The Skills that Make You Rich: Dieting
Yep, that’s what I said. Your dieting and finance skills are more related than you think. Dieting is like finance in that everybody hates dealing with it, except for those weirdos that seem to BREATHE it. Both are alike in several other ways, too. If you conquer one, rest assured those skills are transferable and lead you to an excellent life on all fronts.
What Dieting Means
When most people hear “diet” they immediately think of crazy weight-loss gimmicks that are unsustainable in the long run. This isn’t at all what dieting should be known as. Going on a diet does NOT mean doing crazy shit like “only eat nine cookies a day” or “let your blood type determine everything you eat”. No, actual dieting is none of that.
It’s actually about resetting your food intake to ensure you’re getting the right amount of vitamins, calories, and other nutrients. The best diet is one you’ll never go off of. This takes planning and adapting to, same as finance, but actually helps out more than your physical health in the long run.
Keep in mind too that, just like your financial plan, there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. You might need to try out a couple of different diets until you find one that’s right for you and your goals. For me, my goals are to get to a healthy weight and eat a lot better. The best dieting plan for me is eating mainly eggs and veggies while also doing intermittent fasting. I do the one-meal-a-day (aka OMAD) method five days a week, taking two days off to have more flexibility. (In other words, a perfect 5/7.)
Note the lack of specifics on which days I do OMAD and which I eat more normally. I don’t tie myself down to doing OMAD every weekday without exception. That type of crap isn’t worth the gains to me. I need flexibility; others need rigidity. Depends on what works best for you and your needs, since none of us are 100% alike. Talking with your doctor is a good starting point if you don’t know where to begin.
How it Lowers Costs
Lucky for you, finding your ideal diet really helps out your grocery bill. Take it from me, as I happily spend $125 a month on groceries. I may not shop Whole Foods, but I do eat better than 90% of America. Following federal guidelines, you’ll want to eat a few cups of vegetables a day. Three cups is about five ounces, or 1/3 of a pound (or 142 grams for Europeans). Cooking these veggies take less than 15 minutes and keep more money in your wallet.
This is doubly true because you’re no longer buying as much processed crap as you used to. You’re also cutting a hell of a lot down on takeout and fast food, because there’s a bunch of pan-roasted peas that takes less time to make than delivery does. It’s so easy to make too – coat the bottom of a pan with cooking oil, dump the peas and seasoning in, and mix every few minutes until you can’t resist the delicious smells anymore. Boom, done. Dominos and Wendys? You no longer know them, not when you’re kicking it with the Green Giant.
Best of all, you’re also lowering your long-term medical costs! Now that your body is running on proper nutrition you’re no longer degrading your body’s performance on the heart, liver, blood, muscle, and hormone fronts. You’re suddenly decreasing your risk of a stroke, a heart attack, diabetes, cancer, AND digestive issue in one fell swoop!! ALL of those things, besides doing the obvious thing of ruining lives, are also expensive to treat and then live with. Save your money and eat healthy. Not even the experts can quantify how many thousands that will save you.
How It Can Increase Your Income
If you’re that hardcore about dieting, you can definitely make it into a neat career. But dieting’s effect on your income is more subtle. You don’t even need to get hired by Nutrisystem or Weight Watchers to see you income grow.
First off, you feel a lot better with better food. This is an undisputable fact. With that comes better focus, increased productivity, and the mental bandwidth to Get Shit Done. If your current company doesn’t recognize the change and up your pay accordingly, guess what! You now have the energy to network outside the office and work with recruiters to get that pay you want.
You’ll also look better, and I’m not even talking about weight changes here. Your eyes are brighter, your hair glossier, and your skin looks less sallow. Science proves looking better helps you climb the corporate ladder. Whether we accept this fact or not about human psychology, this bias is also a fact of life. Eating better leads to a higher chance of promotions and a higher interview performance, all because the human’s lizard brain likes seeing prettier people.
Overall, you shouldn’t start dieting properly just because it’s a skill that makes you rich. But if that’s the only thing that’ll actually make you start? Then let’s GO GET THIS DONE!!!!
So how does your current diet look? What do you need to do to optimize it and join me in health superiority?
I don’t know, I don’t think it’s a bad skill but all of my multimillionaire friends are slim and athletic and have never dieted. We eat what we want, as much as we want, and no more, and don’t gain weight. I can’t think of any of the guys I run with, all of whom are wealthy, some inconceivably rich, who have ever been on a special diet. The richest one has a live in chef and other house staff but they aren’t doing intermittent fasting, paleo or one meal a day. We all just eat three good meals a day and work out. Like you say, it’s different for everyone, we are all boomers so maybe it’s generational.
If you all are getting the right amount of nutrients you need, that already fits my definition of good dieting!
There’s another thing dieting and finance have in common: the common misconceptions about what both of them mean. It bears repeating that the best diet is one you’ll never go off of. Sounds like you’ve found that in your life, nice work.