#01 Aggressive Fat Loss 2024 (Addendum)

Enrolling yourself into controlled starvation is a weird experience. If you've never thought about it, or graduated from the process, here are some thoughts from Day 1 of 32.

On the one hand, everything inside you wants you to eat that damn cookie. We humans, as a species, evolved in tandem with food scarcity for some 70'000 years, and it was only around the 1980s where most of the western world could access the quantities and convenience of having all the food all the time.

If our evolutionary timeline was the length of a football field, the last century represents approximately 1 inch.

So it's no wonder why so many people struggle to control their body composition when we live in an environment so unfathomable to our biology.

And yet, we also have incredible imaginations, and the power to disarm our natural desires in service of a worthier aim.

And yet, we have the right stuff to go without. Our collective history is a history of endurance and scarcity. Grit, playful and enernest.

Fat loss, in a food abundant world, is our cross to bear.

Brains over biology

The first step before even considering whether to make a change is to look at a section of your life and ask, "am I satisfied here?"

Powerful questions reveal powerful insights. It's a tool I use with coaching clients and myself all the time.

Asking the "am I satisfied here?" question does two things.

First, it clarifies your values. If a section of life isn't a value, then it's unlikely to produce any response.

And second, if it is a value, then your mind will direct your attention and start constructing a list of possibilities.

The daily practice

The first day is always a breeze.

The excitement, the novelty, the possibility. Nothing to write home about except the early wake up. Not sure what happened there.

Tomorrow will be fun. I'll be cutting trees all day in what looks like the British Summer.

I need to buy weighing scales and take "before" photos before the water loss sets.

On to Day 2...