Do you stress over eating more than your want on the holidays? I found a great way not to that applies in many other places.

Since getting more fit, I’m more sensitive to smaller changes in my fitness. When I used to have more fat, eating more than I wanted for a few meals didn’t change much on my body. To go from having some fat to a little more fat didn’t register. So I would eat more than I wanted.

Now I notice the next morning or sometimes during the meal.

The more precise your standards, the more you can stick to them because missing them becomes more obvious. You hold yourself more accountable without mental effort. This precision creates freedom because instead of thinking about food and how much I should eat, I can eat what I want, knowing that my body will give me feedback so my mind doesn’t have to.

Likewise, the more vegetables I eat and learn to enjoy, the less I have to think about quantity or quality of food.

I’m writing about food here not because it’s on my mind but because it’s not. I think about regulating myself less than before, freeing my mind to think about other things. I didn’t expect this benefit. It’s yet another benefit of fitness.

This freedom, illustrated

I noticed this effect in meditation. Some people meditate on a stool, like this:

I do it that way a lot, although I don’t do the thing with the fingers and thumb. It keeps your spine straight and you can sit for a while. You usually sit on a stool like this:

That stool is stable. You might think stability would help you meditate.

There are also stools like this one that are less stable. You’d think they’d make it harder to meditate, but I’ve found the opposite.

Your body immediately tells you when you lose your balance, so you end up keeping yourself more precisely aligned. You’re free to focus on your thinking while your body takes care of itself.

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• I don’t know what to call it but I can’t call it food →