I want you to imagine
a groundbreaking new medicine:
A single pill, that taken once a day
would make you live
a longer and happier life.
Not only that, this pill
would make you stronger.
It would profoundly increase
your energy levels,
your mood, your brain function,
and your concentration.
In fact, this pill would outperform
every other known medicine
for improving overall markers of health.
It would be a groundbreaking revelation.
It would change the face
of medicine as we know it.
Sounds pretty good, right?
Now, luckily for all of us,
this miracle medicine already exists,
and it’s called exercise.
And if it were available in the pill,
it’d be the most prescribed
and most valuable medicine on Earth.
But there’s a catch.
See, for this pill to keep on working,
we have to keep taking it.
I’ve spent the whole of my career
trying to persuade people
to do exactly that.
Over the past 15 years,
I’ve been on tens of thousands
of health and fitness journeys,
and across all of those ages
and demographics,
I’ve noticed a worrying and common trend.
Whilst exercise can most certainly help us
dramatically improve our lives,
in many cases, I’ve seen it end up
doing the exact opposite.
I call this ‘the exercise
happiness paradox’.
Now, to unravel the paradox,
we must first understand a little bit more
about what goes on up here.
You see, our mood, our happiness,
and our feelings of mental health
are almost entirely controlled
by our brain chemistry.
This complex cocktail
of hormones in our head.
And whilst we have little to no control
over external factors
like national lockdowns
or other people’s behaviors,
this brain chemistry can be manipulated
by the foods we eat,
by the amount of sleep we get,
by how much exercise we take part in.
We call these lifestyle modifications,
and we can control them.
So a sensible hack
for improving our happiness, then,
is to attempt to try and manipulate
this brain chemistry,
to try and make us feel optimal.
Anyone who’s ever completed
a decent workout
would have experienced this:
that rush, that euphoria,
the high we get when we finish.
This is down to an increase
in the production of endorphins,
a type of neurotransmitter
responsible for relieving pain and stress.
But exercise also increases serotonin,
the same hormone
targeted by antidepressants,
as well as dopamine and norepinephrine,
all of which are responsible
for regulating our mood.
So put very simply,
exercise can immediately and acutely
make us feel happier.
But if we're being completely honest,
the way that we feel
is very rarely the reason we’re compelled
to start exercising in the first place.
I know this because the only question
I ever get asked is an iteration of this.
How do I lose weight?
How do I get toned arms?
How do I get a six-pack?
How do we get a thigh gap?
How long will it take to lose a stone?
What’s the best exercise for fat loss?
How do I get rid of this?
Notice how none of these questions
have anything to do
with the way that you feel
and everything to do
with the way that we look.
See, whilst our brains are wonderful tools
for orchestrating happiness,
they’re also prone
to self-sabotage and comparison,
and never has this been more true
than when it comes
to the way that we look.
And it’s not even our fault.
We’ve been led down
a skinny little garden path
by the multi-billion-pound
fat loss industry
where sex sells
and appearance is everything.
We can’t even avoid it.
Every day, we’re bombarded
with messages meant to make us
feel guilt and shame
about the way that we look.
All designed to get us to part
with our hard earned cash
in return for some revolutionary new
diet trend or cutting edge workout
or Little Fat Loss potion sold by
super lean Instagram influencer
or celebrity that never seems to age.
And herein lies the paradox, you see,
when we embark on our health
and fitness journeys,
we begin to expose ourselves
to this world.
These images, these articles
and social media highlight reels,
and our brains can’t help
but stop making comparisons.
We begin to cherry pick the best parts
of other people's bodies and lives
and start comparing them to our worst
parts. I wish I had arms like his.
I wish I had legs like hers. I wish I
could get away of wearing those shorts.
Psychologists call this
upward social comparison,
and it sets us off on an endless
and cyclical pursuit of perfection.
Because the sad truth is
that the pictures we see on
the covers of magazines, in the press,
and on the social media highlight reels
aren’t even real.
They are snapshots in time.
They are actors who trained
to pick on a specific scene.
They are cover models whose photos are
edited and airbrushed to appear faultless.
They are your friends, best photos
at the best angle, with the best lighting.
This is not reality.
There is a lot of cheating going on,
and I know this because I've been
there myself more than once.
In fact, I want to show
you a quick example.
This is a picture of me after I took part
in a photoshoot a little while back.
Now, don't get me wrong, I trained hard,
but I do work in a gym
and I did do a lot of cheating.
Okay, I manipulate your carbohydrate
and water consumption to appear drier
and leaner and more toned
than I actually was.
Now I’m not showing you this
to massage my ego in any way,
because this is not how I look ever.
In fact, I didn't look like
this the day after.
Here's a photo of me less
than 24 hours later.
A huge difference.
There is always a huge difference
between the photos we are shown
and reality.
Very few people are walking around
like this day-to-day.
And for the vast majority of us
who work in offices, not gyms,
whose careers aren't dependent
on looking a specific way
and who don’t want to spend
all of their time counting calories
and tracking their food.
Not only is this unsustainable,
it’s also pretty pointless.
See, our bodies have not evolved
to look like this.
We have not evolved to have
skinny thighs or six pack abs.
This topic, along with nutrition,
deserves a TED Talk of its own,
but very simply, our body's ability to
store fat has helped us survive through
millions of years of evolution.
We've needed it for much of our
existence to keep us warm,
to shield our vital organs,
to nurture our growing brains and to store
energy to survive periods of famine.
Now, luckily for everyone in this room
and most people in the developed world,
these are no longer threats that we face.
There is no famine
waiting around the corner.
We’re unlikely to freeze
to death in our heated homes.
And there are no saber tooth tigers
skulking about in our garden hedges
waiting for us to go to work.
But our bodies haven’t yet caught up.
And sadly, this surreptitious
and insidious belief
that we should all be lean
or should all want to be skinny or toned
It’s robbing people of their happiness.
I’ve lost count of the amount of times
I’ve been sat in a room with
someone crying their eyes out
because they don’t like what they see
in the mirror or they don’t look perfect
or they hate their stretch marks
and it is heartbreaking.
And I’ve seen it end tragically
more than once.
Now, I’m not suggesting that
ambitious fat loss goals are unachievable.
Far from it.
But they aren’t --
They shouldn’t be all consuming
and they are not all important
and we most certainly shouldn’t have
to miss out on life to achieve them.
As a society,
I would love to see us move away
from this endless ideal of perfect,
whatever that even means.
From the idea that
that is even good for us,
that that will make us happy because
in my experience, it really won't.
The biggest lesson I’ve learned
over the past 15 years is this
and is a harsh truth.
No one gives a shit what you look like.
Seriously. No one cares if you’ve got abs.
No one cares if you got skinny thighs
or toned arms. And neither should you.
Do you know what people do care about?
That you don't get sick.
That you are strong and confident
and full of energy
that you are present.
That you jump in every photo
with your parents.
you jump in every pool with your kids
that you’re strong enough
to pick up your grandchildren
and carry them on your shoulders
and that you’re still around
to watch them grow up?
That you capture every moment and take
every chance you get to live a happy
and fulfilling life.
See, if we're being
completely honest with ourselves,
our goal has never been fat loss
or to change shape to begin with.
Our goal is the happiness that
we think these things will bring.
And if we’re stuck in this
perpetual loop of
critiquing the way that we look,
counting every calorie that we ate
and comparing ourselves to everyone else,
we will never feel truly happy
and it will never end.
So what’s the solution?
How can we achieve greater levels
of health and happiness
without falling into the comparison trap?
How can we take positive steps towards
long term improvements in our physique
without feeling miserable?
How can we take the miracle medicine
without the side effects?
I’ve got four things I want you to try.
Number one:
We have to stop being
so hard on ourselves.
Social comparison leads to some really
toxic self-talk, and we've all been there.
I hate my arms, I'm too fat,
I'm too old, I'm too poor.
When you catch yourself using
this kind of language,
I want you to stop and ask yourself,
would I speak this way to the
people that I care about?
Because the answer is a resounding no.
We have to change the narrative
and start practicing gratitude
for the things we do have,
rather than the things we think we lack.
This may sound cliché, but a really
powerful way of doing this
is by using a daily gratitude journal,
this genuinely changed my life.
It’s very hard, almost impossible
to experience negative emotions
when we’re feeling grateful
for what we have.
It takes a few minutes each day,
jot down two or three things about
your body that you are grateful for,
and I guarantee you this positive mindset
will begin spilling over
into the rest of your life.
Step two:
Find something you enjoy
and do more of it.
People that enjoy exercising,
keep doing it,
and those that keep doing it
not only reap all of the short term
benefits I mentioned earlier,
they tend to be the ones that achieve
the greatest long term improvements
in health and their physiques.
So I want you to ignore everything
you’ve ever been told about
what type of exercise you should be doing
and pick something you enjoy.
If you like dancing, go dancing,
if you like lifting weights, lift weights.
Don't be pigeonholed into doing
what everyone else is doing.
And don’t be afraid
to mix things up either.
There's no right or wrong exercise
for your age, gender,
body type or ability.
I’ve coached 20 year olds
that loved bows
and 80 year olds who loved boxing.
Find something you enjoy
and do more of it.
Number three:
Measure performance and not your weight,
in my humble opinion,
and this is just my opinion,
the only place a set of scales belong
in your house is deep in the bin.
Using weight as a measure
of your progress is a terrible idea
for many reasons, not least it can ruin
your entire mood and mindset
in an instant, like an evil
little roulette wheel.
I don’t want to live in a world
where I feel guilty about
going for a pint with my dad
or eating a bit of cake at
my daughter’s birthday party
without feeling compelled to run home
and jump on the scales
and assess the damage.
If we set ourselves small
performance goals instead,
it can be as simple as increasing
the number of press ups we do each week
or hitting a higher daily step count.
Learning a new dance move
or spending more time gardening.
These small, marginal gains can
drastically improve our self-efficacy
by providing us with small
and regular victories.
When we keep winning,
we keep moving forward.
Lastly, and most importantly,
we have to make this time non-negotiable.
I've seen so many people spend so much
of their life worrying for caring for
and providing for everyone else in their
life and ignoring their own health.
And I'm sure that some of you in
the room. This has to stop.
It's so counterproductive.
My challenge for you is to take
20 to 30 minutes
to carve out of your diary each day
as ‘you time’.
Not for your partners, not for your kids,
certainly not for your boss,
and not to lose weight,
but to focus on your well-being.
And please don't use the excuse
of not having time.
Not only do you deserve this,
you owe it to yourself
and everyone else in your life
to become the best
possible version of you.
Now, this doesn't mean we have to go
through some savage gym routine every day.
It could mean spending 20 minutes
going for a long walk to clear your head.
It might mean sitting in a room
in the dark, having a stretch.
Whatever you do, the important thing is
to make this time non-negotiable.
It's a part of your schedule.
I guarantee you if you can manage
to do this and make it habitual,
it will pay huge dividends across
every dimension of your life.
Be kinder to yourself.
Find something you enjoy.
Set small and regular performance goals
and carve out time in your life
to do more of it.
I want to leave you with this.
I truly believe the exercise is
the single greatest happiness
hack that has ever existed.
But to really reap the benefits
of this miracle medicine,
we have to give ourselves permission
to fall in love with
the way it makes us feel, rather
than the way it makes us look.
I know it’s difficult,
but please don’t spend one more second
of your precious time
concerned about not looking perfect
because perfect simply does not exist.
Bodies come in all shapes and sizes, each
one as worthy of happiness as the next.
So throw away the scales
and wear the damn shorts.
Because the only people that care,
the only people that matter,
don't care what you look like and
don't care how much you weigh.
They care that you are healthy and strong
and happy, and so should you.
Thank you.
