3026: Are You Better Than Yesterday by Steve Kamb of Nerd Fitness on Clear Goal Setting and Consistency

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[00:01:00] This is Optimal Health Daily. Are you better than yesterday? By Steve Kam of nerdfitness.com. And I'm your host and narrator, Dr. Neil Malik. Hey there, happy middle of the week Wednesday and welcome back to OHD, where I read an article to you every single day of the year and always with my commentary at the end. Now today is Wednesday and like I do every Wednesday, I'd like to give you a little bit of inspiration.

[00:01:24] Now sometimes the quotes I share directly relate to the topic of the article that I read to you, but not always. Well, today's quote just so happens to perfectly complement today's topic. So with that, here's our inspiration for today. Quote, Small actions done with intention build the momentum you need to rise with clarity, purpose, and strength. Dan Rockwell

[00:01:52] Alright and with that, let's get right to today's post so we can see how that quote relates and start optimizing your life. Are you better than yesterday? By Steve Kam of nerdfitness.com Work has been kind of hectic in a good way, so I didn't get a chance to start thinking about today's blog until late yesterday afternoon.

[00:02:17] I had no idea what I was going to write about when the perfect concept literally dropped itself into my email inbox. Tim Ferriss, life hacker extraordinaire, had just posted a blog with the same title as the one I chose for today. By the way, I highly recommend reading his blog. Hopefully he doesn't mind, but I stole his blog title simply because it's something you should be thinking about every day. Quote, Level up your life? Isn't this blog's motto for nothing.

[00:02:46] Are you better than yesterday? If you can find at least one thing about yourself to improve upon every day, whether it's fitness, diet, work, health, family, video games, starting a company, and so on, then you will always go to sleep a better person than you were the day before. Therefore, as long as it's something, no matter how small, you get to enjoy a small victory and build upon that success for the next day. How about your diet?

[00:03:13] If you decide to throw out everything in your fridge and switch to 100% fruits, vegetables, and nuts, you're probably going to freak out and quickly give up because you're used to eating frozen pizzas, Big Macs, and cupcakes. However, if you try every day to eat just a little better, drink one less soda than yesterday, make one less trip to the vending machine, bring in a healthy lunch once a week rather than going to your favorite sub-sandwich shop,

[00:03:40] in a few months, you'll have a completely different diet and probably a different pant size. No more Costco sweatpants for you. If you're a programmer and you come across bug-riddled software, you make a list of what needs to happen to fix the problems, and then you slowly move down the list and check things off. Eventually, no matter how small the corrections are each day, you will have a solid, bug-free program. What are the bugs in your life, and what are you doing to troubleshoot them? Do you have a list?

[00:04:10] I used to play EverQuest 2 with my buddies. For those of you who don't know, EverQuest 2 is a massive multiplayer online role-playing game, kind of like World of Warcraft. Between working a full-time job and exercising regularly, I didn't have a lot of time to dedicate to playing, which is probably a good thing. Luckily, the game is set up so that I could log on and play for 20-30 minutes, finish a few small quests or kill some mobs, and after a few days, level up my character.

[00:04:40] Life is no different. Just saying, I want to get in shape, is far too vague and won't give you any direction. You need to give yourself quests and goals to accomplish. Decide at what point you get to declare yourself, you 2.0. What accomplishments and achievements do you need before that happens? Maybe it looks something like this. I want to lose 50 pounds. I want to do 10 pull-ups in a row. I want to run a mile without stopping.

[00:05:08] I want to look down and see my toes. Make your goals as specific as possible, so you can measure yourself to make sure you're getting better. If you want to do 10 pull-ups in a row, you're going to have to increase your back, bicep, and forearm strength. If you can only do 2 now, that's fine. Next week, go for 3. After that, go for 4. If you eat right and work on being just slightly stronger than yesterday, eventually you'll be doing 10 pull-ups with ease.

[00:05:38] Baby steps after all. The best way I've found to gauge your success is to keep track of everything. Take a picture of yourself every Monday morning. Write down everything you eat and keep track of every single set, repetition, and amount of weight for each exercise. How are you going to know if you're better than the day before if you don't remember what you did? Day to day, it's tough to see small changes. However, if you find a way to better yourself every single day,

[00:06:07] I guarantee you'll see major changes over time as long as you keep track of where you started. Are you better than yesterday? Hang this phrase on the back of your bedroom door. Set your Google Calendar to ask you every morning at 8 a.m. Add it to your desktop background. Do whatever you need to, but find a way to remind yourself to be better today than you were yesterday. Then, find a way to be better tomorrow than you are today. Level up your life, one day at a time.

[00:06:37] What are you going to do today to become you 2.0? You just listened to the post titled, Are You Better Than Yesterday? by Steve Kam of nerdfitness.com and I'll be right back with my commentary.

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[00:08:36] Remember, the inspirational quote was this, Small actions done with intention build the momentum you need to rise with clarity, purpose, and strength. Thinking about how we can be better each day perfectly aligns with this. Now, I happened to be speaking to my neighbor the other day. He remembered that nutrition is one of my passions and shared with me his weight loss journey. Sometime last year, my neighbor realized he was the heaviest he'd ever been in his life. He's now in his late 60s

[00:09:05] and decided that he wanted to make a change. He wanted to get back to the weight he was in high school. That meant he needed to lose about 25 pounds. And he was proud to share with me that he recently reached this goal. Of course, I had to know how he did it. He said he tried to be better each day. Basically, he did exactly what today's author, Steve Kam, suggested in today's article. Now, he was already active. He walks his dog for three to six miles a day.

[00:09:34] But that alone didn't lead to any weight loss. In fact, even though he was walking that much, he still gained 25 pounds. He did realize instead that he was adding three teaspoons of sugar to each cup of coffee he drank during the day. So, his first goal was to stop adding sugar to each cup of coffee. He slowly reduced the amount of sugar added to each cup by first going down from three to two teaspoons per cup, then down to one teaspoon per cup, then zero.

[00:10:04] He realized that it may not seem like much at first, but three teaspoons of sugar per cup of coffee meant he was getting an extra 48 calories each time he had a cup of coffee because each teaspoon of sugar has about 16 calories. He averaged two cups of coffee a day, which meant he was getting an extra 96 calories just from added sugar each day. So, reducing his intake of this meant he was going to save himself almost 100 calories a day.

[00:10:33] That meant almost 700 calories saved a week just by making one small change. Then, once he felt comfortable and mastered the sugar in his coffee habit, in the spirit of continuous improvement, he decided he would next watch his portions. He ate all of the same foods he loved, but just a little less of them. That was it. He kept up his activity, stopped adding sugar to his coffee, and watched his food portions.

[00:11:01] Those were his secrets to getting to his goal weight. See? Reaching our goals doesn't have to be complicated. Just focus on being a little better each day. All right, that'll do it for another episode of Optimal Health Daily. Thank you so much for listening every day. Thank you again for sharing this show with others. That's how we've been able to keep this show going. So, we really appreciate it when you do that. I hope you have a great rest of your day, and of course, I'll see you back here tomorrow where your optimal life awaits.