If asked to diet like a trader, one might think of scoffing a Red Bull, sandwich and some *ahem* sherbert *ahem* at your desk. This is not my approach.
What I think about is applying a fundamental trading concept — not compounding losses — to dieting efforts.
I have developed some tricks for this which have been working well for me lately. But this concept is something I have found strangely absent in dieting advice.
Let's define a loss here as eating something you know you shouldn't: the sugary, processed, nutritionally void junk that is just oh so satisfying for the two minutes before it hits your stomach.
I see three traditional approaches to dealing with such situations. The first is obviously to go cold turkey - don't eat such things.
There are practical tricks to help with this, like keeping treats out of the house, shopping around the outside aisles of the supermarket etc.
Those tricks are certainly worth using, but I would posit that for most people (including myself), complete abstinence from such treats is neither desirable nor enjoyable.
So, the aim is to be able to have treats but to minimize harm by keeping them occasional and resisting their addictive allure.
One approach is the treat day. I did this for a while. Once a week, I'd chow down on as many pancakes and as much ice cream and pizza as possible.
There are tricks that are meant to minimize harm here too, like working out at the start of the day and making the first meal something healthy and nutritious.
In my experience, however, these tricks were quickly forgotten in the excitement of the oncoming sugar rush.
Another criticism I have is that treat days are highly dependent on social life. I used to schedule them for Saturdays, which worked well when everyone I knew had Monday to Friday 9-5 jobs so that was the day we'd usually meet.
Now, I have friends who are self-employed and who live away on weekends. It's rare that I can see everyone on a single day. I'm often meeting friends a few times a week.
While writing this, I have begun to wonder why we don't meet up for healthier meals. But unhealthy feasts with friends seem to have existed through much of human history.
I don't like to disturb widely established practices that have existed for far longer than I have. Plus, it's much more fun meeting under these circumstances.
If I had to take a wild guess, I'd say there may be some skin-in-the-game aspect to incurring harm for the sake of the friendship. The same could be said of drinking with friends too, which also makes you vulnerable.
Another issue I have with treat days is I don't think making your blood sugar absolutely skyrocket is a great idea at any time. Well, I'm mixed on this.
It probably is better than chronically elevated levels from a consistently poor diet. Since the body is highly complex, we can assume Jensen's inequality applies and that the average gives us little information compared to the variation around it.
I've also seen some documentaries on hunter-gatherer tribes who seem to be obsessed with honey. One said it was the most important thing in life next to meat, with others saying when they found some they'd eat it until they felt sick.
At the same time, I consider the adage that the dose makes the poison. This is basically the reverse interpretation of Jensen's inequality from above: all the sugar coming in one go may be more harmful than the same amount divided up into small pieces consumed over a longer time.
So the final approach is most suitable for me right now. That is the "It's fine to have occassionally" approach of many dieticians.
And this is finally where the trading aspect is helpful.
You see, I think this approach ignores a flaw in human psychology, the same one that makes us throw good money after bad and makes traders compound their losses.
It's not so easy to just have these things occassionally. They are designed to be addictive.
Many times have I been eating consistently healthy, only to be presented with an opportunity for a treat that I accept.
Let's ignore the fact that I accept it in the first place. Like I said, I don't want to completely avoid them. The problem comes after that.
I had a mental habit of writing-off that day after a single treat and promising myself I'd start being healthy again tomorrow, simultaneously commiting myself to a damaging day of overindulgence.
A small, probably harmless treat ballooned into something much more costly, all because I couldn't think like a trader and cut my loss, walk away and see it for the isolated event that it was.
Every subsequent decision I made on those days was made with reference to that initial decision to eat something bad. Yet there is no rational basis to do this.
From reading Robert Cialdini's book Influence, I am now aware of just how strong a driver of human behaviour consistency really is. This is the principle that underlies the famed foot-in-the-door sales technique.
I also think this is responsible for compounding my dieting errors.
A big part of what makes great traders like George Soros great, and thinkers like the philosopher Bertrand Russell, is that their future decisions are completely unaffected by those they have made in the past.
Yet knowing this is all well and good. But I knew all this already and still made the mistake time and time again. I think there are few humans who can alter their behaviour based on reason alone, and I'm certainly not one of them.
This is where my wider reading of trading literature came in handy.
Somewhere along the way I have come across traders who use rituals, even something as simple as getting away from the desk and taking a walk in the park, to isolate losses and mentally prepare to move on.
So, one night, I applied this idea to my dieting problem and wrote a checklist of actions that put the treat behind me and put my mind back into "healthy mode", for want of a better term.
My consistency in keeping up exercise on days when I've had a treat and eating healthily for subsequent meals has improved hugely because of this.
So what's on the list? Nothing spectacular. Sometimes I do the whole list, sometimes I am out and can only do one or two. But even that is still effective. I have found the following helpful:
- Brushing my teeth
Yes, simply getting rid of the taste and replacing it with that minty fresh feeling makes a big psychological difference. I also think it connects with the fact that brushing is associated with the morning, or a fresh start.
I have also found taking a shower helpful, possibly for similar reasons.
- Eating fruit
Interestingly, Mark Baker (AKA guruanaerobic on Twitter) advises donating some money if you suffer trading losses. Although it means you lose more money in absolute terms, he argues it gives you back a feeling of control. I see this as analogous to the above.
- Drinking lots of water
Not sure why this one works, but it does. I guess it kind of feels like washing away or diluting the bad stuff. It does have to be quite a lot of water for me, at least one pint.
- Doing some exercise
This does not have to be a full workout. It hardly even has to last over a minute. I have found a single set of ten pressups or squats to work just fine, as well as deadhangs, overcoming isometrics and walking.
As you can see, these small actions are like a foot-in-the-door working the opposite way to the treat. After taking these small steps, I will try to be consistent with these healthy actions for the rest of the day, instead of what came before.
If, like me, you have a tendency to scrap healthy eating for a day on the basis of a small snack, then it could definitely be worth spending a few minutes to design some rituals to try that can let you just put it behind you and move on.
If you found this article helpful, please feel free to share what worked for you in the comments.
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