Want to Lose Weight? Learn About Your Finances.

There is one form of currency almost everyone in the world understands without confusion - money.

You either have money or you don’t. If you don’t have money, you don’t usually end up having a very good life simply because life costs money. In order for you to stay alive, you need to eat. In order to eat, you need to have money to pay for the food you eat.

Calories, on the other hand, are more misunderstood than any other form of currency in the world.

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In terms of weight management, there are debates going back 50 years about whether overall calories are more any particular kind of diet. Most importantly whether or not having a low carb diet, low fat, high protein diet with or without intermittent fasting or just drinking water with lemon juice to lose weight is going to be more effective.

The resounding consensus is a hard lean towards overall calorie balance with a minor emphasis on macronutrient quality control.

In terms of losing or gaining weight, it really comes down to one thing and one thing only - is there an energy imbalance?

In order to create an energy imbalance, you either need to use more calories than you take in or eat more calories than your body uses. One creates weight loss and then other creates weight gain.

Although only two types of actions happen in weight gain or weight loss, there are more variables to those actions than a simple deposit or withdrawal like you would find in your bank account. You have things like NEAT (Non-exercise activity thermogenesis - the things you do outside of the gym), TEF (Thermic effect of food - the differences in how much of the food consumed is used during absorption and not available for helping your bodily functions). These play a role in calorie balance as well, but today we’ll try to keep things as big picture as possible.

Back to finances.

Finances are fairly easy to understand because there are literally only two types of transactions happening in your account - deposits or withdrawals.

What most people don’t realize is, the same is true of your body and and how you use calories to gain or lose weight. You are either depositing calories or withdrawing them.

Think of it this way:

You’ve gone to the gym, started eating well and working out regularly, but you’re still not losing weight body fat. What the hell, right?

You’re thinking to yourself, “what’s the point of doing all this if I’m not seeing any changes?”.

Well, realistically you have made some changes. You started working out (withdrawing calories via exercise) and started eating better to some degree (withdrawing more calories), but something in this equation isn’t adding up to weight loss.

Let’s take a look at your food tracking and...oh. We haven’t done that. Or maybe you do, but it’s really hit and miss at this point.

Can you see where I’m going with this?

If you don’t have relatively accurate information to work with, it becomes extremely difficult to see what you can work on to change the situation.

Did you reward yourself after your workout with a delicious treat for all your hard work? If so, then you may not be in a calorie deficit anymore. You may back to where you were this morning. Of course, this isn’t to say you haven’t done a great job by exercise and working on your eating habits because you have.

Here’s another way to view it:

If you were going to buy a car and you knew you had to save 10% of the total cost before you could finance the rest, you have to start saving. Most people would open a separate bank account and just adding money into until they hit their financial goal then go out and purchase the car.

The difference with the body is, there’s only one bank account and transactions are happening all the time. Deposits and withdrawals a couple times a day. So you have to get pretty good at knowing how well your account is doing on a consistent basis.

You deposit calories into your account every time you eat something - so maybe 2-6 times per day. In the meantime, withdrawals are happening non stop because your body is taking energy from the food you eat and converting it for keeping itself functioning well.

Add in exercise and all the fun weekend night activities you do with your partner and you’ve got a lot of transactions happening on a regular basis. It’s a whole lot of math and I suck at anything remotely related to it. So let’s do this:

Here’s where we introduce tracking systems.

To know whether or not you are hitting your desired goal - weight loss, weight gain, or maintenance - each month, consider having something to help you with your math problems.

Many apps have tracking for your finances (Mint), your calories should also have some form of tracking (My Fitness Pal) to help you understand what kind of habits you have - both financially and calorically - which will help you know what you can change and how to go about it.

Although Mint is monthly and MFP is daily, the rule of thumb applies.

Once you can see your habits objectively, it becomes a lot easier to know what areas need work. Your tracking may not be 100% accurate and likely never will be. Accuracy comes with time and even then, nobody is expected to be right all the time. The goal is simply to get a better understanding of how you operate on a day to day basis.

To get the best results, be consistent. Checking your bank account after every 6 weeks to get an idea of what you spent on day one...6 weeks ago to determine your spending habits isn’t going to be of much use to you.

The same principle applies to tracking your food. Track consistently. You can get a pretty good idea of what kind of habits you have by tracking 3-4 days during the week and then your weekends - in other words, take a day off, but don’t use it as an excuse to go binge eat.

If you are honest with your submissions, you should start to see a pretty quick trend which can tell you whether or not you’re heading in the right direction.

My Fitness Pal takes care of most of the calculations for you, although I would still advise you to talk to a certified nutritionist about picking an appropriate amount of calories for your needs.

Once you’ve done this for a couple weeks, you can start to see things like this:

Monday - Ate well, tracked everything and was pretty close to target goal

Tuesday - Ate well, tracked everything and was pretty close to target goal

Wednesday - Feeling a bit tired, ate okay, tracked somewhat well, but was a bit off of goal

Thursday - It’s Friday tomorrow. Time to start mentally relaxing. Eating was a bit off and tracking was pretty off.

Friday - FRIDAY! Went out for lunch with co-workers, beers after work, ate pub food and more beers.

Saturday - Hangover. Felt like garbage so I ate like crap. Didn’t track out of guilt in case someone sees my tracking.

Sunday - Getting ready for Monday. Things are going to be different this week. Ate a salad. Tracked dinner.

Start over again Monday.

Does this sound familiar? Well, the same happens with money. 6 months ago when trying to figure out why I never had any money, I used Mint’s transaction record and weekly spending trends section of the app and determined during the week my spending habits were in check.

Weekends on the other was a different story. Sometimes I would spend a couple hundred dollars because I managed to not spend it during the week and wanted to reward myself. This is a common mentality among diets as much as it is with finances.

Unfortunately, I was right back to square one.

But.

After realizing I was doing that by tracking it, I was able to establish a spending limit per day, which removed the temptation to spend it all during the weekend. Very soon after, I noticed my bank accounts were starting to build more than ever before. The spending account acted as leeway to allow myself a bit less rigidity which removed most of temptation to overindulge and end up screwing myself over in the long run.

This wouldn’t have happened if I had not decided to take a hard look at my habits and the same approach worked for eating as well.

By simply having a system in place to see what you are doing essentially from a third person point of view, you can begin to make adjustments and see incremental changes to your body - and bank account.

To most important aspects of this are honesty and consistency. I’m not going to do any calculations for you today, that will be between you, the apps, and a nutritionist if you so choose to consult with one. I can tell you one thing though, it’s not impossible to change your body or your bank account, it just takes work.

#finances #calories #currency #loseweight #gainweight