Managing body fat is like managing debt and finances.
Excellent Financial Advice:
Live Below Your Means.
Excellent Health Advice:
Eat Below Your Means.
Excellent Financial Advice:
Avoid the “Buy now, Pay Later” spiral, it only leads to debt.
Excellent Health Advice:
Avoid the “Eat now, burn it off later” spiral, it only leads to body fat.
Bottom line:
If you treat your body like you treat your finances amazing things can happen (assuming you know the basics of personal finance..see above). And just like finances, remember that it’s OK to spend on the things you truly love.
If you are going to splurge every once in a while, make sure you do it on foods you love, not crap you don’t need and won’t actually enjoy. But remember, when it comes to spurging, it’s better to save up then splurge then to do into debt splurging. The same goes with eating, it’s better to get lean so you have some calorie “wiggle room” then it is to splurge while still trying to lose.
PS- Lastly if you do have excess body fat then it’s the same as being in debt, it takes hard work, persistence and patients to get rid of it. No one gets rid of body fat or gets out of debt by ‘wishing really hard’. You need a plan, and you need to change your ways (see above).
BP
Tags: debt, FAT, finances, healthy eating, healthy finances, personal finances
This is too true! When I fully understood this concept it allowed me to lose 101lbs along with ESE. Save in advance rather than digging yourself out of a hole. “Buying now” feels good while you’re pigging out but it’s the worst later on when you feel like crap and have to “Pay later”. Usually you won’t pay later but rather will just keep “buying now” until you’re bankrupt and 2-300 lbs overweight.
Ah, debt and belly fat. This should hit home for a lot of people. Problem is most people have both problems so they won’t be able to use good practices from one to apply to the other. Need something most people do well with that they can now apply to fitness. Like most women never miss an episode of Gray’s Anatomy but missing a workout or cheating on their diet is a big problem. So treat your workout like your favorite television show and never miss an episode.
So true. And like getting out of debt, once you get the ball rolling, it can be fun in the way that meeting challenges leads to self-satisfaction is rewarding. It’s not the easiest thing to do but the faster you get it done, the more quickly you can put it behind you.
Brad,
There are many parallels between weight management and money management. Another one is that obesity and debt both happen gradually over time (almost too slow to notice) if you don’t take preventive measures to avoid them. This is why it’s easy for so many people to fall into both traps.
Alykhan
I have a hard time trying to fast during the week because I saw food as an escape from stress and work. Recently I swicth my perspective as follows: I have to eat 5 times per week in restaurants and this is hitting hard on my monthly budget so I choose to fast two days per week (between Monday-Friday) and meanwhile I prevent overeating I save a lot of money because I only spent in the 3 days I´m not fasting.
Funny that I happen to read this today when I was thinking about how I will be reaching both my fitness and get out of debt goals at the same time! Brad–do you have anything to share about hitting that weight-loss “plateau”. Any tips or advice would be great!
Thanks!!
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Yeas I have found out that “Eat now, burn it off later” doesn’t really work. If you want to eat more than usual, create a bigger deficit before.
Great metaphor btw.
[...] yes, and no. As Brad Pilon said (in a different post I couldn’t find ((dammit!!)), but I remember the words) saying that [...]