Ep 169 – Unspoken Vices

Dani:

Hello, everybody. Welcome back to another episode of vegan proteins muscles by Brussels Radio. My name is Dani.

Giacomo:

And I’m Giacomo.

Dani:

And this is episode 169. All right, so it’s been three days since we recorded the last podcast. Look at us, like, five days ahead this time. Very exciting. But not much has happened in between then and now. Although I did somehow dodge a stomach bug. So when the kids were here last weekend, poor little Desmond. Poor little Des was throwing up all night.

Giacomo:

Yeah, your mother called him out, and she said, you’re faking. You’re not sick. But I could see some part of her. She was thinking he really was, but we weren’t sure.

Dani:

There was probably more wishful thinking than anything. True, he was sick all night, but everybody else felt fine, so we were like, okay, maybe he just had a little food poisoning. He was fine the next day, like a twelve hour thing. The following day, Daisy started throwing up. And then my cousin who was here got sick, and my uncle got sick. And I was sitting there on Tuesday morning. Tuesday morning, just like, no, no, please, God, no.

I woke up with the worst headache all day. I was like, is it gonna happen? Is it gonna happen? And didn’t happen? And then jock and I was like, wanna go to the gym at 07:00 p.m. tonight? And I was like, oh, that’s late, but okay, so we go to the gym, get all our stuff out of the car, walk up to the door, and there’s a sign on the door saying, the gym will be closed until May 1 due to a burst pipe.

Giacomo:

So what a sane person does is they go to the gym that they have a third membership with, and they train when there’s only 20 minutes left to train at said gym, and they hightail it there. That’s what I did. What did you do, Dani?

Dani:

That was an omen. That was. That was God telling me that I was not supposed to train that day. So I was like, yep. Nope, God is stopping me from having an episode in the middle of the gym that will require me to move to another state. Yeah. But anyway, dodged it. All I ate that day was like, simple carbs, though. So that’s a good example of a day when you do not try to hit your macros.

Giacomo:

You just do what will work in non godlike stuff that happened in my world is I actually caught a little bit of luck, because, as it turned out, when I went to get my oil change and I was like, hey, mister mechanic. It sounds to me like a strut is messed up on this cardinal making a little creaky noise. And he takes me into the bay where the car is jacked up.

And he says, you see this tire right here? Look at it. He goes, you see how it’s bellowing out in the middle? And I was like, oh, yeah, how did I miss that? I looked at him, I said, I drive really fast. What could have happened? And he goes, well, this tire would have blown out. And unlike a tire that you just get a flat on, it would have exploded, and you could have spun out and stuff.

And I was like, well, what’s next? He’s like, well, I need you to sign a piece of paper saying, I recommend you do not drive this car home. I said, what happens if I do? He goes, well, if this thing pops, it’s gonna be a real bad day for. So I drove it straight to a tire shop, and I got tires in that bad boy because you don’t want a tire to blow out a parent.

Dani:

Thanks for keeping us safe, Giacomo. Always keeping us safe. Cars are not my thing. I am afraid of car crashes. Giacomo drives too fast. Everybody. Tell him to not text and drive, please. Everybody watching this in the comments down below or email us. Let’s talk about texting and driving and how terrible it is. I’m counting on you right now. But texting and driving is not what we’re talking about today. What are we talking about today, Giacomo?

Giacomo:

Dani, vices, all kinds of vices. Are they good? Are they bad? What exactly are vices in terms of this?

Dani:

Yeah, so I think most people are aware of, like, the big vices, you know, drinking, gambling, sex, food, smoking, like drugs. People are no, like, oh, these are really intense, bad vices. But there are a lot of other vices that people are leaning on that may or may not be helpful. So let’s just start there. First of all, are all vices bad? Because let me also preface by saying, I have vices. I know what my vices are.

Giacomo:

What are your vices, Dani?

Dani:

We’re not talking about that yet.

Giacomo:

You sure?

Dani:

Because we’ll get into it. They’re on this list.

Giacomo:

My favorite part of this episode is seeing how we can rib each other and catch as many of our vices as possible until we’re like, okay, that’s enough. But everything in moderation, right?

Dani:

Is that your answer to the question?

Giacomo:

No, I’m not answering the question. Vices are things that you do you probably don’t want to do all the time or do too much of, but a little bit of said vice, like watching. I don’t know, three or four episodes in a row of your favorite show could actually be beneficial in some way. It’s something that you don’t normally do routine wise, but you decide, okay, I’m gonna do this thing, whatever it is.

Dani:

Yeah. I mean, not, we all engage in some little things every day that they aren’t actually a problem. And I think that that’s the key point. Right. For example, although I don’t recommend it, some people can go out and have a drink here or there, and they get to enjoy time with their friends and relax and de stress. And it’s really, you know, no harm, no foul. Right. Some people can’t do that. Some people end up going out and having drinks every day and spending a lot of money and, you

know, hurt, really hurting their health, et cetera, et cetera. That would be not good. So I think for me, the line of, like, when does a vice become problematic? Largely comes down to how much is it interfering with your day to day life? Are any major areas of your life suffering because of that vice?

Giacomo:

How do you engage?

Dani:

That depends on what it is.

Giacomo:

Well, let’s give an example and break it down.

Dani:

Examples. Well, examples of it interrupting your daily life. Can you. Is it preventing you from doing your job as well as you could? Is it causing any kind of health issues? Is it causing financial strain in your life? Is it causing relationship strain in your life? Do you feel like you’re out of control with whatever it is like, when the answer to any of those questions is yes, you should probably start

to take a look at them. Again, we’re not talking about drinking and smoking and drugs and sex and rock and roll. We’re talking about other hidden vices that are in people’s.

Giacomo:

Okay, well, I think for this podcast, food is obviously going to be a real easy one because we could think about ways you wouldn’t normally eat, like snacking while you’re watching tv, for example.

Dani:

This is what Giacomo does. I make these epic lists with details, and Giacomo just rattles off all of them in one sentence, and I’m like, okay, I don’t know you for the next 40 minutes.

Giacomo:

That’s not necessarily true. Okay, go ahead. Let’s. Where did you get this list from? Everyone’s dying to know my brain. Oh, okay, go ahead.

Dani:

What? So I. This is the difference between you and I. To me, food is such an obvious vice, it never would have made this weirdo vice list. I think that’s largely because of our, like, different upbringings, health wise. Like, to me, I’m so used to seeing food be a vice to everybody around me, and it was my own as well, that it’s like, that’s plain as the nose on my face that’s right up there with drinking.

Giacomo:

I feel like when I was younger, I just ate a lot, exercised. I played a lot of sports, so I didn’t really get a chance. I was one of those where it didn’t really catch up to me until after the fact, although there probably was some weird stuff going on with my thinking. Go ahead. Go ahead. Start your list. I want to hear it.

Dani:

Your phone. And I actually think that very soon, if not maybe, probably already, this is gonna be in that list.

Giacomo:

I was doing some hanging out in the spatial world, in the VR world.

Dani:

What?

Giacomo:

My oculus.

Dani:

Okay. You were hanging out in the VR world in an episode of the Black Mirror.

Giacomo:

Right. But what I found was, and I’m kind of wondering what this looks like on more sophisticated device, but, like, if for those of you who don’t know what it looks like in virtual reality, on one of these

newer age devices, you can do this thing called pass through, where you can see what’s going on around you through the VR headset.

And I was looking at my phone through the VR headset. Ooh, could I see this? And I’m. Rather than judging or thinking about whatever, I’m thinking about the possibility. So I don’t know if that’s look on your face. You look a little.

Dani:

That’s terrifying. I think the idea of you wearing a VR headset but still looking at your phone. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Giacomo:

You could possibly go wrong. I don’t know.

Dani:

See, Giacomo’s, like, really excited about this stuff. Like, the new VR world that’s coming.

Giacomo:

I’m ready.

Dani:

I just bring it. I picture, like, dystopia.

Giacomo:

I think about hellscape, one of those giant podcasters who experiment with this stuff and critique it. Like, one of these dudes wore that set four days, like, for a week straight almost with night, sun up to sundown. I don’t know. But, no, it’s interesting. I’m sorry, I’m getting off topic here. Go ahead. We’re talking about phones, devices, and perhaps I’m going off on this rabbit hole about, like, how this could possibly become a bad thing.

Dani:

I mean, it’s already a bad thing. That’s what I’m saying. VR gaming, for example, I think that people are using. Using their phones as a vice all day long, and I’m not talking about actually using your phone to

do something like, check your email or play a game? Well, I guess it could be, but it’s like every split second that you’re bored.

Every split second you’re bored. Oh, I’m waiting in line at the grocery store. Let me just take my phone out of my pocket and look at it. I’m sitting on a bus going somewhere. Let me just play on my phone. Someone is talking to me, but what they’re saying isn’t interesting enough. Let me just look at my phone.

Giacomo:

That one’s bad.

Dani:

It is. And I’ve done it. I know I’ve done it. I know you’ve done it. Like, we’ve all done it.

Giacomo:

It’s a fine line because there are things that you should and need and could be doing on your phone. But then there are other times where your phone, you’re literally just staring at it, like, as if it’s this black metal in your hands and you’re not actually doing anything with it. You’re just basically disengaging, detaching from people in the world.

Dani:

It’s just like the cheapest hit of dopamine you could get is to open your phone. So we all do it all the time. If you ever go into your phone and look at your, like, screen time data, I think a lot of people would be, like, truly nauseated to see it. I know I am. I know I am. And I mean, I work online, so I’m on the phone a lot for a lot of different reasons, but I’m also on the phone for a lot of stupid reasons.

And I catch it, like, oh, I meant to pick this up to respond to this client, or somebody told me to go look at this post because they wanted me to look at someone’s exercise form, and suddenly I’ve been on Instagram for 25 minutes, like, watching reels that I don’t even care about, that I’m not even going to remember.

Giacomo:

I catch myself in a place where I’m over organizing and overlooking at something and it’s no longer serving me, and then I can’t stop. It’s like the vice is pretty much taking control when that happens and I catch myself, I’m like, God damn. So I’ll give you an example. Right? So I’ll have a task manager app and I’ll look at it, and then I’ll have my emails and I’ll look at it. And everything I need to look at has already been there.

And the things that I could address while I’m, like, on the move have already been addressed. But then I just keep looking, even though I don’t want to, and I know I shouldn’t be looking at them, but at this point, device has gotten to a place where it’s like, you’re no longer serving me and you’re literally putting me in a place.

Dani:

Yeah.

Giacomo:

Where I’m not engaging with the world around me. Right.

Dani:

I mean, it’s true. We said, like, oh, it becomes a problem when it causes x, y, z problems. So, I mean, definitely like a feeling of dependency or a feeling of a lack of control. You ever leave the house without your phone and then you get, like, away from your house and you’re like, oh, no, oh, no, I forgot my, like, that’s not good, that’s not normal. There are so many statistics that say that phone and social media in particular, you know, it’s really bad for our mental health. Like,

statistically, just the more someone looks at social media, the worse their mental health gets. That’s. That’s really something. And they’re designed to addict you. They’re just designed. Not phones. Social media in particular is designed to hook you. And God damn, have they hooked us. That is my number one vice and probably the one that most people I think are going to be able to relate to. Or maybe I’m just, maybe I’m just projecting because it’s a problem for me, so.

Giacomo:

Well, it’s tough when you are the content on social media to draw that line.

Dani:

That sentence alone just kind of made me sick.

Giacomo:

True.

Dani:

Thanks for that.

Giacomo:

There is some value in it, though. We’re not sitting here trying to shame social life on your phone and those who show up and put information content or engage with you out there to help you and support you. We’re not looking to destroy, sabotage, or harshly criticize any of that matter of knowing how to better control your environment on your phone when it comes to.

Dani:

Social media and other things, and be in control. Like, you need to find a way to be the one in control, not the other way around. So, I mean, a phone is a tool. A tool that can be used for good or evil. Almost all of the friends that I have currently, I met online, somehow or some way. So there’s wonderful things about the Internet and your phone and having all of the information in the world in your pocket at any moment in time.

But also, you know, at the end of you, if you were to calculate that screen time for the next, whatever life expectancy you expect to have from there, it is scary how many years you will spend looking at that phone. Ugh. When I saw that number, it made me sick. So that’s my first one.

Giacomo:

Another one?

Dani:

Oh, I have like, ten. I think the next one is caffeine.

Giacomo:

I am a big fan of managing this device, failing to manage it well, and also leaning in on it much more so than you, I think, on all three fronts, actually. Eating is useful. It’s helpful, it’s cool. Yep. And not for everyone. For many, though, it is something that helps aid your brain in processing and functioning and doing things better for you, for whatever you want to do. But substances that hate to use the words like addict that are addictive or.

Dani:

Why caffeine is so addictive, why would you be afraid to use that word? Caffeine is the drug more people in the world are addicted to than anything.

Giacomo:

Else because it gives it power. It makes it seem like it’s something that you can’t control.

Dani:

But that’s what we’re talking about. It is. It does have power. How many times have, like, vegan strong, for example, when we’re on the road and we wake up and we’re usually in a hotel or an Airbnb, a lot of us in the mornings, like, cannot go. I just said, like, eight times in a row. A lot of us cannot go to the venue until we get coffee. Like, we cannot work until we get coffee. Not me, because I don’t drink coffee, but I have been that person before.

Giacomo:

There’s a dependency.

Dani:

There’s a huge dependency. And, you know, so that in and of itself, I don’t like to feel dependent on things.

Giacomo:

Great.

Dani:

I am dependent on some things. Luckily, caffeine’s not one of them. That’s one of the signs of, is this a problem? Is this actually a problematic vice? And then the other question is, is someone having so much of it that it’s hurting their health?

Giacomo:

Well, that’s where the addiction comes in. Because when you find that you can’t pull it back and you find that more is not helping, it’s actually keeping you the same or maybe even making your quality of life worse. Like, when you cross that threshold, the 400 to 500 milligrams worth of caffeine threshold, once you cross that line and you need to just to have the same effects that are beneficial and the effects that are negative start to outweigh the beneficial effects and you

can’t pull it back, then you’re like, oh, crap, this is addictive. And there’s that trade off where you don’t

want to. You don’t want to compromise what caffeine is doing to help you out for a couple of weeks, just like I give your body a break and give your brain a break, which that’s when it becomes.

Dani:

Yeah, I think that again, I do think caffeine can be a useful tool. But a lot of times folks are having health issues, I guess, without even realizing that it is directly connected to their caffeine intake. They’re not sleeping well. Their stress anxiety is through the roof. They are constantly fatigued. They’re exhausted. There is no amount of caffeine they could have that would make them not exhausted.

But they’re still, like, jittery and anxious. It’s, you know, their stomach is all acidy and upset. It can absolutely be a problem. And then the kicker is when you try to walk it back, when you try to walk the amount of caffeine you’re taking in bath, you feel like garbage.

Giacomo:

Well, in some ways. In other ways, you can tell that your body’s healing up, but you’re so tired. And you also know that should you go back, which most people do, that the caffeine is actually useful again without as many side effects.

Dani:

Robert tells this talk, this, this story in some of his talks, so I don’t feel like I’m outing him here. But Robert Cheek actually is a lifetime, drug free, drink free person. He’s never took a single puff of a cigarette or a single sip of a beer. Nothing. Robert has done nothing like that in his whole life, which I think is amazing. But one day he realized that he was drinking, like, ten yerba mates a day.

And I don’t even think he realized at the time when he started drinking it that there was caffeine in it. And he was drinking so much caffeine via yerba mate that it was a problem. He was spending so much money on it. I know this sounds funny, like, if someone’s ever had, like, a hard drug problem, it sounds funny. That yerba mate could be a thing, but he was spending a lot of money on it.

He was having health issues from it. He decided to stop. And he swears, like, he literally laid on the floor for, like, two weeks straight because he felt so bad. He also, I think, cut it cold turkey. But that’s. I mean, that’s just one example. I remember stopping drinking coffee when I was like, 16 or 17 years old, and I felt like I wanted to die. The caffeine headache was so bad.

Giacomo:

The first time I tried was in, like, my early twenties for like, a year or two.

Dani:

You’re italian. You guys put coffee in your milk for babies.

Giacomo:

We sure do.

Dani:

So what do you mean you tried it for the first time when you were 20?

Giacomo:

No stopping.

Dani:

Oh, stopping. Gotcha. Silly me. I got that backwards. The headaches are brutal, right?

Giacomo:

hmm.

Dani:

So when you say, oh, I don’t want to use the word addicted. No, that’s what it is. That’s what it is.

Giacomo:

Right?

Dani:

Are we relying on it too much? That’s a question for every single person individually. I’m not saying stop using caffeine entirely, but, you know, ask yourself, like, am I leaning on this too hard right now? Are there problems? Come. Hidden vice. The next one that I have here is procrastination.

Giacomo:

Oh, this is a toughie. Because you can justify procrastination if what you’re needing to do, you are procrastinating on by something else that you also.

Dani:

Yeah, Giacomo does this. He does it all the time. But you can’t say anything because what is he doing? Instead of the thing he needs to do? He’s cleaning. He’s, like, cleaning the house, which is amazing. I don’t want to stop somebody from cleaning the house. But also, you really need to be doing this other thing.

Giacomo:

How about when we were running plant bill, like, eight or ten years ago, and we had an entire team of, like, 30 people waiting on us, and I was building a real life cardboard cut out of the first world of super Mario brothers for, like, 50 hours inside of three weeks? That was procrastination.

Dani:

I don’t even know what he’s talking. I must have suppressed this memory.

Giacomo:

Really?

Dani:

Oh, yeah. I don’t remember it at all.

Giacomo:

I even think we had friends over looking at what I was doing, and they’re like, dude, shouldn’t you be working on Plantbuilt? I’m like, I’m just really enjoying this feeling of plant built while I sit here with a cardboard cutout of one of my favorite video games. And I spent an exorbitant amount when I probably should have space that out a little more. That was bad. Procrastina. I’m capable.

Dani:

Yeah. And a lot of people use procrastination as a way to delay something that they think is going to

be uncomfortable. But of course, in doing that, there’s a good chance it’s going to be harder and more uncomfortable than if they had just done it with an exception.

Giacomo:

What is something that’s an example of you procrastinating? I’m curious. Having a hard time thinking about this in some ways.

Dani:

Let me give the caveat, different, though. The caveat, the one exception, folks with ADHD, absolutely procrastinate, no question, but actually seem to perform better with tighter time frames. So one of the things you could do if you’re that person is give yourself like a false deadline or have somebody else give you a false deadline.

Like this needs to be done by this time because if it’s a short period of time, you’ll do better than if it’s like, okay, do this in two weeks. Then a lot of times folks with ADHD will just wait 13 days and then do two weeks worth of work in one day.

Giacomo:

Dang, that seems like a mean little trick.

Dani:

Yeah, but it’s effective, you know, and part of the reason I think people do this is one, maybe the task is just boring and they don’t want to do it. They can think of a hundred other things that they would like to do, but they are largely just creating more stress for themselves by being avoidant of the thing that they should actually be doing.

Giacomo:

But, you know, again, all of these vices can also be beneficial in moderation and when used properly. Yeah.

Dani:

So you asked what, what is my version of procrastinating? It is exactly that what I just described. I’m not late getting anything done. I won’t, I won’t get my work done late, I won’t get my whatever chores done late. I won’t pay a bill late, but I will do all of those things at the last second furiously.

Giacomo:

Okay.

Dani:

I mean, you’ve seen me do that, right? Like get some task done in an incredibly short period of time and you’re just like, what? I’m just like. I don’t know. But, you know, I wasted the last 10 hours doing nothing, but now this has been done in 30 minutes. So that was a day well spent, wasn’t it? No. So if procrastination, watch yourself, see if it’s becoming a problem, especially because if you are being late with things like paying bills, getting your work tasks done, doing the

things you said you were going to do for your family, it is going to become a problem. They are going to assume you’re lazy even if you’re not. Procrastination is not laziness. They’re different things, but it’ll be a problem. All right, number four, binge watching.

Giacomo:

You’re bigger on this one than I am. I feel like I’ve dug my heels in the sand, as most couples do when maybe you share the same thing but one of you pushes back when the other one enjoys a little more. Because I used to binge watch stuff with you and I enjoy it, but I have my limits. Well, you can re. You can go.

Dani:

What is binge watching? Let’s define it. First of all, I actually don’t know what the real definition of it is, but I think watching, like, a couple of episodes of something in the evenings is not binge watching. Watching an entire season of something in a day is binge watching.

And you’re right. I absolutely can do that. And every time I do it, even if I really love what I’m watching, I’m pissed off at myself afterwards. Cause I can think of a hundred better ways to spend my time than whatever it was I just did.

Giacomo:

But you get to start and finish a story all in one fell swoop.

Dani:

And I do love stories, but it can be just a huge time suck, and it can be a method of.

Giacomo:

Procrastination, or it could be a way to force yourself to shut down for 6 hours on a weekend when you’ve been plowing through work for 13 days straight. Yes, for example, it could be. And when you’re not working, you’re busy being in productivity mode all over the place. And so something like that could literally force you, keep you from harming yourself.

Dani:

But, I mean, we do know people in our lives that literally just do not stop watching things like. Like in front of the tv. I’m not talking about always having a podcast in your ears or something, because I definitely do that. Or a YouTube video playing in my ears. But I mean, like, constant, constantly watching shows from the time they wake up to the time they go to bed, like, every single day, that is clearly a vice.

Again, ask yourself, is this interfering with my life? If you’re literally just taking, like, a mental health day to rot on the couch and just recover, and that’s a decision that you made. I think that’s okay.

Giacomo:

Well, what if you have 50 episodes of something and you’re handing it off between your tv screen to your computer, to your phone until you’re followed you everywhere for, like, six days straight or three, four days straight, and you’ve literally plowed through everything? Would that be considered binge watching something? Binge getting into something?

Dani:

And I guess so.

Giacomo:

I’m kind of giving you a little pushback on that last comment of it’s tv and you specifically versus, like, you bingeing on the same thing until it’s done.

Dani:

I don’t understand what you’re saying.

Giacomo:

Well, you can. You don’t have to only watch tv to start and finish a story. You can get the same thing

on your phone and on your computer that you get on your tv.

Dani:

So you can be the same thing, though. Okay, still screen.

Giacomo:

Gotcha.

Dani:

I’m talking about, like, it’s not the same as having an audiobook playing in your ears, right, while you’re doing other things.

Giacomo:

Okay.

Dani:

It requires, it requires your eyes. And I forget where I heard this or what exactly the statistic was, but it’s something. Something like the information that our brain, like, sucks up at any point in time is something like 70% visualization. So if you’re look, like if you’re watching something that’s taking up a huge portion of your brain versus, like, if you’re listening to an audiobook,

you could still do a ton of other stuff at the same time. I mean, that could become a vice also. Giacomo gives me hell for always having, like, something playing in my ears.

Giacomo:

You can’t beat them, join them. I do it myself now.

Dani:

So I guess the point there was, if you’re, if you’re making a conscious decision to do it, it might not be a problem if you didn’t intend to sit on the couch and watch tv all day, but you did, you know, maybe ask yourself, what, what is it that you’re hiding from? What is it you’re recovering from? Like, are you just working yourself so damn hard during the week that this is the only thing that you physically can do?

Probably reevaluate that if that’s the case as well. All right, number five, retail therapy. So shopping. All kinds of shopping. With the rise in online shopping, which, you know, some of our younger listeners might not actually remember, when you had.

Giacomo:

To go somewhere to buy something when.

Dani:

Amazon only sold books, so you had to go places to basically buy anything else or find some weird, obscure website that sold the thing that you were looking for. And there were like, weird return policies. Like, it. It was different. Certainly there were people that still over shopped.

Oh, my God. My grandparents bought so much stuff on the home shopping network, on tv and QVC and all of those channels that, like, when you were a kid, you just flipped through because who wanted to watch that? My grandparents wanted to watch that.

Giacomo:

They, I remember watching them, but we watched them to be entertained. We didn’t buy from those shopping club. We bought a lot from mail order catalogs. The shopping stuff. We would just watch it and be like, that’s very funny.

Dani:

Yes.

Giacomo:

And they’re just trying, like, gimmick people into doing stuff. But I could see where people would.

Dani:

I’m not talking about an infomercial because those were really fun to watch. Really. I thought that was super boring. It would just be like a lady in a sweater.

Giacomo:

No, we would look at it in this sweater, get a kick out of how they were just changing the prices to try

to like encourage people to do stuff. But the catalogs, on the other hand, that we got into.

Dani:

Yeah, we did catalogs too. Parents would hand you a catalog and be like, circle what you want for Christmas. Online shopping has made it easier than ever to click a button and get this big rush of dopamine that you bought a thing and it’s going to be here in like two days or less sometimes. And that obviously can be very destructive in so many ways.

One, your wallet, obviously, like think about all the stuff if go through one year. No, actually we have to do this every year now because of the business. Had to go through the Amazon, had to go back through every order we had made in Amazon that year. And I was not proud in that moment to see all of that stuff. And I was like, I don’t even remember buying some of these things.

So obviously they were not necessarily. That obviously can become a problem. The financial strain alone could put stress on your relationships. And I don’t know if this makes it a vice or not. Horrible for the environment to just buy shit whenever you feel like it.

Giacomo:

Horrible buying and returning too. Even if you’re not spending money, you’re still consuming. Which again, like what you’re saying can be a bad thing. Even if it doesn’t hurt you directly, it hurts the earth.

Dani:

It just is terrible. And like you just said, returning stuff. People think, oh, if I return it, they’ll resell it. Probably not. Depending on what it is. It’s probably cheaper to just get rid of it than pay somebody to restock it. I don’t know. I think a lot of people treat like Amazon’s return policy, like, oh, I’ll just try it and of course it’s fine.

We’re in so much trouble as a planet. We are in so much trouble. So I have in the last few years made a big commitment to trying to buy more stuff used. And the bigger, the bigger the impact of the item, the more I try to buy it used. Like all of my tech, all of the, everything that we record with. So my computer is used, refurbished, open.

Giacomo:

Box, stuff like that.

Dani:

Yeah, and they’re fine. They’re like, absolutely fine. Try to buy clothes at like thrift stores. That said,

thrift stores are like as expensive.

Giacomo:

Oh, my gosh, I have so much fun buying clothes from there. One, you can get the stuff that you love that’s usually very pricey, super cheap, and you can just shop for pretty much anything and you get to support all kinds of people that are reselling. It’s actually a lot of fun. Poshmark is my jam.

Dani:

I hate buying clothes, period. But clothes are probably the worst category. I think clothes are the worst category because with like shein and teemu, clothes are literally just designed to fall apart. That’s why they can sell them for a dollar. Fast fashion, that’s a different topic. I could talk about fast fashion a lot because I think it’s a huge, huge problem.

But that is kind of outside of the scope of vegan health and fitness here. Shopping online in general, you gotta watch yourself because it can become a slippery slope. Again, going back to the phone one like the phone and the scrolling. I installed an app on my phone that basically allows me to program my phone to just not let me into certain apps for longer than a certain amount of time or not let me into apps at a certain time.

I cannot get into my shopping apps at all after 08:00 p.m. because every stupid purchase that I have ever made has happened after 08:00 p.m. from my phone in a shopping app. Can’t even go to the apps. I’m locked out of the app store. I couldn’t redownload other stuff if I wanted to. You know, you can know yourself and find ways around a lot of these things if you feel like any, anything really beyond this list is starting to become a problem.

There’s workarounds for them, and it’s better to catch them before they’re a huge problem because then it’s a lot harder to fix the next one is staying up too late or just neglecting your sleep in general.

Giacomo:

Right. Because you could also wake up super early, for example, just basically the time that you should be dedicating to sleep.

Dani:

All right. I think staying up too late is the common one. You’re the only weirdo I know that gets up at three in the morning. Not sure it is. It absolutely is. Um, okay, but staying up too late, I mean, how many of us have done that? Like, the day is over, work is done, nobody needs anything from us, and the world is asleep. Why would you want to waste that time with your eyes shut?

You might as well stay up and enjoy it, right? No, because the next day is going to be so much

crappier if you got a bad night’s sleep. But I understand why we do it because I am so prone to doing this. If I don’t force myself to go up to bed at like, 1130, I could stay up till three in the morning, like, easily. They call it, oh, something recently, it was like rage, procrastination, or revenge.

Revenge, procrastination. That’s what they call this. The staying up too late because you’re so, like, resentful that people need you all day. Like, the world needs so much of you all day long that when it’s nighttime and nobody needs you anymore, you get your revenge, you get your you time back, and you stay up really late, it will mess you up very quickly.

Giacomo:

Well, yeah, you’re losing out on sleep. Your routine gets thrown off, you start to have to catch up with stuff, and you’re playing that slippery slope kind of game where you’re losing time and your responsibilities are piling up, and your.

Dani:

Health will take a hit. Your health will absolutely take a hit. Just a few nights of crappy sleep.

Giacomo:

For certain periods of time when there are deadlines or big things happening, or for certain periods of time, you’re just in the mood for a little whatever. What’s so funny?

Dani:

We could have called this podcast. and Giacomo justify their vices. Yeah, I can hear what he’s doing right now because, yes, of course, there’s times where you have to work harder. But that brings me to my next one, which is overworking. Like being a workaholic. As a vice?

Giacomo:

As a vice.

Dani:

As a vice.

Giacomo:

As a vice. Fight.

Dani:

Yeah. So just because, I mean, a lot of people have jobs that demand a lot of them. I get that our jobs demand quite a bit of us. There are some people who, for whatever reason, they either can’t shut it down, even though they could, like, they don’t have to be still working. They could shut it down, but they, like, can’t get themselves to do it. That’s just like a weird addiction going on.

But there’s also a lot of people that are using, working well beyond what they have to to avoid other areas of their life, to avoid maybe their family, to avoid maybe their I spouse, to avoid housework or whatever stress is going on at home. It’s. They’re using it as a distraction from other things, as a vice.

Giacomo:

Oh, this is a hard one to talk about. I have so many feelings.

Dani:

I figured you might.

Giacomo:

Well, yeah, I’m a little. I’m at a bit of a loss on this one. Being a business owner and growing business and knowing what it requires out of you versus someone else who is not a business owner. I’m comparing where they could put extra into their work to, like, get ahead, but, like, they technically don’t have to and maybe not necessarily should. This is a little trickier when you run your own business. I don’t know.

Dani:

I don’t know. I don’t know if it is actually that much trickier. I mean, it can be. I think most jobs have their, like, busy seasons of the year and slower seasons of the year. And our. Our work is very. It’s the same. Like, there’s busier times and slower times. So, yes, there will be times you have to work more, but are you also working less during the other times, like, deliberately trying to continue to seek out that balance as best you can?

Because to me, this is very akin to, like, over training and under eating, thinking it’s going to get you to your results faster. Grinding yourself into dust at work. While it might seem like it’s getting you ahead, if you burn out, you’re screwed to, like, you’re not going to be able to perform at all. Did you know that they’re actually adding burnout to the DSM five as a diagnosis?

As a mental health diagnosis because it has become so common in the last few years. Burnout, which additionally is, like, from work. Like, work just grinding you down until you kind of never want to do that thing ever again. You don’t care about anything. You’re exhausted, you’re miserable. Let’s avoid burnout. Overworking and using it as a crutch and patting ourselves on the back for it, thinking that we’re some kind of hero for putting in all the extra time we’ve all done it.

Oh, it was so crazy. I worked 80 hours this week. Like, that shouldn’t be a great job. That should be a. Oof. What are you gonna do about that next week? Like, you can’t sustain that.

Giacomo:

Oh, yeah. There’s not. There’s no pride in any of that. It’s a matter of feeling like you should or obligate. There are people out there that your hustle culture. That’s what you’re talking about.

Dani:

hmm.

Giacomo:

No way. No way. Yeah. Unless you’re just so far into it that now you just. There’s no turning back. You’re, like, past the hustle thing, and now you’re just too far gone.

Dani:

And this is why I say it’s easier if you catch these things early, because if you catch them early, you can kind of nip them in the bud before they become a big problem. If something is a big problem and you’re like, in too deep and now you can’t stop. That’s going to be much harder for you to come back from. And unlike some of these other things, online shopping, like, theoretically you’re going to spend a lot of your life at work.

A lot of your life at work. Just normally we’re talking a third of your life without doing any extra will be at work. That’s a scary statistic. If you want to do like, oh, I don’t know, anything else with your life. He’s just gonna, he’s gonna disagree with me all day on this. Probably the last one that I see in our audience a lot. And I almost didn’t even know what to call this was over planning.

Or sometimes it can be called paralysis by analysis. I actually don’t think it’s that. I just think it’s over planning. Like, spending all of your time on the thinking and the planning and the getting ready for whatever it is, but never actually doing the thing, or almost.

Giacomo:

As bad doing a thing, but having been so hung up on the planning aspect of it that you’re not even present for the thing you wanted to do in the first place. Once you actually do it, plan so much and you can’t even get into whatever it is that you plan for, like a party for whatever, a project that happens too.

Dani:

I don’t really see that happen as much. I do see people obsess over reading about the perfect nutrition timing for pre and post workout and exactly what kind of bicep curl they should be doing to hit the brachialis better. Like, I’m talking, like, down to the finest details and it’s like, what are they doing?

Giacomo:

Yep.

Dani:

With their nutrition and their training? Nothing.

Giacomo:

Yep, nothing.

Dani:

Nothing. But for whatever reason, this planning, and I think a lot of us have felt this to a smaller degree. Like, who has ever gotten a planner at the beginning of the year and been like, this will fix me this year, right? That feeling of sitting down and planning out your year and being like, yes, I have got it. But, you know, planning a year is a lot. You gotta go back to it over and over again. But most of the time, we don’t, like, revisit the goals we set at the beginning of the year.

Giacomo:

So if you’ve laid everything out and you’ve spent so much time and made such a concerted effort to plan everything out without the follow through, you’re left with just a bunch of time spent planning.

Dani:

But, like, why do people do this? Because while they’re planning it their brain is almost getting tricked into thinking that they did it. You know, it’s like they get, they get so much joy out of the act of literally planning it that they almost don’t have to do it. I see it happen a lot in the fitness community,

specifically.

Giacomo:

Well, in the bodybuilding community, too, because bodybuilders are such. Everything is uniformity, but they do it. Yes, but there’s limits to what you can do when you approach everything like that with, like, an extreme amount of discipline. And I order and habit based, kind of when you can’t see past yourself, can’t get creative, can’t look at something for what it is and pivot, and you’re just stuck, like, with, like, fitting things in boxes.

Limit to that. That could actually go wrong. I could go terribly wrong because you could just wind up getting in your own way when you should actually be doing something. I feel like there is limit. I think that’s why it exists.

Dani:

I mean, make plans and God laughs. That’s what they say. You can lay the best plans out, but stuff can happen and they can have to change. But I think that is eons better than just planning something. I mean, some people plan their diets for years.

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

Before they, and I am not exaggerating, I sometimes get instant messages on Instagram from the same people, people I’ve never actually worked with. I’m just a nice gal and I will answer questions when they are sent to me. I will get messages from the same person for years. And they are basically asking the same question every time because they haven’t actually made any progress on that thing because they haven’t actually done yet. And that’s always really sad to see.

Giacomo:

It is.

Dani:

So, yes, the planning is important. I am a planner. I love planning.

Giacomo:

Same.

Dani:

But you gotta execute. Yeah, you have to execute better to execute it terribly. Better to execute it at 30% than have the perfect plan and do 0%. So those are the ones I have.

Giacomo:

Okay, you want to wrap this thing up.

Dani:

I just want to say, like, if you relate to any of these, first of all, like, there’s nothing to be ashamed of. Like I said, a lot of these, in the right dosages, in the right contexts are totally fine. Some of them can even be good, right?

Giacomo:

Yeah.

Dani:

The question is, do you feel in control of these things or do these things feel like they are in control of you? How do you feel about that? Do you want it to be that way? If you don’t want it to be that way, what are you going to do about it.

Giacomo:

Talk to your coach. Talk about it to a friend. Journal to yourself. Think about it. Take a good, hard look at what you’re doing. Get real with yourself. Get out of your head in whatever way you get out of your head. And perhaps you can gain a better understanding of how to use these vices the right way. Or get rid of the ones that you don’t want and replace them with other things that may or may not be vices just to improve your overall quality of life.

Dani:

And these might all seem like things that are completely irrelevant to our coaching business, but

they’re not. A lot of these things actually pop up in various check ins that we have with people. It’s like, oh, did you get your workouts in this weekend? Uh, no. I started watching such and such show and then I watched the whole thing. Or caffeine. Jesus, that one comes up all the time.

The caffeine social media. We know that scrolling on phones is a huge problem for people procrastinating and then not getting their stuff done at all. Their meal prepping, their like. A lot of these things pop up regularly because when it comes to your health, fitness, your nutrition, your results, your goals, all of this stuff is connected. So it all needs to be examined.

Giacomo:

All right, everybody, thanks so much for tuning in to another episode of vegan proteins muscles by Brussels radio. Stay in touch with us at veganproteinsclesbybrussels on the socials and hit the contact button on veganproteins.com and you will get a fast response from one of us. Once again, my name is Jonathan Tacoma.

Dani:

And I’m Dani.

Giacomo:

We’ll talk to you soon.

Dani:

Bye.

Giacomo:

You couldn’t even be up taking me for granted again.