Overwhelmed & feeling out of control?
Good morning, turtle headers. So Spotify podcast data overview thing came out and said, my number one episode of 2022, one day at a time podcast, listened 325% more than the others was the podcast titled Do You Feel Out of Control? Alright, I think you do. Then I did a post in the group the other day saying anyone feeling overwhelmed, not on track, stressed and a lot of people said they were. So we often I think a lot of us feel out of control.
Speaker 1:What is control in regards to health? What are we defining as what's in our control? The end result certainly isn't in our control. I mean, you can influence the end result, which is to lose x amount of pounds and whatever. You can't control exactly when it happens, you can't control exactly where you're going to look like leaner, you can't can't control if you're going to get stronger today, this week, but we can influence those factors, and those influencing things we can do, we can keep them basic and that we need to build a foundation.
Speaker 1:So, everybody needs to build a foundation they can control. This will be different for different people. For example, you could have the foundation where you say: I will always get 5,000 steps a day in, no matter what. My work's busy, whatever, I'll always get the steps in, my foundation, baseline, right? And you're going do better work as well, because when you go for a walk and you go back to your desk, you feel refreshed, right?
Speaker 1:So, it really is an illusion we create, that we think that if we just work flat out all day nine hours that we do more work than if we work six hours. It's actually not true. It's actually not true. We'll actually do more work with less time if we were able to break her up into chunks and actually go for walks and split her up and have more of our mental energy put towards her. Now, different job roles, of course.
Speaker 1:It's a blanket statement, but it's not going to apply to all jobs, right? But, we need to look at, really, what is the minimal thing we need to do for the maximum results. We have to look at this. This is the number one life hack, whatever you want to call it, that you can do when it comes to health. So this is what we can control: the foundations, the steps.
Speaker 1:Five to 6,000 steps is a minimum a day. We need that in our lives, guys, we need to do it, we need to be foundational. We need to track our macros as well. If you are someone who wants to lose a lot of weight, who's not happy about it, who doesn't know much about food or is kind of confused about it, you have to track like a scientist would, you have to collect this data. It's not to be obsessive, it's not to collect data to feel bad about it, it's to collect data, not judge it, objectively look at it, and it will tell us exactly what we need to do.
Speaker 1:And if we can spend ten minutes a day tracking, because every single person listening to this podcast will have ten minutes a day to track your food. You would spend, all of you, there's no doubt, spending hours on social media a day or hours on your phone. So, we can't keep lying to ourselves saying, no, I just don't have time to do it. You do. Of course, you have time to track your food.
Speaker 1:It takes five, ten minutes. Get it at the start, like driving a car can be a bit harder, but it becomes second nature and it's something we need to get our heads into because unless we understand we're putting in our bodies and we've got weight to lose, how are we to know what to do next? If you're saying, Scott, I'm not eating that much food at all and I'm putting weight on, I haven't lost weight for ages, I'm only eating about 1,500 calories, I'm only eating two meals a day, I go, let's put that to the test. Why not track everything you eat for the next two weeks and see, right? Track everything.
Speaker 1:I know, I know, I I know it's right. They're like, no, no, let's look at it. It's like a scientist. Let's have let's collect the data. Let's not we've got the assumption.
Speaker 1:We've got the hypothesis that you think you're eating 1,500, right? And you think that you're gaining weight because of that. But if we were to put it to the test and collect data and I'll judge it and be like, yeah, I did have a pizza. Yeah, I did have a Chinese. Yeah, I did have a takeaway.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the five guys. Yeah, I did. Okay, I put it in. And then at the end, it goes, yeah, your average intake for the week is about 3,000 a day. They go, okay.
Speaker 1:That's the answer. I haven't been consuming too much. Right? And I need to track my macros to bring that down. I need to track it.
Speaker 1:And if I go and do that, I'm gonna lose weight, I'm gonna deficit. If you pick fat loss in the app and you do that, you're lose fat, right? But there's no judgment here. This is important. There's not you're not doing this to get thin.
Speaker 1:You're not doing this to punish yourself. You're doing it to collect data. So the foundational stuff that Turtle has been built on has been steps, macros, two to three workouts a week as a bonus, and for many people, reading, you know, reading five or 10 pages a day, on Audible, listening, listening to a podcast, listening to a seminar, so you kind of put in some good stuff in your brain, you're getting your steps in at the same time, you're feeling refreshed after your steps, you're tracking what you're eating, so you can do the thing that brings the results, because you can train all you want. You can train 10 times a week and if you don't track, good luck losing weight, basically. You can cut out foods you think are bad and not track macros or, you know, calories and, again, good luck.
Speaker 1:You hit or miss, you might lose weight, you might not. So, it's important. Now, build the foundation, have the foundation. If you can't do more than the foundation, don't beat yourself up. You know, this is the main problem I see.
Speaker 1:People are trying to do everything. This perfectionism mindset, all or nothing. Where does this come from? Perfectionism is procrastination. You're never gonna be perfect.
Speaker 1:We've never been perfect. No one's ever gonna be perfect. We live in the middle. So when what what are we on about? I'm not gonna do it unless I can do everything.
Speaker 1:Why? When have we ever learned that way? I'm not gonna start driving a car unless I can learn to drive it perfectly within the first day. Why? Well, like, this doesn't make sense.
Speaker 1:We've always learned step by step. You think of school, they broke everything down. In the end, we learned how to do like nuts equations in school and maths and science. If you were to try and do that now without learning the base, the building blocks, you'd just be like overwhelmed confused, go, no, can't do it. So we've always learned slowly, we've taken our time, we've taken the pressure off and we've built up over time.
Speaker 1:That's what we've done as human beings. Look at a baby when he learns to walk. Oh, if a baby can't walk after his tries the first time, do we say all or nothing, baby? It's all or nothing. You either walk now or might as well cut your knees off.
Speaker 1:No point. You'll never walk again. Obviously not. Keep keep keep trying until he walks. Keep doing it until he walks.
Speaker 1:Could take months, maybe a year. Who knows? But eventually, he'll walk. Baby will walk and then he'll from walking, he'll learn to run and learn to run, learn to sprint, you know, learn to sprint, do a marathon, do an ultra, like some people have done turtle, you know. That's how that is human, that is the human being And that don't think it doesn't apply to you as an adult.
Speaker 1:I just don't get it. Of course, it applies to us as adults. You know? Nuts. This guy stopped trying to do everything.
Speaker 1:Break it down one day at a time, one block at a time, something multitasking. What can you do today? Some of you are like, I've been off for two weeks now, I feel like I can't catch up, I feel terrible about it. Why? Just do what you can today.
Speaker 1:Only today is the day you can do anything. I can think about, I can't believe I missed about 25 workouts this year. I can't believe I didn't do this enough. Wow, why? What are we doing?
Speaker 1:What can I do today then, Scott? You're talking about you want to change, Scott. You're talking like you want to train better, Scott. You're talking about how you want to eat better, Scott. You're talking about how you want drink more water, Scott.
Speaker 1:You're talking to this big talk. What are you doing today, brother? Oh, yeah. Yeah. No.
Speaker 1:No. I won't do it today. I'm just I'm just saying now I need to do it. But why do I do it now? What do you mean?
Speaker 1:Go and get water now. Go and drink. Alright. I've just swung water. There we are.
Speaker 1:I'm tracking ages. Open your phone up now, track what you've had this morning, track what you're gonna eat now. I have another steps, get up now and go for a walk and just go to the fridge and back, go to the computer and back, get some steps and go upstairs, down the stairs for three or four times. You know, we can act if we want to. We can do it now.
Speaker 1:We can start now, again, go. And it's always very, like, pragmatic view in it. It's like, yeah, I've got all this work, stress, and yeah, I get it. And I can't speak for every single person's unique type of lifestyle but, at the same time, what we know for sure about the majority of us listening is we do spend time on social media, so we can cut down spend more time doing stuff, something that's got good return on investments, such as tracking. We know that we don't work eight to ten productive hours a day, right?
Speaker 1:We know a lot of our work is the brain is fried, fucking clicking on a 100 tabs back and forth, talking nonsense, you go on Whatsapp, you go on Instagram, whatever, you're just doing shallow kind of work and obviously some work isn't that way where you're not on computer like, nursing and all that's different. But a lot of us work in office jobs, right? So we know it's bullshit, we say, got all this work to do. You don't work for the eight to ten hours. You don't.
Speaker 1:I mean, find me someone that does it actually day in day out. Like some days you might be like straight through the project, whatever, but the majority of the days there's a lot of minutes and hours in those days that are just brain dead. Just like And in those moments, that's when we need to break it up and go for a walk because it's going to actually improve your productivity. To doing the four day work week in The UK, you know, who would have thought that's going to be that's actually made companies more productive, it's actually made some other companies more profitable and they go how's that and they're working less. Yeah, because it's not about the hours on the clock, it's about the actual work done in the time, actual work, you know, I can do some people can do as much work in one hour than someone can do in ten hours.
Speaker 1:The hours isn't as important as you think, it's like the productivity, the focus you can bring and some of us have got an hour or two a day where we are on fire, we've our first cup of coffee, you can bang someone out one or two hours and then it starts fading away. Some of us have got three or four hours in a tank, nobody, nearly nobody has got eight to ten hours of this hardcore focus work, right? So if we can work from the fact of this, is that our days are filled with some kind of, you know, dead time, let's utilize it, let's go for the walk, Let's go for a go for a walk, do a workout, you know, do something. We need a renaissance here of how we look at work, we need a new way to work, you know, we got an hour, we got the the nine to five, one hour lunch break. It's like, why not have a lunch why do I need an hour to eat food?
Speaker 1:Why can't I just have my food for ten minutes at, like, half eleven, and then, like, at one, I'll take my actual lunch hour, and in that hour, I'll go for a walk and do some activity or stretching or whatever. You know, why do we have to spend that hour just sitting down eating? We've gone from sitting on a commuter to sitting down eating. Take an hour to eat? How long does it take you to eat your lunch?
Speaker 1:Why don't you just eat that before, give you time to digest it and then hit some activity? Why? Like, we need to look at how we can change these things up, you know, how I can't do my work, Scott. Well, let's ask, you know, Tim Ferriss' four hour work week, it all came from literally asking, like asking people like, oh, can I do one day from home? Like, we live in a work from home culture now as well, so we do have more flexibility.
Speaker 1:But the main point is in reading the comments is like, we're trying to do too much. We're trying to do too much and I don't know why that pressure is on ourselves, but we're trying to do too much and I'm telling you now, success from working on Turtle since 2019, in the trenches, in the email replies, macro check ins, one to one coaching groups, meeting people real life, app developing the app, looking at the data, our stuff, right? The success stories are the people that do take it slow, that take this one day at a time seriously. It's not a gimmick, it's not a thing, it's ancient wisdom and it's come down for the ages for a reason, because it works. Today is the only day we have.
Speaker 1:Time, past and future in our brain is completely made up. It's a psychological it's a what's the word I'm looking for? Oh my god, my brain's fried. You've fried me, guys. It's a psychological thing, psychological time.
Speaker 1:Because if you didn't know about like if you only if you just were dropped on an island, with no watch, no nothing, time, nothing, and he just sat there and he was just boom, on my island, you know, there's trees over there, whatever. No watch, no phone. You know, you've only got you know, you can only do, you're gonna focus on what you're gonna do in a moment. You're gonna walk over there, this. Because we're distracted so much now with like plans for weekends, thinking of the future, thinking of what we did in the past, the present moment is really just as glazed it's like a glazed view.
Speaker 1:Like, we're like this observer of the day, but we're kind of not all there. It's kind of like when you're talking to someone, you know, zoned out and you're like, you even here? Are you even listening to me? That is how we live today because we're just like that through the days. At the end of day, we go, fucking hell.
Speaker 1:What do I do today? Don't know. Run on my phone. Walk up on my phone. Do some work.
Speaker 1:Now I'm watching TV. It's like because we're so unattentive to the one day at a time. Well, so attentive to the day to day that it is just a passive thing, right? But we need to be, we need the fistina lenti philosophy, we need this make haste slowly, we need the urgency to live today with the patience of results over time. So I say to myself, what can I do today, Scott?
Speaker 1:What can I do today? Okay. I'm behind the this, behind the now. I've got a mountain of things to do. I'm stressed with this, the family foods there, this and that.
Speaker 1:I've got all this shit going on. Right. I've a lot of shit going on. Okay. Can I do tag all that shit at once?
Speaker 1:No. Okay. What can I actually do today about the shit? Okay. Right.
Speaker 1:What can I do today about the shit? Well, I haven't worked out in four days, so I I will I wanna put a worker in. I wanna prioritize that today, so I'm gonna, you do this, I'm gonna do my worker this time today. And then, you know, I've got I've got to do these two calls. I've got this thing I've been holding off for months to do any I'm just gonna do that this time.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna open up the document, I'm gonna do it. You know, I was like, who do I need a call? Who do need an email to move the who start moving this project on? Who do I need to what's look at this chaos thing that's happening here, this nonsense thing in the life there that's causing a lot of struggle. Right.
Speaker 1:Mercy, what is the actual next step to take to sort that mess out? It's that. It's phone that person up, get a meeting booked in. Done. I'll do that today.
Speaker 1:You know, we break it down this way and eventually that massive poo, massive pop the poo poo Eventually, it doesn't become as big and scary as you think it is. But we can only tackle it now by doing the small stuff, like the dirty plates on the left and the clean plates on the right. The sink is in the middle of me. I can clean one plate at a time unless I'm an alien with eight arms. So I clean one plate, I take the dirty from the left, clean it, put the clean on the right.
Speaker 1:Over time, there'll be more clean plates on the right than dirty on the left. But if I were to just stare at how many dirty plates I had on the left and then how much non clean plates I had on the right, I would be paralyzed and be like, my god, got so much to do. Okay. I so much to do, but what can I how am I gonna get that mountain of dirty plates on my left to be the clean plates on my right? I'll just take that one plate first and I clean that, is it?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Clean that one. Yeah. Okay. Clean alright.
Speaker 1:Put that there. Oh, there we are. Oh, my god. It's so big. So that's still a massive still a huge lump of dirty plates.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, just do that again. Alright. Do it again. Oh, there we are then.
Speaker 1:Okay. Do it again. Okay. Oh, there we are. I nearly halfway through now.
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah. It's working. It's working. I'm doing one at a time. It's actually doing something.
Speaker 1:I'm cleaning one bit at a time and the dirty beds are going down and the clean beds are going up. That is it. It is Is it that simple? Maybe it is. I think it is.
Speaker 1:So, if you have been if you've missed out on sessions and you feel like you're behind, just jump in live if you can because the live energy is good. If you can't do it live, think about what you want to achieve. Do I want to lose weight? Is that my goal? Do I really, really want to lose it?
Speaker 1:Okay, if I haven't tracked, I will track today. Whatever I have at breakfast, I'm gonna track it right now. No messing about, just get it in the app, guys, just do it. Or you like to know, nutrition is fine, I want to get stronger, right. When are you going to do the next workout?
Speaker 1:Are you going do it today? If you can't do it today, genuinely can't do it today, can you plan it out, write it down, I'm going do it tomorrow this time, I'm going to do this exact replay of this tomorrow. Ask the Whatsapp group guys, what's your favorite workout in the last few weeks, I want to do it tomorrow, you know, just can't move on on it, that's it. The knock on effect of a good workout or like making momentum with your macros in the mornings is huge, you feel like, again, this feeling of feeling out of control, a lot of it starts with a rushed morning, lot of it starts with late nights on no phones, going to sleep late, I'm a shit sleep, a lot of it starts there. If you can wake up and have a calm morning, go for a walk, eight steps and listen to this podcast, whatever it needs to get your head in the right game, whether it's thirty minutes to yourself or it's forty minutes or it's fifteen minutes, whatever it is you can give yourself in the morning, do it because it's gonna have a huge knock on effect the rest of your day, right?
Speaker 1:But if you're really worrying about not doing all the workouts and stuff, you've got them for life guys, you're not going to lose them, they're not going anywhere, you can do them. But it doesn't matter how many workouts you pile on in the left, it doesn't matter how many dirty plates of workouts you're to pile on on the left, you can only do one workout at a time to get through them, Right? So just do one workout and then do another one, and eventually all the work that you've been building up will eventually go on the right and you've completed them. And that's how we're going to do about it. Same as the seminars.
Speaker 1:I got only seminars. Alright, do one. Listen to one. One. That's it.
Speaker 1:That's all I want you to do. And that's it. Thanks for listening. And nutrition roundtable tonight with doctor p. So and he's gonna be doing on Sunday.
Speaker 1:And then next, we've got quiz, nutrition quiz. You better start listening. And that's it really, guys. I hope you have a good day. Just take on board what I said.
Speaker 1:Hopefully, it gives you motivation to focus today only, one day at a time, daytime compartments, all that stuff, and just see how the magic works. It just does. So speak to you all soon.
