Seven years ago I received a rude awakening.
My workplace at the time was having a wellness screening, which I participated in. When the results came back, I was diagnosed as being at risk for Type 2 diabetes. Furthermore, my blood pressure was abnormally high, as was my cholesterol.
My health is a lot better now, but to get out of the danger zone, I had to make a lot of drastic changes.
- I eliminated all forms of sugar and refined carbohydrates and paid a lot closer attention to the ingredient labels. (Lots of so-called “health” foods are anything but.)
- I quit using prepackaged meals and started doing my own cooking.
- I quit running and cardio and shifted towards weights and strength training.
- I cut down the media consumption at home and went to bed early.
In short, I got out of my easy, comfortable life and started doing hard things.
Nick Lowary, founder of Ground Shark Coffee, realized that this was a symptom of a larger societal problem:
https://twitter.com/NickLowary/status/1104608298429440002The problem, as he and I both realized, is that we have chosen the easy option over the harder, right one. It’s easier to grab a candy bar from the convenience store, than to perform a 8-hour on/16-hour off intermittent fast. Easier to get a new credit card, than to stick to a budget. Easier to Netflix and chill, than to read a nonfiction book.
But easy isn’t always right. Easy often isn’t right.
https://twitter.com/NickLowary/status/1104608300287516672I can’t say what the right choice is for you. And honestly, I don’t need to; deep down, you already know what that is. However, I will offer a few pointers:
Habits are better than goals.
I’ve always tried to lose weight. Every time I set a goal, however, I failed to reach it. However, when I changed my lifestyle to address my pre-diabetic condition, the weight finally started going down.
What finally made the weight loss stick was changing the habits in my life. Habits are a way of putting your brain on autopilot, and it is biologically wired into your DNA. Charles Duhigg dug into this when he wrote The Power of Habit. The key to establishing good habits is hacking the habit loop (Cue — Reward — Routine) and replacing the rewards for a certain stimulus with an equally pleasing one.
You don’t have to be perfect, you just have to get a little bit better every day.
To get out of a pre-diabetic condition, I knew I had to eliminate soft drinks from my life. But when you’ve been drinking soda pop for over 40 years, it’s not easy to quit. Instead, I switched to diet sodas.
Even then I knew that it wasn’t much better. Over time, I’ve replaced diet sodas with other alternatives: mineral water, black cofee, even plain water. At this point, seven years later, I’m now not drinking any kind of carbonated drink.
99 Percent of Mainstream Advice is Dogshit
The most shocking thing about my diagnosis is that I thought I was living a somewhat healthy lifestyle. I was eating “balanced” nutritional meals. I was exercising regularly and was even training for a marathon that year. And while I indulged in the occasional late night or junk food snack, I was keeping it to a minimum.
I was trying hard enough.
But as the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, yet expecting different results. If I was pre-diabetic while I was trying hard, is it sane to think I’d stop being diabetic by trying harder?
Since mainstream advice wasn’t working out so well, I sought other sources. Most of them don’t even talk about health or fitness. They talk about mindsets which is key to addressing the cultural diabetes which is infecting our society.
Diabetes is a terrible disease to have. Cultural diabetes is a terrible society to live in. Learn how to unfuck yourself and save your life.