Hey hey!
What ruckus are you creating today? What’s different this weekend from the previous weekend?
And most importantly, what’s keeping you up at night?
On to the 3 things for this week.
How to avoid getting sugar cravings in the first place. When cravings come, it depends on our state of mind - to resist or not. But what if you could avoid it even happening? It is a chemical signal, after all.
Best Friends. Are you one?
Learn from yourself. You’ve learned a lot. You are smarter than you think. But have you taken the time to mine your own learnings? Start now.
How to avoid getting sugar cravings
You have cravings. I have cravings. We all have cravings.
For most of you, it is wanting to pop in something sweet and sugary. Some folks have a craving for savoury stuff. But they are cravings.
There's nothing harmful about cravings.
But, when you miss a meal, are sleep deprived, or had a stressful day at work, or had an argument with a friend, you find yourself elbow deep in double chocolate ice cream. It happens in a blur. The autopilot kicked in and there was no room for rational thought or slow thinking.
That's definitely a problem.
After a solid meal
Another scenario that crops up is the craving to have something sugary after a good meal. You just ate. You are rather full. You ate well.
But still, there's this sugar craving. Why?!?!
Some of you are pros at this. You pop in a square of dark chocolate and you are good to go. Some of you cannot stop at one square, and it is a slippery slope.
That's definitely a problem.
I've written earlier about how to tackle sugar cravings. Here you go:
And a weird thought on reframing the craving itself.
But in this post, I want to introduce a weird and alien concept. If you check all boxes (will get to it) you actually won’t get any sugar cravings.
Here's a relevant clip from The Matrix for you to watch.
The mental model I want you to have is this:
There are a hundred switches in your gut.
In your meals, when you eat highly nutritious and fibrous stuff, these vitamins and minerals and amino acids and fatty acids and whatnots start closing these switches.
When your meals lack some of these whatnots, and when your meals repeatedly lack them - some of these switches are not turned off.
Your gut recognises that there's something missing, and that comes across as a craving.
In you pop that sugary goodness, and the craving goes away.
But funnily enough, what's actually missing is something else - one of the aforementioned whatnots.
When you switch to eating real food and regularly are eating that way, your cravings go down. And there will be many meals when you do not get any cravings.
Isn't that a superpower?
You eat sugary goodness when you want, coz you feel like it. Not because of an uncontrollable urge to do so.
More power to you!
Best Friends
I know, I know. Back in high school and saying "best friends."
But why is it so hard to be your best friend? Why is it easier and habitual to be a dick instead?
You look at it on paper, it makes no sense. You want to be your best friend. You understand you better than most. You know all the great things you are doing. But yet, you behave like anything close to a friend.
By you, I mean me. If I could encapsulate all of the self-improvement work I am doing, it comes to this - be my best friend.
You already know everything that you need to know
But you keep digging around more. You are reading more self-help and self-improvement books. You follow smart, successful people whom you want to emulate.
But have you learned something fundamental about yourself? Something that you could not have come up with yourself? Burning the metaphorical midnight oil? I doubt it. How? I've been there. And I am still there quite often.
Extra hour
The pandemic enforced extra time on us all. No commute or social obligations lead to an extra hour or two in the day. I've already been down the Netflix and PlayStation path in my youth. So, I decided to focus on reading and writing.
As I looked around for recommendations, I focused on the overlaps between different schools of thought. The standout one to me was journaling.
Already knew that
Of course, I already knew that you should journal. Coach Dan John is meticulous about his training journals and has piles and piles of them going back decades. But I failed every time I attempted it.
If I couldn't maintain a training journal, could I maintain a journal for my day and for my life? Wrong question.
Am I okay with not starting a journal? Definitely not!
Analysis paralysis
There are 100s of options for daily journaling. From 5-minute journals to writing prompts, to open journaling. It is easy to get sucked in. At least, for me.
I gave myself a deadline of 24 hours to find something, or else. That empowered me to start.
No prompts, no nothing. Jot down everything. Over the last 2 years, I've refined my writing prompts for my journal.
Reflect
Journaling has become an integral part of my morning routine. While I do not do it daily, I average a bit under 6 times a week.
The writing is only one part though. It is the periodic reflection that makes things compound.
I do weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews. Or rather, I used to. Over the past few months, with the world reopened, I've stumbled.
But since this has already happened to me - I know it because I've written it in my journal - I know what I need to do. Which is to get back to weekly, monthly, and quarterly reviews.
Takeaway
Journaling is a valuable tool.
Spend 15 minutes daily, either at the start of your day or the end of your day, writing things down.
Review them every Sunday.
Make rules and guidelines for yourself, based on your journal entries.
For every other question that pops up in your head, figure out your own answer. It is better that way.
And this is to get you to start. Once you start forging your own path, you will come up with your own system.
It is vital to read books and interact with people more intelligent than you. They are able to say things that are in your mind in an erudite and succinct fashion. But as you apply it in your context, your journal will tell you how to be you.
Copy with aggression, and build on your own learnings.
And as with all bits of advice, take what makes sense to you and ignore the rest.
And that’s it for this week. Thanks for reading!
April 17, 2022