This is The Nooner, a short daily (Monday - Saturday) newsletter slash podcast that has its very own section within Dispatches from Inner Space.
Every Sunday, I publish the Dispatches Weekly Digest (DWD), which lets you binge all the Nooners from the previous week. It also includes a meaningful song recommendation, and a short segment I call TMI, where I go off script to bring you backstage, so to speak.
Two more things about the DWD:
It goes on on the main Dispatches channel, so if you’re looking to spare your inbox from the daily emails without missing out on anything, you can specifically unsubscribe from The Nooner section, and still get the Digest on Sunday.
It’s only available to paid subscribers.
The Dispatches Weekly Digest is a labor of love, and I’m really proud of it, and if you want to hear it, I want you to hear it. So, if you can afford it…
And if you can’t, but you still think of yourself as one of my true fans, let me know and we’ll work something out.
One thing leads to another
I usually go for a 15-20 minute jog in the morning. Sometimes I’ll miss a few days (or weeks!) but after a few years of consistent effort at establishing this as a core morning habit, I can safely say it is my baseline.
Yay!
Something I’ve noticed anecdotally, off and on over the years, is that I’m a lot less hungry after a morning run than I am if I skip it. And I only noticed this because I’ve also been intermittently intermittent fasting for the past few years as well, only eating between the hours of about noon and 8pm.
Looking back, certain patterns have become obvious.
If I skip my morning run, I get a lot hungrier a lot earlier, which makes it much more likely I’ll eat long before noon.
And when I eat before noon, I also tend to overeat throughout the day.
And if I’ve overeaten throughout the day, then it’s harder to get up early the next morning to go for a run.
...which makes it harder to fast until noon, which...
This is how I can fall off the jogging and intermittent fasting wagon for weeks (or even months!) at a time.
The other day, feeling frustrated at how often I seem to snack during a typical workday, I decided to do some actual research to find out if exercise actually does make you less hungry, or if it’s all in my head.
Well guess what, it turns out it really is true.
Which means that the virtuous cycle is just an inverse of the vicious one. Just like being overly sedentary makes you hungrier, which makes it hard not to overeat, which makes it hard to be less sedentary, and so on... exercising can help you not overeat, which makes it easier to exercise, and so on.
What I’m discovering (finally), is that to dramatically improve your life, you don’t have to do everything all at once. You just have to do one really good thing, which energizes another, which will then energize another, and another.
And when you fall off the wagon, which you will, and find yourself caught in a familiar vicious cycle that threatens to dismantle all the improvements you’ve been making, remember that all you need to do is refocus your energy on that first thing again, and trust that all the other good things will follow.
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