Solving Obesity & Taking Advice

What if you actually listened to the good advice?

According to a survey done by the CDC in 2016, just under 100 million Americans are overweight and 70 million are classified as obese.

What makes people overweight? What stops them from losing weight? I like to simplify things, so let’s go to the base laws of physics - thermodynamics. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed.

We transform calories into energy for our muscles to use. We use those calories to think, move and keep our bodily functions steady. When we do that, we convert the energy into heat.

That is why calories in, calories out works. It’s not a diet type, it’s a law of physics at work, just like gravity.

If I put a gun to your head and asked you to write me a weight-loss plan, you would say something like eat less, exercise more.

We all know it. But about 100 million people in the US don’t follow the simple advice.

“Many receive advice, few profit from it“

(The Moral Sayings of Publius Syrus, 149)

The problem is about much more than weight loss. It applies to money, relationships, careers… everything.

We’re all really good at giving advice, but the best in the world are great at using advice. Of course, there needs to be a way to sift through all the poor advice, and there are lots of good ways to do that.

But again, none of them mean s*** if you won’t follow the advice on following advice.

When you ask for advice, don’t ignore the answer. . That’s what everyone does. Don’t be like everyone.

Just make sure you’re asking the right people for advice

Question of The Day

What’s a piece of advice you got and ignored that would have saved your butt if you had listened?

Your Friend,

Noah BigNerd Sochaczevski

PS. On asking the right people for advice: this is something I’ve been trying to get better at myself. What I’ve learned seems incredibly simple but is overlooked. The best advice is from people who recently accomplished the same or similar thing to what you’re trying to accomplish. The closer they are in recency and similarity to your situation, the more seriously I take their advice. So someone like Elon Musk probably can’t give me advice right now as well as Ryan Holiday or Lezlie Karls. Situational similarity + recency = serious advice. ANY OTHER ADVICE ON GETTING GOOD ADVICE?