So some of you may be wondering who the hell David Goggins is and why am I talking about him? Well, there is a good reason.
Trying to eat healthily is hard. Trying to lose weight is hard. And it is hard because almost everything we eat or drink that tastes good for us is covered in fat or sugar...and this is not good for anyone trying to be healthy or lose weight. Every day we have cravings for those food we know are bad for us and, the less we have them the more we crave them.
So how do we resist them? This is where David Goggins comes in.
David Goggins is an American ultra marathon runner who was a navy seal, ranger and Delta Force operative. He grew up being abused by his dad, grew to a huge size and then realised that he wanted to be a seal, so he asked what he needed to do in order to become one and did it. He lost a lot of weight and taught himself to read and write and then became a Seal. Because of injuries he had to do Hell Week 3 times before he passed; 3 times!
If you don't know what Hell Week is, look it up on youtube and you'll have more respect for DG when you then think that he did it 3 times!
But what has this to do with me, with healthy eating or living a healthy life? It's simple, it's called 'callousing the mind'. DG, in his biography 'Can't Hurt Me' explains that that we all have things we don't want to do: chores, exercising, eating healthily, getting up early, cooking a meal. We'd much rather get a takeaway or sit in front of the TV.
Callousing the mind is exactly like callousing skin. I play the guitar and, until my fingers were calloused, playing the guitar hurt my fingers, so I didn't want to play that much. But the more I played, the more calloused my fingers became; and the more calloused my fingers became the less they hurt: and the less they hurt, the more I played. Hopefully you can see where this is leading.
Therefore, when it comes to your life, eating the right things and being healthy, you have to callous your mind, according to DG. In other words every day you have to do something you don't want to do. It doesn't have to be massive, or huge like running 5k or eating grass...it can be something as mundane as knowing you don't want to wash the pots, so getting up and washing the pots; you know you don't want to call the school to talk to your kids teacher so you make yourself phone the school; if you're not good at talking to people, make sure you talk to someone. It's about doing things you don't like doing so often that it becomes second nature and therefore you know you can do it.
Callousing your mind helps you mentally get through the tough times of your cravings or hunger or not wanting to exercise because you've done it with so many other things that you didn't want to do, that one more thing won't make a difference. It's deliberate practice at resistance and perseverance and prevention.
For me, I started by getting up at 4.30am. I didnt need to get up but I did anyway because it gave me an extra 2 hours to do things or to have time to myself; now it's second nature. Then it was cleaning up the cat poo, definitely didnt want to do that! More things followed and eventually it became normal to just get on and do things I didn't particularly want to do, and this has helped me to say no to foods when I need to. If I become tempted, I just think of all the times I've done things I thought were boring or horrible or I didn't want to do and still did anyway and then I know I can resist, I can say no because I've done it before. I've calloused my mind.
Now this does take commitment and it is better if you watch his videos or read his book. He does swear a lot but he explains it so much better than I can. He is driven and has gone through and come through so much adversity in his life, that his story could inspire you, as it inspired me, to callous your mind, change your perception of how you see things and help you to continue steadfastly on your journey.
Oh, and I also nicked his catchphrase.
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Thanks for reading.
Stay strong.
Sean.