Why this matters
Here’s a very abbreviated description of my history as it relates to this newsletter and why I have any business writing it at all. I’ll fill in more details later as we get to know each other. As I will cover further down it’s best that I just get this started as quickly as I can and iterate on it down the road.
In December of 2019 I was 311lb. This was the heaviest I had ever been that I know of.
I lost a little weight when I cut back the beer. Got down to 270lb. around March of 2020. I had gained and lost that much weight and more before, many times (details to come). It’s just important to note that this is not the story of someone who has not failed many times.
At the end July 2020 I was back to 293lbs. We’ll elaborate on the fine points later but that was the beginning of the most significant journey of my life.
Near the end of October 2021 I hit 189lbs. More details later, but I did not:
Go hungry
Eat anything I don’t absolutely enjoy eating
Eat anything complicated to make or cook
Join a gym or spend any time sweating
Have surgery
Take any drugs to promote weight-loss
What started off as another bid to shed my extra pounds and regain my health turned out to be a journey of transformation that extended — and is still extending — far beyond the scale.
On this journey I’ve learned a lot of things about taking back control of my mental and physical health that I’d like to share. Sustainable weight loss is only the start.
The Lesson
It’s either never the right time, or it’s always the right time.
I have lost 120+lbs, yes. But that is just one of many positive byproducts of starting small, healthy habits and sticking to them consistently over a period of time.
A wise man once told me that starting small is better than not starting at all. In that vein, I’m going to make this short and sweet.
I will apply the same principal that made my weight-loss journey successful to my newsletter journey. We can improve upon it over time, as I have done with my other successful habits.
No fancy intros or well-thought out taglines. Just get it out of my head and out there where it can be useful.
So here it goes. My most successful habits seem to have the following four things in common:
Start small
Make it something that takes almost no effort. You might ask “But what’s the point? If it doesn’t take effort then what is it doing?” Good question, but people often confuse effort with efficiency. Efficient behaviors don’t require effort, in fact quite the opposite. As the behavior becomes entrenched, the effort required will actually decrease and you can increase the difficulty, thus increasing the efficiency.
Action creates awareness and cements habits, which is what we are doing here. It doesn’t have to be difficult
In this vein, you will probably want to minimize the equipment needed. Don’t let not having X be the friction that stops you. You can add X later once you’ve established the behavior.
Start now
Putting things off for the “right time” or “when you’re ready” is an example of a mindset or a false belief that holds us back. If you weren't ready for something you wouldn’t be paying attention to this. So let’s pick the right something. If you’re not ready for that something you picked, then go back to #1 and adjust it.
Do it every day
If you’ve listened to #1 and #2, you should be able to perform your behavior when and where you need to. We will often stop here and shout “I can’t do everything every day!” And you are absolutely right. I would argue though that to make something a truly automatic habit does require this kind of regularity. We’re not talking about carving out time for deep work like writing a novel, we’re talking about body maintenance. This should be like brushing your teeth. You need to design them around the idea that you can perform them on your worse day.
In case that seems a bit audacious, just know that the habits that I have formed around my body are every day habits, and they take a grand total of 10 minutes to perform.
Do it forever
Did you ever have a car when you were younger. You’d wait until it was about to die and then you’d pay through the nose to get the oil changed or the tires replaced or worse. Then you’d treat it like it was brand new again for the next year until it started sliding and creaking and overheating. As if one trip to the mechanic was going to fix it forever.
Seems silly right? That’s the way a lot of us treat our bodies. As if we can cure all our ills with a 30 day program and then just go back to the way things were and everything will be fine.
It won’t be fine. This is body maintenance, and just like with your car it’s something you will need to do for as long as you own it. How often you take care of it will affect its performance and your total cost of ownership.
I know that forever is automatically scary, but the nice thing is that if you are paying attention to #1, #2 and #3, you have just built a habit that can satisfy #4 by default! If not, pull it back a little! Habits are not set in stone, and they can change as you change.
Putting it into Practice
So what did my first healthy habit on this journey look like? I had collected a lot of ones over the years that didn’t fit this framework. The one that I first started applying this framework to consistently was weighing myself. It’s my suggestion for you if you don’t already have one picked out.
It’s basically like brushing your teeth in that it requires almost no effort. You can do anything from just look at the weight to having a wifi scale that records it to an app. Start where you are comfortable and iterate later. The very act of doing it creates awareness and builds the habit.
Next week we can talk about what I learned to do with that information and what my next successful habit was.
Very cool! You’re doing great cousin! I need to lose 40 lbs. Need to start and actually follow through. I usually lose 10-15 lbs and tire of dieting and exercise and stop. But this post is so true—need to maintain the vehicle for life!
Love it. It's the tiny habits that can make the biggest differences. Keep it up!