How to Paint Your Health and Fitness Lifestyle From the Perspective of a Cartoonist

Having a lifestyle system that one follows to reduce usage of willpower during exercising and eating is a must in an age where unhealthy food is widely spread. Exercising, in particular, is almost always useless without good nutrition and good nutrition is almost always useless without exercising. They need to be in harmony for both to be effective. In the following paragraphs, I will mention the key takeaways regarding food and fitness that the Cartoonist, Scott Adams, brought up in his book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big.

Taking your willpower out of the fitness equation should be one of the goals as willpower does run out of supply. Any system that depends on your willpower usually will fail in the long run. No pain no gain is a truly misconception. You might feel in pain if you did not exercise for a long time, but pain should not be the goal. However, you might feel exhausted, which is different from pain. Walking or jogging do not necessarily bring pain to the person doing it.

You crave unhealthy food because they are tasty and it is hard to resist them. If you use your willpower to resist specific unhealthy food, it will be hard to resist other food as there is no enough supply of willpower. You do not want to use your willpower to make unimportant decisions. Reprogramming your food preferences will make you use willpower less frequently.

Looking for patterns in your daily food is one of the ways to see how your body and mode react to the food you eat. Certain food make you feel in a certain way. For example, eating Indian or Mexican food on lunch during a workday will usually make you want to take a nap. Whereas, a big bowl of salad will not make you want to take a nap. However, not everyone will feel that way as people are different. Thus, experimenting will tell you what food make you feel sleepy and what food do not. It is chemistry not magic.

If you find yourself do not want to go to the gym on a gym day, you can trick yourself using the following technique. Try wearing your gym clothes and you might change your mind as wearing it makes you feel want to go to the gym. Usually, if you do this you will end up going to the gym.

In summary, re-prioritizing your food preferences to use less willpower and experimenting with food to see how your body reacts to certain food are the takeaways.