You have to be able to live within your plans

We all like to think optimistically about our future selves. “My future self will be better at saving money, have a higher work ethic, make less mistakes, not feel the effects of hunger and be able to endure much more hardship than ‘current me’ ever does”. In some ways I think this is a good thing, to believe that you can rise to the occasion if need be. But when we make a plan, unless you have a proven track record of being able to endure more than you currently do, it’s best to be conservative.

Losing 1 kilogram a week for 10 weeks sounds great until it comes to the practical reality of rapid fat loss: being on a massive deficit, near constant hunger, a limited selection of not super palatable food to eat, while still having to maintain your regular activity levels and life responsibilities. You’re not going to do that for very long, and when you finish, you’ll be conflicted with conflicting feelings of: “I’m never going to do that again” with a dash of “Maybe if I’m just a bit more mentally resilient next time, I’ll be able to succeed”. Now don’t get me wrong, people have succeeded with this, but nearly everyone fails.

The same happens to many young aspiring muscle men. Planning to put on mountains of muscle and strength in the near future with 6 sessions a week, lasting 2 hours each. Firstly, the gain from this is marginally better compared to 4 shorter sessions a week. Secondly the fatigue, monotony and time stacks up quickly. Unless they have no social life or responsibilities, there’s no chance of them successfully doing this for any productive amount of time.

Any time we want to give ourselves a serious chance of success, we have to imagine our current self living within that plan. If we can get 70% of the results with 50% of the discomfort, we’re much more likely to actually execute successfully, and be able to repeat that as many times as necessary.

Don’t give yourself a superhuman amount of work to do, just give yourself enough to begin moving in the right direction, and then don’t stop.