body transformation for foodies - How I designed a system so I could eat what I want

So this is a transformation with a difference. I don't have an enormous drive to become ripped. I'm not obsessed with fitness or have a killer story to tell. And I really love food. Basically, I'm pretty average, but I did this in six months and it wasn't as difficult as I thought. But there is a catch. So a bit of history. A friend of mine suggested that I should be more open about this and that she was really impressed given my lifestyle. A polite way of saying a greedy bugger who eats donuts goes up for Korean far too often and is never late for the 10:30 cutoff for McDonald's breakfast. I was a bit reluctant at first. As most of my friends know, I'm very private in my personal life. But I realized I could use it as a opportunity to explain the way I think about things and how it systematically allows me to achieve goals with a great success rate. I also feel this method is most likely something you've never seen before, yet is probably more applicable to a lot of people and maybe more effective than other approaches. So people see me now, think I've always been like this. They are usually shocked I eat foods like this and they all know I'm a big foodie, but they think there's some kind of trick. I don't have a personal trainer, nutritionist. I'm not an expert. I'm not obsessed with fitness or nutrition. So this video is all about how I did it. And I achieved it not through the usual process of hard work, but of careful and considerate design. One that freed me from gruelling hard work, major food restrictions, and God forbid, 5am workouts. All a massive no no for me. I use all of my knowledge and everything I've learned to make this work. It was designed with all my personality flaws, bad habits in mind, some of which you may well share. In this video, I'll be going over the three key problems I faced and why I believe I failed each time I tried in previous years. The next point, how I was going to approach it. This time with a design approach and starting with a strong sense of why that's super important because I don't think people really sit down and think about it. Next point is the way I laid it out. Kind of a golden map that would get me to where I needed to get to. This is going to be part one of a series of videos on this transformation because I believe there's a lot of detail that can be explored way beyond one video. If you like this video, consider subscribing and if you'd like to know more about my methods, as bizarre as they are, click the notification bell. There are a number of problems I face when tackling this, so we're going to look at those problems. Problem 1 I want to get really fit and lean, but I have a problem with food. It's my big vice. I'm a big foodie and I have always seen this as a massive barrier to entry. I've tried in the past and always given in to temptation. I really like going out with my friends enjoying nice food. Further to that, I've been brought up in a family that loves eating and community is built around food. Basically, I don't value having a fitness model body over eating good food. Problem 2 if I stay the way I am, nothing really bad will happen. The problem with this is there is no desperate need to change. I'm not infinitely motivated to get the results that I see. I'm not a personal trainer who might need a good body for work, nor am I an actor, fitness enthusiast or Instagram model. Problem 3 Now I'm really impressed and inspired by people I see with big transformations on YouTube at first, but when I dig deeper I actually feel a sense of separation. I can struggle to resonate as they have often hit rock bottom in some aspect of their life, which I struggle to mirror in my own life. I can see where their desire comes from, but I can't see how I can use today Same catalyst There's always a part of me that excuses my actions and I can see that going forward. Already it's clear to me at least why achieving the outcome I desire is going to be difficult straight out of the gate. Even before I've looked at the difficulty of the how there are no obvious catalysts for me to really make a change. So I have a whole bunch of mental models I use to help me see things clearly. One is an idea about how to ensure that a major change is successful or given the greatest probability of success. It's a combination of push and pull factors. If the factors don't meet a threshold level, I know I will struggle to achieve what I want for others. If you've got sufficient drive, say a photo shoot, a wedding, an event, sports training, or getting paid to look good training for a marathon, you have that powerful rocket. But if you're like me, I don't. I have to create that drive and that is where the problem lies. So the first stage was to really understand what I was trying to achieve. Build a real state, build a real sense of purpose and why map out where I am and what I've got so far. Most of this is actually about mindset. It's something I've learned so much over the years. So the first stage is the why? What's the point? What's my purpose? I could give a lot of typical reasons why and many are true, but there are two distinct factors here that I want to concentrate on. So the first one is I basically want to look good. I don't know where this has come from. Social media, social pressure. I honestly can't distill why I feel like this, but it's the way it is. The next one is perception from others so at the time I started I was single. I've always been self conscious about my image and my attractiveness. I can't do much about this, but I do have control over my body. Being single definitely raised my anxiety about it. More on these problems in a future video, but I will touch on the fact that this was a big driver during my experiment I spoke to a lot of my female friends and they share a lot of the same beliefs of their bodies and the the self conscious nature of how attractive you look, particularly when I shared my feelings. What I found really interesting is that guys are less forthcoming with the social pressures of looking good. I want to kind of break this down and admit that I did feel the pressure and it was a considerable factor in my motivation. So I will be exploring this more in future videos as my findings I think are really interesting. Drop a comment below if you'd like to see and know more about what I found out. I felt it could help me in some way in this regard being more attractive. In fact, this led me to a new hypothesis for my experiment. I wanted to know if it does have any real impact. Do women actually care about how you look despite what they say online, in forums, magazines or in person? This became quite a compelling motivation for me. I really wanted to know the answer. People talk about dad bods, but I want to check this out myself. It's known in psychology that people's deep down subconscious thoughts and feelings are not actually reflected by what they say. I want to see if I can shed any light on this. This leads on to another area about questions your experiments can answer, which we will cover later. Next, a big question I've always wanted to know Is it possible to have a good body shape while still enjoying my food? Or must you choose between the two Good food and being unhappy with your body or good good body and bland food I've never seen anyone put as much thought on a process that I would employ given my lack of need to actually do any of this. So it remained an uncertainty and a question only I felt I could answer. So after my why I kind of wanted to look at my values. I think it's super important and I've talked about it previously. My main values here are, you know, I want to be healthy because I want to live for a long time and I believe my mind can work better if I'm healthy. I also want to be fit. I love being fit and being strong. I'm a big foodie and can never give up great tasting food. I also want to make all of this fit around my existing lifestyle. I don't want to be in the gym, you know, six hours a day and eating these ridiculous meals. I also don't want to become obsessed with it. I want to have more self confidence. Like I said, I've always been self conscious about how I look and I've not been able to help comparing myself. You may well feel the same. So the next factors are the push and pull factors. So the push factors, things that are going to motivate me because I don't want to feel like this anymore. So those are, I basically feel unhappy about my body and I didn't feel attractive. Thirdly, I was kind of frustrated that I can't do what I see other people doing and that just annoys me. The next slot are the pull factors. So these are the things that I want and are positive aspects. So I currently believe I'll feel good if I achieve getting the body I want, leading to increased self confidence. I also believe I'll probably feel more attractive and that's like a perception, perception element. The next point is a little overview of what I don't want to compromise on. I never want to give up eating nice food and enjoying good food with my friends and family. If I want to eat a really nice meal or I'm offered a good night out, I want to be able to do that. I don't want to become obsessed with training or nutrition. I have more important things to concentrate on in life and I don't believe that's a good thing anyway. I don't want to resort to just eating boiled chicken breast and broccoli for the rest of my life. Yeah, that's a big one. And I don't want to be out running all the time. I want choice in the type of exercise I do. So the next point is how much do I actually Want it. So at this point we have reached a checkpoint. I'm kind of now faced with a gateway test. It's a point where I look to evaluate where I am, how much I truly want to go for this. So you got to think, how hot is that fire under you? I can already see it's going to take a hell of a lot of energy input from me. And I don't want to waste more fuel trying and failing. So I need to be committed. Have I reached the threshold energy levels to do this? So I like to think about stacking up all these reasons. If you can stack enough reasons, you'll have enough motivation. Are the reasons compelling enough for you to see it through? Now check this kind of graph out for declining motivation. You've always got to stay above this threshold or you will give up anyway. Look at it. If it's a no, well, just don't bother. Don't waste your effort because it's not going to work. If yes, and for me it was proceed. Next aspect are beliefs. So I want to outline some of my common beliefs. It's important to state these because you clearly see your assumptions and you can openly question them once you've seen them written down. I've always thought I needed breakfast. The most important meal of the day. They say the next one is you have to eat boring food to get lean. You have to count calories tediously. Restriction of carbs or food in general will make me feel tired. Also, if I fast, I will struggle to work because I'll feel tired and exhausted. So the next section are questions I can answer if I achieve it. And this is the big motivator for me. No one can answer this because they are not me. Firstly, does it actually improve my self confidence? Am I perceived as more attractive? Can I sustain my body shape? Do I become a dick once I've got the body I'm proud of? What are the hidden benefits of it? If there are any? What are the downsides? Were my beliefs true or were they complete bullshit? So the next aspect is personality. So I really like learning and learning about new ideas, improving in whatever I'm doing. I really love developing skills. I like being strong. Now for my weaknesses, I can get distracted really easily. I can't resist tasty food or an offer to go out for food easily. I think about food a lot. I talk about food a lot. My friends all like food, food, food, food. So next point is what I'm good at. I have a strong motivation. When I start something new, I'm good At researching topics, I'm good at starting using that burst enthusiasm to get things going. The next phase is looking at what I need to do. There are a shitload of theories about getting slim and getting lean. I made a decision to think about what I believe from a loosely scientific perspective. The key for me was not to get too bogged down in the detail that will overwhelm me or waste time or cause me to waste time researching and never doing. The basic principle is to create a calorie deficit. But why? Okay, so for me, fat is on our bodies as a fuel reserve. Consume more fuel, fat goes away. I'm pretty happy with this concept. So a slightly more detailed look at this. We have an energy balance that we need to keep going every day. So we eat food for fuel and then we have a metabolic rate to survive. And that burns the fuel. It should balance and we won't lose any weight. If there's a surplus, we gain fat. If there's a deficit, we lose fat. And any movement or exercise goes on top of that fuel burn. I also wanted to have a decent muscle mass too. To get that body, I wanted next risks, motivation, deterioration. History has shown this is a big problem. I also know how fast it deteriorates. I can use that to model and allow it in my design. This is key. So another risk is I can get distracted by something new. Life stresses getting in the way, uncertain about what methods work. So I need to design that in unfavorable environments, being around food, friends who like food. So I need to make allowances in design, create mitigation measures. So. So now looking at what I can try, there's the physical side. Gym, running, sport. Then there's the nutrition. I'll touch on these. Portion size, lower carbs, intermittent fasting. Five, two. Gonna look at where we are now. At this point, I'd done my foundation what I want. I know what the problem is. I have a lot of desire. I want to go for it. I believe I have the adequate motivation to get me going for phase one. I have a bunch of questions I can answer if I succeed, which would be really cool. I'm now onto the design phase. I will go into a lot more detail in a future video but will give an overview here. Design, plot out possible paths and strategies. At this stage, I would research the possible options I have. That's intermittent fasting, low carb. I'll quickly assess the pros and cons. You might ask how I can quantify it. I like to use willpower as a currency. So I think about which will cost me the most amount of willpower and I want to keep these low. Then I figure out who do I need to become. I want to be a person who can enjoy their food, focus friends and still have a good body. And I really want to keep this in mind. The next point is what actions and habits will this person that I envisage embody to achieve these goals? I learned a lot of this from Atomic Habits by James Clear. For more details, check out a future video. Then it's all about how can how can I optimize to save this currency or willpower? I need to look for the best options that will conserve willpower and then optimize further by creating simple rules that will not require much mental energy to execute next execution. Now I will be going over this in the next part of the video, but here's a taster with the beginning of my plan. So I decided on intermittent fasting. I was going to be open minded because I've never done it before. Four weeks. Start with two times a week, then increase introduce low carb. Later evaluate it after that four weeks keep trying and reduce carbs while feeling comfortable. I'll be going into depth exactly how I did things, the programs I used and you'll learn some methods like the tricks I used to get free willpower boosts at the points where I knew I had depleted my willpower reserves. I'll also kind of go over how I used simple rules, the process I used to convert my plan into these rules, how doing them right makes the process so much easier. Anyway, that's it for this video. The next video will all be about what happened when I started. Drop a comment below if you want to know any specific parts of my process. Click on the subscribe button and hit the notification bell to be alerted when the next videos come out. Anyway, see you next time.