The TRY HARDER Newsletter by Jerred Moon: Edition 013

Hey Risers,

Welcome to EDITION 013 of the TRY HARDER Newsletter.

Today, I dive into some lessons learned on professional and personal growth. Then, I go a little hard on weight loss because, well, I just couldn’t stop writing.

Save it for later. Read it now. But don’t ignore this one!!
And if you like it, share it with a friend 🙏🏻.

Enjoy!

In this Edition:

Building the Business

Rules Created from Failure

Building the Human

Science: “Exercise Doesn’t Work”

Try Harder

Simple Weight Loss

Building the Business:

Rules Created From Failure 📝

Over the last decade or so, I jot down a “rule” every time I fail. I’ve covered many of them on my podcast, but I’d like to cover them here in the newsletter too. Enjoy!

1. Fail Fast and Get Comfortable with it 💨

You have ideas. I have ideas. We all have ideas. What we don’t know for certain is, will our ideas work. I know if I sit around and wait I am just burning time. Time I could be learning. A lot of these things will fail. That’s ok. I just lean into the failure and keep implementing.

2. Quit Thinking Small 🧐

One thing I have learned is that if I keep at it, I will eventually succeed. Time is normally what I get wrong; i.e. I think it should take 1 year, it takes 2 years. So I try not to waste any time on small goals. Because when I achieve a tiny goal I ask myself, why didn’t I think bigger.

3. Get Out of Your Own Way (and scale) 📈

Leverage is an important thing to understand. Naval Ravikant speaks on the three types of leverage; 1.) Labor: Utilize other people’s time and effort. 2.) Capital: Invest money to generate more money. 3.) Product: Create scalable products with zero marginal cost. I’ve found that the only thing that prevents leverage is me. Some idea, some limiting belief, some fear, etc. I have to constantly remind myself to get out of my own way.

4. Lead From the Front… and Back 🪖

I always try to lead from the front. I set the example, I set the pace, and I set the tone for how things are going to work. However, one thing I learned in the military doing small unit tactics is that you don’t lead from the front. I have to lead from the back. I have to see what’s going on in front of me. I have to see what my team is doing in order to make decisions. If I am always out front, I could lose a teammate and not even know it. The lesson: yes, set the example, but it’s not about you. Take the step back and know where the team is at and what they need.

5. Get Clear On What You Want 🌅

In the movie, “The Dark Knight” the Joker says, “I’m like a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it.” I’ve been the Joker (or one of those dogs) before. I’ve gone through periods of extreme clarity of what I was after and I’ve also been through periods where I am just doing things and I am not sure why. I find a lot more passion, drive, and speed in knowing what I am chasing.

6. Never Say Maybe ❌

Indecision will ricochet in my mind until it has paralyzed me into inaction. I try to stay away from “maybes”, “we’ll see”, and “I’m not sure.” If I need time to think about something, I will respond, “I need to think about that, but can follow up with you tomorrow at 3pm to let you know.” Or I try the word most of us are scared to use, “No.” Time is precious. I try not to waste it being indecisive or a people pleaser.

Takeaways:

Shortcut success. Avoid my failures.
Write your own “rules” when you fail.

Building the Human:

Science Says Exercise Doesn’t Work (for weight loss) 🔬

That’s right! The latest science is telling us exercise doesn’t work. 🤔 Before you ditch the kettlebell, let’s dive into the nuance.

First, you have to know our bodies are annoyingly efficient. And I think this study proves that point.

A recent study found that exercise-related energy compensation (ExEC) often counteracts the calories burned during workouts. In the study, half the participants didn’t lose the expected weight because their bodies became more efficient 🥷, conserving energy elsewhere. For example, your body might compensate by reducing spontaneous physical activity or non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT), think fewer fidgeting, less walking around, and generally becoming a couch potato when not exercising.

Seriously. Do you see? Annoyingly efficient! Your body hates the disruption of the status quo, i.e., homeostasis. Our subconscious minds 🧠 will mitigate movement to try and keep things balanced.

Don’t believe me? Other studies state that our bodies do the exact same thing with burning fat 🏃🏻‍♂️. Burn fat during your workout, and your body will try to conserve fat the rest of the day 🤯. Your metabolism has its own agenda, aiming to maintain your energy reserves and cares ZERO about you fitting into a bathing suit 👙.

Yes, exercise still has a myriad benefits, heart health, mental clarity, muscle strength, blah, blah. This study simply highlights that if weight loss is your goal, you need more than just sweat and tears.

It means weight loss is the KING of TRY HARDER activities. I mean, how do you win when your own subconscious is stacking the deck against you?

So how do you win with weight loss? Don’t worry, I think we can outsmart our subconscious with a few TRY HARDER weight loss rules.

And that’s what I’ve put in the “TRY HARDER” section of this week’s newsletter.

Takeaways:

Understand our bodies are annoyingly efficient.
Don’t cry about the above statement being true.
Learn to outsmart the efficiency.

Try Harder:

How to Make Exercise Great Again 🏋🏻‍♀️

Being that weight loss is the KING of TRY HARDER activities I thought it would be fun to dive in to TRYING HARDER with weight loss and what that looks like.

Is it starving yourself HARDER…? Nope.
Is it punishing yourself HARDER in the gym…? Nope.

So what does “trying harder” look like with weight loss.
It’s actually incredibly simple (not easy).

Step 0.) The obvious - Diet change is paramount 🥗. You can’t rely on exercise alone. However, I am not the diet guru. Don’t let exercise be an excuse to eat more (if you are trying to lose weight). To start, eat fewer calories and keep it clean, but let me talk exercise.

Step 1.) Exercise needs to exceed baseline. ⬅ Follow that rule, and you may just start to win with weight loss.

Let’s dive in…

You’ll need an activity tracker for this. Something that will track your steps at a minimum 🚶🏻. Pretty easy to find these days, and most of us have one attached to our wrist ⌚️. For a week, find your “baseline.” Let’s say, for you, that’s an average of 8,500 steps per day. This can be with or without exercise. The baseline is 8,500 “steps” doing whatever it is that you do. These “steps” are really just a measure of your activity throughout the day.

Next, we need to increase from baseline. So if your baseline is 8,500 steps per day (with or without exercise) averaged out over a week, let’s ramp it up to 11,000. Now, it doesn’t matter if you had the HARDEST workout in the world this morning… Because if you worked your ass off for an hour, but then chilled the rest of the day for a total of 5,000 steps, you’re missing it. You’re getting the health-related exercise benefits, but you’re not getting enough activity for weight loss.

Sounds too simple right? Well, if you have given everything else a try and nothing seems to work. Just give this a shot and let me know what you find.

You can beat your subconscious with data and tracking.

That’s it. For weight loss to work, you have to TRY HARDER and outsmart your subconscious.

Try harder,