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Areas › Your body › Food, caffeine and fuel
The natural reward for walking more is invisible and decades away, which is no use to a brain running on what happens next. A small stake, a streak, a friend expecting a message: each of those moves the reward closer. Keep the stake small enough that losing it stings a little and does not hurt, and change the game when it stops being interesting, because it will.
Eat and drink with healthy enjoyment as a reward for what you have done (Quran 52:19). A reward tied to effort is not a trick played on you, it is how people are made.
الطور
كُلُواْ وَٱشۡرَبُواْ هَنِيٓـَٔۢا بِمَا كُنتُمۡ تَعۡمَلُونَ
‘Eat and drink with healthy enjoyment as a reward for what you have done.’
Qur’an 52:19read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
External structure can carry some of the load that motivation is not carrying. In a randomised trial of 90 adults with obesity, eating within an early eight hour window produced modestly greater weight and fat loss than a window of twelve hours or more, with counselling matched between the groups. A clear rule that decides things in advance seems to help, and the difference it made was modest rather than dramatic.
Jamshed H, Steger FL, Bryan DR, Richman JS, Warriner AH, Hanick CJ, Martin CK, Salvy SJ, Peterson CM. (2022). Effectiveness of Early Time-Restricted Eating for Weight Loss, Fat Loss, and Cardiometabolic Health in Adults With Obesity: A Randomized Clinical Trial.. JAMA internal medicine doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Habits stick when the feedback comes soon and often, and health benefits do neither on their own.
Leave the money staking alone if betting is difficult for you, and use a streak or a check in with someone instead.
Put a rubber band round your water bottle for each refill you want to get through today, and slide one off each time you finish it. Nothing to remember, nothing to buy, and you can see where you are at a glance.
If you are going to buy supplements, look for an independent verification mark: USP Verified, NSF, or a product tested by ConsumerLab. It is the nearest thing available to the check that regulators do not carry out.
When you find yourself reaching for something sweet again, try asking what the reaching is doing for you instead of telling yourself off. Comfort, a small rebellion, a way to stay awake: the answer usually points somewhere useful.