Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

From the very start of this video from John Dilworth at Ignite Salt Lake City, I was so inspired!

We live our lives by a code of action. We’ve gotta keep busy doing everything we can to avoid doing nothing. We’ve been taught that doing anything is better than doing nothing.

Here are some quotes from his presentation:

There are good actions and bad actions, but there is another type of action, where we think we’re doing something good, but we’re really doing something bad that is harmful to ourselves and to others.

Inaction is instant. The very second you decide to do nothing, you’re done.

Inaction is inexpensive. If you don’t do crap that you don’t need to do, you save time and you save money.

Inaction is infinitely scalable. You can NOT do an infinite number of things simultaneously.

When you’re deciding what to do, remember that sometimes inaction is a viable option and sometimes it might be better than doing just anything.

How many times have I been so desperate to lose weight that I’ve tried a stupid diet? Umm… How about EVERY time a new stupid diet comes along?! It would have been so much better for me to just NOT try the diet. I didn’t keep the weight off anyway, so I ended up doing one of those actions that I thought was good, but was really doing harm to myself.

My long-time readers might think that this goes against my favorite quote from my grandfather:

Make a decision, even if it’s wrong.
– Jarvis Klem

You can always decide to do nothing. Just make the decision.

The next time you’re tempted to start a fad diet that goes against all that you know about healthy eating, remember the power of inaction. The next time you’re tempted to exercise too hard, risking injury, remember the power of inaction. It would be better to do NOTHING than to do something harmful to yourself just for the sake of doing ANYTHING.