My life as a gamer began on consoles. My parents bought our first computer in 1999 and to this day, I still don’t find a mouse and keyboard comfortable.
Except for one genre of computer gaming that I love: real-time strategy.
My first experience with RTSs was the Command and Conquer: Red Alert series, which also happened to be the first game I ever played online.
I learned a couple of things very quickly playing online:
- I was not as “strategic” as I thought
- The most precious commodity in the game was not the ore you needed to mine to build factories or tanks but time.
My problem was two-fold.
First, I wanted to save my money and wait to build all the biggest tanks and get all the fancy weapons that research could afford. I wasted time waiting to build a tank that cost me $1,200 when I could have been producing four smaller tanks for the same price.
I wasted time waiting to build a tank that would cost me $1,200, when I could have been producing four smaller tanks for the same price.
My second problem is I didn’t use macros.
Real Time Stupidity
Hotkeys or “macros” (not the protein, fats, and carbs I normally talk about), are a series of scripted actions that are “played out” when selected.
For example, you select a group of riflemen and assign them the macro (hotkey) of Control-1.
When you hit Control-1 on your keyboard, it will automatically select those riflemen and allow you to give them direct orders without having to use your mouse.
This saves time, and time is the difference between victory and defeat in an RTS.
Ask people what that they wish they had more of and besides the obvious answer of money the second biggest thing would be time.
Time is a commodity more precious than oil or money.
As a coach, the two most common things that I hear from people are: I don’t have time to exercise or I don’t have time to cook healthy.
The problem is not a lack of time. The problem is not using the time you have efficiently.
If you try to micromanage every aspect in Red Alert, you will find very quickly that your attention is scattered. This causes you to become flustered and can lead to quick and careless decisions.
Hence why hotkeys or “macros” are so vital to victory.
Save enormous amounts of time every week and apply the concept of “hotkeys” to your diet for easy fat loss success. That’s right, macro your macros.
Pimp My Macros
Think about this, if you were to plan three different meals a day seven days a week that’s 21 meals.
Do you really have the time or energy or mental wherewithal to plan 21 meals?
Fancy ass restaurants only have a few selections for you to make because they don’t have to plan nor keep the resources for 50 different meals!
To hotkey your diet, start by choosing two or three meals a week that you rotate every other day. This plan of attack can be applied to breakfast, lunch, or dinner, in this case, I will use dinner as our example.
You sit down on your grocery day and you choose your two dinners to rotate out during the week. Perhaps three nights this week you have BBQ Chicken Tacos and the other three nights you do Pulled Pork with a Mango-Avocado Salsa.
Sounds like a pretty tasty week of grubbing if you ask me.
Now you know what you will have on M, W, F, and then on T, Thurs, and Saturday (maybe Sunday is family time and you do one special meal, that is accounted for separately).
You just “macroed” your meals.
Now you know how many carbs, fats, and how much protein comprises your dinner thus making it easier to track in MyFitnessPal and to plan the rest of your day.
At that moment, you can sit down and plug all the numbers into MyFitnessPal and in ten minutes, or less you have logged all your food for that week.
Know what changed on Facebook in those ten minutes?
Nothing.
You skipped checking Facebook once, maybe twice, in ten minutes and you logged your food for the week.
I will do you one even better.
Throw that protein packed poultry in the crock-pot with your BBQ sauce on Sunday and 4-6 hours later your meat for dinner all week is done!
Clean the crock-pot out, throw the pork in with some sauce and then cook it for another 4-6 hours.
You just beat the game of meal planning in one day.
Command and Conquer Your Macros
Now you have more time to focus on what you love to do like play more video games, hang out with family or friends, or perhaps you can focus more in the gym and not be so frantic to get home and make dinner.
Yes, not all plans come to pass as life likes to throw wrenches at you more than Rip Torn at Justin Long.
However, having a guideline or plan provides structure and gives direction so you do not become distracted and try to micromanage every aspect.
Automating, or “hot keying”, your meal planning and preparation will lead you to long term victory over your enemy of fat. The time it will save you could now be spent reading a book, playing with your kids, starting that business you always talked about, or not rushing at the gym.
Take command of your meal planning and it will lead to you conquering your goals.