20 For ‘20: 20 Deep Thoughts for Navigating Your Year

A few years ago I began summarizing some key thoughts from the year based on my own observations, the books I’ve read and/or other musings and highlights related to health/fitness/fat loss/life.

You will be tempted to jump on a new diet, fitness program, cleanse or plan over the coming days or weeks. What if this year you put your cognitive/emotional/physical resources into improving your relationship with food,identity as a healthy eater/exerciser, prioritize sleep, grocery shopping, food preparation and set your environment up in such a way to make those habits easier/stickier.

Draw a bigger circle: “A culture that allows the concept of “safety” to creep so far that it equates emotional discomfort with physical danger is a culture that encourages people to systematically protect one another from the very experiences embedded in daily life that they need in order to become strong and healthy.”… If we want to create welcoming, inclusive communities, we should be doing everything we can to turn down the tribalism and turn up the sense of common humanity.” – The Coddling of the American Mind (Haidt, Lukianoff)

What if this year you took action instead of just “being in motion”. They sound similar but being “in motion” is planning, contemplating, becoming “aware”, strategizing – all things that are poor proxies for real, tangible, results-oriented action. Taking action involves getting out and taking deliberate steps, showing up at the gym, getting healthy food, cooking healthy food, eating from home, getting to bed at a reasonable hour. (h/t James Clear)

On keeping the mind still: “We will never feel okay by way of external accomplishments. Enough comes from the inside. It comes from stepping off the train. From seeing what you already have, what you’ve always had. That space between your ears—that’s yours. You don’t just have to control what gets in, you also have to control what goes on in there. You have to protect it from yourself, from your own thoughts. Not with sheer force, but rather with a kind of gentle, persistent sweeping. Be the librarian who says “Shhh!” to the rowdy kids, or tells the jerk on his phone to please take it outside. Because the mind is an important and sacred place. Keep it clean and clear.”- Ryan Holliday, Stillness is the Key

Our society is one of pendulum swinging. When it comes to fitness/nutrition and social media, the approximate ratio of posts telling people to be patient with new years resolution gym noobs to posts of people complaining about gym noobs is about 100 to 1. The ratio is similar with posts telling people to enjoy holiday food vs “how many calories are in mashed potatoes and how many burpees it will take to burn them off” posts. This is not a bad thing.

Insight is the boobie prize of progress: Having insight or knowledge about how or why you are sabotaging your efforts is almost useless. Unless paired with a deliberate, focused and consistent action to curb the disrupt the bad habits, insight on its own is of very little value. I feel like when we gain “awareness” our brain tricks us into thinking we are on our way to making progress when really just prefer to sit on those insights.

Our level of self-compassion has a greater effect on whether we develop anxiety and depression than all the usual things that tend to screw up people’s lives, like traumatic life events, a family history of mental illness, low social status, or a lack of social support. – Lori Gottlieb

Success lies in the un-sexy. It is the underpinnings, the scaffolding, the little wins. It’s in the frustration, the resilience and the discomfort of change. None of which makes for compelling instagram stories.

“You like to imagine yourself in control of your fate, consciously planning the course of your life as best you can. But you are largely unaware of how deeply your emotions dominate you. They make you veer toward ideas that soothe your ego. They make you look for evidence that confirms what you already want to believe. They make you see what you want to see, depending on your mood, and this disconnect from reality is the source of the bad decisions and negative patterns that haunt your life. Rationality is the ability to counteract these emotional effects, to think instead of react, to open your mind to what is really happening, as opposed to what you are feeling. It does not come naturally; it is a power we must cultivate, but in doing so we realize our greatest potential.” Robert Greene – Laws of Human Nature.
“Food Freedom” is a 2-way street; Releasing from the perceived need to consume certain foods whilst exhibiting self-compassion if you do consume said food. A healthy relationship with food is the empowerment of saying “no”more often and the empowerment of saying “yes”with limits.

We tend to think that the future happens later, but we’re creating it in our minds every day. When the present falls apart, so does the future we had associated with it. And having the future taken away is the mother of all plot twists. Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.. It’s our honesty with ourselves that helps us make sense of our lives with all of their nuances and complexity. Repress those thoughts, and you’ll likely behave “badly.” Acknowledge them, and you’ll grow. – Lori Gottlieb, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone

You must love someone without expecting anything in return; otherwise it’s not truly love. You must respect someone without expecting anything in return; otherwise you don’t truly respect him. You must speak honestly without expecting a pat on the back or a high-five or a gold star next to your name; otherwise you aren’t truly being honest.” – Mark Manson, Everything is Fu*ked

Strive for a semblance of balance between accountability without the guilt/anxiety and awareness without the obsession. Becoming aware through the vulnerability of of facing your demons head on and embracing the accountability is the very definition of self-love and the basis of progress and healing.

Breaking through weight loss plateaus involves calling out 2 forms of BS; Diet industry and your own. Ignore the diet industry BS and become tired of your own.
Performance drives success, but when performance can’t be measured, networks drive success. Your success isn’t about you and your performance. It’s about us and how we perceive your performance. Even experts have a hard time discriminating between top products, like wine, performers, and musicians. Performance is bounded. Usain Bolt and Tiger Woods dominated their respective sports but were no more than 1% better than second place. Their performance was bounded but their success was not. Preferential attachment (initial success is tied to future success). It underlies most of our choices from products we buy to causes we endorse. – The Formula, Albert-Laszlo Barabasi

So many social media conversations can be summed up in a single, glorious word; Ultracrepidarianism: the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one’s knowledge or competence.

“Illusion of asymmetric insight”: The conviction that we know others better than they know us—and that we may have insights about them they lack (but not vice versa)—leads us to talk when we would do well to listen and to be less patient than we ought to be when others express the conviction that they are the ones who are being misunderstood or judged unfairly.” Malcolm Gladwell. Talking to Strangers.

What if I told you you’ve ALREADY made progress? That’s right – even if you’ve put on weight this year or feel like you’ve been spinning your wheels, you have taken important steps. The work you put in – no matter how small has cumulative effects. Your body and your brain are capable entities. You have found ways that HAVEN’T worked. You are learning.. Growing.. Progressing. Even if you don’t know it. Frustration is a sign that you are doing something right.

The “Zone of awesome” is a range of behaviors that include flexible restraint, daily movement, eating mostly whole, minimally processed foods most of the time and training consistently. The “not awesome” zones include on one end; The orthorexic zone: Rigid restraint, restrictive diets, cleanses, extreme forms of exercise. On the other end; The “Put your big boy/big girl pants: “I love food too much”, “everything in moderation”, “I’ll start tomorrow”.