I sit down with a lot of folks who are trying to get slim and fit. I ask them a standard question. What are your goals? The same answers usually come up: “tone-up” “get a little stronger” are probably the most common. Most guys want to “lose some fat but add muscle” and “get a little bigger”. I often go deeper and ask the question, why? That is, why do you want to get a little leaner? “…..so I can look a little better and my clothes will fit better.”
I continue to dig. Why? “So I’ll be a “little more attractive” Why? “So I can have GREAT SEX….! OKAY! I said it, now leave me alone!” If this sounds like a therapy session, it is (sort of). I have been hardest on myself though. Why? Why? Why? I’m 46, so for me, the goal is to hold on tight (with a vice-like grip) to every semblance of youth I can.
Specifically, I want to avoid hospitals, injury and illness as I get older. I want women to like the way I look! I want to chase girls (and not completely disappoint one if she lets me catch her), enjoy great dinners, drink wine, travel freely and be fully functional. I want to keep up with, or be even more functional than younger guys.
In short, I want to extend my youthful, happy, pain free, joyful time on the planet. I want to do all this stuff into my 50’s 60’s, 70’s and beyond! My own introspection has provided me with a true answer. Now I REALLY know why I want to eat the healthiest diet and exercise regularly. There are lots of guys just like me out there with the same underlying motivators.
So, it’s not the perfect physical state we are really after. Rather, it is the OTHER wonderful things that this physical state will allow us to have and to be!
Now here is where economics enters the picture:
We do not want the methods meant to get us the things we want to actually prevent us from getting them!
This can happen so easily when you use the wrong tools and methods. If I need to cut down a tree, I want to use a really good chain saw. A butter knife will not get me where I want to go. It will make me really tired, waste a ton of my energy and time but I will never achieve success. Eventually, after much work I may put a small scratch or tiny indentation in the tree, but that’s about it. In this case, the actual method is preventing me from reaching my goal – cutting down the damn tree!
The guy who sold me the butter knife, if he is anything like many folks in the fitness industry, would likely point out “look at that progress!” “That’s proof that this great tool is working really well…..but you’ve just got to work harder!” No doubt he would than try to “sell” me a book on “advanced butter knife tree cutting techniques” and then sell me another book on “improving will-power and positive thinking” so I’m sure to keep working hard with the butter knife.
The same thing is true if you are using bad, ineffective diet and fitness ideas. You see blatant examples of this all of the time. People spend hours and hours at the gym working out and using cardio machines. They constantly follow restrictive diets that involve large doses of denial and discipline.
They do this stuff with mostly limited results – thus they never attain those things that they are really after – the things they want to be and to do that attaining a new physical state will finally allow. Finally, they quit when the time and effort becomes so obviously miss-spent.
This puts them even further away from their original goals and desires. In the worst cases, folks become obsessive or fanatical with these inadequate methods. In these extreme situations mindless, repetitive exercises literally suck up any available time that the person would have spent enjoying the fruits of their new found state of health.
That would include doing other really fun stuff like drinking wine, shopping for smaller clothes, getting physically intimate, traveling, or generally having fun and enjoying life. Remember, that was the stuff they were trying to get into shape for in the first place!
Where diet and fitness are concerned, please apply the “min/max” principle of economics. That is, the minimum amount of time and effort, for the maximal results.
This blog, and the book it represents are humble attempts at introducing people to proven methods that truly deliver on this principle.