This 1 Weight Loss Habit Changed My Life
– The 1 habit that got me to my dream body when I had failed for 7 years before then was sticking to a system
that bridged the journey from past me to dream me. And I have taught this same system to 100s of my successful
weight loss students, so I know this system
will work for you, too, if you use it correctly. The problem is when I just
straight-up explain the system, people always end up using it wrong. I want to save you my 7
painful trial-and-error years by sharing my cautionary
tale of flawed ideas, thoughts and beliefs.
So that when I reveal the system, you grasp how to use it correctly and can do so immediately
after this video ends. I grew up believing that adulthood and being overweight are synonymous. As kids, we look at the world around us, and without a doubt, believe that what were seeing
is all there is to life. My grandparents lived
in a time without color. Teachers live and sleep in the classroom. And every adult around me was overweight, so that's what would happen to me, too. I made peace with that inevitability. And yet when it happened, I wasn't ready. I remember I was shopping with
my best friend at Forever 21. I remember taking a size
2 white v-neck shirt off the shelf, walking
into the changing room, and finding myself struggling to fit. I remember staring at myself in the mirror with the shirt bunched
up around my shoulders and one arm awkwardly hanging
up in the air thinking, "How could this not fit?" I didn't buy anything that day.
I made my way home and
Googled "how to lose weight," and the first thing that popped up was something called "the GM Diet." I lasted 1.5 days on it. Looking back, this makes sense because its essentially a starvation diet, but I didn't know that back then. This experience combined
with the many jokes I had heard about how losing weight means eating bland salads
cemented my second belief about weight loss: losing weight
must be a painful process. So naturally when I saw
weight loss programs that called for replacing all of my current eating habits in one go, or working out for 6 days a week when currently my main workout was making it to the kitchen and back. Oh, hey, can you bring
me some popcorn, too? Okay, sometimes.
I didn't question it. I figured weight loss is painful,
so this is how it must be. It also didn't help that I
bought into the dream sold by the marketing of these programs. They featured chiseled abs and mesmerizing body weight stunts. I figured this is what ultimate health and fitness looks like,
so of course I want that. All of these beliefs kept me committed to program after program all
of which felt unsustainable, but I figured that's the sacrifice needed for being healthy and fit. (record scratches) But believing and
sticking to these programs was two separate things. I would start my week with the intention to prep all my breakfasts and lunches, but by day 3 find myself
in line for Dicks Burgers. Or Id shell out $99 for BeachBody only to find myself so sore by day 8 that my hamstrings
groaned with every step. I have "dug too deep," Shaun T. But since I truly believed that what I was doing was necessary, I figured my problem is accountability. I just need to find a
trainer, nutritionist, or a group fitness class
to keep me consistent. Turns out spending 1000s of dollars is still not enough to keep me consistent.
I think I showed up to my trainer sessions maybe half the time. This 50% consistency would lead me to two types of reactions
on my weigh-in days: The rational type, Id see my weight is up and acknowledge that I
was only half consistent, so this makes sense. Then Id vow to be more consistent, which I would be for 2 weeks until I fell back to my old patterns. The second was the fun house mirror type where I'd fall into a distorted reality. Because my mind could remember all the uncomfortable
soreness after workouts, and the times I exhausted my
willpower resisting the donuts my coworker sent an
email inviting everybody to try, rude!, I would see my weight go up and think "I am doing so much! Why am I not losing weight?" This would spiral me into
chasing new weight loss programs one after another.
All of this made my first two
beliefs stronger and stronger. I was stuck in this cycle for years until a fateful flight
from Seattle to Boston. I remember chowing down
a ham bagel sandwich while running for the gate. I got onto the flight, and suddenly, I felt like I couldn't breathe. I called for the air hostess who put it down to flying anxiety. Now I have flown since I
was 4 and been sky diving, so flying anxiety is not a problem I have. When I landed in Boston,
still miraculously alive, I figured that was a one-off fluke. But then it happened again as I sat down to watch the "Star Trek
Into Darkness" premiere. I visited cardiologists who hooked me up to a 24/7 heart monitor. The results? Nothing wrong. And yet the "I cant breathe"
episodes kept happening again and again and again. I felt helpless. Some background, I went
to school for engineering and was working at Microsoft at the time, so it had become ingrained in me to take a systematic,
analytical approach to problems.
I don't think it is the best
approach for every problem, not to mention it can be quite laborious, so I only employ it for
really serious problems. And this qualified as the
mother of all serious problems. I looked at this cycle
with new somber eyes, and the first thing I decided was I am not going to tell myself stories that don't serve me. How does it benefit me to think that adulthood is synonymous
with being overweight? What do I gain from believing that being healthy and fit
means sacrificing taste, a social life and joyful movement? Instead I detached myself
from these stories. How? I detached my goal from timelines. As long as every single day
I am trending toward habits I believe are healthy, I am doing well.
Essentially, I decided to
focus on systems over goals. Detaching from timelines naturally led me to
question my goal as well. I didn't care anymore
for "21 lb in 21 days," "Toned in 30 days," or "how
she lost 50 lb in 3 months," so what does that mean for the habits I should be practicing? It follows that they
don't have to be exactly what these get-fit-quick programs say. At first, my goal narrowed to only the impressive body
weight skills in the marketing. My belief was that's still
ultimate health and fitness, and if I continue on the path toward it, en route my breathing
problems would get solved. However, my motivation
kept dying every few weeks, despite using the very same system that eventually worked for me. It was only months later I realized that body weight skills don't compel-me-in-my-soul kind of goal. I realized I had been blindly
trying to achieve goals laid out by society and media.
This realization came about because a friend asked
me about my dream life, and without a pause, I quoted
Oliver Sacks reflection on his life at age 81, "I have had an intercourse
with the world." Let me explain. I grew up a third culture kid, and it has left in me a wide-eyed wonder for the breadth of our human experience and the beauty of our planet. I feel a deep longing to not just go where built roads take me,
but off-the-beaten path. Like the kinds accessible
only through hikes, sailing or biking. For example, whenever
I am in San Francisco, I love taking the Coastal Bridge trail, and I find that the view from that trail so much more spectacular than the view tourists
get from driving straight to the bridge. I have experienced this
over and over again, no matter which place I think about.
Not to mention the thoughts, the feelings, the conversations are
just so much more intimate when we are physically moving ourselves. And then there is our beautiful ocean. I want to try surfing,
I want to snorkel more, and maybe one day when I am not as scared of fish bigger than my head,
try scuba diving. (screams) I am fascinated by people
who were prolific well into their old age, people who had the mental capacity to keep contributing back to
society through their work, a standout achievement in a world where most people are burnt
out by the time they hit 40, and a feat only possible with a body and mind that is well-loved
and taken care of. Now this may or may
not feel moving to you, but it is profoundly compelling to me, and that's what matters.
Because whenever I read
this or think about it, it gets my butt moving. It took me a long time to figure out this soul-deep compelling
North Star for myself, but even when I didn't know it, the next step was always
to boil down this goal into distinct targets. So for example when my goal was to do mad body weight skills, the targets boiled down to: better nutrition to lose excess fat, so lifting my own body weight is easier, resistance training that's focused on calisthenics and mobility.
And then once I realized
my actual dream life, my targets changed to: better nutrition with choices geared toward fueling my travels,
work and adventures, resistance training, but the mix focused on endurance building for long walks, bikes and swims. Cardio because my dream life
involves a lot of hiking, biking and swimming and
make time for hobbies, sleep and rest, as without them, I will burnout and probably wont be prolific in my old age like my inspirations. Once I had my targets, I further
narrowed them into habits. The most important thing is to prioritize 1-2 new
keystone habits for a month. A keystone habit is one
which if you don't get right, the chances of other habits
happening drops drastically. During some honest self-interrogating, I admitted to my tendency
to cancel everything if I feel I am falling behind at work.
Accordingly, my first
keystone habits were: one, sleeping and waking
up at the same time daily. If I don't do this, I start
off my day feeling behind, which makes doing my habits difficult. And second, not checking
my phone until after work. This stops me from procrastinating and falling behind on my tasks, which in turn stems my
tendency to cancel exercise and meal plans in order
to catch-up on work. Yup, my starting keystone habits weren't even directly
related to weight loss. No wonder my chasing weight
loss programs wasn't working because the problem was how my life around my nutrition and exercise habits squeezed out any possibility
of being consistent at any weight loss habit.
Then in my Habits sheet, I further broke down
these 2 keystone habits into smaller chunks:
retired to bed by 8:30 PM, left phone outside
bedroom for proper rest, got out of bed by 6:30 AM, didn't check phone until after work. Since my keystone habits turned out to not be weight loss specific, I decided to also add an optional habit that I felt 10/10 confident about meeting, walk 6000 steps 3 times a week.
Note that this is optional meaning that if I am unable to meet it, I will drop this one without
mental fuss or guilt. Next is setting up my environment to maximize my chances
of meeting the habits. To help me retire to bed by 8:30 PM, I set up an alarm on my Amazon
Echo for 8:15 PM and 8:30 PM. I left my phone charger in the living room instead of my bedroom. I also throw my phone under the couch since "out of sight, out of
mind" really works for me. I set an alarm at 6:15 AM and 6:30 AM, and bought a lamp that mimics sunrise. And finally, I plotted a
route around my neighborhood that adds up to 6000 steps. This may sound ridiculous
because I could just go out for walk and just get 000 steps, but I am going to be straight with you, my ability to find excuses to not start something is astounding. And the only way to combat it is to plan so that when it is time to do my habit, I can be a mindless automaton.
Next comes tracking in the Habit sheet. At the end of everyday, I
enter a 1 if I did the habit, else I enter a 0. The gray blocks are
where I am not targeting to do that habit that day. If I don't meet all my
targets for that day, I enter a note with a reflection for the day on what happened,
and what I'll do tomorrow. For example, there were
times when I didn't make it to bed by 8:30 PM. So I installed a Chrome extension that blocks all of the
internet at 8:30 PM, no matter what I'm doing. This brought me right back
on-track next day onward to meeting my goals. And finally at the end of every month, I reflect on what happened last month and what to do next month. To start, the first thing I do
is read my dream life again. Does it still feel compelling? Do I want to add, remove or edit anything? If I changed it, then I do
the previous steps again to refine my day-to-day to
ladder up to my new dream life. If there isn't a change to my dream life in a way that changes my targets, I look at my habits from last month with less than 80% completion rate.
That's right, I don't
expect 100% completion on any habit because that's impossible. I'm not a machine. But I do expect a completion
of 80% on each habit. As an example, here's my
reflection from October. 5/11 of my targeted habits had less than 80% completion rate. Resistance training was 44%, but that was because I injured myself, so I kept the same targets for November.
But for walks I didn't see a good reason for the lack of consistency, so I decided to reduce
the frequency to 4x week instead of 7x week in October. And it goes on for my other habits. Interesting bit here where
I talk about Subscriptions. This is my email subscriptions, which apparently felt important to read, but at the end of the day, they didn't change anything
I am doing, and worse, were eating up time I meant to use for the habits I am tracking. So I unsubscribed from a whole
bunch of email newsletters. I also observed that I
am an impulsive reader. So since I cant be trusted to make the right call in the moment, I sent everything
interesting to Instapaper and then future objective
Richa would make the call on what to read.
To be honest, I was shocked by how much of not sticking to my
nutrition or exercise was because of non-weight
loss things like this. All of that time in the past, I spent chasing the best
workout or meal plan, and that wasn't even the issue. It was the rest of my
life I needed to change. And here is proof in November. You can see Strength completion
rate went up to 100%, walks to 88%, and even the habits that are less than 80%
are still way closer to the 80% threshold.
And since I am doing well on
most of my habits in November, I could choose to add a new habit, or I could continue to
first get all my habits to over 80% completion
rate for next month. This system has changed my life. Some examples of how: after 7 years of being stuck, I reached my dream body within a year and have maintained it without
tracking for 8 years now.
I used to burnout all the
time from over-working. I haven't crashed into
burnout in a long time now. My addiction to mindlessly consume media has reduced drastically, making room for hobbies
and creative projects. The steps in this system
can take some time like identifying the right
targets toward your dream life, but it's so worth it. And if you are losing weight and want to shortcut through
this iteration process, then I may be able to help.
Check out the free sneak peek into my Badass Body Boss
program in the description and comments below. Or if you want to DIY it, then the first thing to figure out is where to start with your targets. Hint: nutrition is 80% of
weight loss, and in fact, my co-coach Lucy took it to the next level where she lost weight 100%
through nutrition alone, so that's right, zero exercise. So you don't want to ignore this video, which will tell you what
your first nutrition targets should be and how to iterate on them. And always remember, you can do it..
