Let's Get Back On Track
Welcome to the one day at a time podcast where we forget about yesterday. We don't worry about tomorrow. It's what are we going to do today? This all matters because you've only ever had or will ever have the fantastic twenty four hours a day you're about to embark on. Hopefully this episode is going to give you some daily dose of wisdom that you can take action on today to improve your life.
Speaker 1:And remember, all it takes is one day at a time. Good morning everyone, I hope you had a good weekend and do not panic if the first weekend you've had in ages being able to eat inside with your friends and drink and stuff didn't go quite to the perfect plan you made up in your head before the weekend. No, I'm not gonna drink much, I'm not gonna overeat, comes to be like yeah, but great. Has been long time in the making and enjoy yourself. Of course, that's what we all said and don't feel bad about it, don't feel like you've ruined anything.
Speaker 1:That's not the case, right? What we do need to think about is how we felt after eating, overeating, overdrinking, like that feeling if we could just bottle that up before making decisions it would help but over time we are to make better decisions so the next time we go out do we need to get wrecked? Probably not. Do we need to eat that extra sides? We don't.
Speaker 1:I went, I had like Sunday roast right in this amazing place in Chelsea and like the waitress had to stop me so I was like yeah I'll have the beef please and I said oh can I have the extra sides of trimmings? She's like you don't really need that trust me there's a lot. Was like okay fine and what about the extra fries or the roasted chips you got there? She's like I think you should just wait first so you see how you feel after the roast maybe then we'll order more. Was like okay I ate I was so full but if I did order them and I forced that through I would have forced myself to eat more food because I hate well I don't like leaving food behind because you've obviously paid for it, but sometimes you should let go.
Speaker 1:So, we're all working back towards normality. So please don't worry about being perfect, it's never gonna happen anyway. But here's a good quote right from a guy called Victor Frankl. He was one of the guys, he was a psychologist, he survived the Nazi concentration camps and he wrote a book about his experience. He says in his book, right, he says this, Don't aim at success.
Speaker 1:The more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you're going to miss it. For success like happiness cannot be pursued, it must ensue. So seeing a lot of comments in the groups and stuff about like, oh, like I didn't hit X amount of weight loss or I didn't do this on the measuring. All these like very specific numbers. Like that's not the goal of the process, you're not meant to be fixating on certain amount of weight loss, yes we do daily weigh and subtract so we can have weekly averages so we know the direction we're going, but don't put success on a number, Your success is a byproduct of your habits because your habits are you.
Speaker 1:You as a person are basically your habits, right? So the focus is on how do we build the day to day that as a byproduct of the day to day that that looks like what we would define a success health and fitness wise. So you know some of you might want to lose weight or you know lose fat and more specifically, some of you might want to gain muscle but if you always gain muscle and you keep thinking oh should we be I should be seeing changes every week, you're basically aiming at something, a target that's not fully under your control and it's going to demoralize you. What you should be saying is am I consistent with my training? Am I the type of person that's consistent with my training?
Speaker 1:Am I turning up to training sessions and giving them my all? Am I resting when I need to be? Am I having this lifestyle where giving myself enough rest but I'm also making sure I hit the workouts hard? And this is true for people who work shift work and have, you know, got businesses and stuff have gone, you know, want more hours in a day. Well, there'll never be more hours in a day.
Speaker 1:Never ever, ever, ever be more hours in a day. You're never gonna have that. If you keep saying, I need more hours in a day or I'll wait for more hours in a day or what hopefully I get more hours in a day, you're gonna wait forever. You're literally tricking yourself. So whilst I'm not a parent and I don't know how hard it is to have a kid, sure it's horrific time wise and about good obviously as well.
Speaker 1:You've got to remember like you can't keep up hoping for more time. So you know what I've seen from people is if you can get workouts in the morning that's probably the best time to do because as the day goes on and you haven't done your workout, the less chance it is you're going to do it. So I guess the 5PM you're like, oh, should I I can't, I'm so tired. And you're giving yourself too many opportunities to skip the workout. If you wake up and the first thing we do is just to get exercise in and get a workout in, you kind of sleepwalk through anyway and then you do it and you're done for the day.
Speaker 1:Workout wise, just go make sure you get steps in. It builds like really, really important momentum for the day. And if you don't work out, always try and walk and stuff instead. So instead of trying to build a habit every three days of working out, we know the science tells us to build a habit, it's better to do it daily. So block out a amount of time every morning, so whether it's thirty minutes or forty minutes, either go for a long walk during that time or put your workout in.
Speaker 1:And that way you're building this into your lifestyle. And the byproduct of that is a healthier you, That's the important part. A few more things as well. So three reasons you're not losing weight just to be absolutely clear. One, you're underestimating your calorie intake.
Speaker 1:We underestimate our calorie intake by 1,000 calories a day according to research, so that's a hell of a lot. The reason is processed foods are really deceivingly dense in calories versus like the nutrient dense equivalent in calories. So, you know, 100 calories of a cucumber overflows a bowl. Hundred calories of like high balls like literally in the palm of your hand if you if you high ball. So you've got to be aware of that, right?
Speaker 1:So you've probably been underestimating your calorie intake. And if you're tracking 100% honestly, you've got that under control. If you're still not tracking 100% honestly everything you're eating, you don't have to do it for the rest of your life, you just got to do it to start with. If you're not tracking 100% honestly you are probably missing out on hundreds and hundreds of calories a day and that is going to be the difference between you losing weight or not because your deficit is above 500 calories right, so you can easily eat into that deficit if you're not careful. Now the second reason you're not losing weight is because you're overestimating your activity, so a lot of people will look at their fitness trackers and go wow I burned 3,000 calories today, I'm sorry you probably didn't.
Speaker 1:The reason fitness trackers aren't another reason, the studies show that fitness trackers, have got a margin of error of 27% to 93%. That is mental. Like that's crazy. So instead of relying on your fitness trackers, holy grail of how many calories you're burning, right, your macro plan has taken into account your activity level, your gym, everything. Just go to the gym, don't worry about how many calories you've burned, go for performance.
Speaker 1:Hit the exercises hard, get stronger, don't work out to burn calories. Your step count likewise get steps in as opposed to how many calories have burned. Just get your 6,000 steps minimum a day, if you can do 10,000 awesome. These calorie burn part of these trackers isn't really as useful as you think. Guess they may show kind of like your last workout versus this one and if this is the same circumstances you might be able to say well I burned more this worker than last so I have worked a bit harder, might have been a bit longer.
Speaker 1:But the calorie a month is probably miles off right. And the third reason you're not losing weight and the most frequent one, is water retention. Now a lot of people stop comparing one day weight versus another day weight, only compare weekly averages, ideally only compare every two weeks versus every two weeks, but you have to collect enough data for that. A lot of it's down to the mental cycle. You want to be able to have a rational calm headed approach to your weight, so you do data collection every day, you take the weekly average, if after one week your weekly average hasn't come down look that's not the end of the world, you can still be losing fat but not losing total weight.
Speaker 1:So if for example you start on a new workout plan and you're walking more, right, that might cause your body to have some inflammation from the workouts, which is fine, normal. You might be drinking more water, eating a bit more carbs. You might be holding on to four or five pounds more water than you were before you started a plan, right. Four to five weeks in you've been in a deficit but you would have been losing four to five pounds of fat, however because you're eating more carbs, you're training more, drinking more water, you may be holding on to five pounds more water. So the net net is you haven't actually moved in weight, right?
Speaker 1:So your weight stayed the same because you've lost five pounds of fat, but you've hold on to extra five pounds of water. It won't be until week six that you see your total weight changing. So I know that's quite like, I wouldn't say in this extreme example, but it's something just to get your head around because you could be holding on to water, but you're still losing fat. How would you know you're still losing fat? One, how do you feel?
Speaker 1:Do wake up in the morning going I feel a bit leaner, I feel like I've lost fat but I'm not showing it. Because you lose fat first of all from the internal, from visceral fat or on the organs, that's where you lose fat first and then it goes inside out face down. That's typically the pattern of weight loss we see. Inside out, you lose your weight in your face first, you'll notice that you start losing weight, your face gets leaner, your upper body gets leaner and you're wishing your hips and thighs get leaner faster but they don't, unfortunately those are the more stubborn areas for men it's the lower back and the abdominal region, it's due to hormones. So yeah that's kind of how you lose weight.
Speaker 1:So as long as you know you're tracking honestly, as long as you're hitting a decent amount of steps right and you call this fat loss, as long as you're going to bed every night knowing you've been honest with yourself which means you're gonna be honest with us, you can go to sleep fine knowing if your total weight's not coming down your fat is probably coming down right because you're gonna be in a deficit. If it's not after two weeks and of the averages are not coming down, we make some changes, don't panic. The reason we do these detailed weekly check ins is purely because we go off data. We have to go off data. We can't keep relying on calculations and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:We need to go off your personal data. For example, I saw someone comment, I'm always going over my fats, but I'm going under my carbs. Right. So we're like right, so now we know from your actual data, not from what you think you eat, what you're actually eating, that you prefer to eat more fat because you're picking the food you like because we tell you to do that and you eat less carbs. So what are we gonna do?
Speaker 1:Well of course carbs and fats are interchangeable, it doesn't matter where the calories come from those two, protein needs to remain constant, right? So we're like well let's put your fat up 20 grams and let's reduce your carb goal by 45 grams. It's the same amount of calories for the day, it's just we've now tweaked your macros and it suits you more your lifestyle, and then you go with that. And actually find that's a really good split for yourself. Now just I'm just gonna finish on this because otherwise this gonna go on for ages.
Speaker 1:You know, people say like, do you track mac why are tracking macros if protein is the only important one? And if calories determines if you lose your gain weight why not just track calories and protein. Now I'd say look going to deficit to hit the protein goal that's fine right. Obviously that's the important thing is the deficit and the protein. The first reason we do track carbs and fat is because it's actually a bit easier to make sure if we just track macros in entirety.
Speaker 1:So if we're looking at tracking protein, we're essentially tracking carbs and fat as well because we're looking at the macros, so might as well look what our carbs and fat land, right. The second reason is we figure out what our preferences are, food choices. So like I just mentioned, someone preferred a higher fat to lower carb, so that's good to know, right. The third is really how we start seeing our energy levels change so if we we typically was on say moderate carb 150 grams of carbs and then one week we know we drop you down to 100 and you start feeling like you got less energy and stuff you can then start saying well the only thing that's changed is my carbs have dropped by about 33%. I don't feel so energetic stuff anymore.
Speaker 1:That's kind of information you'd always have well carbs actually do give me energy. Some people will be like well carbs make me bloated all the time, then we love to look at the carb sources you're eating. But it's kind of like the self knowledge you get. Let me turn a blind eye to two macronutrients, which are important, you need to eat enough fat as well for key hormonal processes, so it is important to actually track your fat. But really it's the self knowledge you get from tracking and the better understanding of your own body, that can't be taken away from you.
Speaker 1:You just learn so much by tracking all three and in the end, ultimately in the end you could maybe go do you know what, I have a calorie goal per day and I have a protein goal per day and that's all I'm gonna do. But is it really extra work to just look at the fat and carbs to track them? I don't think it is. So I think it starts getting maybe over complicated in a way even though we're tracking less to start tracking the macros and the calories and then we're not looking at the fat and carbs but then we need to track protein anyway do know what I mean. So you see a lot of these people like why don't we do this like just track your macros right, if you track your macros you are tracking your calories, yes, and your spreadsheet will be lower in calories than MyFitnessPal.
Speaker 1:Because MyFitnessPal and just food labels in general, they round up the calorie total. So you can check this on labels, can go look at a label. What did I do the other day? I think it was Warburton Thins. On the label it says two sixty calories per two thins.
Speaker 1:Or like per two bagels. But if you add it up the macros, it's like two fifty one calories. Right? So they just round up the mac the calories from the different macros, and then they just have a round number. But obviously that's one food item, so if you start adding all of those up for the day it can add up to like 30 to 50 to even sometimes 100 especially if you add alcohol in because alcohol contains calories but they're from alcohol itself, that won't come up on the macros in MyFitnessPal.
Speaker 1:So, you know, like, that's fine. Like, it's more it's just accurate to track the macros than track the total calories because they will overestimate most of the time. So put in your macros you've actually eaten into the spreadsheet will work out the actual calories you've eaten granted you're not eating, you're not drinking on those days, right. Hopefully that clears up. And that's it guys fifteen minutes of you and me rambling a year, unbelievable.
Speaker 1:But, if you're on your walk enjoy it, if you're not on your walk get up and go for a walk because it's very important. Go for a walk now it makes you feel better. Yesterday, I was just feeling terrible. I was like, ugh, I was in the house. I was like, know if I go for a walk, I'll feel better.
Speaker 1:And I was I was just like, yeah, I'm not gonna do it. And I just got up and went for a walk. And I was just like, why why do I fight this? Like, why do I fight going for a walk? It's so good for me.
Speaker 1:I feel so much better after a walk. I can get more productive. I get I can have, like, brainstorms and ideas. Like, why do we make things hard for ourselves? We know that walking and exercise makes us feel better.
Speaker 1:We maybe should just get used to stop fighting the resistance and just go with it because we know it's gonna feel better. That's our chimp mind, but that's a topic for another day. But remember, today's the only day that matters right now, this present moment. So don't worry about tomorrow. Don't worry about the weekend.
Speaker 1:It's gone. Get today right. Make the most of your opportunity to get better today. If you got a workout, hit it hard. You know, don't be in your phone.
Speaker 1:Hit the workout hard. Go for your walks. Track your macros. If you haven't tracked anything yet today, just put it in because that's gonna build momentum, and just start building momentum back up again because we can feel much, much better in just a few short days of being on track. That's just that's the magic of it.
Speaker 1:We can feel on top of things just a few days back on track. So good luck today. Enjoy yourself. I'll speak to you tomorrow. And that's it.
Speaker 1:Thank you for listening to the one day at a time podcast with your host, Golf Leer. Hopefully, you understood something I said. I hope that some wisdom kind of distilled through into your mind, and I want you to now action it today. I don't want you to think about tomorrow. I don't want you to think about yesterday.
Speaker 1:I don't want you to think about leaving a review on this podcast. I don't want you to think about going to another website. What I want you to do is as soon as this podcast ends, you will take action and make the most of today. Ground yourself today, follow the one day at a time philosophy, and your life will change.
