Sometimes when I assess members, they start the conversation with, “This week was a horrible week. I ate pretty badly.” Usually what they’re thinking is that the food they eat will affect their fat gain right away, and it will show in their results. While it’s true that eating the wrong foods will affect the body right away, it’s also true that the body takes times to store food and convert it into fat. What you eat this week won’t affect your fat levels until next week. This is what I call the residual effect.
When I changed my ways to a better life, I remember going through some of the residuals of my past. This means that even though I was doing the right things, I would still have negative effects from the past negative actions I took.
One of my friends had a pretty unhappy life because of the decisions he had made. One day he decided to start taking the right actions, but after he started, he would still have negative effects from his past negative actions. He complained that even though he was doing the right things, his results were not changing, and life still brought him misery. I told him that of course he still needed to deal with the residuals from his past decisions.
The residuals of our actions usually come a while after we take them...
For example, all the damage we did to the earth in the ’80s and ’90s by mistreating it with waste and pollution we are suffering from now.
Your body responds the same way. Many people say they can eat anything and never get fat or suffer from disease or have any physical problems. However, years later, it catches up with them.
It will take time to see the results of actions taken now. But there will be results. This is why so many people don’t change their ways even though their brain is telling them that they are not making the best choices. Or when they are making the best choices, they usually aren’t satisfied because they are not seeing the results fast enough.
This is how recession, depression or environment degradation starts:
Everything begins by slowly neglecting the system. History can teach us a lot of what happened and how it happened. Many times we expect the inevitable so we ignore it. We continue taking the wrong actions thinking that everything will be okay because something magical will compensate for our wrong decisions.
We can avoid these disasters by making the right decisions now. It’s common sense, right? If you don’t want to gain any undesired fat, then don’t eat the wrong foods and do your exercise. Don’t just hope that fat magically will just “melt down” or that taking a pill will take care of it.
We want the best place to live, and we want our descendants to inhabit it, but we have not stopped to think about how our decisions are affecting this earth and that they may need to suffer to fix our mistakes. We want to be healthy, have a nice body, be young, strong, happy, disease free. But we have not stopped to think about how drinking, eating junk food, drinking energy drinks, doing drugs and not exercising is going to affect us in the future. We mean to do well, but many times when we make decisions we think about how we are going to benefit short term without thinking about the future.
I understand it’s difficult to live a perfect life...
I have made many wrong decisions in my life, and I still make them. However, I do my best to make conscious decisions thinking about how I can improve my life and this planet to enjoy all the results of the residuals of my decisions in the future.
Something that makes me happy is thinking that together we can change this world and make it better not only for ourselves but for all future generations. Remember that it’s ingrained in human biology that thinking about others makes us happy. In addition, when we think about our decisions and how beneficial they are in general, we are not only thinking about others, we are thinking about our own life, and this is in turn how others benefit. In the end, the real beneficiary is oneself.
Weight loss as a side effect...
Either thinking about your weight loss, the planet, your financials or the way to treat people around you, there is always residuals from your decision. Start thinking about the future consequences of your decisions and you don’t have to worry about fixing anything in the future.
This is how also weight loss become a side effect. If you only on acquiring good eating, exercise and mental habits, one of the residuals from everything you are practicing will be weight loss.
So start today and let the future you always wanted reveal in front of you.
Custom Body Fitness is located in Glenwood Springs CO, Carbondale CO and Basalt - Willits CO