Episode 38 · 35:01
Squash Conquest: My Health Update Journey
Dan shares a health update through the unlikely lens of squash, using the sport to make fitness measurable, competitive and enjoyable. He and Tom discuss what happens when a goal becomes attached to a real activity rather than an abstract instruction to ‘get healthy’.
The conversation focuses on sustainable momentum, useful metrics and the value of noticing progress before the final target is reached.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- A concrete activity can make a vague health intention easier to repeat.
- Competition is useful when it increases engagement without turning every session into judgement.
- Track measures that inform behaviour rather than collecting numbers for their own sake.
- Sustainable progress leaves room for recovery, enjoyment and imperfect weeks.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
[Music] don't please [Music] and welcome back uh it's been a couple of weeks we've had a little bit of a break so thanks for joining us again um what's happened since we've been away Tom what's happened I've had a holiday and you've won the competition I think that's everything that I can remember yeah so I am I happen to be wearing one of the freebie t-shirts as well which is finally uh uh arrived I'm like turn up to these.
Hackathons and turn up to these uh meetups because you get free stuff um so then you'll never have to buy a t-shirt again because you just keep on getting free t-shirts so that's my benefit but yes hackathon entry so cast your mind back maybe I haven't mentioned it but cast your mind back maybe a couple months back um I entered in to my first ever hackathon hackathon is basically where you code something and you upload it where they can see.
Your code um which is referred to as open source as in people can see it and they can make contributions to the code if they wanted to and like Flack issues and so forth so I made a first ever hackathon a couple months back and that basically got me Silver for best Easter egg or most fun and then I entered again this time round and it got me gold I don't think I've ever I don't recall ever winning a gold until now so I've got.
Gold in this one like celebrations in the video edit yeah yeah this is like this is where the trumpets and the tinsel or the confetti sorry comes out um which I was super happy about and very proud of myself because I was making it my goal to get gold um so this time around I merged Rick and Morty with X Factor and used open ai's chat GPT 3.5 to review somebody's re to me now read me is an explanation of what.
Your code is um so if you have a um a repository which is where your code sits um is publicly accessible I then can look at that and read the readme file and then basically give a Simon cowell-esque review based on categories so that one again gold for uh best Easter Egg Slash um the most fun so I'm very happy about that I have to have a screen recording on the screen or something alongside uh like insert yeah.
So I'm really happy that that went down um I'm also really happy over the last maybe two months now I've lost I've gone from I think my heaviest was 90 kilograms and and I'm now 79.5 I think I've finally beaten the 80 kilograms um and I thought I would share what I've been doing um because I think that's it kind of matches very much with the Fulfillment stuff that we spoke about last time of like removing the external need for.
Um uh encouragement or external need for approval or um positive affirmation and switch it for internal fulfillment and I think my fitness journey I've always been you know never been to the gym always use life I always said life is my gym and that gets me out of going to the gym so you do stuff in life like lifting canned beans or lift up box or whatever but I'm really happy with my progress and I'm hoping to carry.
On going with that progress I thought I would just um go through some of the stuff especially if somebody's listening and and finding it hard to one enter into a space where your mindset is kind of like really like like on the edge Cutting Edge really pushing yourself because sometimes a lot of that comes from you know like an aspect of unhealthiness of either you know sleep patterns or eating patterns or Fitness and weight and like Health um so yeah I'll just run through what.
Basically recap what I did so first things first I did calorie deficit so calorie deficit is where I I first count I count all my calories that I take in I count all my calories that go out and then I'm trying to minus out AKA you eat X calories and you um work out um X so then it it you have a zero x minus x five but broadly speaking I think calorie deficit could also be that generally speaking I'm burning like two.
Thousand two thousand one hundred calories um just by existing so you want to try and kind of just like lower it down um below that um rather than having an actual deficit in calories so I think that was one of the first things I did and then I upped my squash playing and then I was fasting doing intermittent fasting and there's a thing called um intimacy fasting you can do different hours so I was doing like a 16 8 which means I don't eat from.
Um 8 P.M until 12 noon which gives your body time to um digest and also um in the mornings I think at the 12 hour or 10 hour mark you start burning fat and then at the 12 hour mark I think you start um your cells start rebuilding themselves so it's a starting point and they say if you fast for 72 hours 72 hours is the Pinnacle point at which your cells like regenerate the like most effectively um it's called it's called something.
That I've forgotten the name no I can't remember the name of it now which isn't helpful but um yeah I have this app that shows you when you hit that point where it's basically cell regeneration and I'm like generally speaking if we're ill we're never told hey if you fast your body has a mechanism to rebuild cells after and it will start it after X hours I think it's 10 or 12 hours of fasting um and it will carry on and the peak of.
That is it 72 hours sort of thing so I was like oh like is fasting used as a Health mechanism to regenerate cells very interesting um yeah that's like a a good thing I've been doing and in taking a lot of water trying to cut down on um eating outside of um like dinner and uh lunch and dinner which again it's like it's okay to feel hungry I think that's what I've realized and then you slowly over time build a sense.
Of discipline which means you can't be bothered to do the calories like you can't be bothered to intake the calories of a Mars bar which is like 200 calories because that's the equivalent of me walking for 45 minutes so it's not worth the calories so you have this like increased sense of mental discipline um but it's always down to because you see results and you'll see results in two weeks right so think of like you're gonna start something you're not going.
To see anything for two weeks um depending on how severe you you go in but I saw some stuff quite quickly and I was just weighing myself today's yeah yeah like I was weighing myself every morning at exact roughly the same time you know after you go to the toilet and where you're stuck naked to get the best results you know so it's just like the consistency landscape yeah don't don't weigh yourself at night because you've always got water weight right so.
Um and I've been changing my sleep so I've been trying to sleep more consistently AKA go to bed around 11ish I'm failing right now because I've kind of come out of it a little bit but my goal was to go to bed at 11 and then wake up at 7 30 and again I've been reading Lots about the consistency of sleep is really really important um so even on weekends I was going to bed at 11 waking up at 7 30 and trying.
To keep that consistency and I just sensed a feeling of like every time you get up you're going to feel groggy it doesn't matter if you wake up at 10 p.m at 10 A.M or 7 A.M you're gonna feel groggy so which one do you prefer so I preferred doing it even though I'm not a million person I was preferring to doing uh doing it at 7 30 because cool you're going to be groggy whatever time you wake up and also then you have way more.
In the day so I I basically have an extra like two and a half hours or two hours to get stuff done before then the day actually starts rolling so I found found that was really good for productivity which then makes time go a bit slower you enjoy um that because you're enjoying moments more deeply because time is going slower so yeah there's a bunch of stuff that I've done and then you've just gotta not necessarily like go so hardcore that you.
Fall out of the discipline really easy you want to find a nice pattern so I do like huel for lunch which is just a scoop is 200 cows Two Scoops is 400 cows mixed with water and then like dinner time um or tea time I've switched to say dinner now um tea time would be uh there's these meals called simmer which um you know chunks off the beta Squad yep yeah so he promotes these ready-made meals that are really tasty that are.
Roughly like they're always below 500 calories um and they're really good just throw them in the microwave um so I've been doing that a lot and air frying stuff which helps you know more clean food so after this transformation as we call it um what has changed other than the discipline what what on their feelings or thoughts positive or negative that you're like actually I've got way more energy or actually I feel more sad more regularly because I'm more hungry all.
The time or what are the different things that have yeah yeah I think piqued your interest yeah I think the the most important thing more than anything is just general mood is I'm I'm happier one because I I look physically better and I notice it because even if you look back two months of like the podcast even you'll notice there's a difference between that Dan and this done now so I think like seeing the difference um generally mood is much much higher.
I think the key thing is recognizing when you're hungry I will snack rather than actually make a meal so if I have better discipline in making the meal then it means that I'm like satisfying my body's need for food rather than kind of like just like ticking along with snacking um so I think it's the discipline side of like going into the supermarket before I'd be like yeah cool a couple of chocolate bars or some chocolate eclairs or whatever whatever.
But now it's like yeah it's literally not worth the calories so I can't be bothered in taking it because I know that I'll have to work it off or whatever so yeah I think that's the general mood I'm much more optimistic and positive I've not noticed energy changes I've not noticed that I'm more energetic I've just noticed generally my mood is far better and I'm more positive and I've done my steps in the afternoon there's actually another app that I've.
Been using to cut down caffeine so broadly speaking I don't go crazy with caffeine but there's like a 10 hour caffeine like slump or like the 10 hour fact so they try and get you to drink your caffeine in the morning and then not have caffeine um then for the rest of the day um it also like your Peak there's usually a peak in the morning there's a dip in the afternoon and then there's a peak in the evening so again I I do.
Notice those but because this particular app I think it's called like rise I can't check because my phone is is my camera um it telling the dips uh the Peaks and troughs you can kind of like expect it so you can kind of like work around it so for example you know that there's a peak coming so if you sorry there's a trough coming so if you do exercise you'll avoid the the dip okay so if you can kind of like avoid.
The dip like if there's a dip coming if I go for a walk then I don't feel that dip of like tiredness of stuff because you're counteracting with like boosting your energy with a sense of exercise so yeah there's lots of good little apps out there that are free and stuff but generally calorie counting in a spreadsheet you'll notice how much you snack or how much calorie how many calories are in the things that you never thought about before.
Um wouldn't have battered an eyelid and so forth and something really interesting so a couple weeks back the two things that are interesting Diary of a CEO podcast there was a guy called Brian Johnson and he's doing like a blueprint where he's analyzing everything in his life and trying to um basically reverse age um by doing supplements healthy eating exercise and sleep and so forth so I found his um analysis and journey of that very fascinating to kind of like reverse age.
So much so that he could persist his life for as long as he could um so I thought that was inspiring some of the detail and intricacy and the enjoyment that he finds um from trying to kind of like move these markers and and boost things up and so forth and then secondly I think somebody else some some other podcast um again Diary of a CEO but another episode specifically was walk talking about like nature and health and how we've kind of.
Foregone stuff that we naturally used to do so generally speaking we will do the easy stuff which is if there's an escalator we'll go up the escalator rather than going up the stairs and because we've facilitated that in our culture we're slowly removing that life is a gym or life is your your workout stuff everywhere little by little um so like trying to do stairs more than escalators and stuff but specifically um the point that jumped out was um I've.
Literally forgotten it and I'm trying to jug my memory a separate story do you remember me running upstairs and racing you versus the escalator was it in the flap that you're in now was it the last flat and it was on like the 20th floor or whatever and it was probably the last flat yeah I felt like I couldn't walk because my legs were constantly shutting off every time I did a step after that exactly because the um.
They hadn't painted it was super Dusty so you probably did have some sort of like um lung damage because of breathing in like concrete dust all right probably yeah I can't remember the point that I was gonna make that's a nine but um yeah it's about like losing weight affects memory loss yeah it does um it's about generally speaking people have always changed um oh that was it our society we've built thanks our society we believe that being muscular.
Muscular and big is attractive however in other cultures being big and muscular is a privilege because ultimately if you're big and muscular you then have to eat food and work out to sustain that size and scale so generally speaking that's a rich person's kind of approach to things whereas generally speaking other cultures like you can be lean and thin because that's more sustainable if you're bulky and big it's expensive to persist that and it takes more time and.
Energy which is time and energy really sustaining rather than utilizing it on the things that you are doing with your body right um like the actual activities that we should be focused on um like the work I'll say work right work activities whatever those work activities are rather than literally just sustaining massive biceps or massive triceps or massive like pectorals or whatever I was like that's actually very fascinating so really you should never necessarily try to get big because it's.
Something that then you need to sustain which in itself becomes a task when really you should be just looking for stability of health and like persistent kind of like ease in that unless you're a bodybuilder and you're doing competitions and you make money for being big very fascinating the random thing that popped into my brain whilst you're talking about that is I've realized that you've got the Apple cables going in but you've got the uh airpods yeah so I have headphones just as.
Fallback but I've switched it some the sound comes through my earpods because it's just easier so that I can move around and not be worried that I'm going to yank the cable dongle if anyone was wondering that yeah yeah it's not it's not that it's going up the side of my neck or whatever like that so but yes I thought I thought my health Journey last few weeks has been really really good and then that's great positive news on the on the so it's an.
Exercise just before we go into the negative news is that a before we go I'm trying to sustain this um level or is it like now I'm aiming for 70 kg or 75 or you're like I'm happy at this level now it's maintaining yeah so I'm doing a little bit of both I want to maintain like around the 80 like kilograms but ideally I want to go down to 75 because I think that'll be really really good for me so.
Go down to 70 just before Christmas and then you'll level out at 75 after Christmas exactly exactly like averages 75. yeah I would say I'm trying to I'm trying to um Carry On but now the easy stuff has been done right I've done a quick succession and then it's starting to like level out platter so it's a bit harder now it means I need to up my squash stuff and do more exercise more walking to kind of like burn it.
Um but yeah we're heading down the hill into the sun now we're into the truth the Energy Trust so it's time to go for a walk I've been demoted I've gone down a division in squash to division eight so people may or may not know I've been playing squash that's my go-to because I wanted to find a sport that I enjoyed doing squash is that it is the best exercise I think because the intensity of fast slow power skill.
Um and yeah sadly the the game goes the two top get promoted the middle one stays and then the two bottom get demoted and unfortunately I was one of the two buttons that got the most expenses no it's like quite severe um so yeah um and what's happened is the fifth player stopped playing this time around so it's only me that's gone down um which is a shame so it's not as if I've gone down with somebody else and um.
I've switched my mindset to be like before I was like yeah let's go I wanted to be TR I wanted to um try and build a competitive mindset and be like ruthless and have nothing affect me for example if you see the other player regardless of seeing the other player if they look good or they don't look good to still beating them still crushing them and trying to get into that and build that and not remove of my focus of I'm going.
To win or I have already won I'm just coming to pick it up so do you do you tend to do Mind Games beforehand at all like laughing and joking but then take it serious or just take it serious and make them feel cold and icy beforehand do you have any of those types of Mind Games annoyingly I'm too nice of a person to bother doing like the cold kind of front I'm usually like hey are you doing like chatty and I think.
Sometimes that's the failure because really I should be like cold and just like well you can't talk because some people might think oh this person's just doing it for a laugh and then you take it serious that's the other way yeah doing it so you could double down the chattiness and talk about how like I don't know talk about all the things you've done that makes you sound lazy so then they're like oh this guy give them a full serious security yeah.
Exactly play it play on there like I live five minutes away so I just drove here rather than walked and it's like okay I could beat this guy annoyingly so my last game that I had the guy was like oh I've been in the pub I've just had two pints I don't know how I'm gonna play and he still beat me now what's really irritating about that I was trying to just still stay focused on regardless of him saying that initially.
You would think ah I'm gonna beat him because he's had a couple pints and he might be a bit rough but it didn't happen so next one yeah then the next game that he had in the morning at 9am he lost that game but I'm like oh did I time him out he still won but did I Tire him out he then plays the next game so it's like you almost don't want to be affected by any input from what they.
Even see because it might give you a false sense of security so you're like I'm gonna crush this person regardless of what they say or what they do or how they act or how I act and how I do but it's very challenging to to kind of like get the consistency of like we've discussed before like just zero errors like one I think my grip is slipping in my in my racket so I'm getting errors um which is kind of then I mean it's a.
Lost thing if you if you're error prone it doesn't matter if you're good right so it's eradicating that but I've just eliminated the I'm disappointed but not disappointed overly that like oh I'm not gonna play anymore I'm like cool this is a part of the journey and it's now now is the time to figure out if I'm gonna carry on and it comes back to the whole like failure or whatever like now is the moment that maybe 90 of people don't.
Play the next League but if you can be that person that decides to play anyway regardless of the demotion you then set yourself apart from bunch of squash players and if you take that in Life or in business there's always these crunch moments where it comes like a decision moment like are you gonna carry on or are you going to give up thinking about it is this your first relegation slash demotion in life yeah well I think so.
It's not me so it's not my first it's not my first disappointment office failure but it is my first like down to bottom set no no no I've always like you go in you stay in kind of thing so I think it is very interesting because on the flip side generally speaking I'm fine with you know mistakes or failures in in business or life or whatever but then when it comes to specifically sport an individual sport it's me and my.
Abilities so have I trained an F5 I worked hard enough did I stay focused did I play two like play the ball to the player which is helping them out essentially because I'm kind of wanting to play a good game like I'm one in a rally so yeah we need to get into this a little bit more so relegation first ever relegation in life yeah rub it in did that field did that did that feel any different because I think with a.
Relegation it highlights multiple failures it's not just one failure this is the difficulty because I've been in a handful of relegates I think I've been in more relegations than promotions even I am an alright hockey player it highlights you've lost okay I know hockey's a longer season than squash but you've done multiple failures so sometimes it hits home harder or like let's say you're feeling loads of exams so you drop to bottom set it is now like you're not just tripping.
Up every now and then it's like a consistent tripping up and now the world is telling you via this league system did that feel any different to any other um setbacks because you could you can fail one exam in Middle set but then still be a middle set but there's something about dropping down to bottom set and then try and get up to the middle sir yeah I think the massive difference here is I didn't lose all of my games.
I I didn't get like absolutely obliterated in all of my games so the loss is other players were better rather than I was bad it was just other players were better so they get promoted and I it wasn't that I was bad as such because it's based on scores so you you still get points broadly speaking if you've got a couple of sets against them a couple of games against them um so I I personally feel like it doesn't.
Feel like I've lost a bunch of games and then been demoted so that the hit isn't so hard but I didn't lose all my games and I still got demoted that also hurts because it's like ah like I did try my best granted it wasn't as good as these others so it's disappointed that my efforts positive efforts I still get demoted so it's like now I need to make sure like cool my mindset now is I need to get out.
Of here because to come down and to stay down that is worse than to come down once and then to go straight back up so like every Everything has like a layer of disappointment and a layer of like failure or degree of failure that you can be comfortable with that can be that can hurt more that could be more traumatic than others so how do I minimize the trauma of being demoted not that it's traumatic as such it's just.
Like ah gutted like I didn't beat these people but I did try my best it's just a I I blame it on the racket right I guess I guess it helps because it is just a hobby it doesn't you can literally sack it tomorrow or carry it on tomorrow there's no I guess repercussions from a job point of view uh I would say if it was like if you get demoted you lose a bunch of sponsors I think that would feel like ah got it.
Because now there's this second level ramification from the first level ramification of like cool you lost you well you overall didn't have enough points get demoted sad second layer is then the whole like called the repercussions of that you know did you know in primary Premier League contracts there's literally like a if you get demoted your wage is half instantly um yeah yeah yeah which makes sense right it is very interesting so it makes sense why loads of people jump ship to.
Then go back to the Prem because basically their lives have gone from however like it's halved instantly which fair enough they've probably got enough money for half you can still live off yeah imagine if you randomly halved your wage that's like crazy it's even down to the motivation of why do you even try and stay up why do you even try and like play well you in that case probably want to carry on having the wages like that or you want more.
Wages now for a place where there's no wages there's literally just bragging rights the winner of The League sorry the winner of the each division gets a couple of squash balls so it's like what's the incentive to try and get back to League seven the incentive is ego of light of overcoming a setback like me being able to overcome a setback at an absolute individual physical level rather than a mental level or anything else like my physicality will get me.
Ahead obviously my mind is in that too but my physical body will get me ahead after this setback that that's I'm driven to to do that for sure because yeah it's not a paid league and thankfully you don't have to pay to be in it either but yeah if I paid to be in it I'd be worse if I paid to be in a league that I then do well but still get demoted it'll probably feel worse but as.
A free League I'm gonna come straight back up like it's one of those things you know when you push a football down into water and it fires up even higher that's what I'm hoping for let's go so but it is um fascinating another thing I saw on Twitter recently is Sam's names yes true another thing I saw in ax Sam Altman was interviewed he's the CEO of um openai people that created chat GPT and he was saying in life generally.
Speaking 98 of people want you to kind of like stay where you are or move back it's only like two percent of people encourage you and afford you so really you want to surround yourself with those people and I'm like again as this whole mindset encouragement you know it takes a village to raise a child but it also takes a village of encouraging people to raise good persistent entrepreneurs that will carry on doing it so it's like in.
Life are there are we kind of like okay with the 98 do we have a two percent are we finding a two percent are we trying to grow the two percent and I found it very interesting one thing that I've noticed in the different behaviors if I I've started to like post just outwardly more uh on Ax about what I'm doing and that is attracting people um of the same type so how do you increase your two percent or.
Grow your two percent or find your two percent start speaking start sharing to to be able to do that and how do you identify the 98 percent probably a case of light one was the last encouraging thing that ex-people said like where was the last encouraging thing or like when you said something who encouraged you last like you know or who was pessimistic did you even try it out then what ex people say because X is Twitter there's a clever way so yeah I'll have.
To use like algebra another pie what no why people say I need another letter what the alpha yeah yeah what beaters said yeah I think I say nothing they stay quiet yeah I think I have stepped back from relationships that I remember uh seeing the phrase mutually beneficial um mutually beneficial friendships right or mutually beneficial relationships generally speaking I think you start to notice over time that the word mutual isn't always there it's always a bit like beneficial but not in a Mutual Way.
Um similar with conversations that we went through when we're talking about compromise right compromise is about mutually beneficial rather than one person foregoing something end of so yeah I feel it's a case of auditing are you in friendships and circles where the relationships are mutually beneficial if they're not mutually beneficial then they could be considered a part of the 98 potentially but it's more so that it's like they're not very optimistic they're not encouraging they're not giving you ideas.
Kind of thing therefore that in itself could be something um it's kind of like the yeah the the characters their attitudes is it coming across and helping or hindering in some ways so yes about finding your two percent and growing the two percent don't get demoted no the motion is fine oh final thing I think in getting demoted last three times yeah for sure yeah it's because I'm just like riffing in getting demoted I'm not like oh stuff.
The league I'm also I think I I'm I'm kind of like oh I didn't care anyway I don't think I'm doing that either I'm not getting despawned with it it's fine like I'm like cool nobody knows this even though I've just shared it on a podcast with thousands of people listening but it's like yeah I'm not creating my own table I'm like cool I'll just do my thing to get back and I'll be fine and I'll learn the lessons personally and be much more.
Like introspective and reflective for the experience for my own personal benefit rather than hopefully get emotional about the disappointment and not go back and get back out into Division Seven so hopefully nice in a month's time not even hopefully factually speaking in a month's time I'll be back in Division Seven it's I've said it here it's gonna happen it's a matter of time yeah this will go silent on the Pod for two months together yeah yeah you just won't see me and then it'd.
Be like turns out he did get demoted again there is now a division nine that they've created so actually that is true I'm not in the last League because randomly there is a division nine now previous League there was a division eight only so I went from seven to eight now there's a number nine so I'm not in I'm not even in the bottom league so that's something to be happy about Silver Lining so and on that note.
Don't be a doorstep keep on hammering those Nails bye for now [Music] foreign [Music].