Ep. 044 - Scramble Rules

SHOW NOTES

Life doesn't always go according to plan.  Sometimes the pressure gets to us - so we need a set of scramble rules.

In today's episode, I'm sharing a unique concept to help you navigate the holidays (and life in general) when it becomes impossible to execute your best intentions.

Don't miss this one!

TRANSCRIPT

Welcome to man in the Arena, your go-to podcast for all things related to health and weight loss for men over 40. Here we discuss strategies that will get you off the sidelines and into the game so you can achieve your optimal health. It's time to lead a legacy of longevity. 

Hello and welcome to another episode of man in the Arena. If you're new to the podcast, thank you so much for stopping in. You know one of my goals with each of these episodes is to provide you with practical insights that you can apply in real life situations so you can live a really healthy life, and that's why each of these episodes runs between 10 to 20 minutes, because I know you're busy. So I try to get to the point with each of these episodes, and this one in particular, I'm recording in early November, but it's going to be released the weekend after American Thanksgiving. So if you're listening to this rate when I drop it, happy belated Thanksgiving to my American listeners. And again, thank you so much for showing up and listening to these episodes. Now we begin the slow march to Christmas, which means work parties, family get-togethers, kids activities and there's lots of potential challenges that are going to get in the way of us focusing on our health in the coming weeks. In my last episode, I talked about the importance of having an intention and a plan for this holiday season, especially when it comes to your health and weight loss, rather than just going into the season in this default mode, where there's a potential to do a bunch of damage before the new year, and today I want to continue that conversation a little bit, but more on a micro level.

Now, one of the main themes of this podcast is intention, and it's about planning. It's about preparation. In order to lose weight, you have to eat less, and in order to eat less, you have to be more aware and you have to be more planned day-to-day. One of the things I recommend to my clients and the guys in the arena that the best practice for planning your meals is to do it either the night before or the morning of Now. Why is that? For starters, you want to make food decisions from a clean place. You want to make them from a cognitive place, using your prefrontal cortex.

Your prefrontal cortex is the crowning achievement of our evolution. It is where we solve problems, we come up with creative solutions, we can think in advance, we can plan using our prefrontal cortex, and the evening before or the morning of each day are times when you're less burdened by your day. Either the day is done or it's just starting off for you, and so you have a much fresher, more positive outlook. The second thing is, I find that making food decisions too far in advance, ie if you make food decisions on a Sunday for the entire week. This tends to be a little bit unrealistic because I find that things change through the week, appointments come up, your timing shifts, and so I prefer to make decisions the morning of or the night before, and this puts me in the best position for success.

All right, that's what I've learned, having coached for the last three years, teaching my clients about making a daily food protocol. Now, with that being said, there is something I've noticed, having done this practice myself and coaching the guys who I coach to make their protocols when I make my food decisions in the morning, I'm making those decisions from a clean place and they align with my goals. I want to live a healthier life and I want to eat in a way that's clean and a way that fuels my body and gives it the nutrients it needs to thrive. So I'm making these decisions again, like I said, my prefrontal, and they're clean. In other words, they're not decisions being made from emotion. But here's what happens I go through my day and sometimes I get to my first meal or I get to another meal that I've planned, and now I'm in a much different place.

My mood and my thinking are different. So maybe I'm upset by something that's happened throughout my day, or I'm stressed about something, or something's come up and I wasn't able to adhere to the timing of my meals. So now my hunger scale is deeply into the negative. Now my primal brain not my prefrontal cortex is highly active, and when my primal brain, my limbic system, is active, I don't want to eat what I had planned. I want comfort food, I want calories, because my primal brain cares more about survival than it does about practicality and function and my long-term health. So when this happens and it will happen you will want to deviate from your plan at some point. This is the perfect time to implement what I call our scramble rules. If you're a fan of football, you've probably heard the commentator talk about scramble rules.

This is when the quarterback drops back to pass, but the defense gets to him before he can throw the ball downfield. So, in an attempt to buy more time, he starts to scramble. Okay, he'll get out of the pocket. He'll run either left or right towards the sideline as the defense tries to chase him down Downfield. The receivers notice this and at this point they abandon the designed route that they were supposed to run, and in most systems they follow what's called traditional scramble rules. So if you're a receiver running a deep pattern, like a post or a go route down the field, you're taught to come back towards the quarterback. So if he's scrambling right, then you're going to come back towards the right side of the field. And if you're a receiver who's running a shorter route, like a hook or a shallow crosser, you're taught to run away from the quarterback downfield. So in either situation, you're trying to find open space, but instead of having everybody go deep and everybody come short, then you've got this nice balance

Okay. And the defense, of course, doesn't know what's going on, so they're trying to react in the same time. Here's some key takeaways that I think apply beautifully to everyday life, especially eating with intention. Okay, even though the play breaks down, the play is not dead, so the quarterback just doesn't fall to the ground, he doesn't just throw the ball at the feet of the receiver. He still sees potential for making an awesome play, and so you don't want to give up, even though the situation is not going according to the planned play. And the same is true when your protocol breaks down. It's not a time to give up and just eat whatever quote unquote feels best. It's still an opportunity for you to improve and make decisions that progress your goals forward. Another takeaway is you realize that you're still in control. You still get to dictate the day and the next steps.

So, even though your circumstances have changed, you still get to decide the next part of the play. Scramble rules are something I really want you to adhere to and integrate into your mindset, into your day and as a practice. All right, you want to have these in your back pocket in case your day or in case your protocol breaks down Right. With that, here are some example scramble rules that I want you to consider, and this is something I've seen come up in my own life and something I see come up with the guys that I coach If you miss a meal or if you skip a meal, you have to work through a meal, for whatever reason. I want you to eat a high protein snack as your next bit of food that you're going to ingest, right, something like beef, jerky, greek yogurt, hard boiled eggs, something that's simple but convenient and still nutritious. So that would be a scramble rule. Another one might be if you skip a meal, you'll do a thought download before you eat so that you can make a decision from a conscious place rather than just give in to an urge that you have in that moment. So that's another scramble rule. Another scramble rule you might have is if I feel like eating something different from my plan, I'm going to process that urge first using the tools that I've learned. So I've talked a lot about how you process urges, food urges, and there's a lot of great tools that I've taught through the podcast. So go back and listen to those episodes, because they're going to help you apply this particular scramble rule. Another one is if I feel like eating more than I've planned, I'll use my hunger scale to guide my decision in that moment. And the last one that I often recommend is if the food I planned to eat isn't accessible, I'm going to choose an option that best aligns with my goals. So, for example, I had a client tell me the other day that this happens a lot when they travel.

They go to a particular place and they've made a protocol. They've actually even looked ahead at the menu of the restaurant that they're going to be visiting. And they get to the restaurant and the thing that they decided on earlier isn't available. So my client what he does in this situation. He says, okay, I'm going to order the burger. There's some protein that's going to help fill me up, but I'm going to skip the bun and the cheese and I'm just going to have it with lettuce on the outside and some mustard and whatever else they put on. All right, so that's a great example of a scramble rule. You do not have to use all of these, the ones that I've just mentioned. In fact, I highly recommend you make up your own scramble rules. Scramble rules are a way to avoid making decisions from an emotional place or a place where you have over desire for food or exaggerated hunger, but they also apply to other areas of your health as well that you're trying to optimize.

So just last week, I had a terrible sleep and my morning workout wasn't going to happen because I needed a little bit of time to sleep in and get some extra rest. So rather than just skipping that day and saying the day is dead, the day is done, I can't get my workout in, I went to my scramble rules and in this case it looked like this. So I decided I don't have to do everything. I just have to do something, and so I decided on 20 minutes of yoga. This isn't what I had planned, but it was enough to kind of get me moving. I also looked for time in my day that allowed me to sneak in this movement, and then I added it to my schedule. So that was an important part of my scramble rules. And the last thing I did as part of my scramble rules, I reminded myself hey, I can't control the situation where I didn't get a great sleep, but I can control how I'm thinking and feeling about the situation, and this grounded me to make better choices throughout the day. All right, no-transcript.

What I'm trying to kind of really express here is oftentimes, things don't go our way and we just, you know, sort of write the day off, right? And what I want to suggest to you with Scramble Rules is you still have an opportunity to do something really great. In fact, some of the best learning and the best opportunities for growth for you will be in these moments. Okay, so now that you've understood the value of Scramble Rules, what's next? How can you apply this practically? Well? Number one remember that things don't always go to plan, and when they break down. You use these Scramble Rules and they offer a great opportunity for a big play to happen in your life. And number two create your own Scramble Rules. Decide on what you're going to do when things break down in your day, because life is going to happen right. You know, we can't expect everything to line up perfectly for our health and weight loss. In fact, a lot of us are in this situation already because we have sort of crazy lives and we have things that pop up that we aren't anticipating, so we have to plan around that.

So that's all I have for you today. I hope you found this episode really insightful and remember, if you want to start taking steps to improve your own health, I have an amazing community called the Arena, where you not only learn these great concepts on a deeper level, but you get to apply them with other guys who are doing this work right alongside you, who are similar to you, who are facing similar challenges, and in that process, you get to hold yourself accountable, you get to celebrate the wins that you have, and you get support and coaching from me as well. So I highly encourage you to check that out. Just head on over to thespearmethodcom. Backslash the arena. That's all one word the arena. Get more information there. You can actually sign up and join right from that place, and I really look forward to meeting you in there Until next week. Thank you so much for listening and keep living a legacy of good health and longevity.

If you're ready to step inside the arena and change the trajectory of your health, head on over to thespearmethod.com and download my free guide to learn simple and effective strategies on how to optimize your health today.