Saturday 7

Published: Sat, 02/21/26

Updated: Sat, 02/21/26

Good morning!

Here's your Saturday 7 roundup!

🥩 The "trick" to eating whatever you want:

A few months ago, a friend semi-jokingly asked me how to get in shape. She wanted to lose 15 pounds, but as a self-proclaimed "foodie," she had the stipulation that she didn't want to give up anything.

"Easy," I said.

She laughed. But I was serious. She was already working out 4X/week, was an active and outdoors person, and only drank occasionally.

"Eat whatever you want," I said, "but...whenever you eat, you have to take out a second plate and put an equal amount of beef on it. That's it."

She actually took it to heart.

She looks like a different person now. She also told me several other “health issues” resolved after using this “trick.”

It is a powerful "trick."

If you have to eat an equal portion of beef every time you eat, it creates a lot of friction to snack, it reduces lower-quality food choices, and ensures that most of the diet is nutrient-dense, appetite-regulating, human food.

🪙 The 4 Pillars of Health:

I forgot to mention, she also prioritized her sleep.

My 4 Pillars of Health

Steak
Sleep
Steel
Sun

I think of these as The 2 Coins of Health.

Coin One: Night—Day
Sleep and Sun are two sides of the same coin. Together, they regulate your circadian rhythm and synchronize your biology with your environment.

Coin Two: Stop—Go
Steak and Steel are the second coin.
Steak represents nourishment, repair, and parasympathetic recovery.
Steel represents movement, strength, and sympathetic drive.

Health is built by flipping both.

🤯 Your brain on no sleep:

This is what happens inside your brain when you're sleep-deprived.

Sleep disturbances precede most neurodegenerative diseases by up to decades...We really start to look at sleep as an opportunity to prevent many of the diseases of aging.

💡 How to build a business:

In college, I majored in chemistry but I also added on minor degrees in biology and business.

I really enjoyed the business classes.

But I saw this 1-minute video that may be more valuable than my entire degree (though it probably takes the equivalent of a degree to fully unpack).

🧠 A passage I've been thinking about:

"In the modern world, it is easy to feel like a passenger: reacting to notifications, responding to demands, consuming whatever you happen to drive past on your screen.

But joy is found in being the driver. It's the act of looking at the raw material of your circumstances — your time, your energy, your relationships, your skills — and seeing what you can make from it.

It is the act of creating the life you want (in big and small ways) that makes you feel alive and imbues life with extra meaning. The fact that you can hold a vision in your mind and then, however imperfectly, bend reality a few degrees in that direction."

– James Clear