Can Tracking Food Cause An Eating Disorder?

Hey, Athletes! Do you track your food? Have you had any negative associations with food because of it? This episode covers this topic and more so make sure to tune in!   

Episode 121 of The Garage Gym Athlete Podcast is up!

Can Tracking Food Cause An Eating Disorder?

For this week’s episode we have the guys back at it again. They are diving into the science as they cover a study that goes over tracking your food and how it can potentially have a dark side. The guys go over their takeaways, helpful tips, and more importantly how to avoid a negative association with food while tracking. This week’s topic is this month’s book review. The team read The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham and they go over their likes, dislikes, and barbell review on this one. This week’s Meet Yourself Saturday workout is River Heist! Make sure to pick up some tips on how to tackle this one!  

If you haven’t already, be sure to subscribe to the Garage Gym Athlete podcast either on Stitcher, iTunes, or Google Play by using the link below:

• Subscribe on any device HERE 

IN THIS 53-MINUTE EPISODE WE DISCUSS:

• The Road Less Stupid by Keith J. Cunningham 
• Tracking Food
• River Heist   
• Eating Disorders
• Barbell Book Review
• Tips For MYS
• Updates and Announcements
• And A LOT MORE!!

Diving Deeper… 

If you want to go a little bit deeper on this episode, here are some links for you: 

Study of the Week 

• Introducing Dietary Self-Monitoring to Undergraduate Women via a Calorie Counting App Has No Effect on Mental Health or Health Behaviors: Results From a Randomized Controlled Trial

Garage Gym Athlete Workout of the Week 

Be sure to listen to this week’s episode:

• Can Tracking Food Cause An Eating Disorder?

Thanks for listening to the podcast, and if you have any questions be sure to add it to the comments below!

To becoming better!

Jerred

Transcript: 

Jerred Moon 0:03
Alright ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the garage gym athlete podcast Chairman here with Kyle Shrum and Joe Courtney, gentlemen, how's it going? Today? Red shirt day red shirt.

Joe Courtney 0:16
I want to go change only if you're

Jerred Moon 0:19
on the YouTube channel. Otherwise, it's voice day for all the people listening. Most everyone. And these intros are getting worse. I mean, it's just so much worse over time. It's all me too. It's not you guys.

Kyle Shrum 0:35
I don't need to worry. I'm not even doing anything. Listen. Yeah,

Jerred Moon 0:40
yeah, I ruined half people already signed out. All right, no, not that not them today. Hey, there's another podcast I could listen to over here where they have better intros. But we just get straight to the science. And that's what I'm going to do right now. So the title of this one, introducing dietary self monitoring to undergraduate, undergraduate women, via a calorie counting app has no effect on mental health, or health behaviors results from a randomized control trial. They told you everything was and ruined the result in the title, I don't know why you would do that. It's almost like we don't have to discuss it now. But we are going to get into it he either way. So this was a study, I think it's it's cool to go over these things. Because there is this dark side of fitness. We've kind of talked about it on another podcast. But there you know, there is a dark side to this with with losing weight, it can become an obsessive thing, it can turn into eating disorders, it could turn into mental problems. I know I personally suffered from like a mild case of body dysmorphia. In high school growing up more like constantly trying to get bigger obsessed with how big muscles were to the point where it wasn't just like, oh, I want to get bigger, it was like, I actually felt pretty bad about myself. And that's where I think it becomes the dark side. Like if you want to be obsessed about something in your IQ really dedicated. That's one thing, but to where you're actually having negative self talk and you feel poorly about yourself. That's where you get into these mental disorders. And I think any sort of obsessive behavior with health fitness diet lends itself to going down that path if you're not careful. And that's also why at garage mathlete, we heavily focused on performance based metrics. How much can you lift? How fast can you run, because we know if you fix those things, you will see you will see the physical aesthetic results that you want, you will look the way that you want to some degree, but there's really not, not any of that I found scientific literature that obsessing over mile time becomes, you know, some sort of mental disorder that you might actually need to get help with performance metrics just don't lend themselves to those types of things. And so that's why we take the stance that we take. But it's also interesting to jump into this a little bit more about the study. It was done on 200 female college students who otherwise didn't really monitor their diet. And then they were randomly assigned to one month only one month of diet tracking with my fitness pal, or they were the control group where they just did nothing, which I think it'd be interesting if you got pulled in for a study. And they're like, Okay, what are we doing? What do I do? Like you leave now? And do nothing come back in a month? All right. Science. Okay, thanks.

Kyle Shrum 3:39
Thanks a lot. Yeah,

Jerred Moon 3:41
you do nothing we'll see in a month, and basically

Kyle Shrum 3:44
filled out a bunch of paperwork and stuff, right? And like questionnaires and stuff like that. And then you get to the end of that, and it's like, Alright, you're done in 30 days, see you later. Yeah, we'll have some more paperwork for you.

Jerred Moon 3:55
And that's basically all sum it up to because that this study is is very simple. We can get to get into some of the nuances of it, but that is what they did. There's not much more to understand what Kyle said is true, they did have a lot of different surveys like a pre testing visit, where they had their height weight measured, completed surveys related to eating disorder, risk, anxiety, depressive symptoms, body satisfaction, quality of life, eating behaviors, physical activity, screen time, and other health related outcome and behaviors. So the screentime one I thought was very interesting, because I read some research and also put that in my book killing comfort about how screentime is like this leading indicator currently for our youth to be to have depressive symptoms and also suicidal tendencies. And I think that that's something we all really need to keep an eye on. And that's kind of what I say in the book is like we don't have any definitive things like we can we can be like, Oh, is it correlation or is it causation bla bla bla, but yeah, are you going to take that that stance went to work? You know, you're gonna be like me, you know what, it's not causation. It's just a correlate correlation. So my kid can be as much screentime as they want, don't worry about it. So you're probably not going to take that risk with your kids. And so why take that risk with yourself? There's something to be said about screentime. I did dive into that a little further than I should. But I was looking up the studies that they are the surveys that they have. So they one of the ones they followed, or modeled was the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System? Why are bas s? And so I just wanted to see the questions where and you can like Google, that it's from the CDC, they have a middle school one, they have a standard high school National High School one, and they do have questions about screentime, specifically in their, um, you know, unrelated to school usage. And they asked you about how much screentime is in there. And these kinds of questions, were not in these types of surveys until you know, more recent history, it's because even the CDC is starting to recognize that this is a legitimate concern, too much screentime. But again, that's that's kind of a tangent. But I like I said, I jumped into that one, because it was just something that I was interested in. So they had these pre and post visits of all these women, they sent out an email to like 4600, and ended up with 200 people participating. And they didn't really find they did not observe significant negative effects on eating disorder, risk, anxiety, depressive symptoms, body satisfaction, quality of life, eating behaviors, physical activity, screentime, or other forms of weight related self monitoring. They didn't find any sort of problems with tracking food with my fitness pal for 30 days. Also didn't seem to help you there. But what did you guys think about this, this study overall, and maybe we could just get some thoughts on. I don't know, eating disorders going down this path. You know, we're all coaches, we've seen a lot of people do it. And we definitely know the dark side of these things as well. So what are your thoughts,

Joe Courtney 6:50
like the size of it, definitely. But even though the size of 200 people is really good, it's still in the grand scheme of things for how simple as this study is basically just questionnaires and tell me what to track, it's fairly small. So it would be really easy to replicate and see how the results would do over like larger sections. So they can just take this and go to another university and just keep replicating it until they get a ridiculously large sample size. They set out to see if that if you know which one came, whether it was the disorder before tracking or tracking before disorder, just to see if there's any links. And I think one of the important things for coaching on the side of it is that person, the person, person, the person's personality, will matter as well, because they are really intense perfectionist and obsessive, then I think that might lead to it being either worse. I mean, they may be really good at the tracking part. But that just might give them something new to obsess over. And to be a perfectionist with. Whereas you might not want them to do that, because of that. So that there's still some nuances to to that, but it was cool to see. And there was one finding that I found was really interesting, actually, from this and that they found the people who tracked their the females who track their food, were much less likely to weigh their self or weigh their self much less frequently than the ones that did not track their food. And they weighed yourself a lot more. So that was interesting to me. Because I think that was a side effect of people just wanting control, wanting some sort of feedback. And I guess if you're already measuring your food, you're already getting your feedback, you already have a good knowledge of what you're eating. So you don't really feel the need to weigh yourself versus the other people. Since they're not. I think they just might want some feedback. But it was, that was a pretty interesting thing that I saw.

Kyle Shrum 8:38
Yeah, I noticed that as well. In the control group, actually it it went up to, you know, to a significant amount. I mean, it increased a significant amount. And I think that was part of the, the whole process of come in and fill out a bunch of questionnaires. And then that's it, I'll see you in 30 days, you'll have more questionnaires fill out, you know what I mean? So it's kind of like, well, I'm participating in this thing. I kind of feel like I'm might need to have some data, you know, or some kind of number to give them or something at the end of the, at the end of this thing. And so I don't know if that contributed to it as well. You're not really doing anything else, like you went in for this study, and you filled out some paperwork. And then 30 days later, you're filling out some more paperwork, you maybe feel like you need to do something, or maybe it just put it in their mind. And they kind of started I don't know, I'm stressing out a little bit about it more than they normally would have. But yeah, that was something that I that I interested, or sorry that I noticed as well. Also notice that like tracking, didn't inspire better health choices. Like it wasn't it didn't make things worse, but it didn't actually make things better either. But I think the reason for that was they didn't I didn't give them any kind of goal. You know what I mean? They didn't they just said, you're just going to track your food for 30 days. That's all you're doing. They didn't give him any kind of macro plan. They didn't give him anything. don't have a goal to shoot for, they weren't actually trying to do anything with it, they were just seeing if tracking by itself was gonna lead to more positive or more negative outcomes. And so but it was just neutral, it didn't really didn't really make things worse didn't really make things better. It's just just people with a, you know, people with a lot of data now, or 30 days worth of data have exactly what they ate and drank every day. So that was interesting, too, that it didn't inspire. It didn't make things better.

Jerred Moon 10:33
Yeah, and you're 100%, right, I didn't. And this is what we do with athletes, we don't do it for a month, we typically do it for a week, when they come in, and we give them nutrition plan, we're like, hey, for the next seven days, we just want you to track and independent of any sort of goal or what you think you should be eating or whatever, just get an idea. And then it helps people kind of put in perspective and say, see, okay, this is how much fat I consume on a daily basis, or protein or carbohydrate. And then you can we can let them then see how far off they are from what would be in more of an ideal situation, or calculation for their situation. And so yeah, this is just like, This is how I feel about a lot of fitness stuff these days is arbitrary metrics, like tracking, it's like tracking for tracking sake. And I get this, I get this from a lot of athletes. Anytime, like a new thing comes out, either it's a wearable or whatever. Like that those shirts that came out that I guess like flatline, because I've heard anything from it's been like two years, the shirts that came out like you could wear and it's like, it'll tell you how much power you you lift on the benchpress. And like all that stuff, and like people that are really cool. And they were asking me about him, I'm like, what are what are you gonna do with that data? Like? It's just It's interesting tidbits, you know. So the only way to become more powerful is to get stronger, go through a training program, is this different than what you were doing before? No. Okay, then why are we tracking it? And so that's, that's exactly how this works. You know, it's like, it's like, looking at your money in a bank account, when you don't have a job and just hoping that it's gonna, gonna change. I mean, I hope that I get more money. Next time I look here, it's like, oh, I didn't change, like, we don't have a job, you know, you need to go do something to to get more money. And that's, that's a big thing. So I wasn't surprised by that. Completely, because of the just like a. Yeah, as a matter of fact, if we're just tracking but I am surprised by it. Like, on the side of like, really, you're tracking everything for 30 days, and you didn't change a damn thing? Like, you're just like, nah, this is interesting. Cool. And so I did find that like, not surprising and surprising at the same time, if you will, because of the human behavior side of that. But overall, I think that it was, I don't know, like, kind of, in an effective like, is only 30 days, you know. And the the adherence rate was really good at 89.1%, which I was also surprised with, I thought that was pretty high. But I don't know if 30 days is enough time when we're trying to talk about mental disorders because I don't think anyone would like anorexia, something more serious, or body dysmorphia, something I'm talking about that doesn't like, get prompted in 30 days, when someone else is kind of making you do it. You know, Joe, you mentioned like the person's behavior or type like that's really important. Like I didn't start exercising, and then immediately suffer from body dysmorphia. It took years, it took years of like, slowly becoming more obsessive and slowly, you know, working in more negative self talk, so it takes a long time. And I do think it's my belief, independent of this study, that tracking for too long is a negative thing. I think it isn't tracking macros, or following a macro plan for too long, is very negative. It's not good for your mental health. It's not good for your just life, your quality of life overall.

Joe Courtney 14:05
Would you say? Your relationship with food?

Jerred Moon 14:08
Yeah, I think it takes you down a pretty bad path. So while the study here, kind of I think they they try and answer some really big questions, since they're not really in the industry or coaching or anything else. I don't think that they kind of see the full picture here of like, this takes a lot longer to develop than a 30 day intervention of just kind of forcing someone to track randomly. Because, like you pointed out, nobody's on a plan. Like who don't you think that would make people more obsessive if you had a certain number of carbohydrates you had hit in a day or certain amount of fat. That's where I think things start to snowball and get out of control. If we're just tracking for tracking sake, that's like, wearing your Apple Watch all day and then just looking at your stuff. So I got this how many steps I took. But if you don't have a goal, you're not trying to do anything. You're not becoming obsessive about it. You're not working towards anything. There's nothing for you to go down these these mental paths. So I think I think that the study asked a really good question. And then didn't really execute properly. What do you guys think?

Kyle Shrum 15:03
I think it was the first like, I think it was a good like, maybe like baseline kind of step of like, okay, just having people just track their food, which is not a normal behavior, right? I mean, let's let's just think about that as well is like, tracking your food is not something that just the average person does, like nobody even thinks about it, right? Even people who have My Fitness Pal, maybe they're using it for something else, you know, that doesn't mean that they're tracking their food. So like, I think it's a good like baseline thing, okay, just tracking your food, pretty negligible results pretty neutral. Not a big deal. But exactly what you were saying, I think as soon as you throw a macro plan in there, or as soon as you throw a calorie, a calorie goal, or a calorie limit in there, like just something just really tweaking it, I would almost like to see like, you're going to do this for 30 days, you're not going to I mean, it's just going to be neutral. And then for the next two weeks, we're going to throw a calorie goal at you. And you, we don't want you to exceed this amount of calories. Now let's see people's mental state after that, you know, of actually having to stick to a plan stick to a goal, you know, I mean, and then you just kind of ramped that up over time with with the macros and stuff. And that's where I think you really, you really get to see where people's mindset goes in the shifts that they go through. Because, I mean, to me, it's just, I think it's admirable that they actually stuck with 89%, you know, stuck with it. I mean, that I think that's admirable for people who are going from not tracking at all like to sticking to something for 30 days, at 9%. But then I think, let's step it up, and let's actually add something to it and see if that changes it because my, my belief, it would, it would definitely change. And I think some people would see some positives, but I think we would see more, more negative results, I think people would start getting into a more negative mindset, after they started doing that kind of stuff.

Joe Courtney 16:57
I don't think they gave him any real, real way to fail for this like, for when you give certain goals and certain macro points and stuff, and they gave him some loose calculation, but I think they if they actually gave them like, ways they could somewhat fail, then that would definitely change things as well.

Jerred Moon 17:14
You don't really start beating yourself up until you realize you're not measuring up to to an ideal, you know, you have this and that's where a lot of these mental disorders come from females looking at other females in magazines, who are, you know, airbrushed and have been training with their dedicated coach, and chef and all these other things, you know, like these million dollar models, or, or actresses or whatever, right? This is what, and so, you know, a woman looks at them, and they're like, Hey, I feel bad, because I don't look like that. And same for guys, you know, wow, he has that much muscle, when really, that guy only ever looked like that in that movie for, you know, 15 days. And other than that, he looks pretty average, you know, these are the ideals that people hold themselves to. And if you don't have that idea in your head, it's hard to beat yourself up, like you understand there's no way to fail, there's no way and to be honest, is almost a better thing. But I always say tracking with no purpose is is like useless, right? It's just like, if you have a fun new tracking hobby, it doesn't really do anything for you. And so yeah, I think overall, we need to like killing comfort on this. I think the studies, it's asking a good question, I think that they could have done it a little bit better to truly dive in to see if there is any sort of like mental issues with with tracking, I think we all need to keep an eye on physical activity and screentime there's two huge things that I think are crushing mental health, right now. And so keeping an eye on those things. And I would say for for killing comfort. It's a tough one, right? Because I want people to track and know it, but at the same time, I don't want you to go down this obsessive path. So for killing comfort, for me would be what we tell our athletes to do. And that would be you know, track for seven days, and just kind of see where you're at. And then compare it to an ideal. If you're one of our athletes, we have a lot of ways to calculate your own macros, like educational resources in the members area. And then just pause after you know those two things and see how you feel. And really try and assess whether you're like, you don't really care that much that you're far off, or if you feel bad about that. And that's all I kind of want people to do with this kind of killing come for exercise. It's almost like a mental assessment of your self awareness of like, how does that make me feel? I've tracked for seven days, here's the raw data, here's where I should be. If you feel like crap, and that makes you feel bad. Let's not go down the tracking path, you know, and if you're like, that doesn't really matter to me, like whatever let's do it. Then then try it out. You could you could go try tracking more fallen macro plan. For I don't typically recommend longer than 12 weeks at a time without taking a break. But I think that mental assessment of your self awareness is a huge one. And we really should reflect on when you're going to go down this kind of

Kyle Shrum 20:12
path. Yeah, I absolutely agree with that. And that, that practice that we have with our athletes have of tracking for seven days, it has, to me it has two purposes, right? You get you get an accurate picture of what you're actually looking of what you're actually eating. Right. That's the first thing that it does. And the second thing that it does is it shows you how much work tracking your food really is, you know what I mean? Because I think that's what a lot of people come come to they like, oh, I want a macro plan. You know, I think that's what's gonna help me that that's the key, that's the key to my success is having a macro plan. And it's like, tracking macros, it's hard, you know, and like, even we, as coaches, we do it in short bursts. We don't do it all the time. It's like you're talking about and so I think it does those two things. But it shows people how much effort it actually takes to track and to be accurate, and then you notice that you're off base? And what do you have to do to change it? You know what I mean? Like, you can't take out food that you've already eaten, you know, you have to have this mental attitude of, I'm just going to press forward and try to do better, later, you know what I mean? And so I think a lot of people aren't really prepared for that. And so my killing cover would just say, have a have a realistic goal. It's kind of like what we were talking, talking about what this like, they were just tracking for tracking sake. But if they had a goal to go for, then I think that would have changed the results a little bit. But I would say kind of piggybacking off of what Jared said about the self assessment of like, after I would say after you do that self assessment, and you want to set a goal, like make it realistic, don't just go through all that and then say, Oh, well, I want to lose 20 pounds by next week, you know what I mean? It's like, no, that's, that's not gonna work, you know, let's, let's have a realistic goal. And let's frame expectations properly, after we kind of dipped our toe in the water a little bit and seeing what this actually takes.

Joe Courtney 22:10
Oh, from I can like comfort. So with this, I think they were I mean, partially trying to see if building habits you know what, whether it's tracking is good habits or on your mental side. But if you leave it to be a little bit more flexible and less rigid than I think that that's where a lot of success can help. So my killing cover would be to introduce a new, weekly flexible habit that you can do in your life. So that could be for example, each week, you might do a 14 to 16 hour fast you choose whatever days you do it, just do it three times per week, two times per week. Maybe you don't drink any smoothies, maybe try and do one or two smoothies per week, you pick which days you do it and it just slowly get these small habit forming, and you get to be flexible for when you do it. And then that'll plant the seed to maybe do others. I know I think actually, for a while she was doing trying to do one meatless meal or meatless dinner per week. It's something that she's told us about and I know we do a smoothie a week, and I try and do a second one if we can. So just try and do some flexible new habit that you can introduce and then you know, add on from there.

Jerred Moon 23:22
Awesome. So I think that's everything I I will say like I mentioned it in the last podcast because my scale was gone. I hadn't weighed in since February. So that mean, that's a long time to not weigh in. And but my wife, my weight had not changed. And so that's really encouraging to me, because I just was actually unaware but that also this these are the reasons I don't track cuz I never want to sound hypocritical if I'm like, You should track but I don't need to track. That's not what I mean. It's like I'm where I want to be. So I'm just not gonna track if for some reason that my weight had significantly decrease or increase the when I stepped back on the scale, I probably would be on a macro plan to make the fix the adjust to make the adjustment that I needed to get things right. But I mean, I haven't tracked all three match macronutrients on a macro plan, I feel like in years, but I do. And so this is just another tip for people I do occasionally track a single macronutrient and it's it's typically never fat. It's only ever carbs or protein. And more often than not, it's protein. And we do this protein in water challenge occasionally in the garage mathlete communities where you track your water and you track your protein, because you're getting a protein and you're getting enough water. You have a lot of that, you know, you feel satiated with enough protein. So you typically eat less that protein burns more calories than than other macronutrients just by itself, that thermogenic effect of of it. And so, do things like that, too, if you're a little intimidated by tracking but you want to do some things like just tracking carbohydrates. We kind of talked about that for more of a performance setting in our three part series, but it's like if you just track carbs. Then you realize reading six carbon 600 carbohydrates a day, and you are not an elite endurance athlete, or, you know, whatever, you you train three days a week and you're doing three block or whatever it's like, well, you might not need 600 carbs a day. So maybe we'll try and reduce that. And same with protein, a lot of times people track protein, like I'm getting like 43 grams of protein, they say, Well, let's try and get 140 and, and see how you feel, see what changes. And so these small little tiny changes can really add up to you don't have to go on this crazy macro plan or tracking every single thing that goes into your mouth. Like the reason I like tracking protein is just so easy. You just like, you can estimate things pretty well. Me, you can track it pretty well. And it's just it's almost like you just keep a running tab on your phone, you don't even need an app to do it. It's just like, okay, that had this much protein, this much protein, this much protein. And I kind of said go on to the goal. And those are great places to start. But uh, I think that's it for this study. You guys have anything else are good. All right, we're getting into the book review we skipped last week, one of my favorite books. So whatever. We're gonna dive right into a Joe's favorite book. So yeah, the name of the book is The Road Less stupid by Keith J. Cunningham, avoiding the dumb mistakes that sabotage growth profits and business success advice from Chairman of the Board. So this book was introduced to me shortly after it came out. And it has quickly become one of my favorite books, and how I deem books. And I've probably talked about this for it, or what actions do actually take in my life, from the material I read. And so away from entertaining books that I don't read, you know, when you're when we're talking about self development, or self improvement type books, if you read one, and you do nothing, I would say that book was not very impactful. But if you read a book, and you make some sort of change after having read it, then I would say that book was incredibly impactful. And for me, this book has made me make some changes. And so that's why I think it's very impactful. So the entire premise of the book, he even says in the book that you can read this book out of order, there's no like, you don't have to re you can read the chapter, then go to chapter one, like there's, it's not necessarily sequential. In the whole, the whole premise is about thinking time, that you should think more. And that I mean, I don't, I don't have to dive in much further than that, we can get into like parts that we liked, and didn't like, or whatever. But the whole book is about thinking time, it's about sitting down in thinking about things, you know, for 30 minutes for an hour, and, and actually thinking through all of the pros and cons of a situation, the outcomes.

Because the, what we do and what I know I do, if I have a big decision or something weighing on my brain, it just kind of bounces around in my brain all day. Like, it's just like, I'm not necessarily thinking about it all day. But when I'm on a walk or driving my kids to school, or something that that random thought is in there the decision I need to make or the thing I'm thinking about in the shower, and then eventually you come to some sort of solution, your brain has gone through all of the the pros and cons, right? And so yeah, that's kind of how we think through things. I think most people, but this is kind of setting aside time to be like, Okay, I have to make a decision here, we have to do something here, I'm going to dedicate an hour to just actually sitting down and thinking about it. In some people, this wouldn't be productive. But I think it's incredibly productive, if you actually try it out. So that's the whole idea. Let's get into some of our takeaways, what we liked and did not like about thinking time.

Kyle Shrum 28:51
So I know Joe has a lot to say about it. So I'm gonna go before him. The it's exactly what you what you said, Jared, the thinking time strategy is is the crux of the book. And the book is mostly about business. It's, it's most of the advice that he has in there is related to business and to running a business and those types of things. But the thinking time strategy is what I pulled out of it of I can literally use this for any area of my life. So if you want to use this, this thinking time strategy, to be a better employee, to be a better spouse to be a better parent, just be a better person in general, like you can use this for anything. And so that's why I think people would come to this book and say, Man, this is a business book, I don't own a business. I'm not running a business. I don't need this. And it's like no, that what he's talking about in here is actually going to make you a better human. If you employ it to whatever if you apply it to whatever it is that you're doing. And so that's why I like it. That's why I like to book. Obviously, I'm not running my own business. So there's a lot in there that I don't actually need to pay attention to. But the whole thing In Time Strategy, just the idea of it is, is very impactful and very, very powerful. I think if you just put the time into actually doing it, but he talks about his process, how he's obviously he's been doing this thinking time thing for a long, long time. And he talks about how he has a specific thinking time room, and he has the thinking time chair, and then you jump in and thanking Tom pad of paper, and he doesn't have his phone or his computer in there, there's nothing in there to look at, you know, like, he just, and He even talks about he sits, like, with one hand, like covering his eyes like this, you know, he's like, it's like, looking down. And all he's doing is writing, you know what I mean? And so it's, it can can, it can sound, I think, kind of intimidating at first, but you had to think about this guy's been doing it for like, 20 something years, he's been doing this specific process. So you start the process, and you work up to where you get to that point. But I think the whole idea of thinking time, the point behind it is to be in a place where you don't have distractions, to not have your phone on, you not have something that's going to notify you and distract you. And you're really going to dig deep, and ask very, very specific questions. And so one of my one of my favorite quotes out of the book, speaking of that, is having the right answer is smart. Having the right question is genius. And to me that just that was just a very, very powerful statement of like, it doesn't matter about having the right answer, if you ask the wrong question, you know what I mean? So like, knowing where to start, and I think that's, that also kind of calls back to how we do our coaching, where we do like, our five why's deep, you know, we talk to people about their goals, and like, we're gonna, we're gonna ask this question, and we're gonna dig very, very deep to your, your true motivation here. And so, anyway, that I think, I think it's a straightforward and practical approach. And it's an you can employ to any area of your life, not just business.

Joe Courtney 31:54
I think toys and positives,

Kyle Shrum 31:55
no, whatever. That's all I had to say about it. So you just say everything you had to say about.

Joe Courtney 32:01
So I did like the asking the right questions. But that was one of the first things that I put down and just trying to figure out what exactly the problem that here you're trying to solve. And one of his examples, I also really liked about how you shouldn't make tactical solutions before you find the real problem. And the example he gives is actually even Fitness based and it was, you know, you won't be out of shape and overweight, but buying a new treadmill isn't gonna fix your problem, if you don't perform in your solution. If you don't know that the real problem is that the tactical solution not fixing the real problem. So that was a really good one that I really liked he made and it's, it's just a good reminder that, you know, throwing money at something and buying some new shiny toy, you know, might feel good, you might be motivated for a second or two, isn't the real solution that you're looking for. So did like that. And there was another part about like, the leadership techniques, and he went deep into how to get somebody to invest in their own job and their own, like as a manager, especially like business wise, but just how to get somebody to invest in their self or in what they're doing. I did like, well, because it's not all about, you know, coming down with an iron fist, he has to like really discover what motivates somebody how to actually get behind and motivate someone instead of just like, pushing them into something. So so there are some good nuggets in the book, there's a lot of I think there can be a lot of good things. I will say the audio book, I don't think is the best way to consume this one. So I think if especially for business people, I think you really need to get the physical copy because he has so many things that he goes over and just the way he talks I think it's best to go through the physical copy of it because you can either take it one section at a time you can randomly go to whatever section sounds best to you. And just just read through what what he says instead of the the audiobook because I just you know just kind of segue to the audiobook I just been connected with it. I couldn't connect with his voice and his his his style presenting because he narrates his own book. It came off as very preachy to me and like he was talking at me and not like trying to help me with advice he was just like telling me yeah, just being felt preachy like he was talking at me I think with the getting people to stop and think and increasing their your your productivity and your thinking is a great sentiment but I think like in back in the article possible when he was its basis anything we were talking about with increasing flow and like flow state that was way more process easier to digest and way made way more sense to me and how he described this so that was just kind of a me personal thing of how it was presented. So just how he presented to me didn't quite work. And I think because also at some point it was very business heavy. It didn't really I couldn't really feel as connected with it. Some other things is discussion Go into the bumper sticker business 100% That really got annoying on the book on the on the audiobook. Here the key is the thing that he that he just says throughout the book that says, you know, here it is on a bumper sticker. It's kind of as catchy way of saying like, here it is in a nutshell, but it just got really old after a while. Also with the audiobook laying

Jerred Moon 35:17
here it is on a bumper sticker. I had it been like 1000 times and

Kyle Shrum 35:21
at least it's sometimes the bumper sticker was longer than like his just his.

Joe Courtney 35:28
Yeah.

Kyle Shrum 35:29
bumper sticker

Joe Courtney 35:30
about Yeah, and when you're listening on 2x speed, I'm like, wait, this this bumper sticker end earlier. Over sticker, so that and every time he would finish the thing you'd be now stopped and thank me later, it's like no, stop telling me to thank you later. So stuff like that just kind of got annoying. Overall, it really felt like he was like he had a bunch of these awesome catchy like fortune cookie phrases. And it was just like a carpet bombing of these catchy phrases to a certain certain point. But that's also why I think the physical book if you go through, it's a lot slower and really break things down and maybe be have more of a slower application to it versus like how you would listen to a book or to consume it, I think could be a little bit better if you're you really want to dive into like, especially business wise for if you have a business or want to help your business. So I think it would appeal to those people. But to me a large part it kind of missed the mark for a lot of for a lot of things and it was just hard to to get into this as compared to like art of the art impossible. And some others.

Jerred Moon 36:37
Yeah, very different type of it's very business heavy. So everyone listening should know that I think we kind of hit on that. And then I mean, I'll start with negative that's probably the only negative I actually have is the the bumper sticker thing like that was a It didn't really annoy me like I thought it was it was fine. But it was just it was kind of overdone. He even got to prep you for it and beginning like there's a chapter towards the front that he kind of let you know, like, just so you know, I do this weird bumper sticker thing and you're gonna hear it a lot in the book like he does, like kind of call himself out on it on the beginning. In the beginning. I better yet added that chapter or thing after I read it. Yeah. The editor was like, Dude, you got to like do something. And as far as his style, yeah, I think I think it is pretty polarizing. I personally like that style, or someone's like, you're an idiot. I've I've a lot further along than you just do what I say. I like that style. But I can see how that could also be I'm putting in the negative category because just because I like it doesn't mean people will like it like Joe didn't like it. You know, if you don't like that style, then you could be rubbed the wrong way in reading this book. So my takeaways.

I'm going to read a passage from the book on second order consequences because it's one of my favorite ones. I feel like this happens to people all the friggin time. So in a famous episode during their rule of colonial India, the British failed to consider the second order consequences or the possibility of possibility of being wrong in the snake eradication debacle. Being new to the area. The British were deathly afraid of the large number of venomous King cobras in New Delhi, so they offered a generous bounty for every dead Cobra collected. The Bounty system was a fantastic success with huge numbers of dead cobras soon turned in for the reward. As the available pool of snakes dwindled, and bounties became more difficult to collect. Some entrepreneurial Indians realized they could breed snakes in captivity and thus continue to receive the bounty. Soon a large cottage industry of snake farming sprang into life. When the British became aware of this scheme, they immediately scrapped the bounty program. Naturally, the Cobra farmers now had no use for the 1000s of poisonous snakes they were raising. So they released them back into the wild. The second order consequence, the number of King cobras in New Delhi was twice as large as it was before this good idea was hatched. So that's, that just kind of like shows you the the I feel like people do this all the time. Joe mentioned like, Hey, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm not in good shape. I'm by treadmill. It's like, well, let's like what's the real issue here? Can we get down into the second order or third order consequence? Or can we ask what the problem is first before we just jump to the solution? And had they done that they may have come up with very different solution to to the Cobra thing, you know. And so I do think that these things happen to us quite a bit in life. And that's why I think thinking is so important and just sitting down and I said it has impacted my life I try to at least once a week I'm fairly good at getting it done unless it's a really busy week. Think for at least 30 to 60 minutes and I typically go in with very specific thing. I've even pulled questions direct from his book. And I just sit there and I do pretty much what he says you know, no distractions and I think and it's actually helped a lot, a lot of clarity on direction. Have things and like doing stuff. So I think we all just need to do that a little bit more, even if you don't read this book, just sit down. And think, because I, I know for a fact, unless it's a gigantic decision, let's say like buying a house or a new job. Those are the only times where like, I'm actually put have put pen to paper with like pros and cons of stuff. But then almost everything else in life. For some reason I felt I don't know how anyone else feels didn't warrant sitting down and thinking through any sort of process when we come to make other decisions. And so I think if you can, if you can get in that habit, you'll you'll be way better off. I'd love to three pillars for success. And those three are write down your major outcomes every day. And so this is more at the end of the day you write down what you accomplished. It's a big, big in the kind of productivity space to write down like the one of the top three things you're going to do today, and you get those done. But this is more like what's your major outcome today that's moving you towards the direction you want to go, which is very different, then what did you get done today? Because it doesn't really matter what you got done today? It matters what the outcome is, like, did you move a project forward? Are you getting closer to your goals? No one cares if you answered 15 emails, and did this, like, where did you actually get closer to a goal was, you know, making some sort of outcome, process or project, let's just say for your personal life, and and so it doesn't have to just be work related. But like, if you want to lose their amount of weight or run a certain speed, what was the major outcome for today that's moving you closer to that. So I think that's awesome. So write down your major outcomes every day, plan your day before it starts. I developed this habit a long time ago, I know what I'm doing the next day, really, for the next two weeks before it happens. I have it all like scheduled out on my calendar, I move things around. But I typically know what's going to be what's going to happen. And I think that really helps you get things done at a high level. And then the last one, be accountable to someone, whether it's your team, your family, whoever I think if you're chasing a goal, we're going for something accountability is a huge, huge piece to that. And not just living this silo where you fail, start over fail, start over fail, start over, you know, get a partner, get somebody else who will hold you accountable to these things. And then you inc was the other thing I had written down, which is a chapter in the book. And it's just talking about how,

like, if you were to if you're if you were to be a business, like Joe Courtney or Akash from, you know, what, how would other people view it? You know, like how you run your life? Like, what are you measuring? What are you tracking? And I think him putting in that perspective is, is a really good so we move away from that kind of business mindset in that chapter. And he's just more like, like, Are you proud of you? You know, like, could you like, Would you be happy with you, you know, kind of looking from this outside perspective? And what are you measuring? What are you trying to get better at, and all those things, and I think that's a great if you buy the book and you just want to read one chapter, that's a good one that's kind of moves away from business for a minute. My overall takeaway is just thinking time is a phenomenal habit. And I think a lot of people should do it. Other than that, we can get into our barbell ratings. Kyle, what do you got?

Kyle Shrum 43:17
I'm gonna give it four barbells. For for Kyle.

Jerred Moon 43:21
Okay. Joe, sent me to ask for like,

Joe Courtney 43:29
for me, personally, I'm giving this a to do for Joe. I would say if you're business minded, if you actually really are getting into your business space or starting a business, I bumped it up to Lisa three.

Jerred Moon 43:44
All right, Ashley 4.25. She told me before we started recording, and I gave it a five obviously. So I think if my math is right, that's a 3.8 average for the barbell rating.

Joe Courtney 43:57
was down.

Jerred Moon 44:00
Yeah, that's to man with the two. It's pretty, it's pretty rough stuff. For business people that probably bump into for whatever, so that'd be a solid, solid rating. But I do think you're right. Not everyone listening to this is as interested in business questions. And so you really got to know that going into this book, because it's, I don't know. 90% He's like, what are our competitors doing that we're not doing? Like, there are a lot of very specific business questions that I'm not even interested in answering. You know, it's just like, Yeah, you know, and so you have to know those things, but the overall premise of the book phenomenal. A lot of questions are really good and he has some good like overall things for just being successful and being productive and running your life any any better way. So I think for those reasons, check it out. That's all I got on on this one.

Kyle Shrum 44:54
Yeah, I think even you know, even if you're not going to use the business, portions of it, you know, The things that you were talking about, especially the UAE chapter of just examining yourself, and are you, you know, what kind of person are you really, you know, can people depend on you? Can you depend on yourself those kinds of things. And then just the thinking time strategy, like if you just bought the book just to have a written out version, you know, of the thinking time strategy, just so you can learn how to do it and apply it, I think that's, that makes it more than worth picking up the book, even if you don't even read the other 90% of it. If you just I think if you just read those, those couple of things that are universal, I think that's more than worth getting into.

Jerred Moon 45:39
Awesome. Well, let's get into the workout. Kyle, what do we have,

Kyle Shrum 45:43
this week, we have river heist, which is one of Joe's variations. Let's see five rounds per time, for 33 minute cap. Each round is a 1000 meter row or run, and then a 1000 pounds of ground to shoulder. So you're not lifting 1000 pounds, all at once. Because there's no one alive that can do that. You're going to take a ball or sandbag or a kettlebell, something that weighs a set amount, and you are going to do enough reps of ground to shoulder to equal 1000 total pounds. And so once you've done that, then you go back and you cycle through the row again, you do that five times, four time 33 minute cap, here's a side note, if you don't have a ball, use a plate. And when you use the plate, just tap the ground and lift it overhead, you do not have to lock it out. Also barbells not allowed. Thoughts.

Jerred Moon 46:49
One, I think this is a cool workout. So Joe came up with it. And it's it's the most gamified scenario based workout we have. And I think that, you know, if you know what Joe reads and everything else, like, I'm sure he could come up with a lot of these and it would be his preference for workouts, but I do think it's, it's really cool, because I can just picture myself like, Okay, you're on the boat, then you got to go lift all the heavy bags or crap, gold or whatever it is, you know, and then get out of there as well. So I think it's a cool one. As far as any tactics or strategies I have. I think that the ground overhead is the only place where you can get sloppy here, like we kind of mentioned in there, don't use a barbell. And if you're using the plate, like you don't have to lock it out overhead. But just be mindful about how you're doing it just because we like we didn't say this has to be a perfect form, like hang clean or clean or you know, doesn't mean like it should be sloppy. If that makes sense. You know, like I do think that can happen when you're using like a med ball or something like that, you can start rounding your back when you go to pick it up and you can just get kind of get sloppy. So just keep that in mind as you go through this workout of get those 1000 pounds however you want to break it down but make sure that you are maintaining good form we're still exercising here and still fitness so you know like make sure you have really good form during every single ground overhead.

Joe Courtney 48:13
Yeah, I'd say the ground both kind of shoulder Oh ground ashore my bed. Yeah, so the ground a shoulder that you should be doing that as fast as you can. So I'm the one that's going to go fast on the ground shoulder and the row or run the 1000 meters should be sustained. So keep a sustainable pace, whatever your meter goal is for your your time goal for each. So keep that good 1000 meter pace because that's your like not recovery pace, but you're going to be doing 1000 pound for the ground shoulder as fast as you can and the other one just going to need to pick a you know, Max sustainable pace throughout.

Kyle Shrum 48:51
So I think the last time was on the podcast and we talked about this this workout suggested that you listen to banjo music, because I was just putting the picture in my head just you know trying to roll away with a bunch of gold on the river you know, so listen to some banjo. So I'm going to repeat that one. Listen to some banjo music for that one. One that comes to mind. I didn't have a song to suggest last time but I'll suggest from this time is purgatory by Tyler Childers. So start out with that one and see how fast you can go while I'm playing that song.

Joe Courtney 49:26
I'm pretty sure I actually just added so like I always add music to my Spotify playlist and I'm pretty sure there's I came across an electronic song that was like really upbeat, for sure. There's a banjo and I'm gonna have to figure out what that's called. Because I've had to suggest

Jerred Moon 49:41
Yeah, I don't encounter a lot of banjo in my

Kyle Shrum 49:46
life. No, I don't either. But I mean, this is a pretty specific, I mean, especially like the motivation, like the inspiration behind this workout was is very specific. So I think let's just, let's just keep going with it. So

Jerred Moon 50:01
All right, any Anything else, guys?

Joe Courtney 50:05
You really want to go crazy? Like the Hamburglar?

Kyle Shrum 50:12
Yes. Hey, everybody has everybody has mass now, right? Like we all have mass

Joe Courtney 50:17
just cut you off

Jerred Moon 50:22
that would be great to see someone wearing one of those masks.

Kyle Shrum 50:27
I really I really hope we see that in the group. I really hope that somebody throws that in the group

Joe Courtney 50:33
challenge extended.

Jerred Moon 50:35
I mean, I think if I remember correctly, Jason Wood was kind of all about this workout one last time, so yep. So Jason under the bus of Jason. You are the one we are thinking of when we say someone. Yeah, should wear a mask are all thinking Jason wood. So we

Kyle Shrum 50:53
we won't be disappointed if you don't put that picture in the group. Like yeah, we won't be disappointed.

Jerred Moon 51:00
Right hopefully made it this far in the podcast. I was worried about the end here are only not a lot of people at the end. Has anyone

Kyle Shrum 51:06
ever listened to our workout briefs on the puck?

Jerred Moon 51:10
I don't know. I think they they don't even stick around for the topic. I think people are like, Okay, what were they were talking about eating disorders. Cool. I'm getting out of here whenever. I don't know. So should I even ended up just in like, here. We're done.

Kyle Shrum 51:27
The endings as good as the intros.

Jerred Moon 51:29
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Apparently worse. So I will get out of here. I, every time I ended, I like to you know, just truly thank every single garage mathlete we have, you know, you keep the community going through your support and your dedication. So all of our athletes, thank you so much for listening to podcasts. We do jokingly say that you didn't make it to the end, but I know there are people listening at the end right now. We really appreciate you listening to podcasting and doing the workouts being part of the community and everything you do to make garage gym athlete what it is anyone who happens to be listening who's not a part of any of that. And you did make it as far like there's no reason you shouldn't be signed up for garage gym athlete, but you need to go to garage mathlete comm sign up for a 14 day free trial and just get immersed into our educational resources, our training, programming everything that we have. So go do that. But that's all I have for this week. And as your weekly reminder, if you don't kill comfort, comfort will kill you.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai