Get Fit Slowly

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This is a guest post from Gal Josefsberg, who writes about smart physical fitness at 60 in 3.

In late 2003, I reached my lowest point:

• My career was at a dead end
• I was in debt
• I was 100lbs overweight

Mostly these things happened because I just didn’t pay much attention to them. For five years I had focused on immediate gratification: buy the shiniest new computer, play the latest video games, own the newest car, and eat anything that looked good. I didn’t save money, I didn’t think about health, and I didn’t consider how my actions were affecting my job.

When I realized how low I had sunk, I decided to turn things around. I started paying attention to things like healthy eating. I started noticing my credit score and the debts I had racked up. I even focused more on my work and coworkers. Four years later, I’m happy to say that I’m almost debt free, in good physical shape and doing great professionally. I’m not relaxing though. I realize that healthy habits can be easy to forget and I have no intention of going back to the life I almost wrecked.

These days I read and I research. I read health blogs, I research personal finance, I check on my credit score and I subscribe to blogs like Get Rich Slowly. I enjoy reading GRS because it gives me specific advice on day-to-day things. I’m not looking for stock tips — I’m looking for ways I can save money on everyday things, and J.D. consistently delivers. He seems to understand that being financially smart is not about complex investment strategy. It’s about making sure your expenses are less than your income. If money in is less than money out, you’re in trouble. It’s that easy, and personal finance bloggers really get that.

So I was a bit surprised to read that J.D. needed help with his weight. In fact, that same week I read on another finance blog that the author was looking into volumetrics to help with his weight issue. I was confused. How could these two people, who understood personal finance so well, need help with weight? Can’t they see that weight is the exact same as personal finance? Don’t believe me? Look at the similarities:

In vs. out
Personal finance is all about money in vs. money out. Weight is all about calories in vs. calories out. The problem starts when these two are out of balance. The only difference is that most weight issues are about too much in and not enough out, whereas most finance issues are about too much out and not enough in. As long as you can reverse your thinking a bit, you’ll find that solving weight issues is the exact same as solving financial issues.

Emergency Reserves
How many times have you heard this in personal finance blogs? “You need to maintain an emergency reserve!” Well, weight management has the same concept and it’s called fat. Yes, fat is your body’s emergency reserve. Just like you want a fund that will keep you fed for three to six months if you lose your income source, your body wants a fund that will keep it running if it loses its food source for a few weeks. That’s fat.

An emergency reserve is good in finance, and it’s good in weight management. Stop thinking of fat as your enemy. Fat is a good thing in moderation. Just as your budget shuts down certain things when funds get low, your body does the same thing when food and emergency reserves get low. Those things could include your reproductive systems (your body knows you shouldn’t have children in a time of famine just like your wallet knows you shouldn’t have them if you can’t support them), your sex drive (your body’s version of cutting down on your entertainment budget) and eventually it’s going to cut out vital functions like your kidneys. So yes, some fat is good.

The Worst Savings Account EVER!
The problem is that your body’s emergency reserves account (fat) has the worst fee structure ever. It was built for a time when large emergency funds were unheard of and, unfortunately, it’s never been updated since.

For every penny over a certain amount, your emergency account will charge you some incredible fees. These fees go up exponentially as you go over this threshold. When you have just enough fat, your body is happy and healthy, but when you have too much, those fees start adding up in the form of diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease and other problems. Simply put, your body’s emergency fund is good, but only up to a certain point.

It’s like a bank’s savings account that offers good returns if you keep 6 months worth of salary in it. However, try to keep 7 months worth of salary in there and you’ll get charged a 5% fee. With 8 months of salary in there you’ll get charged a 10% fee and so on. The more you keep in there above a certain healthy limit, the more you’ll get charged. It starts getting to a point where more emergency fund is actually bad for you because the fees are eating up your resources.

The Basic Problem
Let’s convert all of this into finance speech. Bob has an issue. Bob makes $10,000 a month. Bob spends $5,000 a month. Bob has no long-term investments or retirement accounts. He only has a checking account. However, his checking account is bad. It charges him $100 in fees for every dollar over $10,000 he has in it. So what are Bob’s possible solutions? Unfortunately, Bob can’t change banks (wouldn’t that be nice? Deposit your fat with someone else and let them worry about it!) but Bob does have some options. Bob can work less and make less money, Bob can spend more or Bob can put money into his long term investments.

Make Less
The obvious choice. You want to fix the imbalance? Just reduce your calorie income. You know this one as well as I do. Your calories come from eating and drinking . So eat and drink fewer calories.

Be Frugal Not Cheap
Just as with personal finance, you don’t want to just deprive yourself of everything you enjoy. Most personal finance blogs make the distinction between being cheap and being frugal and the same applies to weight control. There’s a difference between calorie watching and eating healthy. Find healthy recipes that you enjoy. Cut down the frivolous stuff like calories from sodas so you can enjoy the stuff that matters, like calories from your child’s birthday cake.

Budget
Use a budget and stick to it. If you know you have a big expenditure coming up, do you keep spending as usual? No, you save up for it. So if you know you have a big dinner coming up, why did you just have that big lunch? All the things that apply to cutting spending in personal finance also apply to cutting calories in weight control.

Spend More
Perhaps instead of cutting down on the calories, you can increase your spending. Be more active. Go work out. Join a sports league. Whatever you do, stop sitting in front of the TV while you’re doing it. The best exercise in the world is 30 minutes of walking. It’s free, it needs no equipment and it has no risk of injury. All the things that apply to increasing your income also apply to increasing your calorie expenditure. Find a hobby with good benefits like hiking or a sports team.

Passive Sources
Work on passive sources like your muscles. A pound of muscle requires 50 calories per day for upkeep whereas a pound of fat requires one calorie. Adding a pound of muscle to your body is like adding a passive income source. It will spend 50 extra calories a day even if you didn’t exercise.

Invest Long Term
Just like your body has emergency funds, it also has long-term investments. These are your muscles, your circulatory system, your lungs and your heart. These are your bones and your brain and all the other systems that keep you alive day after day. You can put money (calories) into these areas, but it’s not as easy as just dumping it into your short term emergency fund (fat). You need to work out. You need to exercise. Get your body moving and build up these systems. A simple 10 minute weight workout a day will build muscle tone and strengthen your bones. A simple 15 minute cardio session every other day will improve circulatory health and build stamina.

Start Early
Just like most people who get into financial trouble because they don’t think about old age early enough, a lot of people get into trouble because they don’t think about health early enough. Your body starts losing muscle and bone mass in your 30’s. If you don’t exercise and put money into long term investments like your bones and your muscles, you’re going to miss your chance. You put money away so you can retire one day, do you really want to spend that retirement in an old folks home unable to move without a walker or do you want to spend it with your spouse, dancing on some beach? Treat your body like a long term investment and start taking care of it today with some exercise.

Planning and Analysis
Here’s the thing most people don’t think of when it comes to health. If I tell you “Bob has six months of emergency fund saved up”, can you tell me if Bob is in good financial shape? No, of course not. You know nothing about Bob from this simple statement.

What’s Bob income? What are his expenses? How much does he have in investments and retirement accounts? All of these things matter. So why do people insist on measuring health by weight alone? This is the single worst mistake people make and it shows in the way they go about fixing their health. Weight alone is not a measure of physical health, just like emergency funds alone are not a measure of financial health. Consider:

• Metabolic Rate - How fast do you burn calories?
• BMI - How’s your height to weight ratio?
• Body Fat Index - What’s your fat %?
• Cardio health - How fast can you run and for how long?
• Muscle density - How strong are you?
• Bone strength - How strong are your bones?

These are all measures of physical health.

Avoid One-Dimensional Solutions
Ask most people what they plan on doing about their health and they’ll tell you “I’m going on a diet”. These folks might as well stop right there. They’re headed for failure. They’re like the people who, when asked how they’re going to fix their finances, say “I’m going to cut expenses!” Sure, that’s one step, but is it a whole plan? Does it do anything about long-term investments?

Unfortunately, your body withdraws from long term-investments just as much as it does from emergency funds. If your calorie income drops below your expenses, your body will start drawing from your emergency reserves (fat) and your long term investments (muscles, bones, heart, lungs, etc.) You have to tell your body that you want any and all calories going into long-term investments by exercising so that your calorie deficit is taken out of fat and not your muscles.

Think Permanent, Not Temporary
What would you think of the person who tells you “I’m going to fix my financial issues by going on a budget for the next three months and then I’ll go back to my old habits”? Pretty silly right? They might see some temporary improvement but they’re going to sink into the same old hole when they stop their three months budget. And yet, no one thinks that when we hear “I’m going on a diet for the next four months!” It’s the exact same problem, folks. You’re either trying to change your life on a permanent level, or you may as not try at all. Temporary efforts lead to temporary results in both finance and health.

Conclusion
There are a dozen other parallels, but in the interest of time, I’ll stop there. Just remember, physical health and financial health are both very similar. They are both number games where you try to balance what’s going in with what’s going out.