Issue XIII | Dollars are Calories

For those who have known me from about 2014 to the present, you might not know that I used to struggle with my weight. Honestly, I still do to a certain extent, but that’s a separate discussion.

When I was young, somewhere around 8 to 10 years old, I was overweight. Not sure by how much, nor do I remember my weight, but I know this: I ate almost strictly salads and lost 10 lbs. I’m not sure how many 10 year olds are out there on a weight loss journey, but I was one of them, and I believe it was mostly self-imposed.

Fast forward to my heaviest: I got to 224 lbs as a 6 ft junior in high school. This is not a wild number by any means, but I knew I was on a path that I shouldn’t be on. I remember being in the shower, looking down at my body, and thinking that something needs to change. From that point, I dropped all the way down to my lightest weight of 172 lbs in late 2015. 52 lbs lost. I mostly ate salads and lean proteins. At one point, I didn’t eat “processed sugars” for at least a couple months.

Over time, I lost that discipline and went back up to around 190-200 lbs.

I’ve lost a bit of that weight now, and I’m at a consistent 185-190 lbs. I have developed a lifestyle that prevents me from putting more weight on.

Here’s what I want you to notice about these two periods of weight loss in my life: my actions were extreme, and the results I got didn’t last for the long term.

This is the same sort of behavior that I see with people and their money: drastic changes made to lifestyle which stick for a while, but inevitably the old habits and comforts come back.

Dollars are calories.

People overeat and overspend. People go on extreme weight loss diets and cut back spending to the bone. The results of these actions are often not success stories.

So what do we do instead? We do what I’ve done in regards to my weight: I have developed a lifestyle that prevents me from putting more weight on.

We take a balanced, cool-headed approach to our finances.

We get educated about how money works.

We learn about how successful people in similar financial situations handle money, and we try to replicate it in our lives with our own adjustments.

We take action.

If you’ve read this far, I want to congratulate you. You just did it.

You took action!

Keep this ball rolling. Money is something you can learn!