For anything that you’re trying to achieve, there are three resources you have in limited supply that you can use— time, energy, and money.
When it comes to energy, it depends on the life stage you are in. If you are a young person, you have minimal responsibilities. Hence you’ll have higher levels of energy.
If you are an older individual, just by virtue of age you’ll have lesser energy.
Similarly energy can be correlated with stress levels too. If you’re highly stressed all the time, you will have lower energy compared to if you have lower levels of stress.
When it comes to time and money. There’s usually an inverse correlation between them.
People with low money (eg. students) usually have abundant time. People with more money (eg. high-performance executives and business owners) have little free time.
Of course there are the anomalies who inherit a fortune and have both in abundance. But this post is not for them.
In order to achieve your weight loss goals, you have to figure what you have more of. And allocate those excess resources accordingly to the process.
That’s the most efficient way to go about things.
When you break down the process of weight loss into its first principles, you realise that there are just two ways to invest in the process. You can pay either with time or with money.
And what you choose to pay with depends on what you have in abundance. So the key to achieve the results you want is to leverage what you have more of; not what you have less of.
What does it mean when I say that you need to leverage your time if you have more of it?
It means you have more opportunities to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, reiterate, and figure out what actually works for you when it comes to losing weight long-term.
This may sound simplistic but it is not. Because this process usually takes years to reap benefits from.
If I take my own example— I have been lifting weights, been into exercise and nutrition for more than a decade now. And it has taken me a lot of trial and error to finally figure out what works for me. And to figure out what actually works for most of the population out there.
The time frame to get here has been the greater part of 11 years.
If you have that kind of time in hand, you can invest it to figure out what works for you. It is not a lack of information that holds people back in the 21st century. Everything you need to know is out there.
All you have to do is consume the information, execute, make mistakes and learn from those mistakes. That is what takes time. Most people forever stay stuck in the consumption stage and never reiterate the execution.
If you go to the Workday Physique blog and read all the posts till date, you’d have a thorough understanding of what needs to be done for you to achieve your weight loss goals.
But that is going to take up some time.
And then understanding the information and putting it into practice will take further trial and error. You’ll make mistakes and you’ll learn from those mistakes.
This is a never-ending process.
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When I was starting out on my own fitness journey, I had a lot of time.
I did not have money. I was just a teenager. So I would go read up on things, test them out. And if something was not working, I’d figure out a solution by reading more on that.
I’d just reiterate this over years and years. If you have that kind of luxury, you should do that.
The second way that you can leverage your time is by making sure that you are the one buying groceries and cooking your meals. This will ensure that your diet is 100% dialled in.
I don’t understand when people with a lot of time in hand rely on others to cook their meals.
Your diet is what matters most when it comes to achieving your weight loss goals.
And if you’re not able to get that to 100%, it’s going to just take you longer.
If you have spare time during the day, I don’t see why you should not be in the kitchen making your own meals. Stop relying on others to cook your food.
The third way you can leverage excess time when you don’t have enough money is to join a bare-bones public gym. College students may not have the funds to afford highly-equipped facilities and that’s alright.
During my college days, I used my hostel gym that cost me a token fee of ₹100 a year. It was open only for limited hours, was always packed, had no fans or air conditioning.
It was a dungeon.
But I made it work. And I think I looked alright.
It took me longer to get my workouts done at times. And I also had to plan my day so I could make it to the gym when it was less crowded.
If you’re in a similar place, make do with a basic facility. Later on, when you have more money and less time, you can invest in better things.
So this is what it means to leverage your time to achieve weight loss.
But this is the group of people that we at Workday Physique DON’T work with.
We work with high performance individuals who work as corporate executives, who run businesses and are busy professionals.
They have limited time in hand. But more money to invest in themselves.
If that’s you, your approach would be to leverage the excess money you have to achieve your weight loss goals.
That means number one— you need to hire a good coach.
You don’t have the luxury of a young teen to make a decade worth of mistakes. You’re probably already in your 30s and may have a family to take care of, on top of your demanding job.
You need to hire someone who already has seen all possible obstacles you may encounter— someone with experience in the field and with all the answers. That way you eliminate any need for trial and error.
This would save you years.
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So pay someone to buy your groceries and hire someone who can follow precise cooking instructions according to your needs.
Don’t hire low quality staff for these things.
Low quality staff require more training, usually can’t follow instructions and will cause more frustration. Invest well if you’re going to invest at all.
If you can give clear instructions, your diet would pretty much run on autopilot. A good chef would cook you meals within your calorie and macro targets. And would also be able to take care of variety in dishes so you don’t get bored.
The third thing you need to do if you have more disposable income is to build yourself a home gym; or move to an apartment with access to gym and sport facilities.
I workout at home. And I’d never pick a commercial gym over this if I had a choice.
I have everything I need and I can train anytime I want.
If you can spare just 1-2 hours between meetings and work to squeeze in a workout. This is what you need.
This kind of luxury is not available to everyone. But if you can afford it, I would recommend this as an investment for your physical health.
What is important here to realize is that you shouldn’t try to cut corners.
If you have more time, don’t waste it consuming useless content. Use the time to learn new things from credible sources, to apply these learnings and to reiterate through mistakes. Use free time to buy groceries and to cook your meals.
If you have more money, invest in the best staff you can hire. Low quality staff are a headache and you’ll waste more time trying to train them. Buy good-quality durable equipment for your home gym.
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The most common problem that I see is people with more time trying to leverage their limited finances to achieve weight loss results.
So they hire low-quality trainers, try to build a home gym with poor quality equipment, outsource their cooking to staff who can’t follow instructions. This is ineffective.
If you have limited money, use that to buy groceries and to invest in your education. Don’t outsource things you have time to do by yourself.
On the other hand are people with limited time trying to do everything by themselves.
They’re spending hours watching videos on weight loss, cooking and meal-prepping and barely making it to the gym. This is ineffective as well.
If this is you, stop.
Outsource your strategising, shopping, cooking and cleaning to skilled people. Use your limited time to relax, recover and de-stress.
Bottomline here is that you must use the excess resources you have to achieve your weight loss goals. So figure out where you’re at currently and proceed from there.
Formulate a game-plan according to your individual circumstances and you’ll succeed.
If you have been trying to reach your weight loss goals for a while now, but are struggling a bit in the process.
It’s probably because of a lack of consistency, a lack of guidance or a lack of support.
If you’d like a 24×7 support system to hold your hand and guide you through the process till you get to your goals, you should consider 1-on-1 coaching with Workday Physique.
