DAY 003: DAY 003【DADBOD.REHAB】 To complete the rest of the DADBOD.REHAB program, you need a B.R.A.I.N. — a device so important, that we assigned it another of our stupid acronyms. It stands for “Body Recomposition Action and Intention Notebook”.
Note that the last word is “notebook”. Yeah, we’ll mostly call it that.
The notebook serves two purposes:
write things down to record your progress through the program
write things down to change the way your brain processes the information you’re writing down, and the structure of your brain itself
This second point is the more interesting one. Once again, there is real science behind this, and broscience. Some studies have indeed shown that writing things down by hand is different than, say, typing them or dictating them to Siri.
We’re not saying it’s “better” — that’s desired-outcome-specific, and anyway further research is needed.
However, that’s where the broscience kicks in: participants in the initial versions of the DADBOD.REHAB did significantly better — and in many cases massively better — on many of the most important metrics when they had a write-it-down requirement, compared to those who didn’t. So much so that we decided very early to make it a requirement for everybody.
So you will need a paper notebook, or equivalent1. Don’t worry, no dream journals, no aspirational quotes, no “Dear Diary” entries. Just a sequence of what you did and (of course) what you intend to do.
So, you failed to buy the carrots and broccoli yesterday. (Yes, we told you to fail, but this doesn’t change the fact that you failed. We’re not going to sugarcoat it for you.)
Up to certain limits, some amount of failure is inevitable, and mostly fine. Failure is even good, in many cases. Failing to complete a set of pushups, or barbell curls, or whatever, is fine. It implies that you are training to the limit of your ability, and it might even motivate you to keep grinding until you crush that motherfucker the next time it comes up in the rotation.
Failing to do a simple-ass task like “buy carrots”, OTOH… seriously, what the fuck, dude? Or failing to even show up to do those pushups or barbell curls, even though you had the intention to? That’s not as OK. Pretty weak sauce. Still, it will inevitably sometimes happen, due to some unforeseen circumstances.
In such cases, the program will require you to Repeat Entirely the Previous Excercise, Next Time (R.E.P.E.N.T.).
This means that you go back one day — to the day where you were assigned the task that you failed to do. You do that day again, which results in being assigned the same task again… only this time, you fucking do it.
NOTE: This is just the typical process. There are more specialized compensation procedures for more complicated scenarios — including injury, illness, sudden realization that you have a serious meth habit that prevents you from excercising, reading, or following even rudimentary instructions — but we will get to those later in the program.
For now, suffice it to say that after a minor F.A.I.L., you generally just have to R.E.P.E.N.T. — in other words, go back to the previous day in the program, and resume from there. This isn’t supposed to be a punishment, it’s just a minor disincentive to provide a tiny bit of extra motivation not to accept failure. The DADBOD.REHAB program is measured in days since you started (this is DAY 003 BTW), so you make a bit of negative progress when you fail to do the simple tasks required of you.
Yes, you in the back with you hand up. Uh-huh, excellent question. Yes, if you fail so frequently that your negative progress takes you all the way back to DAY 001 — then yes, you have failed the DADBOD.REHAB program.
The good news there is that you are already there on DAY 001 — ready to start again!!
Now if we went by the book in this case, you’d get caught in an infinite time loop —— going back to DAY 002, failing, coming back here to DAY 003, and getting sent back to DAY 002, failing, coming back here to DAY 003, ad infinitum.
So we’re going to cut you some slack, just this once. You don’t have to go back to DAY 002. Just get those carrots and broccoli today, and we’ll call it even.
This sounds like — and is! — a simple task. But there are a couple things to watch out for, since this is your very first time buying vegetables. (Well, for the DADBOD.REHAB program, anyway. We fervently hope you’ve bought vegetables before at some point in your life.)
If you have some allergy, or other medical condition that prevents you from eating carrots or broccoli (e.g. broccoliphobia), you can substitute some other vegetable that you can eat. Just use your common sense — it has to be some kind of actual vegetable that you can eat. For now, we’re still not tracking calories and macronutrients, so any vegetable will do.
The goal here is just to start acclimating you to planning some parts of your nutrition plan in advance, in your DADBOD.REHAB notebook
Since we’re already pushing the 5-minute limit today, we’ll leave it there.
So get your notebook, and then write down “DAY 003” and today’s date at the top of the first page. Then, copy the following checklist items into your notebook. Complete the tasks, check them off, and bring your notebook back here tomorrow.
🍒 END OF DAY 003