Beware Mutually Exclusive Goals

There are a lot of great goals out there which are mutually exclusive. To get to any single one, we have to imbalance the scale of life. But often people find out that they simply pit two forces against one another to merely end up at homeostatic balance, gaining no real progress in any direction. Be wary of taking on mutually exclusive goals at the same time.

Gain muscle while you lose fat sounds good. It is possible for the beginner or even for the intermediate who lifts intensely six days per week with 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. But for everyone else, it is folly, because it is biologically impossible. Gaining athletic capacity WHILE you focus on losing weight doesn't make any sense at all. You must feed athletic capability. You must starve fat cells to shrink them.

I understand. I have a tendency to put items on my plate which can cancel each other out. In a dash for productivity, the exact opposite comes about.

It used to be with record-setting. I'd think that I would improve my happiness if I could prove that I could do more than anybody else AND with less advantage. I'm not saying it wasn't nice to excel at test-out examinations of advanced college courses, or to be acknowledged as Director of the Year or top in the country, or even just selling more than anybody else while I took fewer leads than them.

It was nice, for a moment. But the time cost to do those things was very high. There was a moment a few years ago wherein I took a nap with my two-year-old daughter. She cuddled me so tight; and all I could think was how much better this was than any "accomplishment," any "record," any series of "productive" tasks.

Am I going to complain when I'm not as far in my business or personal fitness or educational goals? Yeah. But I shouldn't, because I picked a direction which excludes or puts on hold some of those things.

Likewise, sometimes you need to recover instead of logging a four hour run or seven days of hours-ling bouts of cardio. Sometimes you need to attend to responsibilities and not rapid fat loss. Sometimes you need to purposely eat in a surplus while training athletic capacity. Sometimes you need to purposely eat in a deficit to incur body mass decrease.

Beware mutually exclusive goals.