and things like that, we have to admit that, no, we're not born with a desire to be absolute health machines. You know, like we've we live the lifestyle where we like a few drinks, we like eating out.
Speaker 1 00:09:38 We don't want to be kind of like doing things abhor us. And you know what I mean? We want to be doing fun things. This is a fact, right? So you can't fight against it all the time. You have to accept that. So let's start with a minimal. We can take on the maximum benefit. This is known as the law of the light. This is known as the law of the vital Few Pareto's principle. If you understand Pareto's principle, it applies to everything in your life, and it's a life changing thing. To understand 20% of something or 20% of your efforts generate 80% of your results. This famous Italian economist economist found out that 20% of people owned 80% of the land in Italy, 20% of the people owned 80% of the wealth. Okay, 20% of the roads have 80% of the traffic. Okay. 20% of your wardrobe is worn 80% of the time. Now, it's not going to be exactly 8020. It could be like 1882 and stuff like that or 3070.
Speaker 1 00:10:38 But the power laws are there when it comes to marketing or market share. First position typically has like 50 or 60% of the market share. Second position will have 25% and then third position of 5%. Same as Google search. I used to do SEO. If you were number one, you were getting about 6,070% of the clicks from the Google search. If you were number two, you get about 20. And number three, you're going to be five. After number three, it was literally pointless. Like you could be number four on search results thinking I'm number four on Google as amazing. No, it's not because the top three take everything. And really the top one takes everything. and this is just fact. It's everywhere you want to see it. So this applies also to what effort we should put into weight loss. What metrics we should focus on brings back the results. You hear the saying, you know, your hobbies are made in the kitchen. It's 80% higher, 20% training. Okay.
Speaker 1 00:11:32 It is 80% 90% nutrition, 10% maybe like additional activity, but within the the nutrition part. Carl, if you were to rank them top three if you've got calories. Obviously number one because you need the energy balance to be in a deficit to lose weight okay. Like then you've got protein and steps okay. These and those are the two big. Those are the three are the things that deliver the aid time after time shown all the time. So if that's true why do you want to spend. So like think of it this way. If 20% of the metrics which is calories protein steps deliver 80% of the results, that must mean that the 80% of effort in the other metrics only bring back 20% of results. Does that make sense? So if 20% of our efforts or metrics bring 80% of the results, then the other 80% of metrics only bring back 20%. Most people are in the eighth. Spending 80% effort. Okay, on the metrics 80% of the time on those metrics. For 20%, that's where most people are wasting the time.
Speaker 1 00:12:49 Should I eat six meals a day of two meals a day? That's in that effort. Most people do an 80% effort for 20%. That's where you know you're getting minimal back. Oh, should I eat sweet potato or white potato? Should have white rice or brown rice or should I like should I do three sets or two sets? Should I do 20 minutes of cardio, 30 minutes cardio? Should do fasted cardio or cardio after my workout? After I've eaten. None of these can matter. Our goal is weight loss. Now these matter few goal weight loss, right? It's like you're in. You're wasting your time in the 20, you're in the 80 and you spend the time on the 20. But like Britain is doing now, we've ignored we're ignoring our biggest partner in terms of, economic partner, the EU. And we're spending it on, oh, we've made a trade deal with Japan are brilliant mate 0.1% and 0.2 percent increase in some, in goods. But let's ignore the biggest trading partner that we have not got customs and access to now, which is right there.
Speaker 1 00:13:48 The big boys, the ones that are would deliver in most benefit to us, is right there now not to worry about them. Focus on Japan. That's what you're doing when you're saying, oh, I want to track like my salt intake. And what about my ratio of carbs and fat? should I do two sets of three sets of four sets? That's your. In Japan world, you need to come back to the EU world. The EU is in your face. There are obvious benefits in front of you. No, no. Ignore them. Right. So come on. You see, we need to grow up, I reminded myself as this. You can get over complicated things all you want, over complicated things all you want. Not going to be to your benefit at all whatsoever. It's just a waste of time. and then. Yeah, okay. The last one is, you know, should you eat back calories you've burned? Like, should you subtract calories you burn from exercise? In short, absolutely not.
Speaker 1 00:14:49 to put it simply, if you sleep, eat eight hours a night, you're awake for 16 hours a day. 16 hours a day. Times seven is 112 hours a week. You're awake. If you did three big workouts for 60 minutes and I mean 60 minutes of work three times a week, that is only 2.6% of your waking hours. It's even less a percentage of your actual hours alive for the week. So if you think those 2.6% of your waking hours is more impactful on your calories burned than your eight hours a day of work. Okay, so you're awake eight hours a day. Okay, pretty much for work. And you go 816, 2432. Say. Say 40. Say 40 to 50 hours, which is about 30 to 40% of your waking hours is at your job, right? That's way bigger percentage than three workouts a week. So your job, what you do for your work as a much bigger impact on your on your how active you are. Right. So if you're a teacher or you're a construction worker or you're a desk worker, these are huge impacts.
Speaker 1 00:16:00 If you really wanted to be a different type of active, if you want to be an active person and your desk worker, okay. And then you moved on and you did three months on a on a building site. Oh my God, your calories burned would go through the roof. I mean, if you stayed within, if you could eat more calories and you could get into a deficit far easier, that's got a much bigger impact and work out. So we take you into account how active you are as a whole over the week. So we look at your job will how many workout you do a week on average even though it's a tiny percentage, we still play a factor into it. and then we look at other factors and we give you an activity score for the week. So you don't need to eat back calories because of a workout. We've already accounted for that minuscule percentage, so don't worry about it. And here's the worst thing. Activity trackers whilst they're good at heart rate. And yeah.
Speaker 1 00:16:52 So they're quite good for step counts and heart rate. None of them are very good for calories burned prediction. So say no. Your watch tells you you've burned 500 calories. The truth is, you've actually burned maybe 250 calories when you add energy compensation into the mix, which means your body down regulates the rest of the day after workouts because it wants to lower energy out. Right? So you've just done a workout. It doesn't like the fact that that's that much that's happened. So recoup. Right? So your metabolic rate drops a bit. So say 250 calories. Energy compensation says only 70%. Isn't that. So 70% of 250 I can I'd say 200 200 calories 200 so 200 calories. So your watch says you burn 500 net. You've added 200. Okay, but then you eat back 500. So now you've added 300 calories on top and you've messed it all up. Does that make sense? Again, these numbers aren't perfect, but that's what people do on other apps like MyFitnessPal and it really messes them up.
Speaker 1 00:17:52 It's like, I'll meet you back my calories and stuff like that. Listen, you shouldn't be looking at a day to day. You need to be looking at yourself as an average over the week. That's why look, the the food example is perfect because you can't look at a day to day because you are going to omit the weekend. You have to look at my average calorie intake is likely going to be higher than my targets because I'm looking at my weekdays, but I'm not accounting for weekends. But if I did account for weekends, my average shoots up okay. That's the same with your energy out. Okay if I've done my workout once or twice a week, but like I'm doing sitting on a chair the rest of the week. So that brings my average way down. Okay. Makes sense. So we need to look at it as an average over the week. And that's why the weekly check ins look at your data on average and make tweaks based on your actual data, not predictions. And like who says this? Who says are let's just go from facts.
Speaker 1 00:18:48 what else? I think that's it guys for today. yeah. Again, nothing on anyone personally. Again, I remind myself of these as well every day. we just need some tough love. Something we need to be told. That's the truth. If any of you want links to the research studies about know diets better for fat loss. Okay, well, that's another one I mentioned. No diet is better for fat loss if calories and protein are the same in the diet. So if you've got keto, intermittent fasting, low carb, high fat, whatever diet, if calories in protein are the same in those diet you do, you'll have the same fat loss results. So today you could go super high fat, but your calories and protein are the same. Tomorrow you can go super low fat, super high carb, calories and protein the same. You love the same fat loss results that might blow your mind, but that's the fact. So we don't need to be concerned about carbs and fat ratio in our diet.
Speaker 1 00:19:39 If fat loss is the goal, focus on calories and protein. again, medical reasons, you may want to look at it, but in general, no. And that's it guys. So just a bit of positivity back to this. Yeah I mean have a good day. Obviously one day at a time. Live from today till midnight. Around midnight whenever you go to bed. don't just distract yourself too much with too much data. We want minimal data. Really? Maximum impact, minimal time, maximum impact. So we have more time for our actual lives. Your friend, your family, your work. Things are more important than your ratio of carbs and fat intake today. Whether you've consumed a bit too much salt today and, you know, like, come on, spend your time on other important matters and the quality of life will shoot up. Hopefully this will free you from all the time. Think of all the time you spent thinking of all these questions that don't matter. That the 80% of effort you've all put in to the minuscule 20 you get back, or less 10% you get back.
Speaker 1 00:20:46 Think of all that time you spent. The research is now online looking at articles, looking at influencer videos. All this stuff waste of time. Hit the fundamentals. You'll see they work and then you won't even give a shit about that stuff. Then you're like, I don't care what I'm doing. The fundamentals go away, but bugger off. You don't mean that's what I look at it. I'm like, soul mate, I'm doing the fundamentals. Go away. I don't need it. I don't need to go into all of this all the time. I've spent my years researching deep into it all. And it comes with the conclusion, like many of the people that's been in the industry for 30, 40 years, do the fundamentals and grow up, go and live your life. And that's my message for today.