The law of weight gain
Plus: The power of thinking less, losing 140lbs & becoming a conscious eater.
Welcome to the 123rd consecutive edition of the PWL newsletter.
Each week I share 5 discoveries I have made that are having or may have a profound impact on my weight loss journey.
Here’s what I have uncovered this week that you may want to consider stealing.
1/ The power of thinking less.
“The more you have to think about what to do, the less likely you will do what you are thinking about.”
I first recognized this with my eating.
The more I had to think about what I was going to eat for each meal, the less likely I was to eat the way I wanted.
My workaround was to create a weekly meal plan, which I logged in MyFitnessPal, so I could think less.
Each night I plan for the next day by copying the day from the week before.
The magic of this system is I no longer spend any time wondering what I will eat (thinking less) because I have put my eating on autopilot.
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An example…
This thinking can be applied to any area of life.
For instance, I have been struggling with daily flexibility training for the past few months.
I struggle because each day I burn a tremendous amount of energy trying to figure out what the hell I am going to do.
So I did what I did with my eating. I put my flexibility on autopilot.
Here’s the first draft of my weekly flexibility plan.
Monday — Shoulders and neck
Tuesday — Side split
Wednesday — Hips and hamstrings
Thursday — Posterior chain
Friday — Pancake
Saturday — Front split
Sunday — Bridge
The plan eliminates uncertainty and the likelihood of zero days because I know exactly what I am training each day.
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To steal…
There are two essential types of thinking on this journey — thinking more and thinking less.
Thinking more is used for reflection to learn from our errors.
Thinking less is when we automate things like our eating or our training, that are recurring, so we waste little energy thinking about them.
Consider creating your own one-week template to help you start thinking less on this journey.
2/ The law of weight gain.
This law is the most profound thing I learned about myself in 2022.
“I am overweight because I habitually overeat.”
Every single time I eat beyond my calorie sweet spot — 2200 to 2400 calories — I gain an unhealthy amount of weight.
One day of overeating is not a problem.
What is problematic is when those those days compound into weeks and months.
That’s where serious weight gain happens.
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To ask yourself…
Is this true for you? And if it is, what is the first step you must take to stop overeating?
3/ A powerful spreadsheet tactic.
When something unusual, unexpected or undisciplined happens, I leave notes in the appropriate cell of my spreadsheet for my future self, so they can uncover and build off the wisdom from my present self.
Here’s an example from the spreadsheet I use to track my progress.
Any box highlighted in orange is my quick way of visually flagging any behaviour that did not go as it was supposed to.
You can see that on January 8th I overeat.
The real gold is contained in the note I left in the cell that revealed what I said to myself to convince myself to overeat.
The next time I travel I can refer back to this to make sure I am better prepared and don’t fall for that mind game my brain plays on me.
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To ponder…
What gets measured, gets managed — in things like a spreadsheet.
And what gets managed gets mastered — because of the notes we leave for ourself in the spreadsheet.
What are you measuring?
4/ A story that has me thinking deeply.
This is about prolific music producer Rick Rubin.
What I find interesting about this story is the idea that what we think is the root cause of a problem often isn’t.
The truth is there are other factors, often obscure and seemingly unrelated, that can help us solve elusive problems.
I definitely feel this way about weight loss.
My whole life I felt my weight issues were a result of a diet and exercise problem.
I don’t think that way anymore.
While diet and exercise are definitely part of the solution, what I ultimately realized was I had a behaviour management issue.
I would start do a bunch of random stuff and then suddenly and unknowingly stop doing them.
This led to my mindset of STOP STOPPING.
As a result, I only invest in daily habits I am going to do for a lifetime.
I call these essential habits. I have 10 and I do them every single day and record my results in my spreadsheet for success.
Of the 10, only one has to do with eating and one with training.
But like Rick, I also have one that has to do with getting out each day for an early morning walk to get sunshine in my eyeballs.
It may not seem like much, but subtle things such as these have been proven to align with our weight loss goals.
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To ponder…
If weight gain was simply a matter of diet and exercise, and because there are at least a million products on the market that address these, we should see weight gain trending downward.
That is not the case. By 2030, 85% of all Americans are expected to be overweight or obese.
There are clearly other issues at play.
Getting sunlight early in the morning may be one of them.
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Resources to consult…
»» 1. The Rick Rubin story came from Billy Oppenheimer’s newsletter — Six at 6 on Sunday.
»» 2. Andrew Huberman has broken down the science behind sunlight exposure — The light and sun exposure guide.
5/ Becoming a conscious eater.
I eat 5 plates of food a day.
Each plate has a template that I can build out successfully no matter where I am.
This falls in line with a principle I talked about above — Think Less!
Thinking in templates allows me to accomplish that because I have a visual of what each plate is supposed to look like.
Here’s an example of the template I follow for plate #4.
It’s always a protein source, with 1 or 2 veggies and 2 or 3 fat sources.
*Fat sources you can’t see — grass fed butter on the green beans, and avocado oil on the chicken.
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To ponder…
People struggle with their eating and their weight because they are non-conscious eaters.
A non-conscious eater has no idea…
what they are eating
when they are eating
when they are not eating
how much they are eating
why they are eating what they are eating
what’s in the food they are eating
what they shouldn’t be eating
Successful weight loss requires a shift in identity — from non-conscious to conscious eater.
And one of the first things to do to make that shift is determine how many meals you are eating each day and what each of those meals looks like.
Thank you for reading!
That’s it for this week’s edition my friend.
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PS. Here’s an example of a 50-something female client I am working with. She just hit the 10% mark this week and we are not yet to her ideal body weight.
