I hired a freelancer from India to manage my health & fitness

11 Sep, 2024

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Trying something new—I’m writing this post in an email to myself, which I’ll later publish to my blog and blast into your inbox. This way, it feels like I’m just chatting with a friend rather than addressing an entire audience (seriously, why are there so many of you, wtf).

Anyway, I wanted to quickly recap the last 33 days after hiring a freelancer off $UPWK to manage my health and fitness.

It’s been epic, to say the least.

For the past 13 years, I’ve known exactly what I was supposed to do: lift heavy, focus on compound lifts, and stay within my caloric intake while hitting my protein goals. That’s it. It’s simple. But, my pea-sized brain had me constantly jumping from one workout program to the next, or chasing whatever new fad popped up in my head, which led to a life of just maintenance.

Finally, I took a ridiculously small leap and wrote up a proposal for some help on $UPWK. It took all of 25 seconds to write and post.

It went something like this:

I’m looking for someone to join a Discord group and hold me accountable with my health and fitness. I’ll record my weight, cardio, and workouts daily, and at the end of the month, we’ll chart the progress. I’ll also drop my food in a channel at the end of each meal, and you’ll upload them to MyFitnessPal and screenshot the results for me each day.

Within minutes, I found Esha and hired her on the spot. She clearly wasn’t a “fitness guru,” but that was fine by me—I didn’t need one.

So, I set up a Discord, added her to the chat, and created a few sections.

The General tab is pretty straightforward. We just chat back and forth from time to time—she gives suggestions (some of which are clearly generated by Chatgpt), I ramble on—and that’s it. We exchange 1-2 messages a day, tops.

The Morning Weight tab is where I log my weight daily. It looks something like this: The Food-for-My-Fitness-Pal tab is where the real work happens. I text her my meals after each one, and she uploads them to MyFitnessPal. The goal is to stay within the caloric intake I’ve preset, and to hit my protein target.

Most of the time, it’s easy. Sometimes, I mess up!

Here’s an epic exchange that we had on one of those not-so-great days: Pretty funny, right? Sometimes I f*ck up, and it turns into pure comedy.

But most days, it’s just business as usual, and it looks something like this: I just record what I’m eating after each meal, and then Esha or Shruthi sends me a screenshot of my macros at the end of each day after they upload it to MyFitnessPal. Yes, I know—I could do it myself (shudupp L). But, I won’t stick with it for an extended period of time. A big part of success in any area of life is accountability and staying the course, and for some, paying someone to hold you accountable is the push needed to make real change!

Finally, the last section is super simple. I just log whether I did my cardio/weights each day. It looks something like this: I’m following a real simple cardio and workout program that I’m actually enjoying. I run/walk 2 miles to the gym, focus on the 5 main compound lifts (switching up the first one each day which has the most intensity), and aim to increase the weight while getting in 2 solid sets of each. After that, I run—well, mostly walk the 2 miles back to my place.

Anyway, the results have been epic!

In 33 days, I’ve lost 5 pounds, hit cardio and lifting for more than 85% of the days, and cleaned up my diet (mostly). I've put on a ton of new muscle & I even have a 6-pack that will only improve. Punta Mita, here I come! - Joey, this is the most expensive wedding I will ever attend, really, the four seasons? Just messing, it's going to be a sh*t ton of fun!

Anyways, each month, Esha/Shruthi gets a 30% bump until we reach the "locked in price". For context, I paid less than $100 for the first month, but the plan is to keep bumping by 30% until we land somewhere around the $2,500–3,000 per month range—within a year or so.

If you’re looking to improve in any area of your life, I highly recommend trying out something like this. Maybe it’s not a fitness journey for you; maybe you need someone to help manage your risk in trading. Figure out a proposal, write it up, and iterate as you go.

If you have no idea where you can find top-tier freelancers, give Upwork a shot.

Btw, that's not an affiliate link... I was too lazy to sign up to their partner program.

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