Incentives - using mental models to try and eat better foods
"Show me the incentive, and I'll show you the outcome" - probably the most famous quote from Munger. For me, there are not many goals or outcomes that I want to achieve. Aside from developing my career, stronger relationships, making my body healthier, and getting just a little bit better as a person, I wouldn't say that I have a lot of aspirations (kind of sad I know). However, food has always been something that I was interested in. When I was a kid, I loved eating. When I was a teenager, I loved cooking more than eating. I also wanted to be a chef because my mums cooking was always amazing. Also, I might have been slighltly influenced by the televised magic of Masterchef.
Now, I want to be able to eat good food to develop a healthier body. It's surprisingly hard - nowadays we have to balance career with exercising, hobbies, socialising and relationships. Too many developed world 'problems'. Putting effort into the food we eat becomes just another chore on the list.
To tackle that, I have taken the approach of creating incentives to enable me to eat healthier. Incentives mean nothing without a goal in mind and my goal is a have a muscular, leaner body, something that ancient Greek statues were modelled after. Therefore, I tried my best to incentivise myself to eat low-calorie, high-protein foods that will help me to lose fat and develop muscle easily. But of course it should taste good. If ice had protein, I would just blend that into a liquid and drink it. However, eating such a meal can be the antithesis of 'yummy food'. After a hard day at work, you might just want to go and buy some fast-food burger or some sushi and rest because they are designed to be convenient and taste good. It has taken me years to develop the habits of eating relatively healthily. Even now, I don't think I do a great job, but I like my body right now so it must be doing the job. I essentially boiled what I have to do down to 2 things:
Reduce snacking on high-calorie low-protein foods
Increase protein intake of regular meals
Number one is difficult. Snacks these days are all made to be craveable, and rarely do these snacks fit the bill of high-calorie low-protein. I had to do a lot of research to find snacks that do fit in that category and also taste good and are cheap (why should I spend a lot of money on a snack!). I have ended up keeping a lot of corn crispies in my fridge so that I can slowly eat them throughout the day. It's not the best tasting food but when you want something with a strong taste just break off a corn cracker and dip it in some mustard (which is also surprisingly low-calorie). I have found that generally once you find some foods that are low-calorie, you know what you look for so it isn't hard to find the others.
Number two is actually really easy and is the one I have stuck to the best. It's another reason for me to eat more meat, and there is no such thing as too much meat hahaha. I have found that increasing protein intake makes me feel more physically full as well, which is really helping me stick to it. I now eat a lot more marinated chicken breast and chicken sausages (yes, they are much more protein-dense than other sausages) than I did before.
Overall, I have definitely found that incentivising myself to eat healthier food has successfully made me eat less junk food. Chocolates are cabinet-bound for much longer. While I still eat them, I enjoy them much more scarcely than before. There is also always a pack of corn crisps in the fridge. I can't say that I have a much better body since I started actively changing my diet, but I definitely am more muscular and I won't complain about that. I hope that if there is something to take away from my ramble, it's that incentives can have incentives themselves to reach, sort of in-centive-ception, and that you don't have to fully change everything, just start incentivising yourself to enjoy the incentives that will lead to the change. If done that way, the process is so much easier.
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