*This is a re-post from May last year that is worth a look or re-read if you’re on the nutrition challenge (or even if you’re not).
For anyone who knows me, you’ll know that I’m a fan of a good analogy. Being that we are smack bang in the middle of a nutrition challenge there has never been a better opportunity for me to bring out the king of all analogies!
You may not have ever thought about it but there are a lot of parallels between good finance and nutrition. Both require self discipline, structure, patience, consistency, education and a most importantly the will to succeed. Here are a few comparisons that might make it easier to get your head around some of the nutritional concepts that we promote:
Finance: Don’t spend more than you earn. This is an obvious one. If you spend more that you earn you will quickly find yourself in a hole that you can’t get out of. Ideally one would allocate a percentage of their weekly income to savings, which with consistency will build into an impressive nest egg over time. As time goes on the amount you can spend on the unnecessary will increase without having a devastating effect on the net balance. If your balance is $1000 and you spend $800, you have probably over done it and you might never recover, but if your balance is $100,000 and you spend $800 then it’s merely a drop in the ocean and you will barely notice the effect.
It’s important to get the balance right – if you save too little your nest egg will never grow and if you save too much the rest of your life will suffer and you’ll end up resenting the whole process. Let consistency do the work for you and focus on the end figure rather than the weekly process.
Nutrition: Similar to this, the person who eats well consistently and only indulges once in a while will steadily see progress and over time will be able to have more indulgences without such devastating effects. Think of good food and training as credits, and bad food and laziness as debits, and try to get the balance right. Unfortunately, just like money it takes a lot less time to spend your credits than it does to build them up.
Finance: Avoid get rich quick schemes. Very few wealthy people got to where they are overnight. The reason they are wealthy is because they have built the skills to get wealthy and no one can take that away from them. Even if they were to make a bad choice and lose a lot of money they still have the skills to get back into the market and rebuild what was lost – and most of the time they get back to where they were much quicker than the first time.
Nutrition: You may get quick results through ill advised methods but these methods are unsustainable and as soon as you stop, the results stop too. It may take a little longer to see results through a more holistic approach but the beauty of this is that the extra time it takes is extra time spent learning the skills of good eating. Once you’ve got that ball rolling it is much harder to stop than that of the person who wants everything yesterday. If it seems to good to be true – it is.
Finance: Don’t die rich. There’s no point saving a tonne of money to simply die having not enjoyed the fruits of your labour but it’s also nice to leave a legacy to those left behind.
Nutrition: Live a little and enjoy life but also be proud of the fact that the example you have set through healthy eating will remain as a legacy.
There’s probably a million other examples but I think you get the idea. So now that I have enlightened you, go out there and get rich and healthy!
