Welcome back to the Daily Dumbbell, this newsletter is unprocessed, natural, and good for your hormones. At least that’s what we tell people to scare them away from following the other newsletters.

Happy Tuesday! Also known as the worst day of the week.

Let’s dive in!

Twitter Tuesday

A slight detour over to The Gram today.

Part of the mission of this newsletter is to highlight problematic content online and explain why it’s problematic and how you can spot this kind of content and help your friends and family avoid it.

The text over the video reads

The Good

We 100% support the message that you don’t need protein powder to reach your goals. It’s called a supplement for a reason. It’s there to supplement your diet, not to be used as a staple or a meal replacement.

The Bad

There’s nothing wrong with protein powder. It’s a safe and effective way to get more protein into your diet and demonizing it does not help people. It just confuses them more.

Once we get into the caption and some comments we find the usual suspects:

On the face of it, these seem like fairly innocent statements. But unfortunately this is mostly just buzz word nonsense.

First, whole foods are absolutely not always better for digestion. It also depends on how we define “better”. Processed food is designed to be easier to digest. It’s why it’s easier to eat more of it. High fiber foods & protein are actually more difficult to digest, especially for people with GI problems or FODMAP sensitivities.

Remember, only Sith deal in absolutes.

Second, what hormones? What additives and fillers disrupt digestion and cause imablances in your hormones? Which ones are they tipping over?

The funny part about all of this is that whey protein powder is no more processed than the cottage cheese, greek yogurt, pumpkin puree, or cacao powder that was used in the recipe.

Takeaways

We don’t need to eat goofy bullshit to reach our goals.

In the next section we talk about why the process tends to take so long and we can tell you from experience going on “processed foods are bad” detours will cause the process to take much longer than is necessary. Our paleo phase speaks for itself lol.

Eat foods you enjoy and don’t let anyone scare you about hand wavy hormal imbalances or unnamed digestion problems.

The Terrible Twos…day

A common problem we struggle with and how to counter it.

Today’s problem? Wanting results fast and thinking of progress as linear.

We’ve all heard the cliche about how this has to be a lifestyle. But what they don’t tell you is that it takes time to figure out how to do that.

We want it to be as easy as making a change, executing, & boom success! But sadly that just isn’t how it works. It’s why we emphasize the process so much.

You can’t look at it like a race. There isn’t a finish line where you reach your goal. If you’re doing it right, your goals will likely evolve and change as you go anyway.

The process is a constant journey where you:

1. Assessing where you are: Take stock of where you are right now.

2. Plan: Where you want to go and how you want to get there. This involves deciding how much you’re willing to give right now (this can and does change regularly)

3. Execute on that plan: Put it in motion!

4. Assess again: How did it go? What worked and what didn’t? Even if something did work, assess how sustainable it was. Did you enjoy it? Can you imagine doing that for the next 10 years? What about 10% more or 10% less?

5. Repeat: Make a new plan. Or keep going with the current one. Then Assess again. Plan again, etc.

You are constantly changing and evolving. You’re going through different seasons in life. Sometimes you’ll have time to workout 4-5 times a week. Other times you’ll struggle to get in 2 good ones.

Some weeks meal prep will be a breeze. Other times you’ll fuck it up and eat out a lot. Do you have strategies to succeed in both situations? There are so many variables to account for.

The meme above is meant as a joke, but it’s perpetuating this idea that there’s a straight and narrow path you must take to achieve the goals you want.

But that’s the whole point, there will always be something. This is what it’s all about. Holidays, weekends, nights out with friends can and need to be a part of your process, not deviations from it, in order to be successful.

It’ll take time to figure it out, and that’s ok. Just don’t give up.

Thanks for hanging out with us today! Hope you enjoyed our process/ed focused newsletter. Let us know how we did below and we’ll see you back here tomorrow for some good ol fashioned humping wellness!