Podcast Episode 6- The Long Game!
Welcome back to the Eternal Crown Lifestyle podcast, this is episode 6 “The Long Game” I first want to apologize for not releasing an episode last week. I was on a road trip with some friends in Georgia and never really found a good time to get a new episode reordered during the trip. I got home in the evening on Sunday and I did not want to rush trying to get a podcast episode recorded that night. I felt it was important to take more time to ensure the quality of the episode was where it should be and so I decided to wait a week before releasing this episode. Thank you for understanding and continuing to listen. Your support for this podcast has been really amazing and I greatly appreciate it! Now let’s get into this podcast episode.
This episode is all about focusing on long term thinking, versus short term instant gratification. A lot of the decisions we make in our lives are going to be based on one of two options. Do we want instant gratification in the short term or do we want long term gratification with delayed satisfaction. When it comes to health and fitness, this is an area where people are constantly looking for shortcuts. People want the next miracle supplements or fad diets that promise them quick results with minimal effort. A lot of times this is motivated by some kind of event that is approaching in a few weeks and they want to try to look better for it. Usually they don’t start putting in the effort until they are only 4-5 weeks away from the goal date. This limits their healthy options for achieving the desired results and also puts unrealistic expectations on what the outcome will be. This leads them to look for a miracle solution to their problem and is why so many supplements are marketed as being able to produce results in a very short time period.
The results that you achieve from a fad diet or miracle supplement will not be the best outcomes. When you take these kinds of shortcuts or drastic approaches to achieving your desired results, you are bypassing a critical component of sustainability. You are not teaching yourself to build and adopt long term lifestyle habits. You have instead created a quick fix mentality that will set you up for failure in the long run. You will have created no new habits that will help you to sustain the results and even worse you will stop making progress altogether. This causes you to enter into a yo-yo cycle of dieting, which is very unhealthy for your body and also your mind. In a yo-yo cycle you might lose 10 to 15 lbs fairly quickly , but upon reaching your goal you will revert to your old lifestyle. This will almost always result in gaining back the lost weight and sometimes you may even add additional weight as well. This is why it is very common to see people losing the same 15 to 20 lbs of weight over and over again. They even seem to get more out of shape and farther from their desired goals as the years progress. This occurs because no long term lifestyle changes have been established. Instead they have achieved their goals with will power and strict conditions that can only be sustained for a short period of time. They are not prepared for actual lifestyle changes and new healthy habits. This is not the best way to go about getting into better shape, but is only a strategy for quick unsustainable weight loss.
If you were to cook something in the microwave, it would be cooked relatively fast. However you would be sacrificing taste, quality of food and nutritional content. Most food that is made for convenience and microwavable is highly processed and lacks the high quality nutrition found in fresh foods. Now if you were to cook something in a pan, oven or even in a crock pot it would definitely take much longer to prepare and cook. The trade off is that the flavor would be of a much higher caliber and the nutritional content would likely be exceptionally higher as compared to the microwave or fast food style meal. This is again a choice that you would have to make. Do I want the instant gratification of the microwave and its fast results or do I want to take more time to achieve a more flavorful and enjoyable meal that will take longer to get ready?
These are the types of choices you have to make everyday when you are faced with a decision to make. Do I choose the instant gratification option or the delayed gratification option? This makes a huge difference when it comes to your overall health and fitness. If I choose to go for a really quick weight loss goal, I will have to cut my calories way down and put my body into a severe deficit. I will also have to have greater restrictions when it comes to the types of foods I’m able to eat. It might even be necessary for me to spend hours and hours doing cardio exercise daily as well. This is something that will only be sustainable for a short period of time, probably around a month to two at the most. This will put huge stress on my body and mind. Not to mention if I do not stick with this after the 2 months and simply revert to my old lifestyle choices and eating habits. I will not be able to hold on to the results achieved. It may allow me to look great for a particular show or event, but it will not be sustainable for me in the long run.
This is why I’m not an advocate for most people doing a really restrictive diet or performing hours of cardio to reach their desired fitness goals. I recommend a more long term approach of tracking your calories and following a macronutrient based eating style. This is like following a budget for your food. I believe the simplest approach to this is to take your body weight and multiply it by 10 and this would be your daily calorie budget. So if I’m 200 lbs then my daily caloric budget should be around 2,000 calories. Then figure out your daily protein intake by multiplying your body weight times 1.2g. So if you are 200 then your daily protein intake would be 240g. Now fill in the rest with fat and carbs at the ratio you prefer. If you feel better with higher fat then allocate more of your remaining calories towards that. If you feel better on carbohydrates, allocate more towards them. Just make sure you get at least .3g of healthy fat per lb of bodyweight. So for our 200lb example you would need a minimum of 60g of fat per day. Healthy fats are avocado, fish, olive oil and certain nuts.
Other healthy habits to develop would include daily exercise. Doing weight training at least 3 times a week is recommended, but even just including a 10 minute walk after each meal would make a significant improvement to the quality of your life. Also prioritizing and getting adequate amounts of good sleep is very important too. It is recommended that you get 8-10 hrs of sleep per night, but most people get significantly less than that. You need to build sustainable habits that may not produce immediate results or changes overnight, but when performed consistently over a longer period of time will drastically improve the quality of your life. The key to health and longevity is consistency, if you can make small changes to your daily lifestyle that can be sustained then you will see results. This should be your priority as opposed to looking for what will get you quick results.
I was in the gym the other day talking with a friend and we started talking about the bodybuilding and fitness lifestyle. How typically when you are younger , you are willing to do pretty much whatever it takes to get the results you want. What you don’t typically consider is the long term results or effects that things will have on your body or quality of life. Your mentality is focused on the short term instant gratification of being able to show off the results of your hard work. You have no thoughts about what I should be doing now, so 20 or even 30 years down the road what will allow me to have the highest quality of life. This is why in the fitness industry a lot of people when they are younger will make the choice of using performance enhancing drugs like steroids. They will also do things to their bodies that may produce great short term results , but set them up for long term consequences and health related issues. They may look really healthy on the outside, but it can be at the expense of being healthy on the inside. As a society we typically do not focus on the long term effects of our choices and instead focus on instant gratification.
I myself fell into this very trap when I was younger. I started off by taking a lot of supplements that I had no real idea what the long term effects would be. When I was in my teens a lot of pro hormone products, that were probably very close to steroids, were actually legal to buy at your local supplement store. There was not much data at the time of what they would actually do to your body over the course of several years. This was a huge risk that I was willing to take and I honestly never even thought about what the long term consequences might end up being. I really didn’t care about any of that, I was only focused on what would make my body look the best as quickly as possible. I wasn’t considering what kind of quality of life I would have in the future, would it cause long term side effects, will it keep me from being active as I grow older, will I be able to play with my children or will it give me joint and muscle pains in my body.
When I got to college I took this approach even a step further and was convinced to do a small steroid cycle. This is something I will freely admit to you that I did out of complete ignorance of what negative effects it could have caused. This was something that I would not do again and that did not benefit me in the long run. It actually caused me to feel shame and guilt for abusing my body in that way, all so I could get more attention and have more people impressed with my physique. This is a choice that I have had to live with. If you are out there listening and you are considering using steroids, especially if you are younger, I would highly encourage you not to do it! You really don’t need it! If you are not planning to make your living as a pro bodybuilder then it will be of no long term benefit to you at all. It is simply not worth the risks associated with it and you need to be focused more on the long term quality of your health and life. Not on how much muscle you have or how strong you can get in the gym. You might be able to impress people with those things, but when you are much older no one will remember that stuff and you honestly won’t even care about it anymore either.
Remember this point! Typically the things in our lives that we spend more time on are the things we typically value and appreciate more. The more effort we put into something, the more ownership we feel towards it. It’s a mentality of the harder I have had to work at it or the more effort it requires from me, then the more likely I am to protect it. When things happen more quickly or as referred to as overnight, a lot of times we don’t appreciate these things as much. We don’t place the same value on them. This can be illustrated by the difference of being given a car and having to save up for years to buy it. The car that we had to make sacrifices for over a long period of time, will be treated with a greater value. That car we will likely take care of better and simply be more careful with it.
Why is this? I believe a big part of it is, because of the change in our character that has to take place over that longer period of time. As we are constantly making the choice to sacrifice things that will give us immediate pleasure or satisfaction for a more long term goal or achievement, our priorities are changing. We are deciding that we are willing to do what it takes now , to get to where we want to be farther in the future. We have shifted from short term thinking to long term thinking. We have developed self control and also patience in this process. Those characteristic traits help us to be able to achieve our long term goals, by making the small daily sacrifices to get there. So now it is time for you to make that same shift to, from short term to long term thinking. I want you to take the time to focus on a few areas of your life. These areas can be relational, financial, business, health and fitness, spiritual or others. Pick a few of the areas above that are most important to you right now. Then I want you to write out your 1 year, 5year and 10 year goals for each of the categories you selected. Once you have done that, put it somewhere that you will see each day. Maybe on your bathroom mirror, in your car, or on the fridge. Every time you have a decision to make in one of these areas of your life I want you to evaluate and see if the choice you are planning to make will better prepare you to achieve your 1, 5 and 10 year goals. If it doesn’t then you should think twice about making that choice and ask yourself if it is really what is best for the long game.
