Check it oot.
Issue four already.
I love writing these, but what I enjoy most is what comes back afterwards: a screenshot of a line that landed, someone telling me they've started doing something differently because of it. That's the bit that makes the next issue worth sitting down to write.
New: Audio Issue
New this time: an audio version, with me reading the issue out loud. Full Scottish accent, no apologies, you're welcome. No studio, no polish, just a wee bit of practice at something I've never done before. It's also for anyone who can't be arsed reading. Let's see how it goes.
The Question
This one came from a guy at my Saturday meditation group, of all places. Buddhists are supposed to be neither in a rush nor deluded, so there's something quietly funny about getting this question from him specifically.
“I'm speaking at a conference in three weeks, what can I do to get in shape by then?”
Three weeks. I respected the optimism. To be fair, thirty minutes earlier he'd told me I looked fifty. So there was a small, deeply unenlightened part of me that enjoyed answering honestly.
Here's the honest answer: three weeks is enough to feel a bit better and make a start. It isn't enough for the kind of transformation anyone honest should promise you. If someone tells you otherwise, they're selling you something.
Here's the useful answer, and it's the one that actually counts: start anyway. Three weeks is the beginning of something, not a wasted window before an event. Results compound, whether you've got three weeks or three years. Start today, and by the time you're on that stage, you'll have three weeks of consistency behind you instead of none. That's not nothing. So what can you do in three weeks? You can start.
01
The three dials, in miniature
Remember the food diary from How I eat, the article I put up on the blog last week? Chicken breast, oats, avocado, hummus, berries. At a glance, it looked almost identical to mine. Theirs wasn't working. Mine was.
Nothing on the plate was wrong. There was just too much of it. Healthy and goal-appropriate are two different things, and a surplus of good food is still a surplus.
Eating well comes down to what you eat and how much of it. A lot of people already have the what somewhat sorted. This client did. It's the how much that quietly gets away from them, and that's what the three dials handle: carbs, protein, fat.
Here's generally what I recommend to my clients.
Protein barely moves. Whatever the goal, building or leaning up, keep it high and consistent, around 2g per kilo of bodyweight if you're strength training. Get most of the way there with lean protein sources: chicken breast, turkey, steak, tofu, whey. Nuts and beans get reached for a lot, but they're mostly fat or carbs with protein along for the ride, not the other way round.
Carbs are the biggest lever. They go up when you're building and down when you're leaning up. If, like me, your goal shifts during the year, it's important that your carb intake reflects what you're working to achieve.
Fat is the one that adds up fastest. It's the most calorie-dense of the three, more than double the calories of carbs or protein, gram for gram. Don't get me wrong, olive oil, avocado and nuts are all very healthy foods and excellent sources of fat, but "healthy" shouldn't mean unlimited. That's exactly why they're so easy to overdo without noticing. Regardless of the source, it still counts, and fat is the easiest one on this list to lose all sense of portion with, because nobody's measuring a glug!
Three dials, one plate. It isn't a meal plan, just a way of checking whether your portions actually match what you're trying to do. That's what fixed the diary from the start of this: same good food, smaller portions, dialled to what they were training for.
If you want the full version of the three dials, including a full day of my own eating written out meal by meal, How I eat: balancing protein, carbs and fat for my goals is up on the blog now.
02
Coach's Pick: Rachel Zoffness on pain
A few years ago I was diagnosed with cervical osteoarthritis. For a while I did what most people would: I tried to fix it. I chased answers. I wanted it solved. At times, the pain was close to intolerable. It wasn't until I stopped trying to fix the unfixable and accepted it that the pain itself eased, and I've found a way to manage it ever since. It was never about fixing it. It was about working with it.
That's why Rachel Zoffness's episode of Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard hit as hard as it did. She's a psychologist and pain scientist, and the author of Tell Me Where It Hurts: The New Science of Pain and How to Heal. The whole episode is built around one idea: pain and physical damage are not the same thing.
Two stories from it have stuck with me since. If you've trained with me recently, you've probably already heard me enthusiastically retell them. A construction worker jumps off a plank onto a nail sticking up through a board, ends up in agony, gets rushed to hospital and given serious painkillers, only for the doctors to find the nail had passed clean between his toes. No wound, no tissue damage, entirely real pain. In another story, a nail gun backfires and sends a four-inch nail into a worker's face. He shrugs it off as a mild toothache for six days, then finally goes to the dentist and discovers the nail lodged in his head. Barely any pain, obvious physical damage. Same category of accident, opposite experience. Pain isn't a straight readout of harm. It's the brain judging how dangerous something is and dialling the alarm up or down accordingly.
The other one that fascinated me was phantom limb pain. People who've lost an arm or a leg can still feel agonising, debilitating pain in the limb that's no longer there. One explanation is that the brain holds onto an old map of the body and hasn't caught up with what's missing. The limb is gone. The pain is still real.
If you've ever been in pain and been told it's "all in your head", this episode will change how you hear that. Not because it's dismissive, but because it's more interesting, and more useful, than that.
Listen to Rachel Zoffness on Armchair Expert →
Chau for now.
Martin · Barcelona