This video is an ad for Noom.
Take your free 30 second quiz today at noom.com/ragusea or click the link in the description to get
started now.
So, I've been doing this for a living now for about three years, and that means that
I now have about 150 weekly documents of how I have looked.
And looking back through this footage, it is weird to see how much my body has changed.
That's me three years ago, that's me a few months after that, that's me a few months
after that, et cetera, et cetera.
I mean, I know intellectually that I am constantly yo-yoing between 160 and 200 pounds.
But you can kind of forget about that when you're only looking at your dumb face in the
mirror every day, because even rapid body changes are pretty gradual on a day-to-day
timescale.
But when you have a video archive of your life, you can kind of sift through the highlights
in rapid succession and boy, what am I doing to myself?
I mean, I know what I'm doing.
I'm putting on weight in the winter and then losing it in the summer.
This is hardly unusual, right?
In the summer, I like to go outside and move my body a lot.
In the winter is when all the best desserts are served.
And on top of that, I've had life things going on.
Like, this is when I was trying to nurture my new YouTube career while also finishing
out my old university contract, and also my young kids were even younger, and I was super
overworked and stressed and I am a big-time stress eater.
I'm about 200 pounds in that footage.
And I'm 195, 200 pounds right now, maybe a bit more of a solid 195.
I have more time to work out now than I did then, so less of the weight on me now is idle
fluff — though after this past holiday eating season, I'm still more buttery than I would
like.
This is my body right now.
And honestly, it's fine.
I'm turning 40 in a month.
A lot of dudes my age would be real happy to look like this.
It's fine.
But I know from experience that my body is a much more comfortable place to inhabit down
around 170, 165 pounds.
Everything just moves around better, things brush up against each other less, clothes
fit better, though that may be the fault of clothes rather than the fault of my body.
Regardless, I'd like to be a little leaner and, more importantly, I would like to stop
vacillating so much.
That can't be good for me.
So this year, I've committed to doing Noom religiously.
Noom is a program that can help you achieve your goals via psychology and cognitive behavioral
therapy.
It helps you learn the science behind your own behavior, and it uses that science to
nudge you onto the path that you want to walk — the path to lasting change.
I think there's growing acknowledgement that our weight and body composition is heavily
influenced by factors that are beyond our control — factors like genetics and upbringing
and environment and socioeconomic status.
It is valuable and important to acknowledge the fact that all of us are operating in situations
that are not entirely of our own making.
On the other hand, I think each of us has to guard against feeling too personally disempowered
by that acknowledgement.
Ultimately, I am in control of my own behavior — not every minute of the day, but in the
broad arc of my life, I'm in the driver's seat.
I am in control of what I put in my face.
I'm a human, not a dog.
"All right, one more, Oliver."
Nice one, buddy.
Anyway, I am in control of myself, and if I consume less food energy than I expend,
my body will change in the way I want it to change.
No other outcome is physically possible.
So, in Noom here, I tell them where I'm at now and where I want to end up and how fast
I want to get there.
I know how to crash diet — a little too well — and that's not what I want to do
this time.
My goal is gradual, sustainable change.
Noom is not telling me how many calories to eat here.
They're just doing honest math.
If I want to get to 170 this year, this is about what my daily calorie budget needs to
be.
That number might be too low for me, especially given how much I exercise, and that's fine.
I'll talk to my human coach at Noom about it, and we'll adjust that number as we go.
When you're in a really unhealthy cycle, the hardest part, by far, is that initial break
— stepping off that runaway train.
That first step is even harder than trying to film yourself jogging while holding a 20
pound camera rig away from your center of gravity as though that's a normal and natural
thing to do.
When we're in a really unhealthy cycle, we generally find ways of ignoring it.
We eat alone, as though it won't count if nobody sees it.
We avoid the mirror or the scale.
And the whole point of Noom is to teach you the psychology behind these problems so that
you can overcome them.
You get these daily lessons that you can read like articles, or listen to like podcasts.
"We're here to help you build muscles, metaphorically speaking.
To build your weigh-in muscles, just follow the three Ps.
One, plan.
Mark it in your calendar, set phone reminders or rig a contraption that throws a pie in
your face if you don't weigh in every day.
Two, prep.
Put your scale in a place where you'll be prompted to use it first thing in the morning."
Of course, being healthy and in control of your body is about way more than the scale.
I could be considerably stronger and leaner and still be 198, like I am now.
That would be awesome.
To get there, I'd have to move my body a whole lot, but also I'd have to really change what
I eat.
Noom has a great system of dividing foods into simple color codes.
None of these codes is bad.
None of them is to be completely avoided.
But to achieve my goals, I need to increase my share of green and yellow foods — foods
that have more nutrition and bulk relative to their energy density.
The lessons teach you all about that.
"We want you to eat healthy for the rest of your life.
Giving up desserts forever is neither sustainable, nor as yummy."
One of the best things about Noom is how easy they make it to track your food.
They have the best food database I've seen.
I don't have to type in exhaustive descriptions of what I've been eating.
I put in a few key words and there we are.
Tracking my food lately has helped me to realize that my meals are really not my problem.
My meals are basically fine.
What's getting me is the junk food snacks — chiefly my twin vices of expensive whiskey
and cheap chocolate.
If I can get control of those cheap highs I'm always chasing, I think that I can get
where I want to get with my body pretty fast.
And for me, the act of logging what I consume changes what I consume, because it forces
me to look my actions in the face.
So what are your goals?
Hit my link in the description, noom.com/ragusea and take the free quiz there.
Be honest.
The whole program is based real psychology, and they need to know how you think and feel
in order to help you get control of your body and behavior.
The research on this stuff shows that it's pretty easy for people to achieve their goals
with the help of a good structured program.
It's much harder for people to maintain those goals over the long term.
I am very optimistic that new programs like Noom might prove to be much more effective
in the long term.
Why?
Because it's on my phone, and my phone is plugged into my brain more directly than any
piece of technology ever has been.
The beeps and bloops and reminders I get here affect my brain in profound ways.
And instead of using that power to make me gamble or buy junk, Noom is using that power
to help me master my body and my mind so that I can look and feel and live how I want.
I'm gonna give you some updates on my experience over the course of the year.
Get your own journey started.
Go to noom.com/ragusea.
Take that free quiz and get started today.
You are in control.