Mind Pump: Raw Fitness Truth - 1472: How to Break 13 Destructive Lockdown Habits

Episode Date: January 21, 2021

In this episode Sal, Adam & Justin cover how to break 13 shelter in place/lockdown habits that can be destructive if left unchecked. How to Break 13 Destructive Lockdown Habits. (2:38) #1 – Stress eating. (4:14) #2 – Baking. (9:15) #3 – Eating out. (13:07) #4 – Alcohol consumption. (16:32) #5 – Losing sight of fitness. (21:09) #6 – Sedentary lifestyle. (23:08) #7 – Not following a workout plan. (26:59) #8 – Becoming a Google doctor. (29:32) #9 – All-day scrolling on social media. (31:47) #10 – Refreshing the news every 5 minutes. (33:08) #11 – Online shopping. (34:48) #12 – Throwing your schedule out the window. (37:24) #13 – Blurring the line between work/home life. (38:52) Related Links/Products Mentioned January Promotion: MAPS Fitness Starter Bundle 50% off! Visit Joovv for an exclusive offer for Mind Pump listeners! The Bad Habits You’ve Picked up During the COVID-19 Pandemic MAPS Fitness Products Data Usage Has Increased 47 Percent During COVID-19 Quarantine Mind Pump Podcast – YouTube Mind Pump Free Resources

If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, MIND, with your hosts. Salda Stefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews. You are listening to the World's Top Fitness Health and Entertainment podcast. You're listening to Mind Pump. Now, in today's episode, we talk about the bad habits that a lot of us have developed over the last year of lockdowns. And so we talk about the 13 most common destructive lockdown habits and how to break all of them. So you're gonna enjoy this episode.

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One time paying me $80, you get access to all of them and you get a 30-day money back guarantee. Go check them out. Go to mapsgenuary.com. Again, that's maps, MAPSgenuary.com. I was spending some time this last week with my aunt and uncle who I haven't seen in a while. And I'm always trying to get my aunt to follow our maps program. And she is notoriously guilty of buying into all the stuff that's marketed to her all the time.

And she's always telling me like, you know, you need to do this. And you need to do that, right? And I'm just like, oh my god. And just, please listen to me and just do this, right? And so anyways, we're having this like fitness conversation and then she starts to read this article to me and I thought, that's a really cool conversation actually. And it's around all the bad habits,

all the destructive or bad habits that people have picked up during COVID and how to address them. Like what are they first of all, like the most common bad habits that we see people doing and then how to address each one of them? That's a good topic because of COVID. We have been working from home more, not going and traveling nearly as much. Way less active.

Anxiety is up. Yes. Anxiety and fear is probably, I mean, it hides that we haven't seen in a long time, especially because social media just provides with that quick hit of fear. You're constantly checking and reading things. So that's bound to change people's behaviors. And it's also bound to encourage people

or create an environment where people are more likely to self-medicate to help themselves feel better, whether that be with substances or behaviors, right? Well, that's the first one that comes to mind for me that I think, and I think we're all somewhat guilty of this and that's stress-eating, is that right now, this was this last year, at least in my lifetime, right?

So I'm approaching 40 years old. This was probably, and even though, and I think we were very blessed as far as making it out with and so far, nobody getting COVID, the business has survived one of the toughest times this last year, but still for sure, one of the most stressful times, just whether it be with relationships

and all the political shit that was going on or like what was going on with COVID, and it's just really natural for the average person to just kind of turn to the refrigerator and pick and snack at food all day. Now how do you guys respond to stress and food? Do you find yourselves eating more or moving into this kind of state of stress eating? I don't find, well, I find it's a gradual process where it kind of creeps up on you. Usually it starts with one sort of processed food item or something that's like, you know, something snacky or a cookie or something like that that tends to kind of just keep repeating

itself the next day and then the day after that and then maybe a little bit more. And so for me anyways, I tend to catch myself craving and certain to have those cravings again. And that's really where I have to check and assess if this is becoming a habit. Well, I'm pretty good about being aware of this, although I know I catch myself doing it, but I try and pay attention to when it's heightened in my day,

like when the stress is heightened, and then if I have this tendency to wanna just go over to the refrigerator, even though maybe I just ate a half hour before. So the most common thing with me related to this topic in COVID is I have two best friends, we're on this thread, we've grown up since we were kids, and all three of us are very different politically,

and because the political climate has been so crazy this last year, I would find myself getting in these really like heated debates and conversations with my friends and we would go back and forth. And then when what would break that up is this tendency to want to go to my cupboard or my refrigerator and that is when I am like, okay, this is causing that and breaking that and being aware of it. Yeah, what makes stress eating destructive is it's ignoring your natural hunger cues

or satiety cues. It's also developing a relationship with food that's hard to break, because we all have a relationship of food, but if your relationship is built around using it as a way to make yourself feel better all the time, that's why we stress eat right eating can be a pleasurable Experience in the moment. And so if you're stressed out It's a nice break from the stress to eat something pleasurable

So the foods we tend to pick when we stress eat tend to be these Hyper palatable pleasurable and fast foods. They're quick because when you want to get out of stress, you don't want to wait long, you want to get out of stress right now, and you want to eat it very, very quickly. So this develops that kind of bad relationship. The antidote to this is awareness is becoming aware of the behavior you're doing. That's easier said than done, right? So you hear me say that, and you're like, well, good luck doing that. How do I become more aware in the moment because I tend to become aware later after it already happened? The best, my best experience doing, being aware and ass around stress eating with my clients was by creating barriers between them

and the quickness at which they could get this food. So like an example is don't have these foods in your house. Now this doesn't mean that you can't eat them. You can tell yourself if I really want something, I'll go get a single serving of it at the grocery store, but the barrier between you and the grocery store gives you enough time to at least allow awareness to come in to play. So if it's a 15 minute process or 30 minute process to get in your car, drive to the grocery store, find your single serving of whatever you want, pay for whatever,

that gives you enough time to say, this is stress eating. I don't think I want to do this. I also think that planning your meals out, right, is a great strategy for this too. I think that a lot of times this is subconscious for people. They don't know that they're stress eating, they don't think of it like that.

They get into conversation like the one that I was explaining and then they just kind of drift over the refrigerator and grab something and start eating where if they don't have any sort of structure and plan, that's really easy for that to take over where if I say, okay, like, this is why I like to meal prep, this is why I like to encourage clients to do that and say, hey, this is meal one, meal two, meal three, meal four, however many meals you're gonna let yourself have. And then if you get in that moment where you're like, oh, I'm going in the refrigerator, you have a meal that you're supposed to eat the next time

when you're hungry. And a lot of times if you just go to that and you start to eat that, you find like, oh, okay, I wasn't that hungry when I start to eat it. And so I like just simply planning your day out ahead of time, going into the day versus you have no plan for what you plan to eat it. And so I like just simply planning your day out ahead of time going into the day versus you have no plan for what you plan to eat that day and then you allow the stress that's inevitable during times like this.

And you just run by your emotion. Exactly. Now you had also talked about Adam, you did bring this up the other day about your aunt and you said that she was baking a lot. And I find this, this is actually a thing right now. So I wanted to bring this one up because not only did my aunt tell me this, my sister brought this up to me too. So in court he's brought this up to me too. Okay, so this, and this felt that they fall

in the category of just like normal people to me. Like they are not like super health conscious. They're not, you know, they're not like, I think majority of our audience, they're just my, they wanna be healthier, but they're not as, I think, a majority of our audience, through just my, they wanna be healthier, but they're not as focused on it, but they did both notice that when COVID hit, they found themselves like baking all the time,

like something that would be more around the holidays or like a birthday or something that would be a more rare occasion, all of a sudden they're baking two, three, four times a week, and that had kicked up. Well, I think there's a lot of factors with that. Like, in terms of the smells they're baking two, three, four times a week and that had kicked up. Well, I think there's a lot of factors with that. In terms of the smells, the aromas, like, you know, just a lot of times, like what Courtney always tells me is just like,

it makes you feel good to be able to bake some of these things for the kids to eat and like, you know, have it around and it's a comforting thing. Like it's a welcoming environment when you have things, like these aromas in the house, but I'm like, you know, we had to really kind of check that because if it was gonna repeat itself,

it was happening a little bit too often and we had to really assess like, is this something that is gonna become a problem or is this something that's just, you know, a random thing we'll do every now and then. And baking is different than cooking. Typically baking includes foods that are probably not as good for you.

I mean, you can cook a lot. Yeah, we're not about baking a potato. Yeah, this is a piece of it. Yeah, yeah, we're not like, and reds and things. And here's the other problem with baking. Now, there's nothing, nothing, by the way, inherently wrong with baking.

There's the bad relationship that I think COVID is created around baking where people are home. And they're like, I'm gonna just spend time baking. And then when you bake, here's some of the problems that end up happening. Number one, there's a little bit of the justification. I made this, therefore I'm gonna eat it. And then number two, you tend to bake multiple servings.

You over and dolge. Yeah, well nobody bakes one cookie. You bake 15 cookies and then you end up eating them all. So how do you get out of this bad habit? I would say spend more time cooking rather than baking. If you enjoy the process, and I get that by the way, I get the process of baking, I enjoy doing it sometimes with my kids. It's fun.

Rather than baking, try cooking or try choosing to bake things that are a little bit better for you. That I would even look at, because this is gonna be so individual, right? Like what's a lot of baking to you? Maybe you're somebody who, you know, never used to bake, and now it's on your baking every single week,

or maybe you're somebody who used to bake every single week, and now you're doing it four times a week. So I would reverse you out, like I would with a client with almost anything else. I would assess how often am I doing it, and then I would start to spread that out longer. So I would say, okay, you know, in the past, you know, it'd be once or twice a month, maybe I bake some sort of goods or whatever that were. Now since COVID, I'm doing it every single week. So instead of just

going cold turkeys and you can't ever bake any foods, just say, hey, maybe limit that to a celebration or a specific time versus saying, I can't ever bake again or going from somebody who might be baking multiple times in the week going down to zero. I think I would slowly reverse you out depending on how I do it. Right. And if you like the process of baking, if you like doing it to kids and it's a fun thing, there's a lot of paleo baking sites where it's not 100%, but usually you're going to make things that are lower calorie and that are a little better for you. So, you know, one, that's one thing you could do as well. I like the process. I like doing it on my kids. It's a great thing that we just started doing. Fine. Try to bake things that are not going to be as damaging. Because in the paleo-olithic

era, we had ovens. Yes, they baked a lot. But anyways. Yeah, here's one that happened to me, which I never ate out as much as I did during the period of COVID. Now, when I say eat out, I don't mean I went somewhere to eat out, I did that very little because everything was closed.

But for some reason, I door dashed way more than I ever did before. And again, I think this is connected to the stress eating, but also connected to the, I door dashed way more than I ever did before. And again, I think this is connected to the stress eating, but also connected to the, I can't go to the restaurant, so I'll just order the food. And then, oh, this is so easy. I'll just keep doing it. There was periods where some restaurants were open and I just found, we found every excuse to go because it almost felt like it was an exclusive thing that wasn't going to last

long and it was true. Like it was, we would go just to try and support like our favorite restaurant, but it became like, almost like a two, three, sometimes, you know, like four on a crazy week where we would go to like this one restaurant. It's just to try and support them, but yeah, we, I mean, it sneaks up on you.

And the thing now, everything's so easily accessible with Dordash and Uber Eats and all these things too. You can kind of bring all that home with you. Well, this is something I already kind of do, right? So we eat out quite a bit and we use Dordash probably at least once a day, every day. And before, even before COVID. Now since then, that's ramped up quite a bit. Now,

there's, I think there's a couple of ways that you look at this where it becomes an issue, is, and I have this, I can train in, I, because we're ordering out so often, it's tempting to order the five guys. It's tempting to order the Chinese food, because anything that you feel like that you're craving is right there. It's right there and delivered to your house. I don't necessarily think there's something totally wrong with eating out if you make the right choices and you take an account that you're eating out and that the calories may be a little bit different

than what they estimate on their website. So for us, we've always eaten out quite a bit and we just make healthy choices. There's nowadays, it's so different. I was just talking again, I was sharing this because a lot of diet talk with my aunt this last weekend. I was just sharing too, they live out in Las Vegas. How cool it is that just 15, 20 years ago, if you ate out, pretty much fast food or like fine dining was like your your only option But we in the last decade I'd say it's getting competitive with how many healthy choices there are

There are a lot of options now that you can go out to eat and and get really good meals And so I think it's more about checking in with yourself on the choices that you're making if you're doing this because no doubt everybody ramped this up, right? Nobody wants to go to a grocery store right now. Nobody is going out. There's definitely a factor. Yeah, for sure. And so that's completely understandable. And it doesn't mean, oh, you had to eliminate using DoorDash. I don't agree with that. What I do think though is because of the convenience and how easy it is, it's very easy to allow the cravings to drive the decision. And that's where you have to keep

yourself in check. Yeah, and then you, you know, you kind of said this too. It's just consider that for the most part, when you eat out, it's going to be higher calorie. It's not going to be lower calorie than when you make it at home. Even if you eat something healthy, they tend to use more oils and more things to increase the flavor. And so the calories would be higher, so I would say definitely take that into consideration. Now the next one, this one became a big thing. In fact, there's been lots of articles on this, and that is that alcohol consumption has skyrocketed.

And it makes sense, right, when stress is high, alcohol. And the whole sales go through the roof. Yes, and alcohol, look, like any substance, you know, you can have a good or bad relationship with it. If you start to develop a relationship with alcohol, that is your method of de-stressing. You are heading down a road that, it's not good. You start to develop a really bad relationship

with alcohol, where that becomes your de facto way of feeling better. And it's not hard to imagine what that would go. This was one of those that was a little bit more closer for me than the snacky processed food and comfort food. It was more de-stressing with a glass of whiskey. That was something like, I found myself in conversations like Adam was talking about with my own family that's divided about stupid stuff and just taking in a lot of

what the world is, you know, bringing was just hard. It was just too much that, you know, I was internalizing, wasn't realizing it. And then I find myself with a cup of my hand just trying outside, just trying to kind of decompress But that was something I had to I had to really you know check myself and realize that this is happening We a little more often than I would like now. How do you guys handle clients that just that are like a you know big Winder they love to drink their wine and of course and now I think it was inevitable at this time If you were already somebody who enjoyed a glass of wine, right, so it's ramped up for probably everybody and even people, I mean, I drink more alcohol this last year than I probably have ever, you know, maybe

aside from when I was 20 to 22 range, right? So what do you guys say to the client who already kind of enjoys the glass of wine here and there and they've now ramped the client who already kind of enjoys the glass one here and there and they've now ramped up to it's kind of every night like what's the process to get them to become aware of that or reduce that what's that look like? So okay so a couple things one a little bit of alcohols is okay I don't know I'm not one that subscribes to the whole like health benefits of alcohol I think that's largely overstated. Yeah. But I also don't think there's a ton of damage in a single drink, you know, especially if it's not a mixed drink with lots of sugar and stuff like that that you have in the day.

So like a normal, you know, eight ounce, pour a wine or whatever in the evening, you know, that's fine. The problem becomes with, and just like food or just like anything else, why you're having it. If you need it to decompress, that's when it becomes a problem. If you enjoy it, and you're just enjoying your glass of wine, just like with food, you know, if you need to eat the food

to decompress, you're gonna start to go down, is the intent behind it? Absolutely. So what I would say to people like this is, if you're finding that alcohol is your preferred method of de-stressing, every other time you feel stressed, try to use something that's healthy. So try to do something like going on a walk.

By the way, going on a walk, a lot of people think, oh, that's stupid. It's actually, in my experience, one of the more successful ways I've gotten clients to try something else is I'll say, try doing a 15 minute walk outside and I always get great results with that. For the people actually do it, they come back and say,

that was a great suggestion or meditation or stretching or an audio book, that's another. So something that's healthy every other time, try to incorporate something aside from the alcohol to kind of change that relationship. I try and limit it to just the social experiences, right? So I don't wanna take somebody who, you know, they have a couple glasses of wine

with their spouse on Friday nights, cause that's their, they have someone to watch the kids and they do this nice dinner and they have couple glasses of wine with it. And it's a very special time for them and they enjoy that. A client that really likes to drink or likes wine, like that on a regular basis, I allow that.

And then I say, let's eliminate the buy yourself drinking. You know, like you're not being social, it's not really this great. You're using it because it de-stresses you or where, and then I encourage, like what you just said, walking or some mobility or, you know, gratitude practices or a lot of almost anything else And then I encouraged like what you just said, walking or some mobility or you know, gratitude practices or a lot of almost anything else to de-stress than going to a substance like

food or alcohol. And so I don't want to tell that client that no, you can never have wine or no, you can't do that. But let's limit it to the social experiences when that you feel like it's enhancing your life versus this is something I just do every single night to de-stress. Right. Now, the next one, you know, I did see this a lot, at least I got DMs from people that sat into, which is kind of losing sight of their fitness goals or in general just losing

sight of their fitness. And a lot of the reasons I got for this was gyms are closed. Oh, gyms closed so now I'm not gonna work out or people say, I just don't feel like it. So their fitness habits and behaviors took a big dive. Now, one of the ways that I like to fix this is talking to people about how to use fitness like a tool. It's not always gonna be about working out

and having a crazy hard workout and getting stronger and performance and all these wonderful improvements. Sometimes workouts are a way to distress. Sometimes workouts are a way to break up the day. If you develop this relationship with exercise where you can use it regardless of the context to make you improve your quality of life,

then what you'll find is you're gonna be consistent no matter what, whether you feel your best or you don't feel your best, the workout itself is something that you do because it makes you feel better. I also think that part of why people lost ground is because I think they kind of treated it. You know how like you guys had clients that like the holidays they just check out

and they're like I'll be back in January. You know, like it's- I give up. Yeah, you know, it's just like, I'm going for everything to open up again. Right, so that's, I really think that's where this, what happened here. I don't think we all anticipated this to go

as long as we did. I think when we got locked down and everybody would, their gym shut down, it was really easy to go like, oh shit, gym to shut down, I can't go get my- I would be opening a month. Right, I'm just gonna, ah, whatever. I'm just gonna just not worry about it right now

and just forget about my goals that I set maybe the month before or whatever. Stay safe. Yeah, and then I'll get back to and resume when everything else is back to normal. And what we're realizing is that we don't know how long this is gonna carry on. And boy, are the pounds starting to pile up

when you just keep procrastinating on your goals that you set earlier for you? Yeah, now the next one, I've read articles that have talked about how people have become more sedentary. They've become essentially couch potatoes during the lockdown. And I get why? You might have at least gone to the office before and walked around there for a little bit

and walked to your friend's cubicle or to the bathroom or whatever. Now you're at home, so, and it's funny, I have family members like this where we had this conversation where they had to pull themselves out of it because they're literally saying to me things like, oh, nine a.m. I have my first Zoom meeting.

I literally wake up at 8.45, wash my face, and I'm on the thing, and I put pants on. And I'm in bed all day long. And this is what I'm doing. And so here's the thing you have to do. You have to organize your day to increase activity because our days are already organized to be sedentary. It's natural to not move when you're on Zoom all day long.

I mean, you have to make it so that you move. So what do I do? What would you do? You have a stand-up desk or set a timer for breaks in between for when you can stretch or do some light squats or a walk. I love telling people to do a 15 minute walk after breakfast lunch and dinner.

So there you go, 45 minutes of activity right there, naturally after breakfast lunch. Yeah, you gotta take control of your activity right there, naturally after breakfast. Yeah, you gotta take control of your schedule. It looks totally different now. And I know that's been a really tough transition for a lot of people to have that work and home sort of merger together and to be able to separate the two.

So really just kind of looking at areas where you can even go intentionally on a walk and go to a distance and come back and break up your day. And so that way, you can regain a lot of some of those opportunities for activity. But you really have to be intentional about that and not just reactionary in terms of this is my new place. And I'm just going to plop down and get my work done and then veg out and watch TV when I'm done. The irony of this is that I actually,

at least in my experience or my family and my circle of people that I know, they have more flexibility than they ever have. As far as to, it's not that, so every family member that I know that is working from home now, they have a pretty flexible schedule like whether you work for Facebook,

or they have a check-in time, or everybody checks in, and they do their little meeting. And then you're supposed to do your work all day. And there's nobody that's standing over them and watching, like, are you sitting down at the couch all day long doing, and in front of the computer?

So there's nothing that stops them from at every hour going and doing one set of 10 squats. They could totally do that if they want to do it. They're just not doing it. They've just chose to, like you said earlier, so roll out of bed and they're pajamas still, not even get around really, just get right onto the computer.

But this is not because of a lack of freedom to be able to build a routine or movement in the day. It's just fairly, it's easier to do and I'm just not gonna do it. It actually means discipline. Yeah, it takes a little bit of work to in the day, it's just fairly, it's easier to do, and I'm just not gonna do it. It actually being disciplined. Yeah, it takes a little bit of work to make your day, be conducive to movement. I will say this though, this is an easy one

to actually remedy, try it out, add a little bit of movement, and you'll feel so much better, and you actually be more productive. Yeah, watch how much better work is if you just get up at every hour, and you take 10 minutes. Well, I've actually, the family members

have gotten to do this. They've all come back and been like, oh, I love doing this now. I feel so much better. I don't realize how crappy I was feeling by not moving. Oh, I would love it. This is an issue for a client of mine. I would love to see work hard for 50 minutes,

walk for 10 at every hour. Yeah, work hard. You're like, buckle down beyond the computer and go hard. And if you have to go hard for two hours straight, then go for a walk for 20 minutes afterwards. So every hour, for every 50 minutes, do like a 10 minutes about it. Yeah, and that can be walking, it could be some body weight squats, it could be, if you have an M.

Yeah, it could be a lot of stuff and pay attention to how much more productivity you get out of your workday. Yeah, now the next one, this one's where you see a lot of fitness people, or people who are into fitness kind of fell into the strap, which is not following a workout plan. So they may be active and they may be doing stuff, but they're not following a plan. Now, here's a thing about working out. There is a point at which once you become very advanced and you've been working out for, in my experience, this is someone who's been working out consistently for five years or more, you can train a little bit more intuitively.

But even then, following an actual plan makes a big difference. And what they find and studies that when people follow a plan, they're less likely to avoid movements that they don't like that they need to do. So you're less likely, for example, to skip leg day if you follow a plan. You're more likely to be consistent because the plan tells you these are the days that you're working out and you tend to get better results. So get a plan, something that tells you you're working out on these days and you're doing these exercises

for this interruption, whatever, and follow it. You're far more likely to be successful if you follow a plan. I mean, this hits home for me because we've been training for so long that it's always been tough for me as a trainer To follow like a structured plan because I know how to build plans And so I always give myself this you know flexibility and freedom to do what I want and I like that

And I prefer that most of time But I have to say that you know recently we have structured a split routine plan That we're all kind of following and meeting each other as a routine in the morning. And I haven't been this good and this consistent on both training and diet in a very long time. So even somebody who knows their body, it's very familiar with their way around the weight room

and can build programs and train themselves, still benefit from this structure and maybe more so now than ever with the way things are. Yeah, and a plan can be anything. It's just it really of course if it's well written it makes a big difference, but the biggest difference is the fact that you tend to be more consistent. So you can literally just write out these are the days I'm going to work out and these are the things I'm going to do. I think it's even more important now because you know in the gym you kind of could see the environment, you could see the machines, you could see squat racks,

everything kind of like what you're going to do as you walk in versus at home. A lot of times people are pretty limited with equipment. They don't really know what to do besides like pushups and squats maybe or something and how to structure that and organize that. And so to make your time effective and efficient requires you to have this all dialed in and figured out and have a plan for action. Now, I feel like the next one,

I chose just for sale. I feel it. That's what I did. The next one is coming a Google doctor right now. And because I've even caught myself, which I'm so not this guy. Dear Web MD. Yes, but with the stress of COVID,

I can't help but think this has to be super common right now that everybody is so paranoid that they might have it or someone they know might have it, that they are, I would love to see the stats on this Doug, if you could look to stuff, look at the traffic on WebMD and see if it's like exploded in the last life. Life-face itches, do I have COVID?

I mean, just in general, just internet usage is probably gone through the roof, but yeah, you have to be aware of yourself, because research is great. It's great to go online and learn things. You can become more aware of health issues and ways to make yourself healthier and that kind of stuff. That's great.

But you have to also be aware enough to know that you may be somebody that handles stress this way. I'm one of these people. If I'm in a situation that's stressful, my go-to is to research and read and read and read. When it comes to health, boy, there know, there's so many symptoms that... Daxial laugh. Oh yeah, and it could be terrible thing. And of course, what's gonna happen?

You have swelling in your lymph node, right? So you're gonna look it up and it could be either a viral infection or it could be lymphoma, right? What's the thing that's gonna worry you the most? Oh my god, do I have lymphoma? Let me look that up. Let me look up the other symptoms.

The worst case scenario. Fatigue, oh, I have been kind of tired lately. You know, and you go on all this. So you got to be careful and be self-aware. Am I this kind of person? And, you know, what's this? What's that saying? If you see hoof prints in the sand, think horse, not zebra, right? So that's like, be the more obvious thing. So, yeah, the Occam's razor approach. Yeah. So it's like okay. I've heard that I probably just get tells me that all time So I may you know I may have lymphoma, but I probably just have a viral infection

So let me just think of that and yeah, not be so usually the the most simple answer it wins exactly Now the next one's kind of connected to this which is the all-day Scrolling this is the one I'm guilty of right now. Yeah, this has been really tough for me, especially being that I've talked about this so much on the show, but I've caught myself sitting there and just, and you know what, here's one too, guilty of this, because of all the political bullshit and the debating and the arguing and all that, some of that, it feeds into this too, because then you start researching your bias or the opposite side.

So I find myself just on, and just keep showing up in your feeds. So it sucks you in. So I find myself just doing this and going down the rabbit. On them, before you know it, I've lost 45 minutes to an hour of my day on bullshit. On shit that does not matter right now in my life,

but I got sucked into. I got to imagine that this is a big one for a lot of people. This is a hard one to break too. Here's a good strategy. Give yourself a set time that you're gonna go on social media. So at noon, for an hour, that's the time I'm gonna be on,

and then I'm not gonna be on at any of the time. Don't do the whole, like I'm not going on at all thing because you're gonna fail. But if you set yourself a time, you're less likely to do the whole like I'm not going on at all thing because you're gonna fail. Oh, yeah, but if you set yourself a time You're you're less likely to do the all day scrolling and you know like if you if you can do this and if you're Setting like boundaries for me. I'd all put my phone right away when I get home I'll put it on the plug in a different room and I have to actively go into another room to get it Yeah, so same thing with like going to sleep It just can't be anywhere near me

if I'm getting ready for bed. Yeah, now the next one is very closely related which in this a lot of people were doing this which was refreshing the news every five minutes. Oh, this is crazy because I'm old enough to remember when the time that you got the news was 6 p.m. or the newspaper. Other than that, if you wanted like hour by hour news,

there was nothing. I mean, CNN was one of the first news and what networks to do that. And I remember when they first came out, people thought, what are you gonna cover every single hour? And if they found ways to do that, right? And what it is is it's something happens, and every five minutes it's a different opinion about that thing.

This has been connected to stress and a reduced quality of life. And what it is is it's something happens, and every five minutes it's a different opinion about that thing. This has been connected to stress and a reduced quality of life. In fact, I've read articles where people are told to not watch the news anymore, and they find a tremendous improvement in their quality of life. Isn't that interesting that they used to just report what actually happened instead of like, now all we get is opinions of what happened? Because they have to, because people are checking every five minutes. I don't want to know your opinion.

I just want to see what actually happened. Yeah, so again, similar to the all day scrolling. Give yourself a time. So I'm going to check the news at 7 a.m. every day for 30 minutes. And then that's it. I'm not going to go on anymore until the next day. You'll be fine. If something crazy happens, I guarantee someone will tell you,

or as I say, or never check. Yeah, or, or, or, yeah, I don't think it's that necessary. Oh, well, so I've done nothing for anybody. Oh, so Jessica's good at this. She's made herself willfully ignorant on world affairs and her stress level has dropped considerably as a result. And again, psychologists will recommend this. They'll literally tell you, turn off the news

and see what happens and it makes a tremendous impact. So give that one a shot. Here's the next one. This one I did a little bit too, which is shopping a lot online. Amazon has made it real easy for me to go on and buy shit. Like I'll think of something, but I want that by, you know, oh, honey, what about that? I think it doesn't make sense.

This is one that's crazy to me because I wouldn't have thought that this would have been one, except for I too have felt this myself, because you would think in this time where unemployment is jumping up like crazy and we're all certain T. Yeah, there's time of uncertainty with jobs and stuff like that.

You would think that we would see people stop spinning, but the opposite is what's happened. We've seen more online spinning this year than I think we ever have before. So again, I think this is another comfort thing. Yeah. This is something that makes people happy. You know, they receive a package,

you look forward to it, it just brings a little bit of light, you know, if you're so focused on like all the crazy and things that you can't be doing right now and you know, the impending doom, this sounds like a good idea. And what happened is, you've heard me mention a couple times about creating a barrier between you and the action

to bring awareness. The reason why this has become a thing is because the barrier used to be going to the store. It used to be, do I want that thing? Yeah, I got to drive over there and buy it. I'm not gonna get it. And then you end up not getting it. Well, now I can go on my phone and find, you know, 10 different varieties of whatever I want.

And then I can, and it's literally, Amazon makes it so easy, you just click a button. And then it's here within a few days with, you know, Amazon Prime. So here's a rule you can make for yourself. If you want to buy something, write it down in your notes and tell your, and give yourself two days. That's all.

So say, okay, I want to buy this thing. Today's Monday. Okay, Wednesday, I'll visit this since thing. Today's Monday. Okay, Wednesday. I'll visit this and see if I still want it. That works so good. Maybe it was you who said that a long time ago and I started to do that work. And I did this a lot this last year

where I just start going, put all this crazy stuff and I want this. I got Amazon boxes in my house almost every day for this past year. You're not allowed to Amazon intoxicated. Well, what I started doing is I started adding all the stuff in my cart and then I intentionally abandoned. I said, okay, if I still really want this on Friday,

so I would do it at the end of the week. So that was my thing. Like, okay, if I found myself Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, like going through, shopping for something, I would tell myself, okay, at the end of the week, if I still want this, I can get it. And nine times a 10, I don't get it. Isn't that crazy?

Yeah, I know. Literally the last year, if, if I still want this, I can get it, and nine times a 10, I don't get it. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, I know, and literally the last year, if you drove up to my house, there was Amazon Box at my door, because this was me, because I get this idea for a supplement or a thing for the baby or a thing for the house, and it's like click, click, so easy. But if you put that barrier of time,

you'll find that you'll end up abandoning it. Yeah, yeah, more often than not, which is kind of interesting. Here's another one, and this one, this one doesn't sound like that big of a deal, but it makes a huge deal with our psychology, which is throwing your schedule out the window. Having those structure to your day,

where the days start to bleed into each other, can start to make things feel meaningless and drab and sad. You're just sort of drifting around. You are. And so one way that, you know, especially if you're working from home, when you're working from home,

it's really easy to just, you know, it's everything kind of just turns into each day. It's not a big deal. So what I tell people to do is to inject things in their schedules that breaks up the day. So at noon every day I do this. And at, you know, 6 p.m. after dinner, I do this up the day. So at noon every day I do this. And at 6 p.m. after dinner I do this every single day. Put those things in your schedule

and what it does is it adds structure to your day and it gives you a bit of a schedule. Also wake up at a particular time, go to bed at a particular time. This is a big one. Set your bedtime and set your wake up time and keep them consistent. That single act right there will give your whole day

more structure than just going to bed whenever and then waking up five minutes before your first Zoom meeting. No, I agree. This is definitely one that I had to kind of rain in a little bit and it all goes back to the workout thing. We talked about once I started to dial that in, it just more consistent with my eating, more consistent with my steps, more productive with work, workouts dial that in. It just, it, more consistent with my eating, more consistent with my steps, more productive

with work, workouts dialed in. So, this is as simple as just starting this process of organizing your day. Yeah. Another, the last one is a big problem. A lot of people are now encountering because so many more people are working from home, which is the blurring of the lines between work and home or life. This is why I don't think it's gonna be possible that we remain this way.

People don't know life. There was a lot of theories that when we first switched over to everybody working from home, people going, oh, I love this. This is so great. Convenient. Yeah, I think the flexibility, and then it'll be a little show up

and to work in your pajamas was amazing for everybody at first, but this is the reason why I don't think it's going to last very long, because there is something about the culture that's built and the community that's built when you show up to work and the accountability piece that comes with that, that we're lacking that now. So even if you're a self-motivated person, maybe it lasted for a few months when we first went

into shelter in place, but I think what people are starting to realize is how nice it is to have community to have a world. Yeah, I think two people, I mean, I wish I had a better term for this, but cabin fever is like a real thing. Like it's just you are just, you're seeing the same thing every day.

Like you're waking up, you're... Groundhog day. It's just groundhog day. You're not really getting out. Like you have to find ways to get out of the house versus like having a place to go and a purpose to get you up and to drive somewhere and to kind of spend your day and break it up.

I think it's just better psychologically for people to handle, I think, than to just have it all in one place. Well, I think because of the flexibility what's happened is you have people, I was just talking my brother-in-law, said this is an issue, right? Is because they have certain amount of work that they have to get done for the day or whatever

projects they have to work on, but there's nobody that's holding them accountable. That's just the day. Get it done for the day. Exactly. Get it done for the day. So what ends up happening is he says, he logs in his computer and gets started, and he opens up his social media stuff first. And that can turn into 30 minutes of checking

on things. Or a two hour rabbit hole where all of a sudden they've spent the first two hours of their day like on social media crap or politics or whatever they're into before they even get into like real work. And so setting yourself with a strict schedule, this is my time for work.

If I'm gonna spend time on social platforms or this is the time I do it, and sticking to that, I think is necessary with where we're at. You have to set boundaries. And you set them with yourself, but you also train the people you work with with your own boundaries. So if they send you emails or whatever after work hours, and you respond every single time, you're going to train them that they can do that. or you can say I'm done at six, and everything I get after that, I answer the next day, what you'll find is you'll actually start to train

the people you work with to respect those boundaries. And boundaries between work and life are definitely very, very important for your overall health. Look, MindPump is recorded on video, as well as audio, so you can come watch us on YouTube, MindPump Podcast. You can also find all of us on social media. You can find us on Instagram. Justin can be found at MindPump Justin.

You can find me at MindPumpSal and Adam at MindPump Atom. Thank you for listening to MindPump. If your goal is to build and shape your body, dramatically improve your health and energy, and maximize your overall performance, check out our discounted RGB Superbundle at MindPumpMedia.com. The RGB Superbundle includes maps and a ballac, maps performance, and maps aesthetic.

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