How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life

by Scott Adams

Changing your food preferences is a fairly straightforward process, and it starts the way all change starts: by looking at things differently.

can change my food preferences by thinking of my body as a programmable robot as opposed to a fleshy bag full of magic. This minor change in perspective is more powerful than it seems. Most people believe there is no strong connection between what they eat and how they feel.

Most adults understand the basic cause and effect of their diet choices. They know that overeating makes them feel bloated, beans make them gassy, and spicy food might make their noses run. Those causes and effects are so obvious that they are hard to miss. But have you ever tracked your mood, problem-solving ability, and energy level in relation to what you recently ate?

If you look at your life from some distance, you can see that today is a lot like yesterday, and tomorrow won’t be that different either. Our lives stay roughly the same, while our moods can swing wildly. My proposition, which I invite you to be skeptical about, is that one of the primary factors in determining your energy level, and therefore your mood, is what you’ve eaten recently.*

person who eats right won’t be bothered as much by the little bumps in life’s road, and he or she will have greater optimism, too.

Some types of knowledge can be acquired only by experience. Diet’s connection to mood is one of those categories of knowledge that must be experienced.

The biggest reason is that you probably eat meals that are a combination of lots of different ingredients. You rarely isolate one kind of food just to see how it feels. You probably believe the reason you’re sleepy after a big meal is simply because you ate a lot and your body is diverting its energy from your brain and muscles to your digestive system. You think you’re sleepy in the afternoon because someone told you that’s what lunch does to people.

You should also have a healthy skepticism about diet studies because they are notoriously bad at sorting out correlation from causation.

eating simple carbs depletes my energy so thoroughly that a few hours after consuming them I can fall asleep within thirty seconds of closing my eyes. I literally use white rice like a sleeping pill on evenings when I’ve had too much coffee.

While potatoes send me straight to my napping chair, pasta is a perfect preworkout snack.

peanuts have a high concentration of fat, they satisfy your appetite efficiently and provide fuel.2 The unpredicted outcome of adding fat-laden peanuts to your diet is that it improves your ability to lose weight.

I eat smaller meals on days I eat peanuts.

Science has demonstrated that humans have a limited supply of willpower.3 If you use up your supply resisting one temptation, it limits your ability to resist others. Struggling to do anything has a steep price because you don’t want to use up your willpower and energy on something as unimportant as staying away from the candy drawer. You might need your willpower later for something more substantial. What you need is a diet system that doesn’t rely on willpower. And that means reprogramming your food preferences so willpower is less necessary. I’ll explain how to do that in a minute.

Ouija board

food is the fuel that makes exercise possible.

If you manage your diet right, you’ll want to exercise more, and that will translate into doing so. The starting point for good health is diet. Once you get your diet right, your energy level will increase and you’ll find yourself more in the mood for exercise.

For a few months, eat as much as you want of anything that is not a simple carb.

goals are a trap. You want systems, not goals.

Bananas Protein bars Peanuts Mixed nuts Cheese Whole wheat pasta Edamame (soybeans) Broccoli Cauliflower Brussels sprouts Fish Lettuce Tomatoes Apples Pears Carrots Radishes Cucumbers Quinoa Brown rice Berries The first thing you might notice about my list is that most of the foods I keep at home are convenient.

game your willpower by allowing yourself unlimited quantities of the good sort of food, at least until your cravings for the bad stuff subside.

For dinner, which tends to be a social meal, I’m not so stringent about avoiding simple carbs, especially near bedtime, when I prefer being sleepy. My usual takeout food options are … Takeout Subway veggie sandwiches Veggie pizza Chinese food Indian food

bad night of sleep leads to nonstop eating.

When tiredness sparks your hunger but you’ve had all the calories you need for a while, try eating peanuts or mixed nuts to suppress your appetite. Cheese also works, at least for that specific purpose. The fat in those foods acts as an appetite satisfier. Nuts and cheese have lots of calories, but you’ll find that suppressing your appetite at the expense of some extra calories is still a net gain if the alternative is to eat until everything in your kitchen is gone.

When you eat for social reasons, aim for the lowest-calorie options. You don’t need to suppress your appetite if the reason you’re eating isn’t hunger.

The first rule of eating right is avoiding foods that feel like punishment.

Vegetarian Flavors Soy sauce Cilantro Lemon Salt Pepper Butter (or butter substitute) Garlic Onion Curry Cheese Tomato sauce Salsa Vegetable broth Honey Salad dressings Balsamic vinegar Black-bean sauce Hot sauce

The key to enjoying salt without worrying about a heart attack is that you need to have a healthy diet in general, exercise regularly, and have a healthy body-fat composition. It also helps if you don’t have high blood pressure.

Hanging out with fit people can cause you to become more like them.

health benefits of a vegetarian diet are probably real and probably substantial.

If a person who eats meat in moderation is generally fit and eats plenty of fruits and veggies too,

My main protein sources are … Edamame (soy) Nuts Protein bars (whey protein) Pasta (whole wheat) Cheese Vegetables of all types Protein shakes after working out

If you don’t drink coffee, you should think about two to four cups a day. It can make you more alert, happier, and more productive. It might even make you live longer. Coffee can also make you more likely to exercise, and it contains beneficial antioxidants and other substances associated with decreased risk of stroke (especially in women), Parkinson’s disease, and dementia. Coffee is also associated with decreased risk of abnormal heart rhythms, type 2 diabetes, and certain cancers.12, 13

coffee drinkers have higher highs and lower lows, energywise, than non–coffee drinkers, but that trade-off works.

if success is your dream and operating at peak mental performance is something you want, coffee is a good bet.

The happier you are in one area of your life, the less effort you’ll put into searching for happiness elsewhere. And that can translate into caring less about the taste quality of your meal.

Eating right depends a great deal on your nonfood alternatives. If you get your entire life in order, it will be much easier to have an ideal weight.

If you get your health in order, success will come more easily. And if you get success without good health, you won’t enjoy it.

The Simple, No-Willpower Diet System Pay attention to your energy level after eating certain foods. Find your pattern. Remove unhealthy, energy-draining food from your home. Stock up on convenient healthy food (e.g., apples, nuts, bananas) and let laziness be your copilot in eating right. Stop eating foods that create feelings of addiction: white rice, white potatoes, desserts, white bread, fried foods. Eat as much healthy food as you want, whenever you want. Get enough sleep, because tiredness creates the illusion of hunger. If your hunger is caused by tiredness, try healthy foods with fat, such as nuts, avocados, protein bars, and cheese, to suppress the hungry feeling. If you’re eating for social reasons only, choose the healthiest options with low calories. Learn how to season your healthy-yet-bland foods.

The only way to succeed in the long run is by using a system that bypasses your need for willpower.

Be Active Every Day

if you get one simple thing right—being active every day—all of the other elements of fitness will come together naturally without the need to use up your limited supply of willpower.

any form of exercise that requires willpower is unsustainable.

Once exercise becomes habitual, you won’t need willpower to keep going because your body and brain will simply prefer it to being a couch spud. And your natural inclination for variety will drive you to do more stuff over time.

In the long run, any system that depends on your willpower will fail. Or worse, some other part of your life will suffer as you focus your limited stockpile of willpower on fitness.

three practical ways to schedule exercise in a marriage or marriagelike situation: Join an organized team. Always exercise at the same time every day. Exercise together (if you both really mean it).

right amount of exercise today is whatever amount makes me look forward to being active tomorrow.

you want is for your daily exercise to give you a reward every time. Light exercise does just that; it reduces your stress and boosts your energy. Over time, as you become fitter, you will naturally increase your exercise level, but by then your body will be equipped to handle it.

If you want to make a habit of something, the worst thing you can do is pick and choose which days of the week you do it and which ones you don’t. Exercise becomes a habit when you do it every day without fail. Taking rest days between exercise days breaks up the pattern that creates habits. It also makes it too easy to say today is one of your nonexercise days, and maybe tomorrow too.

If you’re not exercising every day and you don’t drink coffee, maybe you should give it a try. I can’t tell you how many times I ruled out exercise because I was too tired, only to completely change my mind after a cup of coffee.

what I do when I know I should exercise but I feel too tired and droopy to imagine doing a vigorous workout. Instead of doing what I feel I can’t do, I do what I can do—which is put on my exercise clothes and lace my sneakers. (You might call them tennis shoes or running shoes where you live.) Central to my method is that I grant myself 100 percent permission to not exercise, even after getting suited up for it. This is important because I know I won’t take the first step of donning my exercise clothes if I feel it will commit me to something that just seems impossible in my current frame of mind. But once the sneakers and shorts are on, a funny thing happens, and it happens quickly. The physical feeling I get from my exercise clothes triggers the going-to-the-gym subroutine in my brain, and my energy kicks up a notch. It’s like Pavlov’s salivating dogs. The exercise clothes cause me to think positive things about exercising, and that boosts my energy. Suddenly the idea of exercising seems possible, if not desirable. There’s one more step, and this too requires granting myself permission to back out at any time. I drive to my local gym, walk in, look around, and see how I feel. About 95 percent of the time this set of cues will put me in a sufficiently energetic mood to go ahead and exercise, and that in turn boosts my mood. But sometimes—and this happened perhaps five times this year, which is typical—I get to the gym, look around, turn, and leave. As I drive home I am no...