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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, you nutters. Now you're listening again to the one day a time podcast. Hopefully, it is sorting you out and your brain, for another good day. But today, I've got two very important studies actually. You better strap in and listen because these two studies and the kind of lessons from them are potentially gonna change your life.
Speaker 1:They do change your lives actually when you realize these things. The first thing to realize is, like, the fundamentals and all that. There's a few studies out there that if you really grasp them, they can change your life or, you know, grasp certain concepts as opposed to, like, the tactics where if I did fifteen minute high intensity cardio versus twenty five minute low intensity, what's best for fat loss? No. No.
Speaker 1:No. They're they're they're the minors. And as Jim Rohn once said, one of the best personal development coaches of all time, don't major in the minor things. Okay? Don't spend all your time on the minor things don't matter.
Speaker 1:Anyway, let's get into it. First one, the vicious cycle of your dieting. I have done a podcast on all the studies on this and why it is vicious and also dangerous, so please listen to that. But this one is a slightly different approach to it. So you all know you're dieting.
Speaker 1:You know you become highly motivated. You lose 20 pounds. It's very unrealistic how you did that. You probably, like, did, like, James diet or you did a fasting or something that doesn't align with your lifestyle, and then you put a bite back on, and then you feel terrible, and then you go, what is the point? I hate myself.
Speaker 1:Go into a phase of maybe overeating, and then once you feel motivated again, you'll buy the first plan you see on Facebook or the someone seeing the works and then you fall into trap again and again and again and again. Hope is a killer. Right? This hope. I will hope this one works.
Speaker 1:Hope this one works. It can dangerous game to play. But, anyway, this study, 36 adults, 64% female, 36% male. Yeah? They wanted to look at in-depth.
Speaker 1:They wanted to speak to them about it, which is different really to the other ones. So this is what they looked at. They saw that there was a first stage to enter in the yo yo diet cycle, and there was two major things they saw. It was either one, making social comparisons caused the first phase to start, or it was experiencing weight stigma. So what do we mean by social comparisons?
Speaker 1:We know, you know, comparison is a thief of joy or compare and despair. We know this. Right? But in the research says this, no matter how strong or lean or attractive you are, you can always find someone who's stronger, leaner, and more attractive. K?
Speaker 1:The the ceiling is endless when you do comparison. You can go either way. You can find someone way beyond you, and you can find someone way beneath you. Right? And it's a dangerous game to play because if you're gonna feel better about yourself, you compare yourself to those who are below you in a sense of what you're comparing to.
Speaker 1:So maybe wealth or, jobs or, like, where you are in life or whatever, and then you do it up as well. And it's very destructive. Very, very, very destructive. It's it's it's a fool's game to play. Okay?
Speaker 1:So in the study, the younger participants were actually more vulnerable to this. Okay? So a 19 year old female, for example, said this, on the Internet, everyone is really beautiful and really put together. Now, obviously, 19 year old, I mean, the frontal cortex doesn't fully develop or turn on in in a sense until your mid twenties. That really is a statement.
Speaker 1:If you were to critically analyze it or do some CBT on that, you would go on the Internet. Everyone is really beautiful. Okay? The word everyone is obviously is an exaggeration and really put together also an exaggeration. We all know that social media is our highlight reel.
Speaker 1:Right? Just everyone's highlights. Some people will utilize showing some downsides or maybe something not a highlight, but will turn it into a highlight. Does that make sense? There's always a story, but there's always a mission behind it.
Speaker 1:Social media's lost its innocence where, yes, there used to be people, you know, uploading a gallery of 250 photos from a social event on Facebook, you know. When I was in school, as you know, you'd you'd go to a six one party or you'd go into a school event, and then next minute, you know, your friends uploaded 267 photos are uploaded on target view, and everyone looks mental. Like, everyone is just like, there's no one really care cameras there. Everyone's having a good time. There's no pause in, really.
Speaker 1:You know, those days are gone. It's now who are you reserved and what
Speaker 2:do you want to be seen
Speaker 1:as online? Okay. So that's one path that calls people this comparison. So she didn't perceive that these celebrities and influencers or extreme genetic outliers, which is important, which is their career is to basically stay camera ready. She saw that as the the normal standard of human beings.
Speaker 1:Now it's important to realize that if you want to be like someone else, you must you can't cherry pick. You have to say, will trade my entire life to be theirs. So you can't say well that person's got like six pack abs and stuff and then I go okay you want the six pack abs do you? And you go yeah I do, I go okay. That person hasn't had a meal out with their partner or family or social event in the last seven months.
Speaker 1:That person stresses out every day about their food intake. That person thinks you have to do cardio every day, so they always have to work out every day or they feel terrible. That person also has missed out on big social things that are like birthdays, Hindus, everything. Okay? Do you want to live that lifestyle?
Speaker 1:You say no. Now you say, can you have abs and also be balanced? Of course. But it's it's difficult for women, especially because your body fat percentage is higher than men. Arbors maybe show at a lower percent body fat.
Speaker 1:So you you you can't just do it. Same with people who look at someone who are business people, entrepreneurs, and they go, I'd love my own business. I'd love to be that person. You go, well, would you trade all of your evenings where you just clock off work at 5PM and you can chill, have dinner with your with your partner and the kids if you got kids, or do you want that there is no end day ever anymore? And the the weekends don't even matter anymore.
Speaker 1:There is no weekends. It's just every day is the same.
Speaker 2:Would you and you're under
Speaker 1:stress and if everything falls in your head? They go, no. I don't wanna. Well, you you can't just want one part of that journey then. Do you
Speaker 2:know what mean? You can't do it.
Speaker 1:Same with people I like, you know, you look at billionaires or, like, no. You're really like, even, like, multi, multimillionaires who are just on the go all the time. And you see some of these musicians now and comedians and stuff, and they they come out and they're like, I'm on tour. I'm on tour all the time. Like, I haven't seen my partner kids in ages.
Speaker 1:I am run by a team of people who are just, like, utilizing me to generate revenue across the country,
Speaker 2:and I just you know, this my life is here.
Speaker 1:You see me on stage, like, I'd love to be a comedian, but
Speaker 2:then you're like, but would
Speaker 1:you like the background of it as well? Who knows? So remember that. Remember that. So another one was comparisons of closed dome.
Speaker 1:A twenty year old male felt the need to match his friend's physiques while a 25 year old female said, most of the women in my life constantly dieted. Okay. So that's the comparison thing. Experiencing weight stigma. Almost everyone in the study remembered being called fat by classmates, family members, or in one case, ballet instructors.
Speaker 1:The dance instructors, hey, I've heard stories about these people, and I've heard they're really, really bad. They will come up to you, poke your stomach, and be like, next time, I don't want to see your lunch. Wow. Wow. A 70 year old female, for example, still feels stung by remarks about her body made more than half a lifetime ago.
Speaker 1:Guys, you know, what do we do about this? Well, first of all, it's awareness of it. Second of all, these people, to make remarks like that makes them makes them self makes them not self aware at all. And I kind of feel sorry that they don't see the damage they would do, know, like, how can you go around and speak to people like that knowing it's a delicate topic? Like, for me, let me give you examples, real life examples of me.
Speaker 1:Okay, so if I notice someone blushing, so if I see someone if I'm in a social social scenario, and it's a group and, like, my friend comes over and it's a new friend meeting another friend, and I notice my friend is blushing or going a bit red, I don't say, mate, why are you going so red for? And make it worse for that person. And this has happened to me loads of times because I've got, a face facial condition called rosacea. So any changes in room temperature or sometimes even body temperature, it can be triggered sometimes by thoughts as well. So it's kinda like, it's not embarrassment.
Speaker 1:It's like, I feel a heat and then it just doubles down. Right? And it goes really red. And there's been numerous times in my life where I've been in a social scenario and someone will say, why are you going so red for? Why are you so red?
Speaker 1:You know? And you're like, don't you think I know that my face is on fire right now? Because I what I always say is and I get a flare up on it. It is flames. I my head is boiling.
Speaker 1:I could be truth. I don't need someone to point that out to me and make me feel worse about it. Same with when I now I've how I empathize with people when I see if they've they blush or their face goes red and different type and and I understand what's going on. It's the same with people men who lose their hair. You know, I'm I'm 31 now.
Speaker 1:So, like, you know, sometimes in the back of your hair, look all you thin and you think of treatments and all that. Right? And you think it's a it's a tough thing to go through. And and there but some people will will in openly see someone with, like, you know, receding hairline or whatever or, you know, and will say, oh, you're losing your hair, mate. I will have out in front.
Speaker 1:And it's
Speaker 2:like, have you not
Speaker 1:got no self awareness at all? None. Zero. Oh, you're just gonna do this all your life. It it honestly baffles me.
Speaker 1:So when I read these remarks as well, it just gotta be better people than that. Anyway, let's move on. There's an end of second stage of the cycle. So you've either been you've either had this comparison trigger or you've had this remark trigger. Second stage is called undergoing the cycle.
Speaker 1:So when participants came to believe the comments others made about their weight, their behaviors changed. Right? An 18 year old female said she couldn't eat in front of others because she felt they were judging her. A 22 year old female said she would go home and comfort herself with food after being told she needs to lose weight. Actually losing weight didn't necessarily bring the relief they expected, either it wasn't enough or it just made them more aware of their perceived shortcomings.
Speaker 1:But it was even worse when they regained the weight. The participants said they felt self hatred because they'd gotten lazy and let themselves go. And lazy is in commas, quotations and let themselves go quotations. That led some participants to more extreme measures. One said she became obsessed with eating less than her calorie counting up recommended.
Speaker 1:Others described unsustainable fad diets or exercise volume. Okay? This is big. This is the you know, if you if this is kind of,
Speaker 2:what's the word I'm looking for? This is like oh, I can't even think of the word.
Speaker 1:Is this rare, isn't it? Yes. Is this rare, isn't it? Is this something that you're like, that's me. That's being me.
Speaker 1:That's currently me. You know? Stop right there. Okay? You're not gonna stop these thoughts because they are baked in.
Speaker 1:You're gonna have these thoughts. You're gonna have thoughts that you're being lazy, that you let yourself go, and you're gonna have these thoughts, and people are gonna say nasty things, and we can't stop other people's comments. We can't stop family members. We can't do any of that. What we can do is we can realize that the losing weight didn't necessarily bring the relief expected, which is one takeaway from the study, which is true.
Speaker 1:You know, just because you lose weight doesn't solve any problems. It might help sometimes, but it's not a guarantee. That goes to tell you it's not just a physical thing, it's more of a mental thing. And usually the mental thing is that whilst other people can form these opinions in our heads, and they're kind of like we think about them, The mental prison is we created ourselves. So we kind of take things so literally.
Speaker 1:For example, when it says there about someone saying, that she felt that people were judging her when she was eating, Like, she's saying that as if it's a 100% fact, but we know that people aren't judging when you're eating. They're too busy in their own lives. So we must be able to look at some of the statements or core beliefs we have and go, is this core belief actually fact, or is it me making it worse because I think that's happening? And there's a lot of these things happening. So people don't care about how you look in the gym.
Speaker 1:You might get one out of a thousand gym goers who will go and make all they doing. Right? Who cares about them? No one cares what you what you look like in the gym or how you're training. No one thinks you're looking silly.
Speaker 1:No one thinks you're you're no one's looking at you eating unless you're eating, like, one of those challenge burgers, which is, like, 18 inches high. Right? No one thinks you look terrible in that outfit today. People are walking through life seeing so many different people every day. No one's going, oh my god.
Speaker 1:Look at that person and how overweight they are and all these things. Right? If anything, when I I remember reading the book on, trauma, how was it called now? I can't remember. He was talking about how people became invisible when they were obese, and that's why they wanted to eat.
Speaker 1:They wanted to be invisible humans. So they lost weight. And then people started noticing them and talking to them. And then they were like, oh, I like this because they had this like trauma response. And then they were like, I want to hide.
Speaker 1:And they, they knew that if they ate loads and got overweight and obese that they would be essentially invisible to other people in life and because people are ignoring them. So you think like the other people's opinions and stuff can't be our main focus. Even though it plays a part in sometimes our start in arguments, we must look at it clearly. We must do what in cognitive behavioral therapy they do is to look
Speaker 2:at these things. Is it
Speaker 1:true? What emotions am I feeling now? What will my best friend say about this statement? Okay. What do I say what what what if the alternative is true?
Speaker 1:How do I now feel about the statement? You can go through this phase, right? So this happens, and then the third the third stage, and not everyone gets to this stage, is then challenging the cycle. So some participants described ways to break out of the cycle, right? One said she stopped following any specific diet.
Speaker 1:Several others said they reframed exercise as something they enjoy rather than to burn calories. Yeah. Brilliant. You know, you're not on any specific diet, and it's quite confusing sometimes because you're kind of there is your diet. If you went to a doctor, said, what's your diet like?
Speaker 1:They're not asking you if you're on paleo. They're just saying, what foods are you eating? Like, what's your diet made out of? It doesn't necessarily mean that you're following a specific diet. So when we say you stop following a specific diet, that's great.
Speaker 1:But your diet in general can be any food you want. And you know this now. You know that this mostly, if I'm on weight loss, I'm gonna hit my calorie deficit, which is a moderate deficit. It's never severe. So never eat less than your target consistently because you think it's gonna accelerate stuff.
Speaker 1:It's just going to make things harder for you down the line when you've gone into a deficit of 1,000 calories a day and it's not going to be good. And obviously burning calories from exercise doesn't play a major role in your fat loss anyway. If you, you know, in terms of your waking hours, all the hours you're awake over the week, if you worked out for five hours a week, it's about 4% of your hours a week. It's nothing. More you're doing for those 96% other hours is way more important.
Speaker 1:96% of time. Right? So the common thread was in this challenge was self awareness. Recognizing this endless cycle, unsatisfying weight loss pursuit was making them miserable. Right?
Speaker 1:But sometimes no mindset shift could permanently banish thoughts about their weight, and this is true. A 21 year old female compared it to an addiction recovery saying it's pretty much always on her mind. Right? So now everyone goes to stage three, sometimes stage one and stage two. So I think it's important that if you go through this cycle, and a lot of you are gonna go through a kind of phantom Yo Yo cycle when you start on, you know, doing one of these plans.
Speaker 1:It's like, yes, there's words that might trigger some of these concepts from the past diet. So you think calorie deficit, calories, you you need to chill out about it. It's just energy. That's all it means. How much energy am I consuming?
Speaker 1:And then I'm looking at another macronutrient protein. Okay. Great. Great. Building blocks of muscle.
Speaker 1:Keep my muscle strength. Brilliant. This is gonna
Speaker 2:make me feel fuller for
Speaker 1:my meals. Brilliant. Because I got my energy intake, and I got this cool super protein thing to consume. Great. That's all I need to focus on.
Speaker 1:I'll eat whatever I want. Right? I'll eat whatever I want. You will have you will start having moments where you'll think my progress isn't fast enough. I've you've lost 10 pounds and you or 15 pounds or 20 pounds, and you start thinking, oh, I can't do this anymore or whatever.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I can do this. But there's nothing really that you're doing differently. You're eating, you should be anyway, eating food you enjoy. All you need to be doing is tracking the self awareness. Sometimes if you don't track one or two days, fine, no problem.
Speaker 1:But when it comes to like you thinking maybe put your foot off the glass maybe, I don't know if I can keep doing with this, you just think on a day to day basis, can I just track what I'm eating, and can I eat the foods I like? Yes. Okay. Okay. And on that basis, will I have days where I eat the foods I like and actually I'm gonna go over my, targets?
Speaker 1:Yes. Okay. Is that fine? Yes. There'll be days where I don't have much protein.
Speaker 1:That's fine. Did I try to my best of ability? Yes. And no problem. So there's no real necessity to stick to a very rigid plan.
Speaker 1:You can eat less calories slightly today, more calories tomorrow, the averages of what matters. I don't suggest going deeply under all the time, all the time, all the time. A few 100 calories is fine to build up for the weekend, but it's important to realize that we're gonna go through these cycles, and they're very normal. You go through a cycle of highly motivated, I'm on on the path of results. One week you plateau a bit, and you think, this for me?
Speaker 1:Is this right? Is it working? Oh my god. I'm gonna put my foot off the gas maybe and, then just go back. You needed to retreat back to the basics when you start feeling overwhelmed.
Speaker 1:And you might say, you know, today you started feeling like, oh, I start to feel overwhelmed today. Really, really overwhelmed. I don't know what to do today. Feeling overwhelmed. Said, I go, right.
Speaker 1:What's the basics? What's the one big thing today that would just keep momentum going as a nice base layer? And you go, I don't know. Maybe I'll just okay. I'll just track what I'm eating, and I say, I don't wanna I don't care about protein.
Speaker 1:I I'm just gonna eat the foods I like today, I feel like, yeah, and I'm gonna track it. Brilliant. There we are. One big thing. Just track where you eat.
Speaker 1:And no matter if you feel like having more chocolate today, you feel like having, this and that. Yeah. And all it could be, you're so overwhelmed with the pieces of your of your work as well. Your work, your family stuff. It's like, well, one thing I'm do in my work today, that's gonna mean that it it kind of gets me momentum going, but I'm not thinking about 10 other things.
Speaker 1:I'm just gonna do one thing. So for example, I'll have 10 things to do. I'm like, oh my god. Got 10 things to do. Alright.
Speaker 1:What's one thing out of those that if I just get it done, it will it will make me feel better? That one. Okay. I'm just gonna do that. Block everything else out.
Speaker 1:That's kind of how to think about these things. You know? So when you're overwhelmed, just bring it back to basics. Bring it back to basics. Bring it back to base.
Speaker 1:And then sometimes you can add a few of these on top of each other. You can track your calories. You can track your protein, you can hit your steps, heck, you can even do a strength workout, you can go for a nice walk with your friend, you can listen to a podcast, you
Speaker 2:can read a bit of
Speaker 1:your book, you can do three main tasks in your work, you can pick up your kids from school if you got them, you can can do loads of things in one day, you're like, this day was brilliant. Yeah. Cool. You'll have those days. Don't worry about it.
Speaker 1:But some days, it's just one of those things you do or two of those things. That's fine. That's part of the process, man. Part of it. This podcast has gone for on for a bit too long, so I'm gonna do the next part of this podcast tomorrow, which isn't about yo yo dieting.
Speaker 1:It is the cardio benefits of strength training. So tune in tomorrow to listen to that, but have a good day, guys. If you're overwhelmed, do what I just said. One big thing. Feel on top of the world, smash it.
Speaker 1:Keep going because these days, you're not gonna have them forever, but they're there. You know? Grab the bull. What's it called? Grab the bull by the horns.
Speaker 1:I've been terrible at saying this today. I'm just completely blanks. Anyway, have a good day. Speak to you soon.