Housekeeping:
Okay. Having fielded more than one observation this week that 3 minutes is an eternity and ads go for so long! it behoves me to revisit last week’s instructions and, specifically, the point where I said:
Patience, more than grit, is the more likely virtue required out of the gate.
As the observations above point to — it WILL get you super-fit— but only if you’re still in the game.
Go. Easy.
And, this week, another way to play along at home.
The short-term challenge. Typically pitched as a panacea to long-time neglect, and — if portfolios of before-and-after photos are to be believed— turning your ship around and reaching the promised land in days or weeks is to be expected.
Meanwhile, in the real world, the idea you can hurry any physiological process is absurd.
Psychologically, only more so. It seems churlish to call it a sideshow when it dominates the fitness and dietary spaces, but if you’re trying to create habits and processes that will reward you over the long term— and you should be—you’re best to take your eyes off the prize and settle into the mundane.
Not sexy. But the long game, where body and mind are concerned, is the only game in town.
But you can play a short long game.
30 days. That’s a common unit of currency. There are things you can do in 30 days, and there are things you can't.
Piano in 30 days is achievable if your ivory tinkling ambitions extend to the first half of Mary Had a Little Lamb. But for a language, a martial art, or whatever— even with accelerated learning of an 80’s movie montage—30 days is a start.
Is it time enough for a magic wand solution to a long time of, shall we say, not magic? No. It’s a catalyst, not a cure.
But, if we zoom right in and zero in on one particular thing, and adjust our expectations accordingly, then a 30-day challenge can be a useful tool not least because the long-term adoption or removal of any habit always requires just that— a start.
The timeframe further gives us a psychological leg-up. We can view it as just a glimpse of another lifestyle— a try-before-you-buy test drive of a different way of doing things can be a sufficient psychological sidestep to have us take a closer look at something we might otherwise dismiss out of hand.
As well as making it more achievable this also means we’re more likely to step outside our comfort zone and aim for a few of those things in the 'you must be fucking kidding' basket.
So, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just pop outside and rescue our short-term challenge baby from the bullshit bathwater. Cos that’s what we’re going to be doing around here. 30 days of something.
30 something.
So, is there anything you've always entertained adding (or subtracting) to your life? What is your something?
But then, you’re probably not the one to ask. Because the thing is, it will always be different to what you imagine, that’s why we’re doing it.
And as Harvard psychologist, Daniel Gilbert, observed in his book Stumbling on Happiness — (cough) if we can believe anything coming out of the psychological sciences anymore — when it comes to knowing what makes us happy, we are reliably wrong.
You might think a life without television will suck, but may well be pleasantly surprised. And then you can lord it over all the other mindless goggle-box drones telling them just how much more you accomplish every single day without wasting more hours staring at as screen. Until they punch you in the face.
The only way to make an informed decision as to whether this might be something, not that you'd tolerate in your life but welcome, is on the far side. When you've done it for sufficient time to move the needle.
And remember, that’s the idea here: to trial something so you can know if you would, WANT to continue doing it in some fashion.
Challenges will run on the following dates with the first coming right up:
Feb 7 - Mar 8
Apr 23 - May 2
July 2 - July 31
Sept 10 - Oct 9
Nov 19 - Dec 18
Even were you to participate in all of them it's less than half of the year. 150 days in which to test drive 5 different ways to live. I’ve decided on our first challenge already (below) and have a few ideas lined up for future rounds, but I’m open to suggestions:
meditation
7.5 hours sleep every night
30-minute walk
no alcohol
no added sugar
no news
no TV
5 am wakeup
languages
no social media
cold showers
Whatever it is must meet a single criterion:
(Unlike fad diets and thrash-yourself fitness challenges) you could continue doing it forever.
That’s it. Depending on interest I may open up a prize pool in future, but, for now, the reward is the challenge itself. Although success here is magnitudes more likely if you put some skin in the game, so you could get some friends together and create a winner(s)-takes-all prize pool. Even better, be brave and set yourself a Ulysses Contract.
In any case, beware the backlash. And the downside. The second you create constraints, psychological rebellion is in the post. You will want something only because you can’t have it.
Your negotiation of such is one of the benefits on the table. But it's also a cost. Your dealing with it— or not— will be reinforced so if you're in, good, deal with it. But if you're in any doubt, don't.
I know that runs contrary to the idea we might give it the old college try and, when that invariably fails, collect our participation award on the way out, but, no.
Nobody needs caving-in practice.
It’s a challenge. It will be challenging.
Decide. It means to cut away. That the alternative is no longer there. Like a cliff jump, you go or you don’t. You can change your mind halfway, but you’re still doing it.
For the first, I've made an executive decision and figured we'd kick things off with something easy:
EAT REAL FOOD
If you choose to participate, from next Wednesday (7th) until Friday, March 8th, you can only eat real food. Not foodstuffs.
There are pretty much two rules to this:
avoid processed foods, and;
added ingredients.
Eat potatoes, not chips, eat fruit rather than drinking juice, fish not fish fingers, a sausage from Bunnings, not Maccas.
There’s no counting calories and no restrictions on quantity because— when you eat real food— you’re not circumventing your physiological defence mechanisms. Additionally, this should positively influence a host of factors including, but not limited to;
fatigue
allergies
digestive problems
sleep quality
focus
food cravings
anxiety
hormonal imbalances
lack of libido
lack of motivation
So. We’ll see about that. There’s a chart you can download here and stick on your fridge that’ll help you
AVOID
processed or packaged foods
most fast food
trans-fats
artificial sweeteners
spreads
added sugar
The only liquids allowed are:
water
coffee
tea
green tea
stop freaking out, alcohol
You can eat rice, sourdough bread and home baking. More traditional food challenges would exclude all these but we are not viewing this through a health-only lens — protein powder is an easy, cheap, way to make up for an almost certain daily deficit but it’s also highly processed. So it’s out. Anything medical is, obviously, in. Any other supplements are out.
We’re going to eat in the same manner as our ancestors. Not our paleo ancestors, just our grandparents. I don't know about your grandparents but mine baked. Scones, cakes and biscuits were commonplace. Diabetes, heart disease and a host of other lifestyle diseases were not.
Yes, you could live off nothing but your home baking for 30 days. Well done. I’m guessing you will severely limit any positives on offer but you will know.
You have time to prepare, use it wisely. Over the next few days, any time you eat anything that doesn’t make the cut consider how readily available an alternative is.
Make sure your environment supports you. Remove all contraband from your home. Keep calm. If you live with others, and you can't enlist them to your cause, ask them to keep their own cupboard or shelf in the fridge.
Plan ahead. Where are you going to be, what are you going to do? From work lunches to eating out, you’ll soon discover society does not have your back in this. Don't think you can just wing it.
Again. Required compliance is total. There is no conceivable reason you CAN'T do it. Nobody is going to hold you down and force-feed you processed food. You are in or out.
So, if you ‘just ate the last teaspoon of Jimmy’s Cocopops when I put the plate in the dishwasher,’ two things:
stop giving your kid sugar for breakfast
you’re out.
That we even consider this a challenge is, frankly, cause for concern. That stuff we're supposed to eat. Just eat that. Eat just that. Right.
About as uncontroversial as it gets. I've given you a long enough runway to get your shit together. And, sandwiched (mmmm sandwiches) between Christmas festivities and Easter there's no better time on the calendar for recalibration on the dietary front.
It’s not even close to strict. I don’t advocate dietary extremes and further appreciate that eating is for many, many things aside from fuel. And nobody needs to know you can be healthy if your life otherwise sucks.
The idea here is to see if we can make significant, noticeable improvements without being extreme.
So, that’s it. If you’re keen to learn what’s on the other side of 30 days of mild discomfort, that’s what we’re doing. And that’s how we’re doing it.
Feel free to ask questions in the comments (or email me directly) as long as they pertain to following the program as detailed above.
Not modifying it.
I mean, you can modify it. Obviously. You can run a ‘30-days of Donuts’ challenge if you like. That’s called running your own experiment. But if you want to get on board with this one, you know what to do.
Eat crap every day for the next week?
No. Not that.
- OLI