Hey hey!
You wrote down all your goals for 2022 already, right? Of course, you did, being a loyal reader. Now, time to do a 2nd draft. Yes, seriously. Mull it over some more.
I love writing ideas at different points of time during the day. When I write them down, irrespective of my level of awake-ness or weirdness, I think they are always pure genius. When I read them the next morning, some of them give me the same feeling I get when trying to read a doctor’s prescription, a good chunk of others feel like a 5-year old writing stuff down, and occasionally one makes sense and resemble an adult writing it. The last bit is what you mostly end up reading, although occasionally I indulge and publish the gibberish.
That brings me to today. The 3 things I have for you are
on the joy of, and dealing with contradictions. Or how you can eat doughnuts and still lose weight.
3 quotes. Including “Never forget that the public you is not you.”
on choosing experiences. In the not-too-distant future, whatever you eat is engineered to taste like your favourite food but is made up of the exact concoction of macro and micro-nutrients you need to help you thrive physically and mentally.
Let’s do this!
The joy of contradictions
In the world of fitness and nutrition, you have to be comfortable in dealing with contradictions. You have to learn to dig deeper, probe and ask the right question. The issue is that most often, you don't know enough to ask the right question. You learn that only along the way. You realise that you are doing the wrong thing only when you've done the wrong thing enough times. That's how it is, and that's okay.
Here are a couple of contradictions.
All diets work. None of them works.
You can eat doughnuts and burgers and lose weight. All you have to do is ensure that you are on a calorie deficit. You'll find a lot of stunts on the internet proving this.
Let's say you need to eat 1200 calories. That's not a lot of doughnuts and pizza. That's the issue. But if you can suck it up and deal with it, great. Do it for a month and you will lose weight. Crazy!
Of course, you can eat 1200 calories of vegetables and you will lose weight as well. Most probably the quality of weight loss is higher, your health is better and all that. But what is the problem you are trying to solve? If you want to have your cake and lose weight too, just eat the requisite calories of cake and nothing else, and you can do it.
Of course, doing these are hard. There's not enough pizza to go around when it is 1200 calories/day. And eating 1200 calories of vegetables-only is so hard and so boring. Ughhh.
If you do it, you will lose weight. Yaay, all nonsensical stupid diets work.
If you don't do it, you won't lose weight. Even the best diet in the world won't.
Zero means zero. Zero doesn't mean zero.
Sometimes, you have to flip a switch. No sugar means no sugar.
Sometimes, you have to figure out sustainability. A square of dark chocolate, a weekly ice cream, a beer with friends - a few things in moderation is the way to go.
You have to work yourself out. You have to leave enough in the tank at the end of the session.
Lying down in a pool of your sweat feels good. You killed that session. You worked out hard and the dopamine rush feels amazing.
This is definitely okay. But occasionally.
Most of the time, you want to leave the gym feeling stronger than you came in. That means you pushed your upper limit just a wee bit. You could've lifted more but you didn't. Coz you have a life to get back to. Coz you have 1000 more training sessions.
Contradictions
Life is full of contradictions. Well, at least, fitness and nutrition are filled with it.
Sometimes, you have to do this. Sometimes, you have to do that.
The time window with which you are looking at things is a crucial factor.
If you want to lose weight in 4 weeks, and to heck with the consequences and the difficulties and all that - then this is not a time for moderation.
But if you want to keep getting stronger year after year, stay in shape for the long-term, you have to find the right balance between unsustainable behaviour (little spurts of it) with sustainable, sensible behaviour (long stretches of it).
That's how it is.
You can try to prove me wrong. But I wish I made all of this up and it was my theory. Nah, all of this is handed down to me by giants. I am just spreading the word.
Or you can reach deep down to the sensible person who you shut up when they keep saying reasonable things.
Remember, just solve the maze from the end. And then repeat the steps on the way forward.
3 quotes
Public comments are just feedback on something you made. They're worth reading to see how this thing has been perceived. You can even take it as feedback on the public image you've created. All people know is what you've chosen to show them. So if your public persona is coming across wrong, try tweaking it.
Never forget that the public you is not you.
– Derek Sivers
All of us have a private persona. People who see me as a coach, for example, see me at my best. I am sharp, I am alert and awake, I am prepared, and I am good at what I do. So, they have a rather altered sense of who I am. Likewise, in other facets of my life, I am perceived differently.
Everyone around you sees you only through a rather small window and through their lens. So, take what they say with that in mind.
And the people who are much further out, who don't even know you through that window - how much attention should you be paying them?
We're the sum of our behaviours. Ninety percent of our actions are driven by habits, whether positive or negative. Who we are today physically, emotionally, mentally, professionally, and financially is a reflection of our behaviours and the choices we've made to this point.
– Mark Verstagen
The best part is everything about your behaviours and actions and habits are under your control. If you don't like where you are, you can fix it.
One step forward at a time.
The body is one piece.
– Dan John / John Jerome
It just is. This statement is simple and obvious and profound.
On choosing experiences.
Black Mirror time.
Living in the future
In the not-too-far away future, there will be dramatic differences. 100 years ago, automobiles and planes were abnormalities. Today, flying across the world in less than half a day for a week for a vacation or work trip has become commonplace. Door-to-door, it takes me the same amount of time to visit my family in the village near Thanjavur as it takes to go to my friend's house in Singapore. That's ridiculous!
With the metaverse and virtual reality and all that jazz, you could choose to have coffee in Blue Bottle in SF in the morning, go to your favourite dive bar in New York in the evening, and watch football in the Bernabeu - all from your home, and all in the course of your day. And not as a poor substitute but as the real thing. While this may sound incredulous, pause for a second and think. We can fly across the world in metal tubes!
Always in great shape
And you are always in great physical shape. Whatever you eat is engineered to taste like your favourite food but is made up of the exact concoction of macro and micro-nutrients you need to help you thrive physically and mentally.
Feel like pasta? Done! Experience lunch with your spouse in your favourite restaurant in Tuscany with a carafe of house red. Your tongue and brain will still taste stuff the same way, coz they are chemical reactions and programs. But what actually drips into you is the precise ratio of the highest quality nutrients. You get the taste and experience, your body gets none of the nonsense. Win-win!
You have a patch on you that wakes you up slowly in the morning, along with light sensors in your bedroom. And gets you into relaxation mode and ready for bed in the night. You can still drink coffee or whatever feels like coffee but it is decoupled with the delayed chemical reactions you need. You don't need to dunk 3 espressos after lunch to stop feeling drowsy or have an energy drink at 9 pm to pull an all-nighter. All solved with the best biochemical programs, tailored for you.
Every experience becomes a choice
Some of you detest the gym. Some of you cannot stand the thought of going on a diet. But you do it sooner or later coz you want the outcomes of those choices.
But these kinda things will soon be decoupled. You choose to do what you want. Don't like lifting weights or running or any such thing - no problem. You will still be in great physical shape. You can have ice cream for breakfast and pizza for lunch and beer for dinner and still be ripped.
Every experience becomes a choice. You choose to go lift weights because you enjoy it. You do it with your training buddies coz that's how you hang out. Some of you like hanging out with your friends at nightclubs and bars. Some of you like hanging out with your friends on the badminton court.
You get to do things your way, without worrying about the carrot or the stick.
You choose the experience you want to nourish your life with.
A thought exercise
Unfortunately for you and me, this is not going to happen immediately. This scenario, or the equivalent of it, will happen within the next 100 years, probably much earlier.
For now, we are here. But this is a useful thought experiment. What choices are you making today? What experiences are you choosing today? Which ones would you make otherwise if the outcome could be de-coupled? You can hang out with any of your friends, anywhere. Doesn't matter where you are or where they are. Well, who do you choose to hang out with? How do you choose to spend your day? How do you choose to find and make meaning?
And why should this choice change only when the future comes about?
Consequences, of course. Ice cream for breakfast and beer for dinner and sitting on the couch all day is not going to end well. So, what choices will you make given these consequences, given your current reality?
And on the larger choices - who do you choose to spend your time with, how do you choose to spend your day etc - they have the same consequences. The metaverse is not going to solve anything if you make the wrong choices.
In many places, the tech/future will take care of our problems and solve them for us. But for now, you have to do your best.
But in many other places, the choices we make and the lives we lead are tech/future agnostic. What different choices will you make here?
Thanks for reading. If you liked or learned one useful tidbit, please let me know what that was. And of course, I’d hugely appreciate it if you could spread the word to one friend of yours.
See ya next week!
