Going to the gym every day is easy.

It’s easy because we can afford to be sloppy. We don’t have to pay too much attention to how we spend our time in the gym – simply being there is likely enough to be reasonably fit – and we’re burning enough calories to make up for sloppy eating.

Cutting that back to three, or even two, days is significantly more challenging.

With these limits, we don’t have the luxury of waste. We need to focus on only the most effective exercises, and we simply can’t burn enough calories to offset a poor diet.

All else equal, it’s better to go to the gym more often. But the challenge of restricting ourselves, even if only temporarily, presents a nice opportunity for us to focus on effectiveness.

And once we optimize our activity and diet at the lower frequency, we can then add back in more days of exercise take it to the next level.

This doesn’t just apply to physical health either. In most things we do, external constraints can serve as a useful tool to make us reflect on, and focus on, what really matters.

-Brandon