CHANGE #7
Adjust Your Expectations
SIMPLY PUT… From today on, I want you to say the following three things each morning. Say them as a promise, as a reminder, as motivation. Say them out loud:
1. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
2. “If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.”
3. “We can’t become what we want to be by remaining who we are.”
Welcome to quitting time.
This is when the weak stop and the strong persevere. It’s also why many of the people around you (and for that matter, two-thirds of US adults over age twenty) are still overweight, no matter how badly they want to do something about it.
If you’ve been using this book as a thirty-day program, then you’re already one week into the plan. And if it’s taken you a little longer to get here because you’ve allowed each Change to really sink in and become part of you, then listen up.
As the health/fitness correspondent for the Today show, I was assigned a month-long series to convert one of my colleagues, Jeff Rossen, from fair to fit. I was to put him on a plan, get him to the gym, videotape his (almost) every move, and then sit back and watch the pounds roll off. It was going to make for sensational TV. There was just one problem—his body wasn’t quite on the same time frame that we were.
A little background first: Rossen had never been to the gym—ever. He never played sports, although he did touch a signed NBA basketball one time at an auction (but it was still in the glass case). He never met a carbohydrate he didn’t like. (Nice to meet you, loaf of bread. Is that your cousin, second loaf?) And he never ever thought he’d be able to stick to an eating and exercise plan.
Good luck to me, right?
But give the guy credit because he was committed to it. So he signed up, agreed to follow every last direction and guideline of mine, and was ready to work. I didn’t throw him in the deep end, much in the same way I didn’t start this book with a killer workout. We made some early, manageable changes, such as reducing his afternoon and nighttime intake of carbs, implementing a 10k-step-a-day program, and increasing his water intake—all of the things you’re now doing through this book.
Rossen wanted to lose about fifteen pounds in one month. He thought he’d lose at least fourteen by Day Two. I tried to temper his expectations, but he was sure that if he did everything I instructed him to do, he’d shed weight immediately. Unfortunately, weight loss doesn’t work that way. Everyone’s body is built differently and runs differently. What might take a week for one person to start dropping weight may take three or four weeks for someone else.
That being said, after three weeks he had lost only four pounds and was tempted to quit. Why put himself through all this for such measly results, he wondered. I received text after text questioning the plan, his body, the whole program—and each was met with the same answers: “Be patient.” “You didn’t gain this weight in a week, and you won’t lose it in a week.” “You’re doing all the right things.” “Give your body a chance to figure out what you’re asking it to do.”
“Trust me.”
By the fourth week, the weight starting falling off, and by the end of our month-long series, he had lost close to thirteen pounds and dropped two belt notches. He was thrilled. I was thrilled. His belt was thrilled.
Jeff, today
Losing weight slowly is a good thing. And right now, I want you to forget what you think you know about weight loss, getting in shape, and improving your overall health.
The fact is, when you take weight off too quickly (which many fad diets try to do by cutting out entire food groups or restricting calories below healthy standards), your body’s homeostatic mechanisms go into defense mode. In a nutshell, your body thinks that it’s starving, so it tries to protect you by lowering your metabolism to a slow crawl to conserve calories. It’s a sweet gesture (and a natural survival strategy), but it brings any effort you make moving forward to lose weight through exercise and being smart about your diet to a grinding halt.
You need to have patience. That was the agreement we made before all of this started, remember? This is a system. This is a process. And most important, this is the way it works—the way it has always worked—and we are doing this slowly because you want to do it correctly. And you need to trust me when I say that there’s a switch in you that’s about to be flipped.
If you’re extremely lucky, it’s already happened for you. But for most people, it takes a bit longer before that switch gets flipped. It never happens at the exact same moment for everyone, even if you and a friend have started this journey with me together. It doesn’t happen at the exact same time for my clients either. But somewhere along the thirty Changes, it’s going to happen to you, and when it does, once that switch is flipped, you’ll arrive at a whole new mindset.
Every Change you’ve embraced prior, and every new Change you’re about to make moving forward, will suddenly become easier and require less effort. I can’t promise you that you won’t flip that switch until after all thirty Changes become a part of your life, but when it clicks, it clicks. And all this work you’ve been doing that once felt like labor will soon feel like a lifestyle.
DON’T STOP THERE…
There are three factors that help us make a change in our lives: muscle, mind, and heart.
We always start with our muscles. They’re big and strong and require less thinking and more doing. So we muscle our way through a workout or an all-nighter study session or a work deadline. But eventually our bodies—specifically our muscles—begin to tire out, and that’s when I want you to use your mind. Your mind will carry you over matter. Your mind will take you past the discomfort of the workouts, past the annoyances of eating clean, and past the desire to quit.
But when your mind goes soft, when you know each Change is important but you still find yourself wanting to quit, that’s when I want your heart to take over and push you through. It’s time to look in the mirror and say, “I may not see results yet, but I know in my heart that I’m doing the right thing and that eventually this will all lead to something great.”
Muscle, mind, and heart.
And you have to keep telling yourself that. That’s why, every morning, I want you to put down that glass of water after you’ve taken your twenty sips from it and say these three things to yourself:
1. “Life begins at the end of your comfort zone.”
2. “If it doesn’t challenge you, it won’t change you.”
3. “We can’t become what we want to be by remaining who we are.”
Saying those words aloud is you telling yourself that every single choice you make moving forward may be a conscious and difficult choice—and it may be work—but it’s worth it. It reminds you that you don’t want to go back to the way it was or the person you used to hate seeing in the mirror.
Tips and Tricks
If this journey was an easy one, everyone would be doing it. You may not be everyone, but you are the one who will look, feel, sleep, move, eat, act, and be better a month from now. Using a few of these recommendations could make that journey a little more effortless.
Play back your past failures. The next time you find yourself making an excuse not to stick with any Change you’ve learned (and will learn) from this book, replay those moments in the past when you skipped a workout, overate, or quit a diet. Remind yourself how giving in led you here, then use that feeling to prevent yourself from repeating a failure in the future.
This lifestyle isn’t just for the workweek. That means that weekends count. Being good with your Changes all week long may make you feel you can be more lax on the weekends. But start slacking off from Friday night through Sunday night and you’ve just wasted a third of your week being bad. Instead, anticipate that the weekends will be way more tempting for you and try to plan accordingly.
Make a “worth the time” list. You already know which achievements were worth every ounce of your effort, from getting your master’s degree or having your first child to growing out your bangs and suffering through a fourteen-hour flight for a fantastic vacation. So write down a list of things that took time but were worth it in the end—and realize that soon, adopting these thirty Changes will make that list.
Never lose sleep over a setback. Will you forget to send your food diary one night or wake up without having your twenty sips the next morning? Maybe, but when it happens, don’t beat yourself up. Most people react to slipping by throwing in the towel or telling themselves they’ll try again tomorrow or next week. Instead, move on as soon as you mess up.
Ask yourself, “Is this really that difficult?” You could be exaggerating how hard a Change is, just to justify not doing it as often. To keep yourself from blowing things out of proportion, measure how inconvenient a Change might be against other struggles you’ve overcome that were much harder.
Remember the time that you’ve lost. If losing weight at a healthy pace of about one pound each week seems slow, count up how many weeks you’ve been at your current weight. Each one of those weeks represents a week you could have been one pound less than the week before.
Imagine your future you. At the end of the day, take five minutes to close your eyes and picture how you’ll look and feel when your goals are met. Think of the things you’ll be able to do more easily, or maybe even for the first time. You need to visualize who you will eventually become at the end of this journey and remind yourself that every ounce of hard work you put in that day will soon be worth it.