What lessons can doom scrolling and binge watching teach you about fitness and weight loss?

What do binge-watching TV, doom-scrolling social media, and overeating have in common?

They're all easy to do often, without much thought and they provide immediate rewards to our brains.

What do new fitness and eating plans have in common with most busy people?

They're all complicated, hard to follow, require a lot of thought and planning, and don't provide immediate rewards to our brains.

Habits are behaviours that are done often and become automatic.

If we make nutrition and exercise complicated, we won't do them often and they won't become habits in our lives.

Take the lessons from social media doom-scrolling, binge-watching, and overeating and apply them to your exercise and food if you want to make healthy changes.

Here are some tips.

1. Keep exercise simple, short, and easy to do when you first start.

Most people train too hard when they start and either get injured or so stiff that cannot move for 3 days after training.

That's not ideal for making a regular habit.

2. Change one food habit at a time. Master it and then stack another habit on top.

I've had clients lose up to 12kgs with just one food habit alone.

3. Plan your nutrition with foods you enjoy. This will help with FOMO, restriction, and boring diets.

4. Go for frequency over intensity with exercise.

Intensity is great and we must challenge ourselves but our main aim with exercise is to be able to accumulate workout after workout after workout over long periods.

5. Try not to miss two workouts in a row or have two bad meals in a row.

This has been popularised by James Clear in the book 'Atomic Habits'.

It's okay to miss a workout or do an alternative workout to the one planned.

The best thing to do when missing a session is to not miss the next session.

It's okay to have a biscuit at 10:00 am without ruining your entire day of nutrition.

By following these tips you'll end up with all your results in the long run.

Make exercise and food feel good.

Keep it simple