Category: Diet & Lifestyle

1: Be fit and slim: there is a strong negative correlation between wealth and obesity. Why?

Contrary to popular belief, the rich are not slimmer because a healthy diet is more expensive or they can afford personal trainers. They are slimmer because they invest more thought into what they eat. This is because the wealthy have a lower time preference: they are willing to forgo the short-term pleasure of a sugar rush for the long-term reward of truly delicious food, good health, and good looks.

In developed countries where calories are cheap, our choice of food is determined by three factors: stress, culture, and availability.

Stress is the main determinant of time preference with food. Chronic stress makes us unable to make intelligent decisions about diet, and dietary sugar is the main pharmacological compound we used to deal with stress. Sugar and other processed carbohydrates are the main cause of obesity. For non-athletes, exercise has nothing to do with it.

There is much more to say on this topic, but to sum up: if you can learn to manage your stress, you will learn to manage your cravings. You can choose to develop a culture of cooking real food, and even though good food will not be as available to you, you can learn to go out of your way for it.

2: Wear well-fitting clothes: the rich are not fashionable because they can afford luxury brands. They are fashionable because they are conscious about fit and style. You don’t need to go to a bespoke haute couture tailor to dress well: you can find something that fits you at Goodwill. You just need to do free online research and make a conscious effort to design your wardrobe.

3: Show up on time: this is not to say that the rich are always punctual and the poor are late, but that the wealthy can afford to be physically and mentally present for occasions that they deem worth their time. The poor are usually distracted and either physically or mentally absent.

Like with diet, the root cause is stress: it’s much easier to be present when you can throw money to make your distractions go away. But if you’re poor, there is something else you can throw away to make your stressors go away: attachments. All relationships and possessions cost time and money. Some relationships and possessions are worthwhile and produce a positive return, while others are a net drag. When you are poor, it’s much easier for minor things to drag you down, so you must keep your load to a minimum. Partying is expensive. Owning a car is expensive. Owning the latest iPhone is expensive. Let go of attachments that are not vital to your long-term success and you will thrive.

I didn’t have a car until I got my master’s at 23. It’s not that I couldn’t afford or didn’t want a car (living in a small Texas college town). I knew that it would be an ongoing cost and a distraction from my main goal of completing my education.

4: Be young: no amount of wealth will give you a younger body, but you are in control of the two biggest causes of aging: obesity and sun damage. You may not be able to afford plastic surgery, but you can control the main reasons why the rich need plastic surgery in the first place.

5: Have a big family: while there is a strong relationship between poverty and more children, the cost of raising kids is one of the main reasons parents don’t have more children.

Children are expensive at all income levels since the expectations on parents grow proportionately. But I think the problem is the same: parents think that being good parents means spending money on their idea of a good parent rather than spending time being a parent. For example, in my family, we took our daughter out of an expensive private school because we found that she learned more from us at home. We don’t spend our time shuttling her from one activity to another, but go hiking, play chess, and cook together. Being a parent is cheaper and more rewarding than hiring someone else to parent your child.

6: Have a successful marriage: There is a very strong relationship between divorce, single parenthood, and poverty. Why do the poor get divorced more often? The root cause is an inability and unwillingness to negotiate conflict: all relationships take work and generate stress. Successful couples can take time to do the work because they manage their stress. Couples who divorce let stress and resentment build up. It is said that the overwhelming reason relationships fail is “lack of commitment.” But why are people not committed to relationships? It’s because it does not create value for them. Once the sensual aspect wears off, the inherent friction of human relationships overweights the positive aspects of the partnership. Poor people divorce for the same reason they get fat, and it has nothing to with money. The root cause of poverty, obesity, and divorce is high time preference.

7: Don’t complain: Wealthy people are happier, while the poor are much more likely to be depressed. Part of the reason is that they can throw money at problems. A more fundamental reason is that the poor have a scarcity mindset, while the wealthy have an abundance mindset.

The abundance mindset sees the universe as full of opportunity — for friendship, love, and financial success. By contrast, the scarcity mindset sees everything as a fixed pie and leads to hoarding, envy, and stagnation in every aspect of life.

Poor people with a scarcity mindset think that if their neighbor has something good, whether it’s a possession or relationship, it must be unavailable to them. So they complain about the cruel, unjust universe.

Wealthy people with an abundance mindset see others’ success as an inspiration: if their neighbor has a great marriage, a beautiful house, or a successful business, there is something positive to learn, and potentially a valuable relationship to build. The universe is full of opportunities, so there is no reason to complain about failure – they have only themselves to blame.

8: Enjoy great art: while the rich can afford an original Banksy their wall, and will.i.am at their kid’s bar mitzva, the world’s greatest paintings are in public museums, and great music and film are nearly free for you to enjoy — if only you developed a taste for it.

It is said that Howard Hughes once locked himself in a hotel room and watched Ice Station Zebra for months. If I developed an OCD desire to watch a movie on repeat for months, it would the 2003 film “Master and Commander.” I’ve heard some people complain that the film is boring and doesn’t have enough action. Once again, high-time preference is at fault. You are addicted to crave the rush of sugar in food, the cheap dopamine thrill of pornography, and the freight train of explosions in the latest Michael Bay Transformers 7: Faster and Exploder.

Nurturing a taste in great art takes patience and time, but if you want to explore the highs and lows of the human condition and be inspired to be a deeper, more passionate soul, you must put in the time and work.

9: Keep a clean house: yes, the wealthy can hire housekeepers to pick up after them. But if you’re poor, you have an advantage they don’t: you have fewer possessions and less space to store them in.

While weekly cleaning is necessary for every household, being organized is more important: by putting things away after you use them (and teaching your kids to do the same) you can keep your home from becoming a mess in the first place.

The messy appearance of poor households has another cause: the scarcity mentality. People hoard things they don’t need because they worry that they won’t be able to get a hold of them again. But possessions you don’t need right now are only a drain on you: they take up physical and mental space in your life. Let go of the things you don’t need with the faith that they will be there when you need them again. There are “Buy Nothing” neighborhood groups all over the U.S. where families freely exchange things they don’t need anymore. This year, I got a punching bag, a shop vac, a kids trike, lightning for my garage, toddler clothes, yard tools, and much more. We gifted just as much. Relying on relationships and having faith in people’s generosity frees us up for physical and mental baggage.

10: Don’t stress about money: in developed countries, stress about money is the worst aspect of poverty, worse than the physical deprivation it forces. Few people in America have to worry about going hungry or homeless, but many more live paycheck to paycheck with chronic stress about money. A $500 surprise expense would put most Americans into debt.

A high income is no guarantee of financial well-being: if your spending rate is greater than your income, you will never have financial security. Real wealth is not measured in income, but financial security: the confidence that no matter what happens to your income stream, your lifestyle won’t be affected.

The solution to money stress is simple: live below your means and build an emergency fund. It’s easier not to stress about money when you’re young and broke. When you’re starting out, all you need to worry about is living below your means and keeping your emergency cash fund topped up. When you’re wealthy, very little of your net worth is cash. You have to balance your net worth between business interest, real estate, securities, and other assets. Managing your portfolio becomes a part-time job – unless you hire expensive money managers, which is another set of worries.

Conclusion

Wealth is one possible reward for developing good habits in life. It takes time and luck to build wealth, but you don’t need to wait to become rich to enjoy the other rewards that result from striving for physical and mental health.

• Find life-enhancing ways to manage stress (such as sports or hobbies rather than food, porn, drugs, or tv)
• Eliminate relationships that drag you down and distract you from your life’s goals
• Put as much thought into your appearance as you do into other important aspects of your life
• Make a concerted effort to nurture your soul with great art
• Eliminate possessions that do not bring you joy or add more value than the financial, physical, and mental burden they carry
• Live below your means to avoid financial stress

For nearly the entirety of human history, the chief concern of most people has been getting enough to eat. The invention of capitalism finally enabled the majority of people in market-based societies to focus on higher pursuits. Yet capitalism is now widely blamed for causing obesity – because of the availability of fast food, “food deserts”, or simply because markets incentivize products to make food as delicious and cheap as possible.

Whether or not you are a fan of free markets, it is personally important for you to understand why this idea is wrong:

The ultimate cause of obesity is not that we eat too much food, or that we lack access to healthy food, or that our food is simply too delicious. The cause is that we eat the wrong foods. The reason so much of the food in America is so unhealthy is mostly due to bad science enshrined in agricultural subsidies and government-issued guidelines.

Regardless, if you are overweight (and over 70% of us are), you need to know that the cause is not due to your genetics (our grandparents weren’t all obese), a failing of morality or willpower, or the capitalist system.

When you eat a healthy diet, your body naturality self-regulates the hormonal signals for hunger and satiety to keep you at a healthy weight. It takes years of eating bad foods to cause chronic hormonal imbalances that lead to weight gain, metabolic syndrome, hypertension, and the majority of chronic lifestyle diseases that we deal with today.

I’ve written about the hormonal cause of obesity and what a proper diet consists of elsewhere, but it is also important to understand that you don’t need to shop at premium grocery stores like Whole Foods to eat well.

Organic and groceries considered “health foods” today have only been around for a few decades thanks to health food venture capitalism from people like Whole Foods founder John Mackey. (Follow this link to listen to his story, and you might be surprised about the pro-market views of America’s leading hippie food promoter.)  Food that is objectively nutritious can be found cheaply in most anywhere America, even if it comes in a can on the shelf of a Dollar Store.

Experiments such as “30 Days of Gas Station Food” prove that you can find decent food even if you shop exclusively at gas stations.

If there is interest, I would like to conduct an experiment: identify some staples of a healthy diet, then match them one for one between Whole Foods and Dollar General. I suspect that the building blocks of a nutritious diet can be found in most fast food venues, gas stations, and even “food deserts.”

About three years ago, I decided to reach an ambitious financial goal, that would put me in the top 5% of my peers. I engaged in a deep dive of personal finance, which led me to reject the conventional wisdom about career, savings, and investing. I developed new principles, achieved financial success, and moved my retirement date forward by several decades.

Two months ago, I became aware that though I was only slightly overweight, as I got older, my weight was having a detrimental effect on my health in many ways. I decided to engage in a similar process to lose weight.

I already knew that the conventional wisdom of a low-fat diet and more exercise was wrong, but as I dived into the topic of weight loss, what I learned transformed my approach. I’m still learning more every day, but here is the gist of what I found:

The most common explanations for why 70% of Americans are overweight are wrong. Obesity is not caused by eating too much or exercising too little, but by a hormonal imbalance in the body. The human body has a “set body weight” which it maintains through hormonal feedback systems. Inactivity and overeating is the result of obesity, not the cause. This is why diets which focus on eating less and moving more almost always fail — as has been proven by numerous studies. Unfortunately, the lure of hundreds of billions in agricultural subsidies has maintained a false theory of obesity despite 50 years of negative evidence.

The ultimate biological cause of obesity is a hormonal imbalance caused by insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is caused by persistently high levels of sugar in the blood. High sugar levels come from frequent carbohydrate-heavy meals. Cheap and plentiful processed carbohydrates from corn and wheat are the result of agricultural subsidies, which were passed to support the false hypothesis that obesity is caused by excess fat consumption.

Insulin resistance is the cause of fat accumulation. Insulin is a hormone which enables all cells to use and store sugar in the blood. Insulin is essential for the body, but persistently high levels of insulin cause resistance and fat accumulation. Fat storage is thus hormonally mediated. Attempts to lose or gain weight by calorie regulation below the set weight inevitably fail long term because the body compensates in myriad ways:

The body will respond to decreasing fat stores by increasing appetite, reducing satiety, lowering the metabolic rate, decreasing body temperature, and many other ways.
Long term weight control can only be achieved by understanding and addressing the causal factors – the hormones that regulate weight – especially insulin and leptin. This is why people who address weight by regulating calories suffer from a life-long rollercoaster or weight loss and regain. Lack of activity and larger meals is the outcome of obesity, not its cause.

More fundamentally, obesity is caused by dysfunctional emotion-handling skills. Carbohydrates are a highly effective and pleasurable endorphin activator. Like alcohol, tobacco, or heroin, carbs help addicts with chronic stress, anxiety, and depression — which are all common in the developed world. Carbohydrate addicts treat emotional instability with food in the same way as any other substance abuser.

Humans have evolved satiety mechanisms in response to fat and protein consumption (leptin is released to signal satiety). But like alcohol or cocaine, humans have no evolved satiety mechanism for carbs, which causes chronic overeating.

Understanding that carbohydrate consumption is an addictive relationship is essential to effective weight loss. Telling an alcoholic to consume less alcohol does not work because any amount of alcohol reinforces the addition. For the same reason, eliminating all processed carbohydrates from the diet is necessary for an effective dietary change.

Adopted sibling studies show that obesity is 70% genetically determined. I suspect that the specific trait is an inherited lack of emotion-management skills, which combined by super-availability of cheap carbohydrates is responsible for the modern obesity epidemic which affects 70% of Americans. Treatment of obesity requires addressing the need for emotional self-regulation and insulin resistance. Weight and fat loss will follow naturally as a result.

Exercise is effective for weight loss not because it burns fat or builds muscle (these effects are trivial and counteracted by the body in non-athletes), but because the endorphins produced during exercise reduce the emotional dependency on carbohydrates in food.

It is impossible to become fat from eating food — real food. Real food contains fats and proteins that trigger the body’s automatic satiety mechanisms. Obesity develops due to artificial food in the form of refined carbohydrate products. You can’t lose weight by eating MORE of anything. You must reduce the harmful effects of addictive carbohydrates.

The solution to obesity is to correct the hormonal imbalance by reducing insulin resistance. Insulin resistance can be reduced by creating periods of low blood sugar, specifically by eating a low carb diet, extending the periods between meals, such as by avoiding snacking and intermittent fasting.

Lowering insulin resistance will signal the body to automatically reduce fat stores, by increasing activity levels and correcting satiety levels. More activity and smaller meals are the *result* of fat loss, not the cause.

Finally, it is necessary to address the underlying emotional needs which cause carbohydrates addiction. Healthier substitutes such as walks, coffee, meditation, exercise, or just more sleep can reduce the dependency to derive endorphins from frequent carbohydrate consumption.

As I’ve discovered these ideas over the last month, I achieved dramatic success with my own health. I now have a healthy BMI for the first time in years and am rapidly moving towards my goal of 10% body fat without calorie restrictions or exercise. By switching to a low carb, high-fat diet and adding periods of intermittent fasting (a restricted daily eating window) I achieved a steady loss of 2.7 pounds per week.

Furthermore, I found that daily walks, coffee, and a concerted effort to get more sleep reduced my need to constantly snack to find emotional balance.

So, here is my one trick to lose belly fat overnight:

Extend your nighttime fasting period:
Don’t eat anything after eight pm or before noon. Have a glass of water with sea salt (to replenish electrolytes) before bed. Your body will use up the remaining sugar in the blood and enter fat-burning mode overnight, and you will pee out the ketones in the morning. Weigh yourself every morning to motivate yourself and track progress.

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