Alex & Aaron (Nutrition and Mortgages)

Hi, it's Aaron from Diagnostics and Finance here. I'm sitting here in a beautiful park, going to be my office location very soon. I'm sitting here with Alex from Real Nutrition. So Alex, with nutrition parallel to finance, do you think our listeners would be able to know that we actually have so much in common related to finance and nutrition?

Yeah, there isn't a lot we talk about this quite often because especially when it pertains to say weight loss with nutritional body composition at the end of the day, body composition changes. Gaining body fat or losing body fat really comes down to an energy balance equation. Are you eating more energy than you're burning or are you eating less energy than you're burning? And finance in a way is.

You earn amount of money and if you go and spend more than you earned for a prolonged period of time, you're going to be in a little bit of trouble. So we're better off spending less than what we earn and saving a little bit of money for a rainy day.

Yeah. And it's kind of, it's funny with nutrition a lot of the time people think that you've just got to burn more energy, burn more energy, train more to try and out train a bad diet where often it just comes down to how much you're eating and whether your daily habits that leads you eating more than you should be or less than you should be. And I guess it's the same for finance. We often think we've just got to continually earn more money, whereas if we could just spend a little bit less, you get good results.

Absolutely. And I think how do people start? I talk about small things all the time, small little changes. To achieve a big goal we all got to have big goals. Same in nutrition.

Yeah, it's focusing on the systems rather than the goals. So it's good to set goals and you want to set them big. But once you've set them, kind of park them on the bench and focus more on the systems that are going to get you there. The day to day habits. I guess it is a bit like finance. If you're stopping at the service station and you're filling up the car and you're like, oh, I'll just grab a quick little snack. That one decision there that's going to spend an extra five, ten dollars doesn't seem like a lot but when you look at it across a year that might be the thing that puts you 1% over your spend instead of 1% under. Same as nutrition, like just having say just slightly too bigger serving Sizes or opting for say a higher energy density meal. So some meals that are, say, higher in calories. So let's say you're having a schnitzel down at the pub and you've got a big pile of chips there and you think, well, bugger, this one meal isn't going to make or break me. But seeding half the amount of chips or just forgoing the chips, or getting a grilled chicken with chips instead, saving that little bit of energy in that one instance, if you can build that into a habit and then say at the end of a month or two months or three months, if your energy is continually slightly less than what you're burning, you're going to have lost body fat. So instead of thinking about I've got to do this, I've got to be drastic, just changing your daily habits, the systems that make you end up eating a little bit less, you can get results without having to kind of go overboard.

And I guess it's the same with, you're very similar. If you're not saving any money now, your bank account in six months time is going to be nothing. So if you put a dollar a day, which is a common trend, dollar a day, you've probably seen the ads, it's all about charity, charity. A dollar a day, you can feed a starving person. But if we put a dollar a day or even $10 a week or $10 a pay in six months time, we're not going to have nothing, we're going to have a little bit more than we did before. So that's just a little system change. So if you need to save 100 grand for a house, which is not an unreasonable deposit these days and you have nothing now, you've just got to start. It's not focusing on the 100 grand that's the target we got to start. How about we get to a thousand first? Yeah, how about we get to 500 or 100? Like your bank account, when you're saving little bits and you nick it over 100, it feels good. Yeah.

And it reinforces that we're just seeing that result. And like humans, we haven't evolved to think long term, we've evolved to think about where our next meal is coming from or what's the most important short term goal. And so if you can just maintain, if you can make a habit change and kind of change almost your identity. So you become a person, say eats lean or you become a person that's a bit more frugal and then after a week or two, or a month or two, you see that small change, whether it's only a couple of hundred dollars in your bank account or in a savings account or whether it's just a kilo or two on the scales that can then reinforce that good behavior to kind of continue doing it. So it's almost like an identity shift that has to happen immediately. And if you can change your identity to think I'm a person who eats lean or I'm a person who saves just a little bit per week and then you focus on those systems, in time you'll get that feedback, the evidence, once you've got a little bit of result to kind of reinforce that behavior to then keep going. And it just kind of reinforces who the new person that you're becoming to achieve that longer term goal.

And achieving goals is really cool because you got me at the schnitzels and chips and the schnitzels and chips and. And there is a temptation. Every week we both go to a meeting that has schnitzel and chips. Can we have our schnitzel and chips like this motivation, reward factor. Can we have what has been termed out there like cheat day or can we spend a bit more, can we go on that more expensive holiday and we earn $1,000 that week, but we spent 10 grand on going on a holiday or we have been really good all week and we really want that sniffle and chips.

Yeah, that's where the context and nuance is key. Right. So I mean if it's that schnitzel and chips every day is the habit and you're spending or you're spending a little bit extra every single day is a habit you're going to have. If you look at it across a six month period, it's not going to be great. But if it's, if it's accounted for and if it's planned for. So I guess it's imagine, right? So say with finances it might be that you put aside $50 or $100 or you know what you can spend every single week on whenever you want and you can kind of say waste that money. It's the same with food and energy. If you know that that one meal per week of schnitzel and chips, if the rest of your week's pretty darn good and you're eating less than what you're burning and that one snitzel and chips doesn't put you over, then you can eat that then and it becomes guilt free. Right. Because you know that this has been accounted for in the context of the whole, it's absolutely fine. So it's just about looking at the entire context and knowing that you can have what you want when you want it, if it's been accounted for. And there's a bit of a system in place to plan for it.

It's an interesting thing. I was just thinking of a concept. I don't know whether this is an official scientific concept. It was called reverse motivation. When you're able to have a cheat meal or you're able to go and spend a bit of money on yourself, you may feel regret on that. You go, I love to eat that food. I love to go and buy that thing that I probably didn't even need to buy in the first place. And you get to the next day and you go, actually, my bank account's a bit less than what I wanted it to be. Or I jump on the scales. And that whole meal, you can feel it the next day, or you don't wake up early enough, or you actually start to feel after maybe one or two of these days where you've been going all good during the week, and then you have this one thing and another week and another week and another week, and then you find that you're waking up next morning after eating a big crappy meal or a yummy meal and you feel it and you go, maybe I don't want to do that anymore. So that little bit of reverse motivation at you too over a period of.

Yeah, and I guess that then has to come from. It's all relative, right? So you're only going to know that that makes you not feel as good if your base habits are good. Because if you're usually feeling good, usually eating well, or you're usually pretty good with like saving a little bit of money, when you then do the thing that you shouldn't do for too long and you get that bad feedback, then it's that reminder. But I guess you have to then have at least your base habits have to be good to start with, right? Otherwise you're not going to have that comparison. I think with imagine finances a bit like this. But a lot of people when they're stuck in a rut with say, nutrition and health, they don't have that reminder. And so you kind of almost feel like, I'm never going to be able to achieve something a bit grander. So you never even start those base habits. And I guess that might be the same with finances. If you're in debt and cause your bad spending gets you There sometimes if you can't see the light at the end of the tunnel, you can't put that first foot in front of the other. So what would you recommend? Finances. That first way to change out of a hole.

I think, I think these are the common person that comes to me with finances and they want to buy a house and well, maybe they don't want to buy a house. They come to me and they're in a bit of debt trouble. So they've got two or three credit cards, they've used the whole interest free balance transfer, forgot to close the other credit card. Wow. I've got another credit card gone out and spent on it. We've got 20, $30,000 worth of credit card debt. We've got a car loan, we've got personal loan, we've got solar finance, We've got a whole range of things that are nice to haves maybe or necessities. And it's just spinning your wheels. You've driven your car into the sand and you're not getting out. You don't have that four wheel drive, you don't have that extra grunt that you need and you feel like you have to borrow some more money to get that extra grunt to get going, to keep going, to keep getting the kids fed, clothed, whatever. And I think it's just sitting down and mapping it out. One of the things that I do a lot is get all the debts and we put them all out there on the table and we go, okay, we can deal with this, this section first and then this section and then this section. But it's not necessarily people would ask what section first. The biggest thing that I go after is the smallest debt. Yeah, if you got a debt for a thousand bucks and you got a debt for $10,000, you got a debt for seven grand and a debt for 50 grand and a debt for 100 grand. My thing is don't worry about the repayments, don't worry about whose interest rates the highest, whose is the most priority or anything. You've got to keep every debt happy. You've got to keep repaying them, you've got to keep them on track. And if you've got the smallest debt, say it's 1000 bucks. Any payments you're making over and above what you're doing on all the other debts, you need to stop doing that. Pay minimum on everything, Move the extra money you were paying on those and put it off. The smallest debt, now that smallest debt's got extra money, that smallest debt is now dropping. Yeah, Once that smallest debt's gone, how do you feel? Yeah, it reinforces that and then you get that money. That money from that debt now goes on to the next largest debt. So not only do you have the minimum repayment on the next largest debt, you've got the minimum repayment from the first debt and the extra money that you're able to put together to pay off this next one. So how fast is this next one going to go? Yeah, that one's going to go. Now we're going to take all that one and go off a bigger debt. Now we're going from pain, all debts, lots and lots of money. And we're going after, strategically going after one after another, after another after another. And I think it's fairly similar with nutrition. There's a thing called protein.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess it's like a good analogy for it might be that if you're treading water or say you've got like your stationary freight train, right? And it takes a lot of energy to get the freight train moving. So you've got to put a lot of energy at the start, but try and look for them the smallest thing that you can shift to get things moving. Because once it does start moving, the momentum is going to start carrying you. And then the more you kind of, you almost build that then relentless momentum. So, yeah, with nutrition, I guess looking for the biggest boulders that you could move, or I guess better way to put it, is the simplest boulders to move. So instead of thinking, I mean, with nutrition, everyone's an expert, right? And so most people just surrounded by kind of like new diets or new things that they should try, or this particular food's bad for you or this particular good food is good for you and you've got to start eating more of it. Again, think bigger picture. The smallest, I guess, debt to deal with would be the main habits that are going to make the biggest difference. And as Aaron alluded to protein, increasing your protein intake generally means you decrease your fat and carbohydrate intake naturally. So if you could imagine if you had just a big bowl of chips in front of you to eat, chips being predominantly carbohydrate and fat, it's quite easy to keep consuming them. But if I made you eat a steak first or I gave you a bunch of eggs to eat first, you'd probably not be able to fit in as many chips afterwards. So just trying to look to increase your protein intake and veg intake, focus on what you should be doing more of instead of worrying about what you shouldn't be doing and going for that easiest debt. That is the eating a bit more protein and veg can then make things easier. Once you've built that momentum, you get that good feedback that you're eating a little bit less energy, you might have already seen the scale shift a little bit. Can then start attacking the other things. So in finance, the bigger debts and nutrition, it might be increasing your nutrient intake or looking at your energy or something like that, or looking at the nutrient timing about your performance in the gym or I don't know, something like that. But start with the easiest thing first.

So I think that's awesome. I hope you guys are getting how nutrition and finance works together. Also, you got to think that sometimes when we've got our finances under control and we're making some money, there's ways that we can then use our finances to better our health as well. So if we can fix up some money so that you can get your nutrition up to date, get back to the gym, get to a good gym and get all these combinations of financial fitness, nutritional fitness and physical fitness, you'll be a force to reckon with and there won't be any stopping you. So talking about money and talking about we both run businesses. What do you got coming up that could be good for people to get in contact with you to start this little journey? Maybe it is just fruit and veg and protein that you guys can take away today, do it tomorrow. That's awesome. What's something that they can get a little extra help from you?

I got an education based challenge. It's called Lean for Life that I run. But the last one for this year just started because it goes for eight weeks and that's going to take us to a couple of days before Christmas. So in the new year, if you want to jump in, it's just education, habit based, so you can't really fail. It's based around learning the key aspects of nutrition which we then start applying. The end goal is to lose about four kilos in eight weeks. So a sustainable rate of fat loss. So nothing drastic. But more importantly, change these habits that we've kind of been some of these simple ones that we've been discussing long term. So you continue, so you almost change your identity during those eight weeks and continue learning, continue building from there. So I guess the eight week challenge is a good way to attack that smallest debt, right? To start the easiest things first. But even before that, if you just want some advice, I'm always here to help. So if you just click through to my Facebook page page. Whether it's real nutrition or Alexander Perkins, nutritionist on Facebook, send me a message, tell me where you're at. I'm happy to just suggest something that you can start with small to get going.

And we'll tag all the contact details, website and Facebook pages so you can click over and even just take the easy way out. There'll be a phone number that you can just click and go, hey, Alex, I need some help.

Yeah, yeah, just, I'm always, always happy to help if you just give me a call or, yeah, send me a message. So, yeah, yeah.

So I've done Alex's eight week challenge. I've also combined it with the gym and I think that's a really good combination. So that's really cool. And it's got my headspace better. I'm cranking out of the gym as much as I can, and it gives you a good frame of mind, gets you kick started for the day. So if you're not financially fit or you are financially fit and you just need to help to get to that next level, my contact details will be there as well. And anything that we've given you today, please jump on, go out and give it a go. And if you need any help, you just have to reach out and then we can, we can jump in there and get you the next level.

Cool.

All right, guys.

Listening, guys.

Thank you.