Episode 34 · 30:37
Revitalising Body and Mind: Dan’s Journey with AI and Fitness Transformation
Dan brings AI into a practical fitness reset, using generated plans, feedback and visual motivation to reconnect with his body. He and Tom ask where technology genuinely removes friction and where it risks creating another complicated system to maintain.
The goal is not optimisation for its own sake, but a routine simple enough to survive low-energy days.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- Use AI to reduce planning friction, then test the advice against your real body and schedule.
- A visible picture of progress can make an abstract health goal feel immediate.
- The best routine has a small version you can complete on a difficult day.
- Health technology should support consistency rather than create guilt or dependence.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
As much and you're just licking your finger yeah troll [Music] s settings I think I've changed the settings like put this like dull thing right so it's like a haze so forgive me Haze but um I think my settings ultimately are going to be if I don't change them then they're this which is like I'm in the dark so I assume this is slightly better yeah slightly well welcome to today's podcast hopefully you're doing well and if not this next.
30 minutes will make you better um because we're going to chat um all things um that's on our mind and what we're going to try and do differently today is um we're gonna just run into it straight away by asking how your weekend's been catching up properly so Tom how has your weekend been yeah weekend was good so it was picking up um brother-in-law from Manchester Airport and went into Manchester so it's quite nice seeing the City Vibe went.
Um mini golf one thing I would say with this mini golf you know how mini golf is normally like on thin carpet AstroTurf whatever you call it this was like carpet at home type of stuff that you'd knock it and it would like hardly go so it was really annoying and then you'd over knock it and then it would like shoot off basically so it was unlike any other did they have any like drums and pipes and all the rest of it because I think I've.
Had a little bit of all that um it was cool to be fair um quite tough to play more so from the uh yeah the carpet point of view but that was good fun who ended up winning Roxy um brother-in-law Brandon dead did you come in the rankings I came I can't remember if I came second or third because it was a close one mcmegs so out of three yeah cool well I've got some news you know obviously I've been doing calorie.
Counting fasting exercise extra exercise and More in taking and I've lost 2.2 kilograms in one week nice which is good so I was worried about um actually weighing myself this morning um thinking I don't want to disappoint myself if just in case I randomly put on weight or stayed the same or not as much but um I've got super into it so when I'm calorie counting two I'm fasting which by fasting I mean like there's a pattern where you do 8 16.
Where you ate eat within eight hours and then don't eat for 16 hours but you can have water and tea and stuff um and that just helps with because after 12 hours your body starts actually burning um burning calories or burning fat and um in upping up my exercise you know having something like um an Apple Watch or whatever with calorie counting on the active calories is is really really helpful but then I wanted to estimate how many calories I.
Think I will have changed so due to my weight and age and whatever they say roughly 2003 2003 calories 2 300 calories is like the Baseline but then I realized oh Apple actually works out your resting calories which on average is for me 2100. so if that's my resting calories then I want to work on a deficit so the deficit that I've been working on is trying to work out more that I've been eating but also what I'm eating is much much lower.
Anyway and what I shouldn't be doing is going any lower than 1 500 calories and then to work out the actual weight um kind of like difference in in kilograms they say that it's roughly 7 700 calories equals one kilogram so to lose that you kind of want to work out um a deficit of 700 700 7700 so I estimated based on my deficit I think I only like intake probably like 1400 calories or something because of my.
Deficits um and then I estimated that to be 1.7 kilograms so to know that I've actually come out at 2.2 kilograms is really helpful so yeah if you're wanting to shifter and I've definitely noticed like I'm I think I'm more like I feel more positive and it might have been because I had heal and he'll has more nutrition in it so yeah that's what I was gonna ask you next because everyone focuses on the um the weight loss rather than but.
How do you feel afterwards because sometimes you can lose weight quick but feel way worse so I I definitely I definitely feeling the the struggle of like I'm feeling hungrier or more because I'm doing the fasting but I'm glad that I feel hungry because I would be worried if I didn't feel hungry then I'd be worried that my body has just gone into starvation mode and like is okay with it and kind of like just slowing down metabolism so I think it's.
Good they say there's like a range of like one to ten in hungriness and like you should be kind of in the in the like the middle or something so you're not like fully starving and you're not fully full you're like just in the middle a little um or on the side so still feeling a little bit hungry but not like starving um but General like mood and outlook on life is more improved one I think that's probably because I'm just getting better.
Nutrition because I'm substituting meals with fuel and also I'm seeing more grateful for food yeah yeah I'm I I basically it's stuck well not start myself but I basically did it all weekend and on Friday I had like chips and burger the sweet potato fries were like the tastiest sweet potato fries because there's a sense of control right so if you are able to exhibit a sense of control then when you do have something it does like taste better and just.
Imagine you're just licking your finger yeah troll so I think like I'm so happy that I've been able to break it I think it's because I've you know like I've always said like I did the 10 press-ups for uh temp recipes for 10 nights you see a difference so like cool I just needed work two weeks without thinking of anything and then the urge of like actually I'm just gonna weigh myself just to see and I was like look it.
Doesn't matter if the numbers are high or low I'm just gonna see what happens and to be like 2.2 is like oh that's really encouraging so this week I want to try and do more like hit workouts because I'm probably going to play Squash less because I played twice last week so I wanted to like hit workouts with um Apple um and stuff and also see if I can be a bit more like not not miss the kind of like intaking of 1.
500 calories because broadly speaking of becoming I'm kind of a little bit lower than that I'm like intaking 900 like 1100 calories which is I want to make sure they don't become unhealthy um yeah but for one week for one week it's not going to cause too much trouble right it'd be like long-term deficit would be um would probably cause like health issues and stuff um nice so yeah I'm just trying to find the balance of like what makes it.
Enjoyable or not because in the day-to-day it's like you realize oh I feel hungry I'm just gonna have a snack and really I think I have a sugar craving like I would like a sweet snack right about now but because I'm like the discipline of fasting is stopping me which is which is good and in hot weather you typically don't want like chocolate or snacks and stuff in the same way which is which is good and I'm drinking two liters a day of water.
Generally speaking I was kind of doing that anyway um but I've been more registered making sure that I I fully do two liters um I think I'm doing slightly more but again I want to make sure I don't drown myself in too much water either I'll be too hydrated so yeah that's a really I'm really happy with week one 2.2 let's see what we get to um because according to the BMI thing I'm actually clusters overweight so um.
Really yeah which is interesting um because I'm I was I put in 33 male and like what was I 89.4 but my ideal like the top range is like 85. so I'm probably just like four kilograms over into the overweight classification but um yeah I thought that was quite interesting insightful is that after the minus 2.2 kilograms you lost or whatever no I think I'm I think I'm still because I think oh wait it was it was 85.
Yeah and now I'm 87.2 so I need to work out I think I'm two kilograms away from being like a decent thing but it's difficult to know because how would you know if that is not muscle versus normally a guess really on the just chart thing unless you went into more yeah um to figure out you wait yeah muscle capacity or whatever it is so so yeah that's been a really good motivator for for this morning which is good so nice.
What else did you do over the weekend or what else have you been thinking about um I learned something about my relationship with Megan only triggered on the weekend is friendly uh yeah podcast friendly I realized that I tend to keep on top of like chores at home more so than away because in my opinion maybe because I work at home I like to keep the place tidy probably a little bit OCD or whatever but then when I go away I'm.
On holiday that is their responsibility looking after me I'll look after you when you're at my house you look after me when I'm at yours sort of mindset but Megan on the other hand is no home is where I rest so I wouldn't necessarily do as much because I'm resting but when we go to other people actually I want to be a blessing to others so we should help out more so I basically realized what four or five years later but it's like.
Okay that makes sense why you're always getting me to do stuff when I'm on holiday mode in my brain going why are you always asking me to do a lot of stuff but then probably vice versa when she comes home from work I'm like oh can you do this this and this it's like why are you bothering me I'm on like chilled after work chilled zone so yeah it's just funny getting those many Revelations of how you run how you work.
As a couple and I basically it's like there's probably two options we either both need to balance each other out so I need to do less at home more away or we just recognize our strengths and then I don't do anything away from home and you take on that chores but then I'm more likely to do stuff at home because that's more my natural thing so it's either teamwork and push our extremes or teamwork and sort of balance out a.
Little bit and see and we'll probably just play it by ear to see which one feels a bit more what works for us I think um I was chatting to somebody at church this week and the importance of like never stop learning never don't don't ever stop learning whether or not that's in a relational capacity or a like an individual intellectual capacity or anything like that and learning these intricacies again it's just a case of making a well-oiled machine even more.
Like run even more efficiently um so it's good to have these conversations because in in the world you you don't get these opportunities to discuss this in these intricacies as much as you do and also like bother to even discuss it because it could be like you do this which is annoying and you do this is it's annoying and then you kind of like not discuss it so that it like okay cool this person's not worth marrying as it were that would be like.
Sometimes a typical low interaction level of um of the same topic coming up yeah but yeah I think every time there's a new revelation it makes you better and then ultimately you go up to like level two level three level four which is your Crossing other aspects of life is like a you know one of those um pentagons as Earth or whatever the FIFA chart oh yeah yeah and it's like understanding that's gonna 80 or whatever I I would say it makes.
Sense right your your marriage is a spider chart of parameters and you're trying to Edge out each parameter um equally yeah I I think it makes sense talking about don't stop learning um this this weekend um so this week I've last week sorry I've been broadly reading a lot about um creating your own large language model creating your own um basically AI model to ask questions of and the model would be based on your information so it could be based on a.
PDF it could be based off a YouTube video and then you could ask it questions and it would tell you stuff about the video about the PDF so if you think of like stocks and shares when they do earning calls they'll release a long PDF of like 30 40 or pages and somebody wants to ingest that into a database and then ask the database questions so I wanted to figure out how do you do that because what I want to.
Try and do is one I want to keep on moving with the time so I don't get left behind with this whole like Ai and how do you build an AI and so forth so I started um using this product that kind of showed you how it was working and what it does is you give it something it crawls it so I gave it a website it crawls the website and then it basically chunks the website into two paragraphs.
As it were and then it's based on what you ask it searches based on what you ask and says do you match paragraph a or paragraph B right and the and they're big big like data chunks based off if it matches paragraph B it gives it to the AI and it says use paragraph B to answer the question right so then it answers it so this like paragraph a and paragraph B is called chunking um there's different methodologies to.
Chunk so I wanted to try it with the um I wanted to build myself as a coach um so I want to try to do it as a coach because there's a influencer there's this female influencer that's put all her YouTube content all her videos into an AI that people can speak to and basically have a virtual girlfriend and she's been charging them a pound a minute for the interaction through a telegram chat and the telegram chat will answer the questions that.
These people are asking her but will answer it as of voice note as her voice but it's not actually her and she made like 75k in the first day something like that so obviously those are interesting things because her methodology or her approach was she realizes generally in her day-to-day life her DMS are mostly from guys and mostly from guys that like lack confidence or something like that right so she wanted to build guys confidence up by being their girlfriend.
So she's like a girlfriend to like thousands of people um and I thought oh it's a fascinating um like play on the fact that guys like confidence so I will be their friend and and what does that like cultivate as a result like you know obviously there's some dangers in that because then these people think they know you when really they don't they know a a general like a general General generated version of you so I took the same premise the same idea.
Right took all of our podcasts or like some of our podcasts I just took my audio I then chunked my audio and the re the chunking that I used was six sentences uh plus two sentences in an overlap which means chunk A and B will have a little bit of each other in it so there's a bit of overlap and then I'm using open AI so I chunked these podcasts put it all into a database then there's something called Vector.
Databases now this is where it gets like technical if you think of map coordinates as X and Y right and if I said oh there's a particular space and we've got objects and you map these objects and the similar objects you'll map them closer to each other right so for example a T-shirt and a jumper might be mapped close to each other because they're kind of like they go over the top of your body for example right but.
Then like trousers will be mapped somewhere different because it's it's not relatable it's closed but it's not relatable and then like you know a rubber duck will be positioned somewhere else right so these objects in a space have a like a relatability kind of like coordinate now when it comes to um AI models it does exactly the same but it's not X and Y it's 130 130 No 1 365. numbers to coordinate it in a in like a.
Virtual space of where things relate to each other so you basically say for all these Snippets or all these chunks of data give me the coordinates for these chunks and then when I ask a question tell me the coordinates of the question and then based off those coordinates I can search the database to be like give me these coordinates need to roughly match other coordinates so what coordinates will match the things in the database and then it says these five.
Snippets match closely to what you've asked so for example like one question that I asked it um was what business ideas do you think it's best to start right so based off of that it transfers that into this coordinates which is basically called a vector or an embedding um and this embedding is a list of of like numbers then when I asked the database using a list of those numbers so these this is the query embed to go.
And search on and it gave me like 10 Snippets where we've spoken about business ideas in the podcast and then you feed that into the AI into the into the program and let me see if I can quickly quickly find it so you feed it into open AI using chat GT GT I use chap gpt4 and it basically said uh so my question is what what business idea is the best start it says it's difficult to pinpoint the best idea.
Um as it depends on your unique skills interests and market demand however one approach mentioned in the Snippets is to take an existing product and localize it it could mean adapting it to a different language a specific area or a particular cultural group for example creating an Etsy like platform for a specific region focus on um local products and culture another suggestion is to focus on a product or service that people use every day like shampoo or something like that.
If you can create a highly a high quality product at a good price customers May more likely want to subscribe or buy in bulk right so I'm like awesome I do remember that we've mentioned those things in the podcast so it's now answering based on what I've said because I've just used my audio for the time being and then now I want to build an AI voice that's my voice so I can read out that answer in my voice and.
Put it in a telegram box so I can chat to myself about business and things so I'm I find it super satisfying when you learn something new um does that like broadly make sense does it broadly make sense of like how it works sort of yeah it's a lot of information for a Monday morning but yes it's enough to yeah basically it's like map coordinates of paragraphs and those coordinates find percentages if everything's filed it's like saying go to one a and you go to that filing.
Cabinet or whatever but from a Maps point of view yeah with 1 356 like numbers which then tells you the exact coordinates in which this like in this space these paragraphs exist so I'm like I've only done some of the I've only done some of the episodes I've not done all of the episodes so I want to download the other audio files to like map it in and I was like if we could slowly carry on building stuff we could.
Basically build a coach which is this don't be a doorstep coach so you can be asking it stuff and it would tell you answers based on the content that we've been creating it does make you want to make more content in the spaces that we've not spoken about potentially because someone will ask of variation of answers so can you create um like if you've been a YouTuber it would make more sense that you could probably uh you'll probably have more content.
Um to use the one thing I want to work out is how do I stylize it like me um how would it effects or the character Arc so let's say you pick a famous YouTuber that's been there for ages let's say like a KSI hmm from his first video to now he's a lot more polished professional slash probably is less likely to swear kick off or picks and choose when he does that more so than maybe his earlier years of just doing.
Anything for the sense of entertainment how would you be able to because you sort of want the character Arc and the maturity but would it class it as all individual things so if you said you hate women as a joke and it's pulled out context it's like so KSI do you like women no I hate women but actually it's just randomly pulled out of context how does it do that type of stuff it's fair enough if you don't know.
The answer it's just something that came to my mind yeah so the the one thing you do get to do is you get to set up um the parameters in which you want this um AI to interact so at the very start of any interaction you preemptively say cool like this is who you are this is what you are here are now you you inject the content bits from the Snippets so the 10 Snippets that I've found based on.
Your question and then you say answer the question right so broadly speaking you could say at the start to be like you are KSI you are super like you're super mature you don't swear you don't do and you could basically preemptively put in guard rails um at the very very star and then if and and you could be like and if you don't know and if you don't find the answer in the Snippets say that you don't know the.
Answer right so hopefully in the Snippets he's not sad something like that therefore it doesn't come out but if he had then what you'd probably want to do is go through the the database of Snippets to pull out anything that could be perceived as uh as like you know bad bad outside of context let alone in context right like um outside of contacts and Insider context and pulling out those one sentences so um fascinating so yeah I'm trying to.
Programmatically um program down Ryland as an AI based off podcast episodes and I was thinking I could feed in my personal YouTube videos on my personal podcast to give it more of an arrange I just don't know how to get it to be the same tone um because it's still kind of reliable replying back as if it's literally a bot saying well these are the things I found and these this is the answer so I need to fine tune it a little bit further to.
Get the um the same like language over but I would also say I want to improve on that because it might be that the bot then says um basically a lot or something right so you'd want to be trying to remove some of the um language um style that I do have to improve on it a little fascinating that's really interesting yeah so I'm I Now understand um that methodology enough to be like oh I can basically create.
Somewhat of a an AI model based off content based off contextual information whether or not it's like YouTube videos or a website or or whatever there's I understand how like the basic principles which is really really helpful to now innovate on on top of that so yeah it's um I lost 2.2 kilograms in the body but gained 2.2 kilograms of learning yeah that's really interesting fascinating yeah there's another thing that or two other things that I mentioned is.
Um with Dave Logan on the Friday front of the Pod I don't know if he still listens anymore um so that was good catching up with him and then yesterday we me Megan did a try a night trial a first run of I listened to something recently and it was basically talking about active listening and how you let someone speak for five minutes and it could be about anything and everything that's on there mind heart soul whatever you want.
To call it um and basically you can't fix anything to something you don't even answer them you're just letting them fill the gaps to some extent but then you just pick out one or two things to be like after you talk for five minutes this is a thing that's highlighted to me and as you're talking about the AI thing I was thinking actually it'd be really interested if you could have an AI bot listen to you for five minutes and be.
Like I've noticed that you mentioned depression 10 times and joy wants let's talk about depression do you feel like you're actually depressed or whatever like to then hone in and I think probably me being more dyslexic safe typing in because that would be a bit more fluffier obviously wouldn't mind it if you spoke for five minutes and then it let's say typed out the question then you spoke into it but it would be a very interesting AI mirror maybe we should uh painting.
That like mirror mirror on the wall yeah yeah I I think what I've noticed is we talk a lot about um emotions mental health like emotional stability understanding self-reflection and it feels like it'd be cool to build like a therapy AI um thing and you could easily do it with a it records you know five minutes of you speaking and then it gives you some like follow-up questions or some analysis um after the fact to then go on it I.
Think um yeah all this stuff is uh so fascinating so fascinating and I'm like how how do you bring this um down to like kids levels so you can introduce this stuff at a kids level so then at the very start they can be like far more aware about things so then they're just more well like they're more well-rounded and I hope that it doesn't then become the because they're so good at emotions that they become like um.
Everything feels heavy for them because they can they can empathize really really well or that they understand so much that they um feel like oh I can feel your hurt and I can feel your you know it's like how do you find the balance of understanding your own understanding for your own benefit as well as like an external benefit of how it all plays together um yeah interesting thoughts for a Monday morning well we've managed to smash out half an.
Hour's worth of of content but um anything else to add or any other closing thoughts before we go I think it's practice the active listening five minutes with someone that will give you five minutes and then let them pick out something and try and not crucify them try and pick out something that will be helpful um because it would be really interesting to see if you feel seen and heard in those five minutes because I think that's what.
Socials and being on our phones and stuff is probably first what it first was four of the element of connection but actually sometimes it's it's a lot of water down connection which sometimes doesn't give you that root so you can grow further um but by giving a friend or a partner or whatever that five minutes that you'll listen to and then ask questions and then if that's quite intense obviously you could just take it in terms of do someone else another time.
Um or just do one after the other subs you but yeah well there you go go and find your one person and have five minutes talking at them until next time keep hammering those nails [Music] [Music].