Dry Curd and Chocolate Cake: How to do things we don’t like
As we continue to explore the theme of how to stick with things that are good for us, today I’m sharing a mental reframe or “hack” that I’ve used for years that has kept me pushing through at 5am, in the middle of a big workout, or getting ahead of a deadline.
When I was training for the Olympics, my typical meal plan on a since-session training day looked something like this: (pulled from a 2009 article about my nutrition, for accuracy!)
8:30 am breakfast: 4-5 eggs/egg whites, 2 portions of dry curd cottage cheese, some fruit and green tea
During- and post-training: JB shake x2: 40 g protein with 90 g Gatorade in 800 mL water with creatine and beta-alanine mixed in
2-3 pm post-training lunch: meat protein (chicken, ground beef, steak, fish) with couscous or multi-grain bread, large spinach salad with mixed beans, walnuts, fruit in a sesame ginger dressing
5:00 pm: a small snack
7-8 pm dinner: similar to lunch without the added starchy carbs, unless he feels depleted from training
10 pm snack: dry curd cottage cheese and fruit along with a shake (whey and lactose-free milk)
You might notice the inclusion of dry curd cottage cheese.
If you haven’t tried this, it’s basically a pressed cottage cheese, so almost all the moisture is removed. I chose to include it as a regular part of my diet because it includes 22 g of protein per serving, with minimal fat and minimal sodium - it’s basically a superfood. And importantly for me, it’s also lactose-free, since back in 2008 I was uncovering a dairy allergy that had recently appeared in adulthood.
Incidentally, dry curd is also pretty tasteless and quite chalky. On my first taste of the stuff, my reaction was: ugh that’s terrible!
I didn’t at all like the taste or the texture, but I did like the fact that it would support my training goals. It helped me meet my daily protein requirements without irritating my dairy allergy, and that was more than good enough for me.
Though, I did come to like it over time. This may be due to reward value—the way that our brains can interpret a food as pleasurable if there’s some kind of psychological reward attached, even if it doesn’t taste very good at first. Precision Nutrition has a great article on that, here.
But, importantly, I didn’t try to like it. I couldn’t pin my training results—and my potential to win!—on something as fickle as liking the fuel I needed to put in my body.
Because “like” is fickle.
Take a moment to think about it for yourself: how many times have you stopped doing something, such as an exercise routine or a healthy habit, simply because you stopped liking doing it?
Sure, you might like cycling when you’re puffed up on an endorphin high and getting a PR. But you might not like it so much when it’s 5am and -20 degrees outside. Or when you’re injured. Or when you’re in the middle of a long ride and you feel tired, achy, bored and just want to get it over with.
You might like getting up early in the morning to write your book when you’re well-rested, and the sun is streaming in through the windows and you’re feeling a creative spark. But you might not like it so much when you had a poor night’s sleep, the dog is barking, you’re stuck on page 163 out of 400, and you’re pretty sure the curser is mocking you.
Even our enjoyment of highly pleasurable things is fickle. Have you ever gotten tired of eating too many sweets?
We live in a world that puts a very high value on both pleasure and immediacy. Discomfort and delayed gratification receive far less emphasis.
The reasons for that are obvious.
Naturally, it’s good to have pleasure and ease in your life. It’s important do some things, plenty of things, “just for fun.” Doing that in-of-itself is good for us. Shoot, Outside Magazine wrote an entire piece about it titled How Having Fun Makes You Healthier and Smarter.
But when it comes to the rest of life that’s good for us - eating healthy, exercising, getting to work we’ve been putting off - we all know that a lot of it is harder to stick to.
I’ve learned a method to apply that allows us to “future-proof” ourselves when doing things that are good for us and tough to adhere to. There is a simple way to not let liking vs not liking something dictate our our behavior and choices.
Still, I recognize this is not the natural way humans operate. We are biologically wired to chase pleasure and dopamine, and to seek ease and avoid discomfort.
Been reading this newsletter for years waiting for some simple life hack? This is it. That day has arrived!
This practice has been one of the key pillars that’s helped me accomplish my goals and has helped hundreds that I’ve worked with accomplish theirs.
Foster perpetual “Like and Don’t Like About” lists.
Sounds simple - and it is. But it takes an ongoing dialogue in one’s own head to make the technique successful. So what does this look like for me?
Below, I’ll use a favorite topic of the past six months, running, since it is no secret to any readers of this newsletter that it is one of my least favorite things to do in the world – right up there with poking myself in the eye with a pencil and doing the dishes.
Usually, these lists sit in my head and I go through them subconsciously on most days, and very consciously on days when I’m running into some mental barriers.
When starting this practice, it’s usually best to physically write these lists out for a few activities. Once you see it on paper, you’ll imprint it in your mind much easier. From there, it begins a constant farming exercising - tilling up old memories of “likes” and planting new ones.
Here’s what goes through my head re: running:
Don’t likes:
I’m not good at it compared to other running events/sports.
The way my legs and lungs burn while running.
That it takes a long time and I find that boring.
Likes:
The process of preparation – from laying my clothes out the night before, to prepping my meals… it brings me back to my Olympic focus.
The way I feel for the hour after I finish.
The focus my brain has for the 4-5 hours after I finish.
The way my body looks.
Being in awe of myself that I actually ran that far.
Talking about running.
Seeing new places when I travel.
Writing about running.
For this example, for me, it’s not even close. And I could easily have kept doing.
If I just focused on what I don’t like about it—or making sure I liked it at all times—I wouldn’t run.
And yet people do this to themselves more times than not. We do things we like in the moment even as we don’t like what they do to us sometimes just moments later; and we leverage not liking one part of an activity to justify why we shouldn’t do something that has almost endless benefits.
So here’s your homework:
Next time there’s something good for you that you think you don’t like, make a list. See if you can come up with some reasons you do like it, or that make it worth doing regardless. The trick is - be super honest with yourself. (see #7 above)
Then you can make a choice. You might decide it’s worth doing, regardless of whether you like it… or not.
Good luck!
- Steve
PS - this works the other way, too. That sweets example above? I love the taste of chocolate cake, I really do. And if I let liking the act of it, which is one item, drive me, I’d eat it all the time. Except I:
Hate the way it makes me feel within minutes of consumption
Don’t like the way eating it all the time would make me look
Too much would be terrible for my teeth, and blood sugar, and…
And… you get the point. You can use this to STOP doing things you do like but are bad for you!
