TN50 #91, EAT: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, 3 October 2022
Hi Team,
Happy Monday and welcome to The Next 50 #91. Tonight, we’ll focus on the ups and downs of EAT based on your feedback from my call for help a few weeks ago, TN50#87.
All of the answers I received on Eat promotors and detractors were surprisingly consistent. Kind of like you all maybe cheated and shared your answers!
Here’s how you rated EAT promotors and detractors.
The GOOD – Biggest EAT Promotors:
Top Rated #1: Regular Routine/Being Home. Everyone, save 2 of you, said some version of this and I get it and absolutely agree I find it much easier to keep my EAT framework fully operational at home more easily than when I am on the road or out on the town. That being said I also try and take a few minutes every evening to think about the next day’s EAT plan, and a lot of times this can make a huge difference in how much damage I do when I am in a more fluid environment away from home base. If this doesn’t make sense to you, please let me know and I’ll talk you through it. We covered this last week on MOVE but I’ll say it a different way today, “Prior planning prevents piss poor performance”. The Rule of 6P’s.
One-Off #1: Having an 8-Hour FC, FC is shorthand for Food Clock, my team and I refer to the period of the day that we consume calories as our Food Clock (FC). For this individual maintaining an 8-hour FC is the most important variable of her EAT framework and having worked with her for 2 years I can tell you that her results across the entire First Principles Performance Better Basics Program have been amazing.
One-Off #2: Using a PROLON Fast Mimicking Diet (FMD) set me up for great results. The PROLON FMD is a 5-day fast that really helps transition an individual’s old EAT plan (or lack thereof) to their new EAT framework. The FMD isn’t for everyone but a lot of my team have found great success using these pre-packaged kits from time to time. If you want to know more just reach out and let me know and I’ll happily share some old blogs that cover this topic.
The BAD – Biggest EAT Detractors:
Top Rated #1: Traveling/Eating Out, no surprise here, based on the #1 Promotor. I know a lot of people who have a, “What I eat on travel doesn’t count” strategy and their results from this strategy are exactly what you think they would be – NOT good. I have been on the road a lot recently and I couldn’t control everything I was eating like I might at home but at the same time I didn’t go crazy like I had just graduated Ranger School, or anything like that.
Top Rated #2 (tie): Alcohol, again, no surprise here. I always tell my team the best meal to have a drink is breakfast! I don’t think many people take my advice on this but it would allow all the alcohol to be out of your system well before dinner and sleep. Alcohol lowers your tolerance for making dumb decisions regarding what else you are going to consume and in a lot of cases turns an 8-hour FC into an “I stopped caring how or when it ended” FC, yikes! I’m guilty of this too, I know it’s easy to do, my recommendation is trying to minimize these kinds of “Treat” Days.
Top Rated #2 (tie): Eating what’s convenient, I’m not going to say it a 3rd time… Actually, I am, NO SURPRISE HERE. We live in a world of perfectly designed, highly palatable, highly processed, high reward food. Often these food options are designed to make you want to continue eating and this shouldn’t be surprising because that’s how people who make and sell food make money.
All 3 of these detractors point to situations that involve being in an environment that you do not control, if you are having trouble with these types of detractors at your home it’s time to get the “junk” out of your house. Operationalizing a plan that involves eating an entire big bag of Doritos at 10 pm is much harder to do if you have to get up, get dressed and drive to the store to buy the Doritos… You get the picture. That falls into Habit Breaking 101, let me know if you want a book recommendation on this.
And Finally, The UGLY:
Nothing quote worthy in any of the answers so here’s a GIF from Elf!
As always share the post with your team or anyone who might find it useful and let me know what you think.
Have a good one, Alex
PS. Today is 3 October, if you remember the book/movie, Black Hawk Down the events depicted occurred on this day back in 1993, I had been in the Army about 2 years, back then, and I was not in Somalia during that conflict. A few years later I had the privilege to work with, train under and be mentored by many of the soldiers who were out on the ground in Somalia that day. The lessons I learned from those men and the improvements in equipment I enjoyed because of their willingness to call out their mistakes would prove to be very valuable to me and many like me later in my career. To all those men I would like to say, “Thank you”!
