Stuffed with things, starving for meaning.

My most recent piece started exploring similarities between physical and financial wellbeing that come from consumption habits. The key takeaway from that piece is that success is largely the result of sustaining a balance. The ingredients in your diet, or the exercises in your routines, get most of your attention, which can lead to a false sense of what drives results. Even with good variety, imbalances over time will eventually lead to problems.  It is unsustainable to consume more than you burn without gaining weight, and it’s unsustainable to spend more than you make without losing net worth.

Perhaps the biggest trap out there is this ill-conceived assumption that all your problems can be fixed by improving one side of the equation. If you have a problem with spending there’s no level of income that can keep you in check, money is literally spent into existence[i]. Similarly, no amount of exercise could burn off a diet that’s completely off the rails. It can be incredibly costly to eventually conclude that “more” won’t actually ever be “enough”. 

It’s way too easy to overconsume and encouraging you to do so is big business. We are constantly tempted by our own psychology and billions of dollars in advertising. Additionally, food can and will eventually make us full. Spending on the other hand, especially on the wrong things can leave us feeling empty. There are no biological processes to slow you down from blowing through all of your money. I have an empty picture frame on my wall that shows every person in history who felt fulfilled by spending money.

Not to mention that burning cash and consuming calories come easier to most people than burning fat or sticking to a tight budget. When Joey Chestnut set the world record at the 2021 Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating contest, he consumed 76 hotdogs which amount to over 22,000[ii] calories in just 10 minutes. That sheer volume of calories consumed is near the theoretical limit for the number of calories possible to burn in an entire day for an elite athlete[iii], a day with 24hrs of intense training!

So yes, exercise has many benefits and so does having a higher income but don’t underestimate your ability and the ease at which you can over consume. At the end of the day, appetite control is what it’s all about. It might not be sexy, and it might not sell, but it’s the truth. There’s a tempting trap to believe we can outearn our outburn if we work hard enough, but that’s just the hedonic treadmill’s siren song trying to take you off course.

_{Image generated with OpenAI’s DALL·E / ChatGPT.}