This is Optimal Living Daily, the missing element to achieving your goals and expanding your potential

by Michael Melberg of Michael Melberg.com, and I'm Justamalik. This isn't your typical podcast,

there are no interviews, just me here, reading articles to you with permission from the authors,

and with a little bit of my commentary at the end. So for now, let's get right to it,

and continue optimizing your life.

The missing element to achieving your goals and expanding your potential by Michael Melberg

of Michael Melberg.com. I chuckled in the smallish veterinary clinic in Leesburg, Virginia, just loud enough to draw a glance from the doctor standing nearby.

My wife just responded to my text, I said.

I told her, Doddy gained 10 pounds.

She told me, that's because you feed her salami every night.

Doddy is our bull oxer rescue, a bulldog head stuck on a boxer's body. She's

four years old, has white fur, and now weighs 85.2 pounds. Where she was once ripped with genetically

gifted shoulder muscle striation, she now looks a little soft and full, maybe full of salami.

In my defense, delicious deli meat is a staple of my

closely tracked diet. Some of it falls on the ground while I'm snacking, where Dottie dutifully slurps it up.

Other times I'll roll up a slice for her and play catch. Still, other times, she'll snack some off

of the coffee table herself, usually when I'm slow to share, and especially

when I'm not looking. Okay, okay, clearly I'm to blame here for her weight gains. If I'm being

honest, though, it does come as a surprise. I'm quite diligent about feeding her the same amount of

food, one and a half cups in the morning, the same at night, both with a splash of warm water.

No more, no less. But over the course

of six months, a few slices of fatty meats started to add up to ounces, then pounds, then you're

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