Good morning everybody, hope you're having a good day as always straight into this one. I've got two studies to talk about that are very very important. The first study is, and the general theme of this one is we become like the people we spend most time with. We've heard the rule you become like the five people you spend most time with but is it actually true and is there concrete evidence behind this? Hint, tip, whatever you want to say, yes big proof.

Okay let's go. So what this study says, it wanted to prove, it wanted to prove that. So the first major study on the depth of social influence was conducted and examined from the Framingham Heart Study, one of the largest and longest running health studies ever so twenty to thirty years in length. Participants were probed with all sorts of demographic questions including questions about family members and friends. The results of the study found that if a friend of yours becomes obese, you are forty five percent more likely to gain weight over the next two to four years.

Right, more surprisingly the research has also found that if a friend of your friend becomes obese, your likelihood of gaining weight increases by about twenty percent even if you don't know that friend of a friend. So you to your friend, if your friend becomes obese forty five percent chance, but if your friend of a friend becomes obese twenty percent chance, okay. So still, an influence by someone you don't even know. The effect continues even one more person. So if a friend of the friend of your friend, alright, stay with me now, develops obesity, you are still ten percent more likely than a random chance to gain weight as well.

Basically halves every time each time you go out. Your friend forty five percent chance is obese, your friend of a friend if they're obese is a twenty chance and if that her friend of a friend of a friend ten percent chance. Using the same social network data, the researchers also found that you are sixty one percent more likely to be a smoker yourself if your friend smokes. If a friend of your friend smokes you are still twenty nine percent more likely to smoke and for a friend of a friend of a friend the likelihood is eleven percent. They also found that a friend who lives within a mile and is happy with their life increases the probability that a person is happy by twenty five percent and if a friend of a friend of a friend is happy with their life then you have a 6% greater likelihood of being happy with yourself.

Okay. So consider the other studies suggest that a £7,400 raise only triggers about 2% increase in your happiness. So if you raise go from $30 a year to 37,400, 2% increase in happiness apparently okay. I don't know if you think that's true or not but let me okay, so then since the research date has about two to three decades the researchers show a real cause and effect relationship between individual friends and friends of friends and weight gains. That's why we have to be careful about what influences we allow into our lives.

So you're not the average of the five people you surround you with, it is way bigger than I. You're the average of all the people you surround yourself with. So we really need to take a look at who influences our friends. I think we don't have to go three levels out but if we think about it this way. If you were made to Bruce Lee, okay, Bruce Lee was heavily influenced by Krishnamurti.

His ideology, his martial arts after he saw Bruce Lee basically had a detriment, really bad back injury, the doctors told him he might not ever be able to walk again and for a year he was out of action in his prime and he just read a lot and he read a lot of Krishnamurti, who then changed his entire philosophy on fighting instead of thinking styles, the Chinese way of fighting, the American way of fighting, he was like there is no way of fighting, freedom in the moment you have to see in the present moment to act with total awareness that's when you will be the kind of at your best. So he got rid of styles and would just saw what is in front of him. That comes from the teachings of Krishnamurti. So if we think about it, if you look at someone like Bruce Lee, we look at his influences Krishnamurti or these other people we can see their positive influence on him and therefore if we are with Bruce Lee we're going to have the influence through Bruce Lee of that other person Krishnamurti. Does that make sense?

So when we look at our friends who are they hanging around with? Who are influencing their thoughts? What are they reading? Because whatever they get influenced by will slip through into their conversations and actions with you and even if you don't know it it'll impact you. So do we The answer The question is, do we need to get rid of friends who've got bad business?

It depends on the person. If you can see If you can see that's my friend, been friends with him for years, he or she for years, I understand that they're influenced by a bad group of people they mainly hang around with and when I see them you can see those behaviors come through. But if you're totally aware that that's happening you don't have to fall into the yes I'll do reality we become more like the people we spend time with and they become like us unless you're a really oddball in a sense you like the abnormality but we need to look at who do we spend not just time with person but in general And what are they doing with their time because that's gonna influence us. And that doesn't mean we have to control what they do, but we have to be really, you have to be really, what's the word, well aware essentially. You got to be aware of the influences on them because they will see through.

Especially weight gain and you see why that happens. Like if your friend becomes obese there's a forty five percent chance of you putting weight on of course because every time you see them you might be going be overeating, eating is going be part of most of your times together if they're obese or overeating and it's going to be the behaviours are going to rub off. Many times you go home and you go, ah, should I go to the gym and you say to your mother, father or your sibling and they go, nah, it's dark man, stay down, watch TV and go, yeah okay then. It's just stuff like that, small subtle stuff that adds up over time. So we need to look at that and actually you know what, this study would say, okay, your friend is overweight or obese, So they can have a bad influence on you.

But as turtles here, I feel like we've got stronger mindsets. So instead of us really thinking well let's cut these people out. We need to be the leaders. We need to be the force of light for these people and try and help create better, relationships with food, better insights, understanding and we can actually then try and help these people and we can influence the people the other side. So as opposed to we're always being acted upon, we be the ones that act on our people around us in a good way, rub off in a nice way and they can pass it on to others because that's what I feel the church membership is all about.

A lot of people will start with membership, partners might be like, oh, it's just another fucking elephant fitness plan, whatever. Six months down the line, reading books, training for strength, dropped weight, feeling strong, mindset is you know, rock hard. That's going to rub off on your partner. Go wow, okay, I see that. And that's it from us, we're radiating our light.

So for most people who are unaware, who don't want to be leaders like us in our own lives, in our own circles, I feel this study is very illuminating. And it must be taken seriously. But I feel like we can come to this study and we can use it to do good in the world. Am I making sense? Maybe not.

Anyway, next study. This is a good one. Thanks to Lyle MacDonald for bringing this one to my attention. It basically looked at, so this is the title of it, Some ultra processed foods are needed for nutrient adequate diets. Don't wanna bore you with all of your jargon, but essentially they were doing these mathematical kind of equations or whatever.

They figured out from the hit the 22 nutrients needed, 2,000 calorie diet, Eating only unprocessed foods wasn't possible to hit all the nutrient standards and 2,000 calories just wasn't possible. Unprocessed is vegetables, fruits, you know, fish, lean white meats, Okay, that's unprocessed. Ultra processed will be like cereals, chocolate bars, donuts, whole grain stuff as well, some yogurts, that type of stuff you know, this added a lot of stuff to them. They found the only combination that actually resulted in you hitting all your nutrients for the day and within the calorie goal they set was a mix of ultra processed foods and unprocessed foods. And there's another study in this as well with macros I'll talk about in a bit.

Actually, I'm not trying to start from a conclusion because I've always believed that we must have a balance, we must be able to eat these ultra processed foods not feel bad about them and fit them into our macros. But now studies are saying actually because they're fortified with so many more vitamins and nutrients stuff now, extra iron, extra vitamin, extra calcium, actually is beneficial from the consuming some of them within a diet that's not overeating on calories. They also found the model, the modelling only worked for ultra processed as well for people of a lower socio economic background. So even like okay say no for example you say do you know what, I don't even want to eat a lot of processed foods no matter I don't care if it doesn't eat my vitamins and minerals I'll just supplement with them instead and you'll take a concoction of supplement tablets. The studies even said, okay, that the only one that was affordable was a combination because they couldn't get people from an X background.

Couldn't even get the nutrients they ate if they went and ate and then try to buy the unprocessed foods anyway. But even if they could, they couldn't afford it. It's not within the realm of affordability, so they have to include ultra processed foods. Does that make sense? So when we look at this as a whole, the evidence is starting to stack against the clean eaters.

The people are saying avoid sugar, avoid sugary foods like that doctor, you know who you are. You know, and I'm not passionate doctors I really don't worry, I'm not saying this is just an example bringing it back. I feel like we need to start looking at this seriously and I think the negative connotations for eating junk food needs a go. We're getting junk food's getting better in a weird sense. Like we are being told the calories and macros of these foods.

They are trying to reduce their fat in them. They are trying to replace the bad oils with better oils like this is moving in the right direction slowly. They're being fortified by vitamins and minerals and stuff like there is a benefit to include an easy no diets not just because they're nice and we like them, but from a vitamin and mineral standpoint, plus the psychological standpoint is very, very clear. It's like I posted, I've been reading a book by Robert Sapolsky called behave okay. And the reason I'm reading is because I'm going to cross reference it with psychological stuff from you know, from the stoics, from Buddhists, from Krishnamurti who's not neither, and see if there's any crossover.

And what is clear as day, and I'll tell you right now, is he mentions in the book behave, Robert Sapolsky says that using the frontal cortex to say like, wouldn't do that if I was you, telling us I wouldn't eat that if I was you, I shouldn't eat that. Okay, it's very taxing. He says it's very, very, very taxing. He says that because it's such a general thing, the process, the broad patterns of the frontal cortex makes does far more work. Okay, and it talks about self discipline is good.

That's again used in the frontal cortex. And he says it takes energy and when it's working hard the frontal cortex has an extremely high metabolic rate and rates activation of genes related to energy production. Willpower is more than just a metaphor, self control is a finite resource. Frontal neurons are expensive cells and expensive cells are vulnerable cells. The cognitive load, okay, so if you if you were forced to do loads of decision sharpen and use cognitive load immediately afterwards performance on a different frontal dependent task declines.

Now it even says then our increased cognitive load with a task requiring difficult emotional regulation and subjects cheat more on their diet afterwards. It's to become it's been clear to me for a while but this is starting to become very very clear. If we're always fighting against the ultra processed foods and we need to stop lauding the words against them bad for you, bad. What's the lauded word? Bad.

Junk, that's a lauded word. Junk food as if it's worthless. Junk, lauded word, bad connotations. The more we use these words for these ultra processed foods, the more we're going to have an automatic, conflict with the words, conflict with them, therefore using our frontal cortex to try and use our willpower self discipline against eating them, but they're not going to be part of our diet because the world we live in. Therefore, we're going to run out of cognitive load and then we're going to make worse decisions because we run out of our energy in the brain.

And then when we make worse decisions, that's typically at the end of the day, we feel a bit stressed, there's another stress that comes into our life, someone texts you something, a not be saying that, and then you go on a massive binge because you run out of this cognitive load, you only think straight right now, you don't care, emotions taken over and it's gone and you binge and that's the start of a month binge. Right. Does that sound familiar to you? Sounds familiar to me. So looking at this study, it's very clear what we need to do.

We actually benefit from eating ultra processed foods in our diet and cereals are included with this, whole grains are included. They're very processed things. They've added, think of them as there's going be a branch of ultra processed foods, know, like chocolate versus whole grains, of course whole grains will be better. Cereals are, you know, depending on which one you go for, but they're all fortified. So why don't we start removing the bad connotations with these ultra processed foods and start thinking of them as dense, highly dense calorie highly calorie dense foods with added vitamins and minerals that we want to keep at moderation.

So once we think I'll have some cereal, I'm gonna have yoghurt, I'm gonna have some chocolate, we need to think of it as dense in calories, fine, less volume, fortified vitamins and minerals. If I have a moderate amount of this in my diet and I eat unprocessed foods as well that is optimal. And once we can understand that that's actually optimal isn't our relationship with ultra processed foods going to change? I hope it will. And if it does change, we will no longer keep fighting against ultra processed foods.

We stop this huge resistance against, ah, chakra, don't want eat it. Because it's going to make you run out of cognitive load, your frontal cortex is going to get burned out. It's too obvious now. So don't worry if you are eating ultra processed foods day in day out, I do. I've not never worried about it.

I've never worried about it. I went to the shop today. But Coke Zero. Shop, he was like, oh, it's bad for you. I said, oh, why is that then?

He goes, yeah. So it's worse than the sugar version. I was like, oh, this myth is terrible. But how is it worse than the sugar one? And why is the sugar one bad?

Well, sugar one's a lot of sugar. I admit it is a lot of sugar, part of your teeth, no doubt. Probably not worth drinking full fat, you know, what we call full fat Coke just because it's high in sugar for you guy, you might as well get the calorie version. He's like, how does the sweetener even work? Again, fallacy, just because you don't know something works doesn't mean it's bad.

This is classic. And my friend messaged me yesterday as well, speaking speaking about how he started to lose weight. He's gone on low GI carbs to curb his hunger, which can work of course. But he's like my weight's gone up and, I'm eating vegan meals and this and that and I've completely cut out sugar, completely cut out caffeine. I'm like is this the answer because now he's like I'm sixty two days in.

He's even counting the days in. He's on his diet or on his change. He actually knows the day. The only time you know the days because you want it to end or you you know it's it's a finite thing in your head it's a finite thing. I don't know how many days I'd be doing this, health and fitness.

I don't know. I don't count it but I feel like if you count it and you get a heartache another day gone, I feel like that's a very conflicted state to be in. And there's no doubt the research is clear in this as well like he will break and binge and it'll turn into him gaining the weight back that he's lost and then go back to the drawing board thinking well that didn't work what now? Maybe more extreme stuff but actually the answer isn't the answer is not there either. The answer is to accept our diet is a mix.

If we accept that and stop fucking worrying about it, eat what we like, hit to our macros, get your workouts and get your steps in, focus on the stuff, happy days. And remember, whilst there's a lot of influences on us three levels deep friends are friends are friends and they do influence us. Can we switch our round and be the influence on our friends which lead to influence in their friends? Can we reverse this? And can we be that light in that as well?

That's what I'm trying to say. Can we do it? I feel like we can 100% especially with Octagon coming up. But I hope his voice note was useful. Two studies there that are very important.

I'll probably do a breakdown of study. The second one is very big. So I'll do another breakdown of ours well in on the Instagram carousel post so you can see the and see all the the data yourself and I'll link you to the study as well if people want to read it. But, very interesting. But guys, it's Tuesday.

I'll see one big thing today. Write it down, get it done. If you can do one big thing a day for your $3.65, 1 big thing is done. It's a lot, a lot of big tasks done. Most people might do one big task a week and just fill do the rest with filler.

But we're doing one big task a day, we make sure we stay on top of it. So make sure you write that down and use your energy to get it done. But remember, your frontal cortex being used throughout the day, it will eventually run out of steam towards the end of the day, so your willpower will decline, likely make worse decisions as the day goes on. So therefore, that's why we do workouts in the morning. That's why you probably wanna prep prep prep your meals as well early on the day before for the food days ahead or in the morning and you'll probably have a better day.

So get the one big thing done now out the way so then your day is basically a success. Speak to you tomorrow.