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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 one day at a time podcast. Take those wise words seriously. So into some questions coming through. One answer.
Speaker 1:I haven't lost any weight this week. What more can I do? Probably nothing. It's Thursday. Right?
Speaker 1:So your water weight might still be there from, you know, New Year's Eve, New Year's week. Just because you're not losing weight, you're not losing fat, I will keep saying this. It's important to realize you can be doing everything right, and your total weight doesn't come down. Don't worry about it. The actions you're doing, your calories, protein, LeanShield score being high.
Speaker 1:If those are in order, don't worry about the results because the results will handle themselves guaranteed. If you're doing what that means is if you're hitting your calories and your protein, your steps, and your LeanShield score, you are doing every single thing possible backed by decades and decades of research, randomized control trials, observation, all types of studies looking at this type of topic. You're doing everything you can, the fundamentals to lose fat, maintain muscle, and do what's best for your health. So just focus on that. If you look, you go on your scale, my weight, sir.
Speaker 1:For example, my weight before Christmas, it was like seventy nine point five, eighty kilos. The first time I weighed after Christmas, eighty five. Then yesterday, it was eighty three point three. Today, it's eighty three point three. Even though yesterday, I had a I had a day under my calorie target.
Speaker 1:My protein was good. I was more active. Oh my god. What did I do wrong yesterday? Nothing.
Speaker 1:It's just how it is. But my protein is get there. My calorie targets now I'm down to maintenance. I've been in a surplus for the last two to three weeks, by the way. Now I'm finally at an average rolling average of maintenance, which is nice to see.
Speaker 1:And, yeah, I'm not worried. I'm not concerned. I'm I'm doing what I can, and that's what that's what we need to focus on. And remember, that's what the stoics and stoicism is all about. Focus on your actions and your attitude, not the end result.
Speaker 1:If you keep putting your happiness and your mood on the end result, right, you're given power outside of your control. You don't have that control. Therefore, you're always gonna feel you're missing out or feel down. So, yeah. So looking at other questions, people asking about, workouts based on weight, so much reps should you aim for each exercise.
Speaker 1:So when it tells you to do like three sets of 10 reps on an exercise, we can't tell you what way to use because it varies so much between people. It depends on the equipment you got, depends on, you know, your experience level. You need to figure out what weight works for you. Always start light. So say for example, you're gonna do a it tells you to do dumbbell chest press.
Speaker 1:So you got two pair of dumbbells. You got a pair of dumbbells or two pairs. Sharpen my English up, guys. You're pressing. You might start with two kilos, and you go, that's way too light.
Speaker 1:You go, okay. Two kilos is too light. You try four kilos. You know? Still too light.
Speaker 1:That's the only way. That's the only safe way for you. It's the only way for you to figure out. We can't tell you the way to use because it does vary. And if we tell you to use five and you can only do two, you're gonna think why can't I do five, not two?
Speaker 1:Do know what I mean? What matters is the intensity for you. If the weight you're using so when it tells you to do between eight to 12 reps, what that means is, can you do eight to 12 reps where if you fall into the zone of eight to 12 reps, that's hard to do. Like, by the time you get to rep eight or rep ten and twelve, you haven't got much left. You are thinking, I'd be lucky to do one more rep.
Speaker 1:That's the intensity we want. That's what we mean by intensity. So use the weight that delivers that intensity. If you haven't got heavier weights and it's too easy for you, another way to increase the intensity is to go very slow on the reps on the way down or on kind of so say no you're doing bench, dumbbell chest press as the weights lowering down, you go really, really slow and then on the explosion side, you can still go up quite quick like boom, slow and controlled. Boom.
Speaker 1:Same with biceps, you curl it up, and then you curl it and then you let it curl down slow. That's a way to make it more intense. If it does still means you're doing 12 reps and it's still too easy, right, all you wanna do then is double the reps. Alright. Can I if if it's told me to do 12 reps too easy, can I do slow 25 reps?
Speaker 1:And then you wanna get to the rep 25 and then you're like, wow, that's I couldn't do it one more. Perfect. You've now reached the intensity you need for that set to actually count towards sending a signal to protect your muscle. That's as simple as I can make it, I think. So yeah.
Speaker 1:So that's the that's the kind of guidance on the thing. Okay. What should I do if the urge to binge is emotional rather physical hunger? So binge eating or eating through craving kind of by default is an emotional response, not physical hunger. When we realize this, we understand that sometimes food isn't the answer to the emotional urge.
Speaker 1:So a craving is a desire. Right? Craving and desire are interchangeable in a sense. I have a desire to change my current emotional state. That's basically what we feel, whether it's boredom, sadness, loneliness, well, you know, anxiety, we want to change your emotional state.
Speaker 1:We use a mechanism of food because it's pleasurable for us for a few minutes, and we think that if we have something that feels nice, it might make us feel better. But we know it's a trap because once we've eaten our food for the first minute or two, we've realized it hasn't satisfied the the craving, and we keep eating and it still isn't satisfying. Then with 1,000 calories down in chocolate, and we think, have I done this? I've ruined the day. I hate myself.
Speaker 1:And then you have another emotional response, which is like you feel like you've you're an idiot, essentially. You feel like, why am I always like this? And then you go down a spiral. Right? So what is the answer here?
Speaker 1:You know, there's many psychological views on this as psychotherapist, the schools of thought, stoicism, There's Eastern thought on this, like the Buddhists, and, you know, I'm gonna I'm gonna mention a few of them now. But, you know, if we look at the western ish view, which is the stoics and cognitive behavioral therapy, It is the reframing of a thought and not treating it like a fact is the first thing. So it's like, oh my god, I really want a bag of Maltesers like but then if you come in with rationality or if you were to speak to yourself like you speak to your best friend, you'd say, well, you've just eaten an hour and a half ago, so you're definitely not physically hungry. You are doing a habit right now and you like to comfort eating the night because you feel lonely or you want some pleasure, but that's never actually made you feel better. So therefore the answer isn't really the Maltesers.
Speaker 1:You think maybe the answer is something else. Can you wait it out? And you're saying, okay. Yeah. So that's a fact.
Speaker 1:And maybe recognizing that the fact is that you're not actually needing food. It's just like a change of emotional state. It might stop you from eating that bag of Maltesers, you know. However, the eastern side of things would argue that you even fighting the craving makes it worse. So this internal fight, and this is like it's kind of eastern thought, but also a guy Krishnamurti who was Bruce Lee's favorite philosopher and where Bruce Lee got all of his be Walter, my friend, and flow philosophy from.
Speaker 1:And his philosophy Bruce Lee had a philosophy of he was always creating a style of fighting, and then he realized the best style of fighting is no style of fighting is to do what is required in the moment, but to do what is required in the moment needs insane amounts of awareness without trying to fit yourself into a certain style, if that makes sense. Now how does that play out to what we're trying to think of here? When you have an emotional state of craving, desire, instead of fighting the desire to go away, which sometimes makes it even stronger, you need to be in a state of neutrality. In a sense, you see the desire come to being. I desire to have Maltesers or Oreo ice cream sandwich or a pear.
Speaker 1:I don't really desire I do desire pears to be fair, but, like, you know, it's not as intense as long as I want a Maltesers. I mean, you can you know, it's obviously nothing. It's not to do with the food. It's do, like, oh, want I something super sweet and crazy. So can I observe my inner world desiring the Maltesers?
Speaker 1:And can I be neutral about it? And I can I just watch it like I would watch a plant grow, you know, on fast speed? You just watch it grow. You watch it blossom. You watch it flourish, and then you let it watch it die.
Speaker 1:That's kind of the view that Easton's outlook for Christian Moody has is if you let it take its course without coming in and being the judge judgment or the judgment or the judge. If you if you don't come in as the judge and you don't come in as the fighter, you let it come and go. Right? A lot of meditation is kind of saying this these days, but it's true that the best action is sometimes no action. So what should I do with the urge of binge eating?
Speaker 1:Nothing. Just sit there. Why is there always a response required? Sit there, observe the binge in the mind, do not judge it. It is a craving.
Speaker 1:It is a thought. All craving is is a thought because if you were to be interjected with another thought at that moment, say you had a phone call from your friend saying, oh my god, someone's just crashed into your car outside. I guarantee you, you won't be craving Maltesers in the next ten minutes because your mind will be elsewhere. Right? And that just proves that it's a a thought.
Speaker 1:It's a a thought always building up a power in the mind about wanting wanting wanting, but we try and fight the thought, and we make it worse. Instead, let the thought be like a like a child. Just leave it be and it will calm down and go to sleep. And that's really for me personally, that's helped me the most. I feel like being very neutral helps understand why I even have a craving in the first place.
Speaker 1:I'm being very, very aware and honest about stuff as well. Not like, you know, I'm I'm hungry. I just look at it and I've realized that, Okay. Cool. And I let the wave I let the wave go.
Speaker 1:Come and go. Let the wave come and go. So try those two. I'm gonna leave you guys on that today because I think it's one of the important things that we we we do well all day, then it comes to the night, and then we go, oh my god. Why am I eating 700 extra calories in a night?
Speaker 1:Sometimes to do to lack of sleep, and you have an a a more likelihood of eating more calories. But, yeah, often it is just like our binge our thought to binge overtaking our mind. Be neutral. Be aware. Don't judge yourself, and you'll see it come and go.
Speaker 1:Let me know how you get on. Have a good day, guys. Speak soon.