What My Body Transformation Taught Me About How To Stop Worrying
By: Woody Rini
Tags: Anxiety, Life Lessons, Worry, Mental Health, Stress

Recently I published an article explaining why we all spend so much time worrying even though it causes needless suffering.

The gist of that article is that we worry because we’re trapped in it by our own scientific learnings. We worry first as children because we don’t know any better, then as adults because we have developed a “learned experience” that worrying is correlated with life working out ok.

Of course, the beautiful truth about life is that it always works out ok, and so there is never a reason to worry. We just happened to miss that lesson!

At the end of the previously mentioned article, I described how I was going to attempt to counter-condition myself from worry by imagining various everyday scenarios without worry, over and over and over again ad nauseam.

But honestly, if you tried to replicate me in this, I believe that you would fail unless you understand the principle I’m going to cover today.

I’m calling this principle “Conceptual vs. Physical Learning” for the time being. And I’m going to illustrate it by talking about my personal body transformation and what it taught me about worry.

How Solving Worry is Just Like Getting In Physical Shape: A Lesson in Conceptual vs. Physical Learning

What I’ve learned in my multi-year journey to understand worry, anxiety, and mental health better is that solving worry follows ALL of the same laws of physics that other phenomena in the physical world follow!

Let’s explore this via my own personal health story.

My Body Transformation — Aug 7 2020 vs. Dec 21 2020

My body transformation — August 7, 2020 vs. December 21, 2020. I think the left picture is probably the SADDEST I have ever looked in a picture!! On the left I am around 185–190 lbs and no muscle, on the right I am around 175 and significantly more muscular.

One thing most of us can relate to is the journey to either lose weight, gain muscle, get in better shape, recover from injury, or at least to do SOMETHING as it relates to our physical health. At some point in our lives, we all face struggle regarding our physical body.

As you can see above, I’ve been through my own struggle recently. The picture on the left is from August 7, 2020, and the picture on the right is from December 21, 2020. That’s about 4.5 months and a huge difference!

My Physical Low Point — Late July 2020

I didn’t even show you the worst picture because I don’t want to scare anyone away. About two weeks before the “Before” picture shown above, I was in the Emergency Room at my local hospital because I had sprouted hives all over my body and they weren’t going away after taking Benadryl.

I was not only out of shape, but I was covered in these full-body hives that wouldn’t go away not because of a food reaction, but because of a STRESS reaction. I had been playing video games far too much, and one day decided I would “stream” video games to an audience on a website called Twitch. Well, doing that made me so nervous that I broke out and went to the ER for extra strength allergy medicine.

At that time, I was so low physically and emotionally. I was overweight, sitting right about 190 pounds. That was FORTY pounds heavier than I had been at my previous healthiest adult weight in late 2016, when I was a trim and skinny 150. According to Body Mass Index, I was overweight and trending towards obese.

I was covered in hives, sitting in the ER, sent there by an addiction to video games that had finally boiled over.

The part that I considered the most “sad” of all, though, wasn’t that I was overweight or that I was addicted to video games or that I was using emergency room resources for hives in the middle of a pandemic.

The saddest part of my “down” state was that I felt conceptually SO CLOSE to being really fit, and in really good shape, even though I was the heaviest and most out of shape I had ever been!!!

I was saddened because I knew all of the information about getting in shape, but I hadn’t been able to put it into practice yet.

I knew to eat fewer calories.

I knew to make time for exercise.

I knew it was that simple.

But it was HARD to get all that into practice. I just kept eating take-out, kept putting off working out, and kept trying to crash diet my way out of it by going “low carb” for weeks at a time before bingeing again.

Here’s what’s amazing about my physical health journey, though. No matter how bad things got, I never wavered in my complete certainty that I could become super fit if I wanted to. It was so straightforward — exercise, eat right, and it will happen!

Despite failing again and again in 2020, I never lost faith in my physical health goals. I kept restarting workout regimens only to slow down due to a sickness, vacation, or injury. But I kept at it.

I kept tremendous faith in my ability to change my body, because to me it was a simple, physical task — put in healthy food and exercise. It was straightforward.

It’s easy to say “I knew it was going to work out”, but I’m going to prove it to you by showing you an excerpt from a journal entry dated late July 2020.

Here’s what I wrote on July 29, when I was at my heaviest weight ever.

A Journal Entry I wrote on July 29, 2020, while I was at my heaviest weight ever and had just gone to the emergency room covered in hives from a stress reaction. I was comparing myself to a hypothetical person who wasn’t trying to improve their fitness.

Isn’t that wild? In July, at my lowest point, against all odds, I had complete confidence that within a year I would be ripped. As you can see, I’m only about 4 months into my transformation and I’m already quite healthy and the most muscular I’ve ever been. If I keep going like this for 8 more months, this vision is going to come true.

So how did I know I would succeed? How was I able to persist in my physical health journey despite failing over and over and over again?

I was able to keep going because I knew that getting a change in my body wasn’t a result of just KNOWING CONCEPTUAL INFORMATION on how to be fit, but rather was based on IMPLEMENTING a PHYSICAL PATTERN that would create fitness.

So while my MIND knew what to do, my BODY did NOT know what to do yet, because it didn’t have any practice. And I was OK with that because I knew that’s how developing an exercise pattern works. I knew it would take time.

I knew all the information. I knew what to do. But it took time and persistence to actually do it right. In September I started working out and eating right, and finally found a pattern that worked for me. Now, I’m crushing it and my physical journey is just going to keep going amazingly, as far as I can tell.

Flexing in the Mirror!

Working on Your Weight Is Easier Than Working On Your Worry/Anxiety Because You Understand that Your Weight is a Physical Thing

So, with that background set, let me introduce the concept that is going to BLOW YOUR MIND if you can internalize it.

Your “Mental Worry” is an electrical circuit inside of you that is every bit as physical as your body fat or your muscle.

Most people don’t know this, or they haven’t quite internalized it fully. They think worry is a conceptual thing, as illustrated by the example below.

Let’s say you’re about to have a performance review with your boss about how you did at work this year. That might cause you anxiety. It might even cause you “worry”, which is what I call the act of willful self-negation in order to wish for a desired result.

Now, let’s say you actually realize this worry is harming you. It’s harming what you call your “mental health.” You say to yourself:

I shouldn’t be worrying about this darn performance review! It’s not a big deal! It’s not going to change my life dramatically!

Then you call your friend. And she says “Yeah, you don’t need to worry! You’re an awesome employee! Everyone loves you and it will work out no matter what!”

So you let it go for a day. Problem solved. You decide not to worry.

But then you wake up the next day, and suddenly, like magic, that SAME anxiety about the performance review is right back there. You have the same worry impulses, the same desire to self-negate, the same negative feelings.

And you think: “What’s going on!? I thought I wasn’t going to be anxious about that anymore!”

So you argue with yourself again. You try to give yourself all these various reasons why the performance review won’t kill you. Hey, you might get a lower bonus. Your boss might not appreciate you. But you’ll survive. You’re blessed. You still have a roof over your head.

Then the next day comes. And once again, you are NERVOUS beyond belief. You are worrying like crazy. You are self-negating, as if your life depends on this performance review.

And because you’ve already tried talking yourself out of it, you’re at your wit’s end.

There is now something we call “Cognitive Dissonance” happening to you. You think you shouldn’t feel anxiety/worry, but you do, so you have to either fix the feeling or give up on trying to fix it.

Since you don’t know how to fix it, that isn’t an option.

So you give up, and just accept that you’re going to feel bad and be worried because you feel like there’s no solution. And you accept that there will always be worry and anxiety in your life.

Has that ever happened to you? It definitely has to me, all of the time, about everything, throughout my whole life.

I used to think — as you probably do — that some amount of worry is inevitable, that mental health is tricky and complicated and that progress in mental health is based on all of these interwoven thoughts that have to be slowly untangled and re-processed through logical analysis until our anxiety is gone.

But now I believe that mental health is just like physical health — to maintain it, you must do the correct exercise over and over again, regularly!

Let’s return to the physical metaphor again and pretend that instead of solving anxiety about your performance review at work, you’re solving the fact that you’re 20–30 pounds overweight (like I was).

First, you realize you don’t need to be overweight (just like you didn’t need to worry about your performance review). So you say “I don’t have to be like this!” You list to yourself all the reasons why being in good shape would be better for you. You’d be happier, more energetic, etc. etc.

Next, just like in the last example, you call your girlfriend. And she says something similar: “Yeah, you can totally get in shape! You can do it! Let’s do a health pact together.”

Then, the next day you wake up. Guess what? You are STILL OVERWEIGHT! Just like I was still overweight each day even when I knew what to do.

Imagine waking up the next day after deciding to get in shape and thinking “I can’t believe I didn’t lose all this weight overnight! I really decided to be fit yesterday! Why is all this body fat still on me? Why didn’t I lose twenty pounds overnight?!?!?”

You’d never think that. You’d think “Well, darn, I decided to be healthy, but now I have to actually create a plan and implement it on my physical body over time!”

The reason you understand this is because you understand that your physical body takes TIME and REPETITION in the PHYSICAL WORLD to change.

But you just don’t understand that the EXACT SAME THING IS TRUE FOR YOUR MENTAL HEALTH! You just need a basic exercise routine and repetition of that routine.

Sure, having a personal trainer that makes an exact custom workout for you is great.

But if you wanted to get in shape, you could honestly take a free workout from Youtube and a free diet plan, follow them, and lose tons of weight and get in great shape. That’s exactly what I did and it worked for me! All of my workouts have come from a free Youtube video!

It’s not customized to me, it’s not based on my injury history or my past or my body type. It’s just a simple routine that I do over and over and I get really fit.

What if you could do the same thing for your mental health? What if you could have a simple, straightforward routine, which you do with discipline, and which will inevitably make you much happier and less worried?

I realized in August of this year (2020) that such a routine can actually exist.

But for it to exist, it must follow the same PHYSICAL principles as a workout routine. It’s not a “conceptual” routine.

My new hypothesis is that you don’t need to think complex thoughts about your feelings or your past to get rid of your worry — you just need to mentally program away your worry. Just like you don’t need to think complex thoughts about your food to lose weight — you just need to eat baked tilapia instead of a Big Mac.

The Thing that Helped My Mental Health The Most in 2018 Wasn’t Customized at All

In order to illustrate the idea that simple, straightforward physical things can help mental health, I’m going to tell one more story.

*****I want to remind you that this is a PERSONAL STORY, and I am NOT making any recommendation to you whatsoever about what you should do for your mental health. This article is not therapy, mental health advice, medical advice, or any other type of professional advice. It’s just my story. I am not a therapist.*****

In 2018 I went to the psychiatrist. I had been going to therapy, and ultimately I decided to also go on medication to help my anxiety because it was so bad.

In spring 2018 I walked into the psychiatrist’s office with high expectations. It had been MONTHS of waiting to get in for an initial appointment, so I expected to be put through the ringer. Surveys, tests, multi-hour interrogations about everything I had ever experienced — that’s what I was prepared for.

Instead of putting me through a giant battery of tests, my psychiatrist asked me about three questions, waved her hand at me and said “Sounds like generalized anxiety. I’m going to give you Lexapro. It works for most people. It should help.”

20 minutes after entering the office, I was out the door with a prescription for Lexapro and a psychiatrist who didn’t even know a thing about me! I had spent more time in the waiting room than talking to the psychiatrist!

I vividly remember leaving that office. I was FUMING!!! I felt shortchanged. Like I didn’t get my customized care. I had all this pent up emotion, worry, everything, and it was boiling over.

And then I took my first Lexapro pill. And it was a glorious experience. Immediately, the stress was gone. The bad feelings. I felt euphoric. It worked amazingly well from the very first day. I won’t ever forget that.

Eventually, I settled into a routine, got over the side effects of the medicine, and kept going to therapy and working on my mental health in addition to taking Lexapro.

But I can tell you, after actually TAKING THE MEDICINE, I realized that I didn’t need a ludicrously complex, conceptually customized plan. I just needed a simple mechanical thing that worked.

Now, the Lexapro never would have solved any of my mental health issues for the long term if I hadn’t also done the mental work and the therapy. It would be like getting healthy food delivered, but never exercising. You might notice a little bit less pain, but without exercise you’re never going to be even close to your healthiest.

And you can’t feasibly order to-go for every meal of your life — eventually you need to learn how to cook.

After talking to my psychiatrist a couple years later, I went OFF of Lexapro in summer 2020, and don’t plan on going back on again unless something drastic changes. Just like how you might order a custom meal service of healthy food for the first few months or years of your health plan, but then eventually learn to cook healthy food for yourself.

And remember, every metaphor has its limits. It’s one thing to eat healthy food or to exercise. It’s another thing to put an artificial pill in your body that deliberately changes the chemicals in your brain. I just felt this metaphor was a great example about how everything doesn’t need to be customized.

I also think it might show people who are irrationally resisting their therapist’s/psychiatrist’s recommendation to try medication that it could be worth trying!

So What Exercise Should You Actually Do For Your Mental Health?

Let’s close this article by talking about what exercise you can actually do for your mental health. As I alluded to earlier, I picture this as a physical, electrical exercise. Just like doing a push up, but for your brain. Here’s this process quoted from my last article. Just replace “social media posting” with anything you have worry about in your life:

I would walk, and with each step I would go through the following process: I would envision making the social media post I would envision feeling the same anxiety, fear, and emotional/physical reaction that I would normally feel when making a social media post. I would then choose to NOT WORRY. I want to be clear about what this means. I would still feel anxious and fearful and nervous. Those things aren’t worry. What I would do, though, is I would NOT NEGATE MYSELF. I would not put myself on hold on the inside. I would allow myself to feel everything and all my senses and be at “acceptance” with the way the world is, regardless. I would finish the “mental simulation” and realize that I WAS STILL ALIVE, HAPPY, AND NOTHING BAD HAPPENED WHEN I DIDN’T WORRY!!!!

What I’ve quoted there is what I consider one “repetition” of the exercise. It’s one path through the neurological circuit. At first it may take you multiple minutes to be able to envision this even once. But as you get faster, you’ll learn how to create a “simulation” in your brain in just a few seconds.

Honestly, I am still in the VERY beginning of my work on this method. It’s experimental. But to me it makes sense. If I want to get fit with my body (which I am doing successfully), I just do the same workout every two or three days. There are hundreds or maybe a thousand reps in that workout.

If I want to get healthy mentally, I can do the same thing: I can do thousands of repetitions per day until I am physically a different person.

With each repetition, I am rewiring an electrical circuit inside my brain. Eventually, after hundreds of thousands or millions of repetitions, I expect to be able to rewire my brain so that it doesn’t feel worry or anxiety except in the rarest scenarios.

Why Might This Technique Work When Others Have Failed Me?

To wrap up, I want to reiterate why I believe this technique will free me of my worry and anxiety where others have failed.

It’s because when I understand the difference between conceptual and physical components of the work, I remove the cognitive dissonance that is normally associated with working on mental health. This removes the panic and gives me clarity to actually rewire my brain.

In the past, I would go to therapy, think that it “should be working” because I “talked about my challenges”, but I’d still have anxiety and worry. This cognitive dissonance would make me feel BAD about myself and think maybe I can’t heal myself.

Now, I understand that no matter how much I CONCEPTUALLY address my mental health issues by talking about my past, my worries, etc., I understand that I must ALSO do the physical rewiring of my brain in order to feel better.

Just like peak physical health requires healthy eating and exercise, peak mental health requires both therapy/conceptual work AND electrical re-wiring exercises.

It’s likely that while you’ve done the “therapy-type” side of the work, you have not done any of the “re-wiring” side of the work to the extent you need to!

So in the past, this is what my mental health worked looked like (and probably currently looks like for you):

My Old Pattern of Working on Mental Health (Conceptual only, unsuccessful)

Realize I have worries. Question my worries, and whether I might be able to not worry. Work on my mental health by trying to conceptually address each and every challenge in my head (e.g., “I shouldn’t feel anxious about this because it’s not a big deal, I shouldn’t worry about her because I know she loves me, etc. etc.”). Become frustrated and overwhelmed when, despite my work on my mental health, worry and anxiety are still present, even on issues I already thought I had addressed or decided not to worry about. Experience Cognitive Dissonance — The feeling that I can’t both be “making progress” and “still feel frustrated and overwhelmed”. This dissonance causes extreme fatigue and suffering, and makes me do negative coping behaviors like video games. Since I don’t know how to fix that dissonance, I give up on being unworried and accept that I will feel worried and anxious for the rest of my life to various degrees. Constantly live with worry and wage an exhausting day to day battle against it. Spiral up and down emotionally and physically depending on my external environment.

My New Pattern of Working on Mental Health (Experimental — Conceptual PLUS physical rewiring activity)

Realize I have worries (same as previous). Question my worries, and whether I might be able to not worry (same as previous). (And remember, I have already done YEARS of therapy and thought examination, so the “conceptual” part of addressing my worries is already mostly done and I am now bottlenecked by the physical part). Understand the key concept that my worries are physical electrical signals. Accept that until I have a set, standard exercise routine which consistently rewires these signals, I will continue to have the same worry. Just like how even with a perfect understanding of what to eat and how to exercise to lose weight, the weight won’t actually go away until I work out for multiple months in a row (This is the physical component). Become frustrated each day and experience pain when my worries are still there (It is NOT a quick fix! This will still be the same. There will still be a lot of anxiety. I know, because I’m at this stage right now). Do NOT Experience Cognitive Dissonance — Embrace the pain of my worry, accepting that it follows the laws of physics. Just like how I embraced the pain of still being overweight during the first few weeks/months of my exercise regimen. Because I do not have cognitive dissonance, I do not panic or give up. I perform fewer unhealthy coping mechanisms. Instead of playing video games, I work a little bit each day at my mental health exercise to rewire my brain. Slowly but surely, I see progress on my mental health, and because I have no cognitive dissonance and understand that it takes time to rewire the brain, I am constantly motivated to remove my worry. Instead of going into a downward spiral or an up and down cycle, I slowly trend in an upward spiral. (Just how my body transformation has left the downward cycle and gone upward once I started my consistent exercise). (Hypothetical: I am still not to this stage yet) Just like I can remove all of my unhealthy body fat and live every single day, for the rest of my life, with a healthy body and feeling amazing about my body, I know that within a year or two I can remove all of my “worry circuits” and replace them with “joy circuits” and live the rest of my life without worry.

If you’re at your wit’s end with worry, reach out to me for some free help!

So, there’s the difference between what I used to do, and what I’m doing now!

As I mentioned, I am still early in this process. As an honest assessment, in terms of my progress with the mental rewiring I’m still the equivalent of the overweight guy in the first body photo I posted. I have made so much progress, but honestly I still do not have an exact, airtight routine for mental health rewiring the same way I have an exact routine for my physical fitness.

I’m literally still doing the groundbreaking research on this method on myself, right now.

The good news is that since I’m still experimenting, the most valuable thing anyone can do for me is try this out and let me know how it does! And I’m doing all of my coaching on this right now for free because really, all I need are test subjects!!!

If you want to be part of my experiments and get some free coaching in this technique, just click this sentence and it’ll send you to a calendar tool where you can schedule time with me!

I’m looking forward to working more on this method and providing more updates as I go.