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Look at these photos. What do you notice?
Damn that looks good!
I don't know about you, but the first thing I noticed was DAMN THAT LOOKS GOOD.
Maybe a little jealousy.
But also a tiny moment of happiness at imagining putting one of those in my mouth. Ahhhh…so good.
And yet, most of us will never make a dish like that. In fact, by looking at those photos, we'll treat them like a tiny morphine addiction to feel good for just a minute…and then go back to our day.
Remind you of anything?
Ahhh…I feel so good. But I'm not going to do anything. Thanks for nothing, Obama
Guys, I completely get how fun it is to look at pics on Pinterest and Instagram, and (if you're a huge fucking nerd), Money Magazine.
But I also know that stuff is engineered to give you a quick dopamine hit. You feel good, you even feel accomplished, then you go right back to your normal day.
And as part of IWT, I've always been fascinated with areas where we feel better but don't actually change anything. Because I know that if we make a tiny change here or there, our entire life can change.
We did it with money. We did it with careers and entrepreneurship.
Now I want to talk about food
What do you put in your body every day? How does it help you perform?
There's a reason why I'm talking about this now: I think a Rich Life is about much more than money. I'd made plenty of money and I was still eating the same stuff I'd always eaten.
In fact, my food became part of my identity. I would brag about eating Taco Bell at 25. I even wrote about it in my book!
There's nothing wrong with Taco Bell. But isn't it interesting how our food becomes our identity? Where we eat, how much we eat, what type of cuisine we eat.
As my business grew, I wanted to find every edge I could. And I knew that if I could understand how food works, I could have endless energy every single day.
More than that, I wanted to figure out why I kept saying things like “I should cook more” or “I should really start eating better…” BUT I NEVER DID.
What I learned about the food-marketing complex
I started reading all these food articles - Paleo this, Atkins that, use extra-virgin olive oil! I've even watched The Food Network (notice I said “watched,” not “cooked”).
And here's what I realized: Most of the food stuff out there - the cooking shows, the articles, even the Instagram photos - is designed to get you to consume more food photos.
It's food porn! It feels good for a second…but doesn't change anything long term.
Check out this quote from Allen Salkin, author of a tell-all book about The Food Network:
“Food Network is not in the business of teaching people to cook or improving our knowledge about kale. Food Network is in the business of getting people to watch more Food Network. It's always been about selling advertising to a target demographic…”
YES! Exactly.
The Tyranny of Takeout
The worst part is…food porn works. We look at some food model's pan-seared ahi lemon tuna and think, “oh, it seems so easy!” We even feel like we learned something. But deep down, we know we can't cook that.
I don't have the right pot. I don't know how to fillet that fish. And our most common go-to…“I don't have time.”
So what do we do? We open our fridge, sigh, and eat the same old stuff we've always eaten. Takeout, “grab a quick bite,” leftovers. The same old stuff - for years and years.
It actually gets worse, because each time we try (and fail) to cook, we're less motivated to try again. We get flabbier. We eat more takeout. And we start to give up on the possibility of looking and feeling our best.
Look, I'm as guilty as anyone.
For years, I was focused on growing my business. I never cooked anything. Every single day, I ordered delivery. Every day. FOR YEARS!
I got so good at ordering delivery, I could order food from Seamless (delivery site) in less than 15 seconds and the food would arrive while I was still on a call.
Pics from my Instagram. Don't judge.
3 things I learned that “food experts” don't understand
I learned that I “knew” I should eat differently…but I wasn't ready to give up the foods I loved. I figured there had to be a middle ground instead of going from Zero to Kale.
Along the way, I realized food is a HUGELY underrated part of a Rich Life. It's what we eat 5+ times a day. Yet amazingly, all these years, I never stopped to think about what I was putting in my body.
I was just eating whatever was in front of me, never connecting the dots to how it made me feel.
So I googled “healthy eating.” I bought a few cookbooks. And yes, I even tried paleo.
But I don't want to eat broccoli and skinless chicken breast for the rest of my life. And I'm damn sure not making a lovely saffron soup on a Wednesday.
First, yes - I want to eat healthy…but I also want to eat DELICIOUS food. Sorry Mr. Nutritionist, my first rule is that I have to like what I eat! (Is that so weird?)
Second, food needs to work around your life. Are you really going to cook tilapia and take it to work? What happens when you warm it up and your coworkers smell fish in the conference room? People will hate you.
And finally, I want my food to give me energy and keep me focused, not leave me craving chips an hour from now.
My dream is simple: I just want to be able to make a delicious meal, in less than 20 minutes, that will actually leave me feeling GOOD, not tired.
I'll show you how to do that next Tuesday on my cooking show.
Click here to register. It's completely free.
-Ramit
P.S. By the way, this isn't just me. Over the last year, we've been testing a new course behind the scenes. We took students with no cooking experience and showed them how to create meals like this:
If you're curious for a sneak peek, come to next Tuesday's cooking show.
The big lie about “food porn” is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.
Guest post from Chrissy of Littles and Laundry
I am a frugal mama. Don't get me wrong, shopping is one of my favorite things to do – I be shoppin'. But most of the time… I be window shoppin'. 
For a number of years, exercise was a priority in my life. I grew up in a home where physical fitness was always encouraged and I went into marriage with the goal that I wanted to continue to make physical fitness a priority.
While I had periods of time where I didn't prioritize it as much as I should have, but for the most part, I was always doing some sort of exercise plan - whether it was P90X, The 30-Day Shred, Pilates, running, using the elliptical, or even just walking on the treadmill.
But last year, after reading The Adrenal Reset Diet and Trim Healthy Mama, I realized that I needed to give my body a lot more grace and not push myself so hard. This meant not only what I was nourishing my body with, but also in getting more sleep, not packing my schedule so full, allowing a lot more margin in my life, and not setting such ambitious goals at the expense of my health.
These books plus many other things inspired my Year of Rest this year… which has been such a good thing. But while I told myself that not pushing myself with exercise was to “take care of myself”, it actually was having the opposite affect.
Even though I had cut way back on my outside commitments, even though I was getting a lot more sleep, and even though I was doing a much better job of taking care of myself, I wasn't feeling energetic. Instead, I realized I was feeling lethargic and tired. And I knew it was because I wasn't making exercise enough of a priority.
But I was really hesitant to consider doing anything about it because I wanted to honor my commitment to a Year of Rest and, in looking at my schedule, it felt like if I were to add time in for more exercise, it was going to eat into my margin time.
So how did I end up making exercise a priority and find the time to work out for an hour and a half multiple times per week? Well, here's what I did:
Jesse had been worried about the lack of exercise in my life. For those of you who know him well, you know he is really into fitness and healthful living.
He works out faithfully almost every single day and we have an amazing gym in the garage with all sorts of equipment that he has slowly gotten - after lots of research and study on what the best equipment and workout training programs are. He loves to read articles, books, and magazines on fitness. He loves to study the best diets and workout plans and supplements to take. He is always investigating new fitness theories and listening to the latest weight-lifting podcasts. And he loves nothing more than to find someone else who is passionate about fitness to discuss all of his findings and research with.
As such, you can imagine that he has gently encouraged me to make fitness more of a priority. He never pushed me. He never shamed me. He just quietly suggested I consider making it more of a priority… because he knew it would make me feel better.
I wasn't ready to hear what he had to say for the first few months after I stopped regularly working out. I came up with excuses. I told him I needed to be kind to my body and give it a break.
But finally, after I had mentioned multiple times how I felt lethargic and tired, he knew he needed to motivate me. So one day in February, he and our good friend, Brian (who works for us full-time and works out with Jesse every day), came and told me that they really wanted me to start feeling more energetic. They saw how I was making self-care a priority in so many other areas and they felt like this was an important area, too.
Because they were both so kind and gracious about it and because they've both earned the right to speak into my life - even when it means saying the hard things - I listened. I told them that I really did want to start working out, but I was struggling to figure out when and how to make it happen.
It wasn't enough for me to recognize that I needed to make exercise a priority; I also needed to make a plan of action for how I was actually going to make it a priority.
In order to do that, I needed help.
I went to Jesse and asked him to help me put together a workout routine. He was thrilled to do so! In fact, I realized that I kind of made his month by doing so. I was not only stating my needs and asking for his help in an area that he's really good at, but I was asking him to do something for me that he's crazy passionate about.
Almost immediately, I could tell that it meant so much to him that I would come to him and ask for his expertise in area that he's spent years of his life researching. I realized that I'd never really shown much of an interest in this topic that he is SO into and it helped me get a better peek into his world by me wanting to have him help me come up with a workout plan.
Jesse's never one to do things halfheartedly, so he spent quite a bit of time researching options, asking me what areas I wanted to work on, taking body measurements, analyzing my current activity and strength level, and then devising a detailed plan.
I was so touched by how much effort he poured into this project and how much he wanted to set me up for success. In all honesty, I never realized that one of the side benefits would be getting to see my husband show so much love and care for me in this way.
Note: Jesse used a lot of the ideas for the workout plan he put together for me from the book, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. I haven't read it yet, but I've looked through it and am hoping to read it soon. He has found a lot of the ideas and suggestions from this author to be very helpful.
Asking for help is a great first step to get started, but I knew I needed to do more if I was actually going to do this for the longterm. So, I took a big leap out of my comfort zone and ask the guys if I could start working out with them every day.
Now, that might not seem like a big leap to you (especially if you're not an introvert who would much prefer to do an exercise DVD by yourself with the door shut), but for me, it was putting myself out there in a very vulnerable way. I knew both of them were lifting a lot of weight at this point and I was going to be coming in as a complete newbie. I knew I'd feel embarrassed that I couldn't lift much and didn't know correct form. I knew they were going to have to spend a lot of time helping and teaching and coaching me.
But I also knew I couldn't do this on my own. If I was actually going to follow through with the plan Jesse created for me, I needed to be accountable to other people.
So every day, at around 10:30 a.m., the kids start in on their independent homeschool work, we go out to our “garage gym”, we turn up the music, and we work out for the next hour and a half.
Have I had moments when I've felt uncomfortable and conspicuous? Absolutely! Especially in the beginning, I'd get frustrated that I couldn't seem to get my form correct and I was embarrassed at how hard I had to work to lift what seemed like a small amount.
Little bit by little bit, though, I am loving it more and more. I'm realizing that I'm so much stronger than I think I am and I'm actually really started to look forward to the workouts. I feel jazzed when I push myself hard. I feel excited when I surpass last week's personal best. And the guys have been SO encouraging to me along the way - cheering me on, pushing me to do my best, and not letting me give up.
Note: Jesse set up my whole workout program in the Strong App. This app is so great as it allows you to track the exercises, the weights, and the reps. It gives you rest time in between sets, tells you when you beat your personal best, and makes it so much easier to stay organized and know what you're supposed to do each workout. I'd highly recommend it!
It's often been said that when there's a will, you can usually find time to make a way. And that's what happened here.
I had told myself I didn't have time for a long workout each day, but I realized that it wasn't that I didn't have time, it was that I was choosing to spend my time on other things.
Making working out a priority meant that I had to rearrange my schedule and our family's schedule. Jesse and I talked about it and knew that it was worth it. I cut back on some of my business commitments, we moved some things around in the morning and afternoon, and I just committed to make it a priority for this season of my life.
Here's what I discovered: I'm pretty much getting just as much done and it's not hurting our daily schedule at all because now that my work time is shortened, I'm more focused and productive during it! Isn't it amazing how that happens? It's like the work expands to the time we have allotted for it!
I also have a lot more energy as a result of working out, I'm sleeping better, I'm motivated to eat better, and feel like I have more balance in my day. Instead of spending most of my day sitting and working on the computer and sitting and homeschooling, I have an hour and a half in the middle of the day devoted to physical fitness - which makes me feel so much better!
Best of all, I'm doing this with my husband. So it's something fun and different we're doing together - and we both love the camaraderie we feel in doing this together!
All of this contributes to me feeling happier, healthier, and more confident. This, in turn, gives me more energy, which makes me more productive. So you see, while it might seem like a lot to be “giving up” an hour and a half of my day to working out, the truth is that I feel like I am gaining so much more in my life (and not just when it comes to muscles!) than I'm giving up. And it's been totally worth the time and effort invested!
What are YOUR favorite ways to exercise? How do you find time to fit it into your day? I'd love to hear!
