Don't Major in Minor Things - Lifestyle vs Diet (Study)
Good morning, Octagoonies. It is day two of the challenge, and I hope you're enjoying this so far, and I hope you had a fantastic day yesterday. However, if you didn't, today's a new day. Okay? Shut yesterday off.
Speaker 1:Shut tomorrow off. What can we do today? Let's plan it out. Let's get it done. Now sometimes we can do the best possible plan and we still fail.
Speaker 1:I can't remember who said that in the group yesterday, but she said, woke up at 06:30, I went to the gym, but the gym was closed. I tried to watch it on replay, it wasn't working and things are going down, I kept going and preserved but I feel a bit gutted or something along them lines. And that's a normal thing to think, right? But the power isn't in the end result. Sometimes we can do the perfect preparation and we still don't hit our goal or that end result.
Speaker 1:It's about turning up. It's the turning up that matters. If you turn up eight or 10 times, it will work out. You know, you will go to the gym and the gym will be open when it says it's gonna be open. But sometimes shit happens like it's in a way, but it's the turning up and the turning up is the is where the magics are.
Speaker 1:The Stoics, the ancient Stoics, the wise wise Stoics of Greece and Rome, they had a they had a analogy. They talk they spoke about the Stoic archer. So they said this is archer with a bow and he pulls back the bow and, he pulls back the arrow, okay, and he's perfectly prepared, he's waiting for the perfect weather, he aims it, he's got the perfect grip, the perfect tension, and he he waits for the perfect opportunity, let's the let's go the arrow, but then something flies in front of him and stops the arrow hitting the prey. But the archer did every single thing perfectly. It couldn't have gone better on the archer's point of view.
Speaker 1:However, sometimes, you know, we let the bow go and we execute, we try and do the plan, we go to the gym and all this stuff, things get in the way and it didn't work out. Does the archer walk away and go, I'm not an archer anymore. Sorry, boys. No. It goes, shit happens.
Speaker 1:I I did everything perfectly and most of time it's gonna work out. And that's what we need to think about this challenge is let's just do what we can every day. Let's try our best, not every day is gonna be perfect, not every week's gonna be perfect. But if we can continue to turn up like we did yesterday in droves and a 160 people live in the morning, guys we're gonna smash it. I'm telling you now we're gonna smash it.
Speaker 1:Now Doctor P did an awesome seminar, q and a session on nutrition last night so please do watch it I think it's important. But a really, really important topic came up about well if I start first by saying for all of you that are new to macros and stuff, you know, weight loss and fat loss are different. We think sometimes it's the same thing. So when we lose weight, if we did keto for example, where we drop carbs completely, you might drop six pounds in a few days, but that's all from water retention because one gram of carb, one gram of glycogen, so in your muscle will pull in three grams of water. So when we do eat carbs, we do have more water retention in body.
Speaker 1:Now it's not a bad thing. We want water in the muscles, we want water in the carbs putting water in. But when we drop all the carbs and we drop six pounds of say or three or four pounds of weight, we haven't changed our body composition. We still got the same amount of fat. Right?
Speaker 1:We haven't done anything to that. And it's actually a false win, and people take it as a real win and they go, I've lost this. The keto is amazing. No. No.
Speaker 1:The reality is you dropped a bit of carbs which dropped water. And start eating carbs again, you put a water on. But you we want to have carbs in our diet. Carbs give us energy. If we were to change the word carbs because it's been demonized to energy have you eaten energy today?
Speaker 1:I think so, mate. Have you eaten energy today, Scott? No. I haven't. Well, that's why you're feeling shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Maybe I should eat some energy. Yeah. You should. Who's telling you not to eat energy?
Speaker 1:Well, they said if I eat energy, it's gonna be bad for me, and I won't lose fat. Well, you need energy to function, though. Yeah. I know, but I wanna lose fat, but you but you're not gonna function, man. So what do you think is gonna happen?
Speaker 1:You're gonna have a miserable existence. Right? So we want the energy to function. You know, the brain uses glucose. Like, the body's primary, the primary usage of energy comes from carbs.
Speaker 1:Right? So, of course, you can eat too many carbs and you can eat too many too little carbs, but we should have a good amount of carbs. And the studies show there's a moderate carb diet, which is all of you are gonna be on on the macros app is the best approach. Okay? So don't worry about the weights now.
Speaker 1:You're you're a scientist for ten weeks. You're just collecting data samples every day, sample of weight in the morning. Don't worry about it though. You take it off to the lab. The lab, they'll they'll they'll look they'll look at the weight, take the weekly averages, and over ten weeks you'll see a trend.
Speaker 1:But don't try and like, oh, I've lost weight today. You go, I've gone up one pounds today, I've done everything right yesterday. Yeah. That's fine. You can gain water retention even with perfect days.
Speaker 1:Okay? It's the trend over time. So fat loss and weight loss are different. So we're gonna lose fat one pounds a week on average if we hit our macros no matter what, but our weight loss might not represent that, might not show that we're losing the fat because we got water retention, we got water weight covering it. So we stick to the macros, we stick to the plan, we're more than likely gonna can't even speak guys.
Speaker 1:We're gonna lose roughly one pound of fat a week. Right? So for ten weeks, about 10 pounds of fat is roughly what we're gonna lose if we hit our macros according to the app. Okay? Now the next thing I wanna come on to is don't major in minor things.
Speaker 1:This is another Jim Rohn quote. Do not major in minor things and majoring is like, you know, you're gonna do a degree in minor things. Because if we do that, we're wasting our energy and our power on things that don't actually move the needle. Now here's examples of minor things most of people major on. What where should I get my protein from?
Speaker 1:Whey or casein? Minor. Should I eat three meals a day or six meals a day? Minor. Doesn't matter.
Speaker 1:Should I train fasted or should I wait should I have breakfast or not? Minor. Minor. Minor. Minor.
Speaker 1:What other ones are there? Should I eat carbs before bed? Those make some difference. Of course, you can eat carbs before bed. It's a myth that stores fat.
Speaker 1:You know, should I have this processed, ultra processed foods or not? Minor. There's loads of examples, guys, you know, of of these minor things that we major in. So what what does what matters is total macros every day averaged out over the week. So if you have more macros today and you have more carbs and fat today because you went out for a celebration drinks last minute, as long as your averages are out over the week and at the end of the week your average is near, happy days.
Speaker 1:The macros app has got a tool in there called the macros planner where you can simply give yourself more of an allowance today if you've got a social occasion and you'll automatically reduce your allowance on other days. And it does the calculation for you, so you wake up the next day, your macros are changing, you go, well, if I just hit this, I'm on track. Right? We've got these tools to make it easier for you. So don't major in minor things.
Speaker 1:Let's major in major things. Hitting total protein, averaging your macros over the week, getting your steps in, making sure you get enough sleep. If you're sleeping five hours a night, we need to read, read, really need to look at that. Again, I can't speak. We need to look at that because the studies are clear.
Speaker 1:If you don't if you don't sleep enough, if you sleep five and a half hours a night versus seven and a half hours a night, right, not only are you at risk of losing muscle mass and you're not dealing with stress because when we sleep we can reduce our stress bucket. We actually eat three four hundred calories more as snacks in the evening if we don't sleep enough. Think about that. We don't even know what's happening. Oh, why am I snacking?
Speaker 1:You you don't think to link it back to your sleep the night before? Sleep is such it's a hack. It's the I hate the word hack, but it is the best hack we can do. Let's major in sleep. Let's major in our overall macro allowance for the week.
Speaker 1:Let's major in hitting our protein target, the benefits of protein, let's major in our steps every day and getting out in nature and listening to audiobooks and knowledge. That's what we should major in. Forget the rest. Forget the rest. Don't be don't waste your mental energy.
Speaker 1:There's something called cognitive load. And if we use our brain too much in cognitive load, we're gonna it's gonna be problematic. We make worse decisions. We overload the mind. We're using too much of our willpower.
Speaker 1:All this stuff goes out the window. So I think it's important. Now the next few topics I wanna cover because I think, you know, the window of the weekend is, you know, in the future. But I think a topic came up as, know, weekend drinking, binge eating, emotional eating. And I think a few things here is like to understand.
Speaker 1:You don't just because someone you know, people will label people as they're not fun if they don't drink. I think that's a problem. And I think we have to disassociate with that silly equation because fun doesn't equal drinking. Everybody in The UK drinks. Doesn't mean everyone's fun.
Speaker 1:In fact, I'd say if you make drinking your personality, you're the worst type of person, your least fun person because all you've got in your ammunition and all you've got to yourself is you can drink loads and be reckless. Happy days, well done. There's more to us than this. Right? So when we if we got problem with with binge eating and drinking on weekends and this the friendship pressure, let's go take it back to what the teachers taught us in school and I think maybe they taught you this, I don't know.
Speaker 1:Remember when you were in school and you did something and the teacher's given you a row and they'd be like and you'll say, no, no, Daniel's fault it was. It was Daniel's fault, he told me to do it. And the teacher will say, alright, so if Daniel told you to put your hand in fire Scott would you do that? And I go no and he goes so I was at Daniel's fault then. Do you know I mean?
Speaker 1:And it's like okay fair enough. That's kind of the same with him with drinking, it's our responsibility to set these boundaries upfront. We don't even have conversations with our friends about it. The problem is we tell our friends we're on this new plan and macros plan or whatever and they start telling us what we should be doing and it makes us feel worse. Again we say well there's no point.
Speaker 1:But true friends will have the conversation with you. Communication problems is the biggest problem in relationships and friendships, everything. The lack of communication is terrible and if we can just be upfront to people and say listen, we love more fun if we have a good amount of drinks, good amount of food and we wake up the next day fresh. Don't you agree? And some of my friends say no.
Speaker 1:They say you're young, you should get wrecked and ask where the fun is and tomorrow don't care about it. I go well, okay, completely different mindset. I'd rather have that Sunday morning and not waste a diet and still go out and see people, have a have a laugh, have a few drinks, happy days and go home. Okay? It's about moderation.
Speaker 1:Chat to your friends about it. This ten weeks is important to you. Tell them, guys, I'm on a really important ten week plan. I still want to make this a lifestyle so I still want to come to social events. I still want to drink because I do enjoy the social part of it.
Speaker 1:I enjoy a pint. In the summer, I love a pint. I love a cop bag. I love a drink with friends. But we don't have to go overboard.
Speaker 1:And that starts now. And there's an interesting study in this and I've posted on Instagram and I wanna bring it up here now. And I think it's for you to start thinking of this as a lifestyle thing because it was a study and people who ate dessert, okay, had better success over eight months than those who deprived themselves. Now they did a study over thirty two weeks and sixteen weeks they dieted and in sixteen weeks they just kind of let them go. In the first sixteen weeks, the group that ate dessert and the group that didn't eat dessert, they both lost weight.
Speaker 1:Okay? They lost 33 pounds on average, both groups. What happened is at the second half of the study where they stopped telling them to go into a deficit, the group that didn't eat dessert regained 22 pounds. Boom. Spikes right back up.
Speaker 1:The group that did eat dessert kept losing weight. So the difference is staggering. The difference now is the first group they lost 30 they both lost 33 pounds and then the group that didn't eat dessert gained 22 pounds. The graph has gone 53 pounds difference in thirty two weeks. Now the reason is simple in this.
Speaker 1:The reason is very simple. The group that didn't eat dessert saw this as a diet, a short term fix, something they'll do now to lose weight and then they'll be happy and then happy days. The group that ate dessert saw it as if I can incorporate dessert and my favorite foods into this and still lose weight, then it's not really it's not a diet anymore. It's a lifestyle for me. I'm still eating the foods I like.
Speaker 1:And what happened is the lifestyle they built over that half of the study then equaled the byproduct of that lifestyle was more weight loss. Because the byproduct of eating in moderation, having fun with our eating, being in control, understanding we can eat any food we want but in moderation, if it were macros or whatever, understanding that the byproduct is a body where our weight is managed better. Yeah, you see so we can't go into this challenge thinking I'm not gonna eat rubbish for ten weeks and see what happens, that's not gonna work, you will rebound. I promise you the research is so clear on this rebound effect that it's essentially a form of self harm to go and do this to yourself all the time, to kid yourself, you'll just cut everything out and go super super strict. And that's why some of you are like oh my god the calories I've been given is so high, no way can I lose weight?
Speaker 1:Yes, where you can lose weight. The calories you're given will be in a deficit for you, right? You've been conditioned by the magazines and other people and all these My Fitness Palpots you and super low calories, Other other coaches who can't be bothered to actually care about your long term health and just put you on low calories because it's gonna give them results in the reviews for the apps. They just put you in low calories because technically it'll work for the time with them, give you a review. Oh my god, I lost 25 pounds following.
Speaker 1:Yep. MFP, JC, all this stuff. And then you come off it and you go back to eat normally, but gain the weight, but you're given the review. Okay so we can't fall into those traps. We have to see this differently.
Speaker 1:So when we give you the calorie allowance, the macros and you think it's too much, it's not too much. That's the conditioning. You have to look at yourself and go hold on. Is it really too much? Is that what I believed from the past?
Speaker 1:Is it true? And how are you gonna find out if it's true or not? If you never give it a go, if you're always running away from it back to 1,200 calories, back to 1,100 calories, back to 800 calories. Okay. We start off with a decently high calorie intake and macros, and over time as we lose weight, they will come down.
Speaker 1:Your end macros won't be the same as you start the macros. This is gonna be changed for everyone. So just remember that. Put this in mind. Remember the dessert group.
Speaker 1:Remember the the group that didn't eat the dessert and didn't eat the foods they like rebounded massively in the group that learned to live with dessert kept losing weight after the challenge of the study finished. If we can think of this and remember small duration, we must live with these foods. The world is abundant. 50 to 60% of the foods we eat in general in the Western world are ultra processed foods. We live in a world of abundance.
Speaker 1:Is it realistic that we changed how the world is and change everything to organic plant based and all the shops never sell ultra ultra processed foods again? Are we gonna change the world where our friends invite us out to drink and ask us to drink more than we want to? Are we gonna live in a world where we'll have no social gatherings, spontaneous trips, holidays? Of course not. So why are we trying to change the reality of the life we the life we have?
Speaker 1:And actually the only power we have is in ourselves. So we must be able to live in this world of chaos, I see it, and it's a good chaos. You know, it's chaos. We we we wanna be able to navigate through this chaos, and we be superhumans. That's really the the thing is we can navigate through this.
Speaker 1:We are superhumans. And the power is for us to navigate through this world, not for the world to change so it makes life easier for us. Now there is a middle ground and we cover it in the Habits book where we must make our home environment, work environment easier for ourselves. An environment that, promotes the behaviors we want. Of course that's true.
Speaker 1:But we can't always control the environment we're in. So we must be able to control part of the environment we're in which is always our own mind. Right? The rational part of our brain. We want to be able to do that otherwise we're animals.
Speaker 1:The difference between us and animals is we can use the rational brain. Animals can't. So let's make sure we can use the rational brain. But the rational brain runs out of energy if we major in minor things and focus on the stuff that doesn't matter. Sorry, guys.
Speaker 1:I'm I'm ranting a bit on. But just wanna get it across to you guys. Is something I'm very passionate about, long term help for you guys. I don't wanna put you on a plan for you just to lose weight with Turtle, get the five star review and go bye bye Tara, well done, you lost weight but but I know you're gonna gain weight again. I can't do it.
Speaker 1:I can't. I can't. I could me, doctor p, this team, could say, guys, low calories, high intensity training, loads of training, and let's get you all shredded. Of course, we could do it. We could get reviews galore doing that for my ten weeks and we you'll be back with us and again, worked for me last time, they'll go back again, but it didn't work for you last time, made you come back again and more and more all the time and it's bad.
Speaker 1:Now, of course, we got re returning members, but you'll you'll speak to them, the mindset's completely different. It's normal to gain weight sometimes. It's normal to not be at the lowest weight. But the mindset change is something we wanna focus on, the lifestyle. Okay?
Speaker 1:That's the change. That's what we focus on. So hopefully, voice note was useful a bit longer than usual or maybe they are just getting a bit longer. I don't know. Maybe so.
Speaker 1:But remember, don't major in minor things. Focus on what matters, your steps, your your macros over time as an average. Don't major in minor things such as daily weight and focus on that. We will take a weekly average and compare weekly averages. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Get your three workers in, drink your water, happy days, and let's have fun. Let's have fun. So see you in the audio room. Well, turtle radio, let's call it. I'll see you in turtle radio half seven.
Speaker 1:Workout bank tomorrow, strength workout. But guys, have fun today. Let's have a laugh. Enjoy yourself. Laugh for the day.
Speaker 1:Do the best you can. Happy days. WhatsApp groups motivate each other. Build a community that you wanna be in. And remember, you're building a lifestyle one day at a time that's gonna be that's gonna basically make you more of the person you actually have always been.
Speaker 1:And that is the magic. So guys, I'm out. Have a good day. Bye bye.
