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2 months agoFor me the secret was realizing I am nothing more than a creature of habit.
If I’m eating pizza and watching tv or playing video games, that’s what my brain wants more of.
If I’m making salads, getting in aerobic, and doing weights, that’s what my brain wants more of.
Discipline is the weakest tool in your toolbox so don’t rely on discipline to get you very far. Only use discipline to build a minimal habit. Since discipline is such a weak tool, don’t ask much of it. Habit is the true engine of progress so you have to hack your weak discipline (by not asking too much of it) to build habits rather than to build gains (leave gains to the force of habit, don’t give that job to discipline).
Basically the important thing to focus on is building a habit rather than outcomes. Focus on the process more than the prize.
The most important thing is to lift some weight every second day (or whatever cadence suits you). If I only do 10 pushups that’s fine. Progress will come with consistency so the important thing is to just do something, the minimal something. If I do more, it’s a bonus.
After just a week or two of using discipline to do this, my body starts asking for it. I can feel it in my body that I haven’t worked out and it wants me to work out. Discipline stops being important and habit takes over.
Similarly with food, my body really just craves more of what it’s had recently.
My theory (personal reasoning, not science) is that my digestive system isn’t very smart. It just wants energy. If it “remembers” that it got energy from a pizza, this desire for energy will manifest as an impulse to eat pizza. But I can hack this process by eating salads or vegetables, then my body “remembers” it got that energy from healthy food instead and so the craving starts manifesting as a desire for a crunchy salad or fruit.
Basically I find it really only takes one or two weeks of actually being “disciplined” for the effect of habit to start having a meaningful effect.
To make the process of being “disciplined” in those first couple of weeks easier, don’t require a massive effort. Make being disciplined as easy as possible by asking your discipline to only deliver the minimum. The role of discipline is to build the habit rather than to push you hard.
Build the habit by using discipline, using discipline only to force yourself to do the very easiest / minimal version of what you want. Do not use discipline to force a huge workout or the difficult version of what you want because then you’re asking discipline to climb mountains and that just isn’t sustainable. So use discipline to do the very very easy thing with consistency.
Goal: eat better. Discipline here is easiest when you make the healthy food before you’re hungry, when it’s easiest to make the healthy choice and then when you’re hungry the easiest thing to do is to eat the healthy thing. If you wait until you’re hungry to prepare, then the easiest thing to do is order a pizza so you’ll do that instead. Use discipline intelligently by pre-preparing the healthy option. Don’t over-discipline by making this meal boring. Add some fucking Caesar dressing or air fry some hot chips as a side or do whatever makes this tasty for you. All that matters is you home cooked a vegetable and protein meal for yourself. That’s the win you need from discipline, nothing more. After doing this for a while, you have retrained your food habits.
Goal: weight training. Discipline means doing some training. If that’s only 10 pushups, great job you did it, you met the goal. Do not use discipline to get yourself to do 100 pushups. Discipline doesn’t get me that far. Discipline only gets me started. If I only do 10, I hit the goal. After doing this minimal goal for a while, you’ll naturally start challenging yourself more in a way that isn’t driven by discipline so don’t use discipline to drive this. Only use discipline to drive doing something, anything, minimal as fuck.
Goal: aerobics. Discipline just gets you out the door. If you make it around the block and it only took 5 minutes, great job you did it because the goal is just to do it daily. After a while of building the minimal habit you’ll naturally start wanting to go a bit more.