The Power of Subtraction

Simplifying the process by finding things to cut out

Author

Ben Johnson
May 19, 2024

"The soul grows by subtraction, not addition."

Henry David Thoreau

Hey friends,

The most common push back that I hear about fitness has something to do with not knowing what to do.

“I don’t know which exercises I should do”

“I don’t know how much food to eat or which foods are better than others”

“I don’t know what gym to choose”

“I don’t how often I should be lifting weights, or running, or stretching, or meditating for the best results”

“I don’t know how to track what I eat”

“I don’t know what the best way is to do *x, y, or z*

It’s so common for people to feel overwhelmed by the amount of things they don’t know. And the most popular solution? Doing nothing as a result!

Ah yes, a crazy concept: I don’t know exactly what I should be doing for my health, so instead I’ll do nothing. That seems to make sense, right?

In my opinion, people actually know more than they think. Maybe you don’t know what the best way is to do something (reading this newsletter each week will help solve that issue by the way), and that’s ok!

But have you ever thought instead about what NOT to do? Instead of thinking about adding things to your life and being overwhelmed by what you don’t know, sometimes it’s more obvious what things you should not be doing and cut those out from your life.

Ask yourself the question: “If I wanted to become morbidly obese, what would I do?”

You could create a list of things that you think would lead to you gaining a bunch of body fat, and then very simply just … avoid doing those things. It simplifies how we approach fitness tremendously.

For example, here’s a list of things in my head that I know are unhealthy behaviors:

  • Eating a bunch of processed foods

  • Consistently skipping my workouts

  • Drinking a bunch of alcohol and then eating an entire pizza and bag of Doritos while drunk - definitely not speaking from personal experience of course, that never happened to me throughout college…

  • Staying up really late scrolling social media and not getting enough sleep

  • Eating out at restaurants and fast food places all the time instead of cooking from home

  • Sitting all day at work and never getting up to walk around

  • Drinking sugar sweetened beverages like a Coke or Pepsi with every dinner

I can say with almost 100% confidence that if I engaged in the behaviors in my list consistently, I would put on A LOT of fat. So the simple solution here is that I will just, you know, not do those things as often. I’ll cut down on how often I do those things, or maybe cut them out all together.

By cutting out unhealthy habits I will be an infinitely healthier person, even if I didn’t know exactly what I was doing in the gym or how to add in the perfect amount of cardio to my routine.

I would bet that as you’re reading this you could stop and think of many behaviors that you know are unhealthy. You might even be tempted to create your own list and write it down. And hopefully you picked up on my hint that I want you to actually do that. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

Awesome, now that we’re back together, how does your list look? Maybe you have some similar things to mine, or maybe you have a bunch of things that are totally different. My list was a small sample of many unhealthy behaviors out there.

Now that you have a list, you can be aware and make conscious decisions to avoid doing those things. I’m not saying you have to cut out those behaviors entirely, just be mindful about knowing they are things that won’t help move you towards your fitness goals.

People are always trying to figure out what TO do or what they can add into their routine, and it can lead to a bunch of frustration. Trying to figure out the perfect weight lifting regimen or macronutrient breakdown of your food is extremely overwhelming. As I mentioned earlier, when you’re overwhelmed you are more likely to just do nothing instead.

Don’t overcomplicate things. Avoiding detrimental behaviors is just as good as adding beneficial behaviors. You know certain behaviors that are not healthy, so make the process simple for yourself and just try to do less of those behaviors.

Ben’s Best

I created my own meal prep recipe this week that was absolutely amazing! I’ll call it a sweet potato taco bowl. Here’s the ingredients:

  • 2 lbs 93/7 lean grass fed ground beef (Simply Nature is the brand I buy at Aldi because it’s cheap)

  • 1 can of black beans, reduced sodium

  • 1 huge sweet potato (like the biggest one I could find at the store)

  • about 1 ½ pounds of broccoli

  • 2 Taco seasoning packets, reduced sodium

  • 1 medium yellow onion

  • Plain nonfat Greek yogurt

Directions:

  1. Preheat oven to 425 F

  2. Cut up sweet potato into small cubes, about ½ inch - 1 inch. No need to peel the sweet potato

  3. Place the sweet potatoes in the oven for around 45 minutes, stirring/flipping halfway through

  4. Dice up onion

  5. Drain black beans in colander and rinse until water runs clear

  6. Brown the ground beef in a large skillet over medium-high heat. Let it sit for a bit before breaking up to get a nice sear

  7. When the beef is about 50% cooked, add in your diced onion. Cook until beef is cooked through and onions are translucent

  8. Add in both taco seasoning packets. Follow the directions on your packet for how much water to add. Mine was 2/3 cup of water per packet, so I just added 1 ½ cup of water

  9. Mix in black beans and simmer on low heat stirring frequently until mixture thickens, 2-4 minutes.

  10. When there’s around 15 minutes left on your sweet potatoes, throw your broccoli in the oven on a separate baking sheet. I don’t really have an exact time, just cook it until it’s soft when you poke it with a fork and the ends look roasted

  11. Assemble your bowls by evenly distributing sweet potatoes, broccoli, and beef mixture into 6 servings. Enjoy!

🍕 Pizzadilla recipe that I made for dinners this week. This was phenomenal and definitely satisfied the pizza craving that I was having!

My favorite podcasts from the week:

Below is an awesome video I watched this week about the importance of muscle in your metabolism and the impact on how much food you can eat:

As a side note, Jeff Nippard is an absolutely phenomenal source of information. He looks into the actual science behind a wide variety of topics and presents the science in simple English instead of science-y language. You would benefit from watching any of his videos.

Weekly Action Points

  1. If you didn’t already when I talked about it above, create a list of behaviors/habits that you know are unhealthy. Try to think of everything you can, and actually write them out. Just thinking about it and writing them out will help make you more aware of what these unhealthy behaviors are in your every day life.

  2. Exercise for the week:

  • Continue with the 12 minute walk every other day just like last week

  • Add in this week the stretching video below a minimum of two times. Doesn’t matter which days you choose to do it, but do it two days throughout the week.

  1. Nutrition goal for this week: If you are someone who consistently drinks sugar sweetened beverages, limit these this week to no more than one per day. Sugar sweetened beverages includes pop/soda, fruit juices with added sugar, sweetened teas, most of the drinks from Starbucks, and really any drink that has “added sugar” on the nutrition label (that includes adding a sugar packet to your coffee!)

Limit yourself to one of these types of beverages per day this week. And when I say “one per day”, I mean one standard serving size. So your 36 oz Pepsi from the gas station doesn’t count as one drink, it counts as three because the standard serving size for soda is 12 oz for example.

That wraps up for this week! Each week as we are going through this newsletter my goal is to slowly add more information to your plate for you to think about. These small changes will add up to make big changes for you if you stick with it!

Next week we will talk about the importance of being honest with yourself and having a solid plan, see you then!

Ben

Share this newsletter with someone who could benefit from some simple fitness information! I’m trying to help make fitness accessible to as many people as possible.