As January is the month of self-improvement, or at least starts out in this way, there has been the usual array of disappointing, yet entirely predictable, ‘health science’ shows hitting our screens. Whilst I know that these will annoy and frustrate me, like a moth to a flame I am drawn back to them again and again, mainly so I can be aware of what is being discussed in case I am later asked about it by a client. The theme of the shows this year has been very much focused on diet with #trustmeImadoctor and #howtoloseweightwell leading the way when it comes to low budget TV masquerading as science.

I have written about the weaknesses of these shows before so won’t go into that here. Please see my previous post on Bad Science here for more on the usual suspects of N=1 studies, correlation not causation, lack of scientific controls etc etc. Instead what I am going to do today is address the topics at the heart of these shows, that is, what you should be eating to be healthy and high performing. I have split this advice into a few different categories below to show that there isn’t a perfect diet for all at any one time. However there are some themes that develop which I will summarise at the end. See if you can spot them…

Disclaimer – Usual stuff here. I’m not a Dr and don’t play one on the internet, if you are considering changing your diet do consult with your healthcare provider for support and guidance. This blog is for informational purposes. Please see my full disclaimer on the home page of this site. Thanks.

Average Office Worker
If you are fairly sedentary then you don’t have a particular demand for glycogen (carbohydrate) and you will be better off using fat as the dominant fuel source. This has the benefits of managing hunger, maintaining consistent energy levels and taking care of the waist line. You can enhance this further by delaying your breakfast to encourage your body into a ketogenic (fat fuelled) state. A typical day might be a low carb egg muffin and a coffee at mid-morning, a beef and kale stir fry with a glug of olive oil at lunch, dinner of salmon and veggies and some small snacks of mixed nuts and deli meat. You may add to this approach by having some carbs with your meals a couple of times a week which is easily done with some potatoes or white rice.

Hobby Athlete
If you have a lifestyle similar to our office worker above but you like to play a bit of sport, go cycling or maybe to a few gym classes then you can follow the advice above but just match your carb intake to how active you have been. If you’ve really worked hard then having a meal afterwards of meat and carbs, such as tuna and rice, will aid your recovery and replenish your muscle glycogen without storing any fat. If you have a lighter session you may want to just focus on starchier veg with your meat, such as carrots and parsnips.
 
 
Hard Charging Athlete
If you train full time or train around work but very intensely then the advice changes again. The basic approach is the same - you want to eat quality protein and fat from real food sources, however the complexity comes in matching your carbohydrate intake to your activity and there is plenty that can be played with here dependant on when you train and what that training entails. The bottom line however is that you want to provide fuel and recovery agents to your muscles when they need it most. The advice is therefore to eat medium protein and high fat before training and then high protein and high carb straight after training. This approach will give you the performance and recovery elements you need to be successful whilst also ticking the health boxes you need to stay that way over the longer term.

Metabolic Issues (Obesity, Diabetes etc)
If we take a look at all metabolic issues there is a common factor – insulin resistance. Insulin is the hormone produced when you ingest carbohydrate, and to a lesser extent amino acids. If you have issues with insulin then the obvious solution is to minimise carbohydrate. So again we are in the situation described above for our office worker – eat real food, mainly protein fat and veggies. The slight complexity comes due to the metabolic dysregulation, whilst introducing a more fasted approach may be helpful for the office worker we aren’t ready for that yet here. Instead focus on 3 meals a day of the components described above. A nice tweak to this which can give some of the benefits of the delayed breakfast above is an intermittent fasting approach called 16:8 – that is you eat all your meals within an 8hr window. This is very achievable for most, helping to normalise the metabolism whilst simultaneously encouraging fat adaption and allowing the cell repair and clean out process called autophagy which conveys further health benefits. So for example you may have breakfast at 9, lunch at 1 and dinner at 5.

In Summary
What you’ve probably gathered by now is that we should all be eating a variation of a real food diet. That is foods with no ingredient lists. This is enhanced further if you can source local food that has been raised naturally. A further tweak is to match your carbohydrate intake to your activity. If you are fairly sedentary then you should focus on protein and fat with plenty of veggies. If you are very active then up the carbs and replace some of the fat. I don’t think that, as a prescription goes, it is particularly complicated, however it is evidence based (from research, not TV shows) and has been shown to be effective in the real world numerous times. That being said if any TV company would like me to wear a white coat and pad that out for an hour of screen time my email address is on the contacts page.

Unfortunately a great quote has gone from being something that might spark an intelligent discussion to being the preserve of the insta-whore looking to add a semblance of substance to their soft-porn social media profiles. This is a great shame, and likely something that even the most learned scholar never predicted for their work. In this post I am going to try and reclaim some quotes back as I feel there is huge value to be had from them. They are an opportunity to pause and reflect, developing metacognitive skills which are a huge asset when tasks get tougher or deadlines shorter. Below I’ve gathered some of my favourites that I refer to on a regular basis, along with a few notes of my thoughts about them. I encourage you to look up some of the authors and get stuck into some reading of their wider work to help find some favourites of your own.

The following are in no particular order as I have just transcribed them out of a rough notebook where I scribble such things as I come across them.

“Choose not to be harmed and you won’t feel harmed. Don’t feel harmed and you haven’t been.”
Marcus Aurelius
We are in control of our thoughts and feelings. If am angry or hurt then that is a choice I have made. If I don’t like that choice or it isn’t helpful for me I should make another one.

“A good person dyes events with his own colour, and turns whatever happens to his benefit.”
Seneca
Make the most of every situation, there is always an opportunity, look for it. Practice reframing and it becomes natural.

“We must all either wear out or rust out, every one of us. My choice is to wear out.”
Theodore Roosevelt
Action inspires action. Stay in Motion. Finish the day weary and glad for sleep.

“There is no such thing as failure, only feedback.”
Anon
Be Antifragile, I cannot fail so should be prepared to take more risks, expose myself to lower odds situations, I can either win or learn. Both are valuable.

“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it, but love it.”
Nietzsche
I control far less in life that I would like to think so love everything that happens, it is all part of life’s experience. The situation will unfold regardless of whether I am happy or miserable about it. Make the choice to enjoy everything.

“Nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
Shakespeare
It is not the situation but my own thinking that determines my mood. I can choose what is most beneficial regardless of what is happening around me.

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing, the last of human freedoms, to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances. When we are no longer able to change a situation we are challenged to change ourselves.”
Victor Frankl
No matter how tough or seemingly desperate things get I still have control over my attitude, exercise that control. Tough situations breed tough people. Value the opportunity.

“Success is nothing more than a few simple disciplines practiced every day.”
Jim Rohn
Find a system for success and do it daily. If I want to be good at something I need to do it daily. Simplify actions down to their basic components, dispel the mystery of difficult tasks and get to action.

“The best way to multiply productivity is not to do more but to do less on better activities.”
Robin Sharma
Work smarter not harder. Do the thing I don’t want to do first. Take time to organise my efforts.

“You can’t go through life expecting pats on the back for shit you’re supposed to do.”
Greg Everett
Never feel entitled to anything. Just because I worked hard it doesn’t give me the right to any special treatment. A human’s job is to work hard, it’s a given, never feel  like I deserve something. Keep working until I get it.

“Wealth consists not in having great possessions but in having few wants.”
Epictetus
What do I actually need in life? Will a few shiny things actually make me happy or will that come through effort and achievement? Remember the hedonic treadmill. Simplify possessions, identify the difference between wants and needs.

“If you want to be a lion you must train with lions.”
Carlson Gracie
Never be the smartest person in the room. To improve I have to fail. Expose myself to situations where that is more likely. Seek out the people you want to be better than and spend time with them. Be aware of negative influences, cut out shit talk and shit tv.

“He is most powerful who has power over himself”
Seneca
If I can control my mind then my happiness and satisfaction is within my control. Success in life is controlling your mind as then happiness is available regardless of the external circumstances.

“Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful.”
William Morris
If I don’t use it regularly or love it then I don’t need it. Simplify, simplify, simplify.

“There is only one thing that I dread – not to be worthy of my sufferings.”
Dostoevski
You can bear the bad times as a good person or a bad person. Choose to be a good one.
 
I hope the above have given you some food for thought and you’ve maybe decided to scribble some notes down for yourself. If you have any particular favourites that you refer to regularly please share them below or via social.

As I’ve discussed in recent blogs I am increasingly subscribing to a systems method for my personal development rather than setting distinct goals to aim at. Part of the reason for this is that the world doesn’t work in a predictable way so it’s difficult to set goals for a future that is uncertain. To combat this I’ve instead been focusing on small daily behaviours that I know are helpful to me, trusting the fact that if I continue to repeat these I will start building a momentum that will increase my chances of experiencing positive developments.

I’ve been playing with this idea for a while and, at New Year, decided to formalise it by identifying the 10 daily actions that I know make a positive contribution to my development, my wellbeing and my life as a whole. Now 10 is a lot, I would encourage everyone to start small, maybe just 1-3 in the beginning. I spent a lot of 2015 experimenting with many different daily habits and refined the list I now have to contain the ones that proved to be helpful.

Taking these 10 I’ve then used an app called ‘Way of Life’ to track these. This is a wonderfully simple app that lists your desired daily habits and prompts you to record whether you’ve done them that day or not. It then gives you trend lines over time. Whilst this may seem simple and relatively insignificant it has a strangely powerful effect, being accountable, even to just an app, is a great motivator and there is a distinct satisfaction that comes from having a row of little green boxes at the end of the day.

I encourage you all to have a think about the daily habits that are most powerful for you and to start tracking these using ‘Way of Life’. This simplifies the whole process down to just ticking the boxes whilst knowing that day by day you are progressing and increasing your odds for success. If you need extra motivation take a look at this TED talk by Matt Cutts, it’s only 3mins long but wonderfully explains what I’ve been getting at here.
Finally, for anyone interested, this is my list of daily habits:
 

- 8hrs sleep (tracked using a fitbit)
- Morning Journal (Google '5minute journal')
- Meditate (Using Calm or Headspace apps)
- Weights/Training
- 10,000 steps (tracked using a fitbit)
- Listen to a TED talk or podcast
- Foam Rolling
- No alcohol
- Read
- Breathing Exercise (using Box Breathing App) 

If you are using the blank page of 2016 as an opportunity to make some positive changes then you have likely been keeping an eye on all the media advice and coverage on how to do this. Whilst some may be well-meaning the vast majority of these columns and articles are pap at best and I encourage you to review my ‘New Year Fads’ blog from last year to help separate the useful from the useless.

This year I am focusing my attention on some common goals and helping you find the most efficient (and healthy) way to reach them. Regular readers will know that I am increasingly favouring systems approaches as opposed to pure goal setting and it is no exception when it comes to New Year’s Resolutions. A systems approach focuses on small daily behaviours that help move you towards a place of higher odds for achieving your goal, as well as others along the way. These approaches are also easier to maintain long term and provide the actionable steps which are often missing from many goals.

To illustrate this system I have picked some common New Year Resolutions and outlined the systems approaches you could take to help get you there. Each of these systems is a daily behaviour that will help you achieve your goal whilst bringing additional benefits. If you’d like more information on this approach then do check out my recent blog post on the topic here.

Goal: Lose weight

Systems:

• Don’t eat carbs in the morning

• Eat Real Food (no ingredient lists)

• Prepare all own meals

• Only eat carbs post exercise

Goal: Get Fitter

Systems:

• Pick an exercise and distance (e.g. 500m row), beat your time each week

• Never sit for longer than 30mins

• Buy a fitbit and set a steps goal

• Never take the lift/escalators

• Train in pairs/groups with consequences for missed sessions

Goal: Be more productive

Systems:

• Don’t watch any TV programme you’ve already seen

• Turn off notifications on your phones & tablets

• Only check social media once a day

• Write a daily to-do list of 3-5 items

• Do the things that you dread first every day

• Sleep for 8hrs a night

Goal: Learn something new

Systems:

• Keep a daily journal detailing what you’ve learnt each day

• Read a new book every fortnight

• Attend a class for your skill that you have to pay for

• Create an event/occasion where you have to use your new skill(s)

• Do your desired skill every day and log it

Goal: Drink Less

Systems:

• Change location/type of social situations where you’d drink

• Identify triggers for drink and replace with alternative actions

• Make a bet with a close friend

• Find a healthy swap e.g. sparkling mineral water

I hope you’ve found the above useful and it has given you some inspiration on how to create some systems that will help you achieve your 2016 goals. If you have a goal or aim for the year that isn’t listed here and you’d like some advice then please comment or email me and I’ll be happy to help out.

Happy New Year!