The Principles of Body Recomposition

Investing and body composition have a lot in common.

Both require delayed gratification over short-term rewards.

Both are ‘something that I’ll get to’, but few do.

And both tend to be cyclical, with the gradual trend being expansion.

For these reasons, I have found that many successful investors and financial managers have great lessons that can be applied to body recomposition. Principles by Ray Dalio is the latest and greatest.

Dalio founded Bridgewater Associates, which has become the world’s largest hedge fund. In the process, he has built a net worth of $17b USD. But what's interesting is not how much money he has made, but the system he used to do so.

Dalio built algorithmic decision-making processes to help drive investment selection and capital allocation. By doing so, he was able to use all the information and knowledge he and others had gained in their lives, in an unbiased and unemotional setting. 

This is important because it’s the deviation from fundamentals – be it from ‘gut feel’, cognitive bias, or anything else - that can ruin investment portfolios and stifle returns.

That’s not dissimilar to body composition, particularly when it comes to delayed gratification and placing an emphasis on short-term rewards.

We are often guilty of overestimating our ability and taking on tasks that are beyond our current capability. This is called illusory superiority - of which a great example is that 90% of people think they are above-average drivers (Roy & Liersch, 2014). Although I would be surprised if that was the case in Canberra...

So even though we know that a diet and training program might be overly restrictive or tough, we decide that we can do it, because we are the exception. The problem is that often the failure sets us back in the long run, as we feel disillusioned and unrewarded for our efforts.

A few months ago, and before I had read this book, I was challenged by a mentor to put together the ‘rules of body recomposition’. The idea was that these were the rules that could not be violated if people wanted to get results. They were to be moulded by my experience, learnings, and ideas on how things should work.

It made sense – if I could boil the process down to what is fundamentally essential and what is not, I could refine my programs to ensure these needs were met. These rules would also guide the content I produced, to ensure a consistent message.

However, I was hesitant to write ‘the rules’ at the time, mostly due to the fact that I wasn’t comfortable making the rules – I have only been doing this for a few years, and the more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know!

Instead, I decided to call them the Principles of Body Recomposition, for no other reason than it less-induced a feeling of Imposter Syndrome. But don’t worry, Ray, you won’t be hearing from my lawyer(s).

prinThe Principles of Body Recomposition had to be simple and limited to the essentials only. They weren’t allowed to be four pages long, with multiple sub-headings, because that defeated the purpose (this guideline was probably specific to me, as I have a tendency to go long-form).