Hey hey!
Hope you are having a pleasant Sunday.
I had a great night last night, just me and conversations with a few boxes of sweets. You can read about it below.
Now, just getting ready to record my thoughts and then heading out to train - gorgeous weather in Madras to get out.
No audio version today - equipment glitch. Meaning the laptop on which all of that is set up refuses to switch on.
Anyhoo, let’s do this.
A post about my sweet tooth. While I’ve gotten much better because of better eating habits - eating more vegetables and all that, as well as learning to not behave as if I’ve never seen sweets in my life before, I occasionally slip up. Which is glorious fun but also a learning moment.
3 quotes, as always.
The secret to motivation and getting an endless supply of it.
My sweet tooth and I
About last night
Recently, I started noting down when I get cravings. They mostly involve a craving to put something sweet into my mouth. But I've realised that there are so many more cravings as well. Many times, I have not recognised or acknowledged that it is a craving and the ensuing pattern that follows.
As embarrassing as this might be, let me tell you about last night.
When. Not if.
With Deepavali around the corner, a few friends and students have sent across goodies. Which is wonderful and generous and thoughtful of them.
Unfortunately for me, once something sweet has entered my fridge, it is a question of when, and not if. When am I going to plop all of it into my mouth?
To say I have a sweet tooth is a gross understatement.
Sweet tooth
Whether I am eating sweets tonight is a foregone conclusion. It is Saturday, there are sweets in my fridge. Duh, what do you think is going to happen?
The good thing is that I've trained today, and eaten 3-4 cups of vegetables already during lunch. While none of these is needed to justify eating sweets, I inevitably find myself justifying it.
Pause before a response.
I eat dinner. I follow my guidelines and get a good, balanced meal in. But every stray thought is about "When do we get to dessert?!?!"
The "we" are the two voices in my head, who weirdly seem to occlude on eating dessert.
I wait 10 minutes after dinner. I already have a plan for what I am going to put on my bowl. I have kaju katli, moti choor laddu, and this delicious amalgamation of a biscuit and a cookie and ghee sweet that a student of mine sent that my wife and I cannot get enough of. I slice half of that and add it to my smorgasbord. I throw in some ribbon pakoda for good measure, to balance out the sweetness.
So far, nothing crazy. Sure, the quantities I used to take down before and now have gradually come down but what has not changed is that rabid want of wanting to stuff it all down my gullet.
I eat the 4-5 pieces of sweets. Happy. Settled.
For all of 5 minutes.
The wes in my head start talking. One wants to eat the other 2 kaju katlis, as well as the other half of that delish sweet. The other is asking the question, "Do you really want it?"
I mean, of course, I want it. But is this just a stupid craving because the chemical hit in the brain is craving more of that hit? Of course, it is.
But, instead of waiting to answer that question, instead of waiting 10 minutes, instead of writing down in my "Cravings journal", I re-fill my bowl.
And then I wait. Who am I fooling?
It is much easier to leave it in the fridge than to put it in a bowl and next to me.
So, I obviously ate it. I ate it before the other guy could even ask the question again.
And then I refilled my bowl. And ate that too.
The next morning
And with the sensibilities of a new morning, I wrote all of these down in my journal.
Yes, actions and not words. Yes, pause between stimulus and response. Yes, be proactive and not reactive. I know all of this.
But knowing is one thing, and doing it is another.
This is not about whether eating sweets is right or wrong. This is not a right or wrong question. This is simply how one part of me shouted over the other part that was following protocol - raise a question and pause.
It happens. It happens quite a bit. It happens in places where it is not as mundane as eating sweets. It happens in serious situations as well.
I am the nutrition/fitness coach. I am the guy with a crazy sweet tooth who just wants to eat sweets as he used to 20 years ago. Sometimes, one is driving. Sometimes, the other is driving.
What could I have done better? Well, paused. I could still have chosen to eat the sweets. But then, I could've eaten them tonight - they are still going to be there, after all. And it is not the situation where I cannot afford to buy them.
Writing it down in my journal, not feeling guilty about what I did but simply observing what I did, and laughing at myself - that seems to be a good enough lesson from last night.
Let's see what I do tonight, coz the rest of the sweets are not gonna eat themselves, are they?
And yes, I could get rid of all of them but it is Deepavali. Ah, me and my rationalisations.
Enjoy responsibly. And guilt-free.
3 quotes
When you launch a new product, the first question to ask yourself is not "How is this new product better than the competition?" but "First what?"In other words, what category is this new product first in?
– Al Ries and Jack Trout
10 years ago, The Quad was amongst the first of its kind. Today, the fitness space is seeing great growth, which is wonderful for all of us involved. The more mainstream fitness gets, the more people will get fit and healthy.
As we contemplate and design new products and services at both The Quad and the Daily9, this question is something that I find myself spending a lot of time on.
Being better than the competition is a given. I think that is how everyone must be - your product should be way better. But to attract a new group of people, what category are we the first/top?
Without hard work, you'll develop neither judgment nor leverage.
– Naval Ravikant
Naval is a great person to read. If you don't read Naval yet, I highly recommend you start here.
You don't have to stop doing anything except to stop seeing the world from the viewpoint of your own personal cravings.
– from Way of the Peaceful Warrior by Dan Millman
Isn't this just a powerful, wonderful statement?
Stop seeing the world from the viewpoint of my own personal cravings. My attachments. My desires. My wants. The world does not revolve around my head. But in thinking it does, I am always misoriented.
I need to print this and plaster it all over my office.
How to get an endless supply of motivation
Not starting trouble
We all start with a high degree of motivation. The first few days or weeks are attacked with gusto. You start to believe that you can just keep going. Even if you are terrible at something, there's enough motivation and drive in you to keep you coming back.
But at some point, it all starts to crumble down. Because your activity, be it going to the gym or trying a diet, is a house of cards. It is not built on a sustainable foundation of habits and guidelines - because you are not aware of them yet.
This inevitably happens when instant gratification stops. When the results stop coming by rather easily. When you plateau.
You wish you had more motivation to just keep going.
Extrinsic drivers of motivation
Motivation can be broadly clubbed into two types - extrinsic and intrinsic. As Steven Kotler puts it,
Extrinsic drivers are rewards that are external to ourselves. These are things like money, fame, and sex, and they're definitely potent. Money translates into food, clothing, and shelter, so the brain treats our desire for it as a basic survival need. Fame might seem trivial, but famous people often have significantly more access to resources - food, water, shelter, mates, and so on - so we're wired to want it. And sex is the only way for humans to win evolutions' game of survival, which is why sex sells and the bars are always packed on Friday night.
When the slowdown happens, our extrinsic motivation kinda empties. Or the other way around. But what happens is that suddenly things are hard to get around to.
What do we do?
Intrinsic drivers of motivation
We need to find an intrinsic driver for our motivation. Autonomy was what drove me when I started down this journey. I wanted to be in charge of my life, of my health and my fitness. Mastery continues to drive me today - to get better at the skills, to have the satisfaction of a job well done, the enjoyment of the journey itself.
Motivation, unfortunately, is not a tap you can turn on when you want to.
Wanting something really hard and a lot is not adequate.
You have to do the work. Obviously.
And to do the work, you have to want to do the work.
Which is where you think motivation fits in magically and solves it.
Those people who keep going to the gym have more of it. And you have less of it. Well, not really. Doesn't work that way.
Actions
Developing intrinsic drivers of motivation is not that simple or easy. Maybe I'll write a longer post about it some other time.
For now, just know that your actions are what determine you.
If you keep saying you want to lose weight but are not able to, examine your actions.
If you keep saying you want to get stronger but don't see that happening, examine your actions.
It is the rare instance where you put in the effort (action) but don't see results. There, the solution is simple - get a better coach.
But most often, your action and your mouth are not aligned with each other.
But you already knew that
Watch the discrepancy between your actions and your supposed goal.
Break your goal into actions. Let's say you want to get stronger - the actions you will need to take are
Lift weights at the gym, at least 3 times a week.
Sleep at least 7 hours a night.
Eat adequate protein and calories.
Find the discrepancy.
Then, either fix the action. Or question whether you really want the goal. Or are you just repeating what everyone else is? Does this goal TRULY motivate you? Does it stir something inside?
Until you find that, you cannot wake up your intrinsic drivers.
Don't depend on it
As my wife put it, you cannot depend on motivation.
But you can cultivate it. Much harder to do. Longer process. For that, start with identifying the right goal for you.
That said, there are quite a few things you can do to make it easier, to reduce the friction to act. Continuing with the "Get Stronger" theme, let's see what those could be.
To reduce the friction required to go to the gym, you can
go to bed in your training gear. Or keep your training gear right by where your dental stuff is. As soon as you wake up and (presumably) brush your teeth, there it is. Put the clothes on.
Have a workout buddy. Or better yet, buddies. They are gonna be at your doorstep in 5 minutes. Do you hit snooze or do you get up?
To sleep 7 hours every night, you can
Work backwards and be clear about when you need to go to bed. If you need to be at the gym at 7 am, and it is a 15-minute commute - then you need to be up by (at least) 6.15 am. Minus 7 hours is 11.15 pm.
By 10.30 pm, you should be done with all your devices. Your dinner should've been done quite a bit earlier.
No devices in bed. No devices in the room, if you can.
And if you find it difficult to go to sleep, practice breathing drills and not doom scrolling.
You get the idea.
You cannot depend on motivation to get the job done. It might magically exist for a week or a month. But most of our goals are much longer-term.
To get to your goal, act accordingly. De-couple feeling motivated and going to the gym.
Don't feel motivated? Okay. Go to the gym.
Feeling motivated? Brilliant. Go to the gym.
That's pretty much the secret.
Thanks for reading. I’ll get my glitch sorted out by next week.