6
Commitment and Action Are Key to Success
If staying as young as possible comes down to prevention, prevention comes down to one word: commitment.
I see it everywhere—with the young, the old, the rich, the poor. And I have to ask myself, Why? Why are they so complacent? So unworried? I watch what they are eating. I see how they are moving around and how they look. I see their weight. The picture I perceive is a snake that makes no noise until it strikes. These people will remain complacent until a symptom occurs. And then they just accept it as the natural process of aging.
I want to help them. I want to offer answers that will make a difference. And I know their problem. They do not have the commitment to do what is necessary to defeat the enemy of aging. They’ve made the decision numerous times before but don’t add the commitment. They do some “ounce” prevention, like multivitamins or an aspirin every day. Some even brag about eating free-range beef. But they never take the action required for success.
I want you to be different. If you’ll make an effort to realize the following truths, you’ll experience success in reaching a point of commitment. See where you are in the process, then commit to working toward success in the plan.
1. Realize the Need
Few realize the need. So many who are overweight or don’t exercise, who are eating themselves into the grave, who are developing dementia, high blood pressure, or diabetes never see the need to eat properly, to get to an ideal weight, or to exercise. They are given a pill to get their cholesterol down, a pill to lower their blood pressure, another pill to control their sugar, and they take an aspirin to prevent a heart attack. They simply do not see the need to do more. But a pill isn’t enough. So many do not realize that being treated with pills is not the same kind of protection prevention is. There is so much you can personally do to prevent your problem. Work at it—you may be able to eliminate having to take the pill. (Or at least get the dose lower.)
2. Many Want to . . . But
Many actually do realize the need and want to make their lives better. They want to lose weight. They really want to be more active. Deep in their hearts, they want to—but don’t. Life is too hard. They have to deal with too many other things first: their job, their marriage, their children. Or they’re just too busy to do anything right now. Many want to—but later, not right now. The trouble is, later may never come.
3. Decision Is a Change of Mind
This is the tough one. Many want to have moments when they decide to do something about their health. Many New Year’s resolutions to lose weight are made in all sincerity. Some of these people read about what is causing their problems. Or even better, they learn what they can do to prevent the aging process from developing so fast. They actually hear that the LDL Cholesterol is the bad one that causes some kind of problem with their arteries. They develop some kind of an understanding that the HDL Cholesterol is the hero and that exercise will increase those particles. And that weight loss does the same. They decide to lose weight. Some even study the benefits of getting to an ideal weight. They decide they are going to change their eating habits. They decide no more red meat, no more egg yolks, no more cheese or whole milk. They decide to cut out the butter and margarine. They decide to set up an exercise program and to maintain an ideal weight.
The problem is that a decision does not require action. A decision is simply a change of mind. Decision is an essential first step, but so many times, it stops there. These are the ones who have had a stent placed or have been told for the first time they are diabetic or have high blood pressure. Or they are the ones who feel perfectly healthy and have been told how to prevent future problems. If they have the knowledge, many decide to do something about their problem—but they fail when the time for action arrives.
4. Commitment Is a Change of Heart
One day it came to me. Immediate action is the most significant point required for success. All the knowledge in the world isn’t going to prevent your aging process unless you come to this realization. Even if you read this book three times and learn all the medical aspects of aging, you won’t do anything about it without this insight. It is called commitment.
Proverbs 23:7 states that as a man “thinketh in his heart, so is he.” That is so true. Your “wants” have to go deeper than just in your mind. They have to reach your heart.
Commitment requires a change of heart—it requires action. Decision involves the mind—commitment involves the heart. We’ve covered the basics of the causes of aging. You now understand that the most significant aspect of aging is directly related to protecting your arteries. You understand completely the damage within the walls of your arteries whenever an LDL Cholesterol splinter enters the media. And most important, you have come to realize that saturated fat in the foods you eat causes the greatest increase in your LDL Cholesterol. You have the basic knowledge, you have made the commitment, and now your success depends on your actions.
Case Studies on Commitment
Susie
Susie is sixty-one years old. She has had an active life, traveled the world over, and is financially well off. She went for her annual checkup, and her doctor informed her she had developed diabetes. Even though it was mild, it required medication. She was worried that her new diagnosis would lead to health problems as time went on. I showed her a medical report I recently read. It pointed out that being told you have diabetes has the same outcome as being told you just survived your first heart attack. She was shocked to find out that diabetes is as serious as having a heart attack. I pointed out that the American Diabetes Association says that 8.3 percent of the population has diabetes and that heart disease is the number one killer of diabetic people. I explained that she is not alone; one in five has some elevation of their blood sugar.
But what affected Susie the most was when I explained that if she didn’t take action to control her diabetes she would most likely die of a heart attack. As she wiped the tears off her cheeks, she told me she had no idea diabetes was that serious. I talked to her earnestly, explaining how she could get her blood sugar down to normal and be able to come off her medication. All it was going to take was losing her extra pounds, getting an exercise program going, and eating the proper foods. It was fairly simple.
The first week, she began walking daily and changing her eating habits. She was feeling good. And I remember feeling so happy that she had decided to change her lifestyle. After that first week, my wife and I invited her to go out to dinner. I wanted to see what she would order for her meal. She didn’t eat the premeal bread. She ordered a salad and a fat-free dressing—on the side. Her main course was grilled fish. I was feeling good that my two-hour dissertation had taken proper effect.
However, when we were leaving the restaurant, she and my wife walked out ahead of me as I stopped to speak to someone I knew. On the way out, there was a little bowl of wrapped mints. Susie didn’t see me watching, but my eyes followed her fingers as she picked up two of the mints and slid them into her purse. Not one, but two.
I realized Susie had decided to change her lifestyle to gain control of her diabetes, but she had not made the commitment. Taking the two mints was a very small thing, but it made me afraid that Susie would stay on medication for diabetes the rest of her life. Because of her little decision to take the mints, she would have difficulty accomplishing the big things necessary to control her diabetes. She will have difficulty controlling her future because she didn’t take control of her present. My hope is that she doesn’t have to go on insulin as she gets older, and that she will revamp her thinking and commit to a new lifestyle.
Many times you will hit a little thing that will trip you. That doesn’t mean you are going to lose the football game, but it does mean you have to reevaluate your decision and commitment. It means you have stumbled and need to get right back up and get going again.
By the way, Susie found hope in one particular article. According to the Centers for Disease Control, type 2 diabetes accounts for 90 to 95 percent of all diabetes cases and can be prevented through lifestyle changes. But by losing approximately 7 percent of body weight, along with improving diet and exercising, it is very likely people can prevent diabetes from ever developing. And if you are diabetic like Susie, the same lifestyle may even return your glucose levels to normal.
It has been two years since I had my two-hour dissertation with Susie concerning her diabetes. My wife and I took her out to eat recently. She had made the decision to change her lifestyle of eating, exercising, and getting to her ideal weight, but I was concerned that she had not made the commitment. She has gained a little weight. Her exercise program lasted only about three weeks. Her eating habits haven’t changed significantly—although, she didn’t order anything fried. She is still on medication for her diabetes.
I told her about watching her take two mints as she left the restaurant that night. She just laughed and then, almost boastingly, told me, “Most of the time I now take only a single mint as I leave.” (She didn’t want to sound completely defeated.)
Susie will most likely die from a heart attack years before she has to. Looking back, I wish I had asked her to sign a commitment pledge concerning her decision to beat diabetes. I wish I had explained to her the difference between making a decision to change her lifestyle of eating, exercising, and weight loss and making a commitment to do so. I wish I had explained to her in a little more detail that the small things she would do wrong would be red flag warnings for her to get back on course. I wish I had taken the time to encourage her not simply to decide in her mind that she was going to defeat diabetes but also to commit in her heart to take the action necessary to be successful.
But I didn’t. Susie made the decision but not the commitment. She can change, and I hope she does. But commitment is the key.
J. B.
J. B. was near 350 pounds when I first met him. That was about ten years ago. He was the strongest man I had ever personally met. He could lift more weight than most any football player. His arms were bigger around than my thighs. He had the muscle, but he also had the fat. Over the years, the fat kept increasing until he reached his obesity weight. That was his condition when I saw him about a year ago.
I ran into him the other day. He was much trimmer. He had lost over sixty pounds, and he was smiling when he reached out his hand to shake mine. He told me his story.
He had reached the point where his doctor informed him that if he didn’t lose weight he was going to die. “I didn’t like that statement,” J. B. said. “The doctor told me to go to a certain nearby retirement village. This was one where you start out in a cottage, and as your health worsens, you move into a rest home, and later, when you are bedridden, they move you into the nursing home part. My doctor told me when I left his office that I wouldn’t find any fat people at the nursing home—because they were all dead.” J. B. looked at me with his hands turned upward and told me that he did go look. “And there were no fat people there. They had already died,” he said.
That was his moment of commitment. He made the decision that day to lose his excess weight. He said he was going to lose another forty pounds. He asked me to go over a plan for him, and that was how we spent the next hour. What he had been doing had worked for losing weight, but he had not developed a plan for what to do when he reached his goal weight. The first part of our discussion centered on his ideal weight. He had been in his best shape at 195 pounds when he began college. He realized he could reach that again if he set it as his ideal weight goal. Then we discussed the importance of developing a lifestyle of eating now that he can continue once he reaches his ideal weight. He was so thankful for all the information.
Two hours later, I received a phone call from him asking some specifics about his elevated cholesterol. He wants knowledge. He has done well on his own without a specific plan. But now, J. B. sees himself as successful—because he is committed.
Knowledge is essential but can be void without commitment. The worst heartbreak I have seen a person experience is when they have had a major setback health-wise and realize they should have been taking better care of themselves. They understand then that what they now want they can never have. Their lifestyle has left them with permanent damage. What they have sown they are now reaping. I encourage you not to travel that road. Work on your future—beginning today.
I know you have made the decision to improve your health. Right now I want you to commit to developing three strategies for your new lifestyle. The first is to eat healthy. That means you will commit to not eating specific foods that damage the arteries in your body, as well as pledging to yourself to eat specific foods that protect your body. The second commitment is to control your weight, to reach and maintain what you determine is your ideal weight. And the third commitment is to develop a personal exercise program.
These are the three strategies that will determine your physiological age. These are the three strategies that will become routine habits that control the aging process of your body. Don’t wait for a crisis. Commit now to do everything in your power to develop a younger, more active and productive body and mind.
Many decide.
Few commit.
By the way, you remember Mary from the last chapter, the fifty-eight-year-old woman who had taken some medication for her cholesterol? Her face had flushed, she had begun breathing rapidly, and her hands had turned red except the tips of her fingers, which had blanched white. Well, I saw her two months after she had made the commitment to change her lifestyle. She had lost over sixteen pounds and told me she had changed her eating habits completely. She is exercising five days a week.
She has acknowledged to herself that her warning light had come on, and she was frightened by a great wake-up call. The episode she experienced was the best caution light she has ever seen, because that attack resulted in commitment to take care of her health. It took the medicine reaction to scare her enough to change her lifestyle to eating properly, losing weight, and exercising for the rest of her life. It exposed her false sense of security in depending on a pill alone.
How to Get from Here to There
It’s one thing to change your mind and heart, and it is another to get going.
The Little Things Count
Football legend Vince Lombardi, who coached the Green Bay Packers for nine years, had the best winning percentage of any National Football League coach with at least eighty-five victories. Attention to detail made him a winner. He didn’t want his players to be merely good; he insisted they strive to be the best. And he summed it all up when he stated he was convinced that it was the small things that won football games.
Get that, the small things won the game. Oh sure, he had to have a man who could run the ball up the middle like a house afire, and he had to have someone who could throw the ball like a rocket and another player who could catch anything that hit his fingertips. Those were the big things in the game. But what made those players get that way was how they handled the little things. Little things, like the receiver who stayed after practice and caught ball after ball; the quarterback who took his playbook home and studied and studied his responsibility in each play while everyone else was relaxing for the night; the lineman who knew exactly where he was going to place his left foot when he lined up to play because he had practiced moving that foot back about a half-inch, assuring himself that he was developing the added power to beat his opponent.
Lombardi makes you realize it is the little things in life that make the biggest outcomes possible. Commitment begins with attention to the little things that reassure you that the big thing is going to happen.
I remember hearing about J. C. Penney when he opened his first department store. At his five o’clock closing time, he would walk outside the front door of the store to see if anyone was coming down the sidewalk. If there was no one in sight, he would go back inside, lock the door, and close for the day. But if he saw someone coming, he would wait to see if they might be coming to the store. He never wanted to miss a potential sale. That attitude every day at closing time was a small part of the overall success of his business, but the little things, so many times, determine how the big things turn out.
Small things you do will let you know whether or not you are going to succeed; they forecast your future. Small signs will signal whether or not you are persistent. Tiny red flags will wave from time to time, and you must condition yourself to watch for them. And at that moment, you must make that extra little effort to take care of the little things.
Then when your commitment is solid, you will begin to notice little changes you are doing differently. For instance, you’ve set a specific time to exercise daily rather than “maybe sometime today.” You’ve determined your menu for the day: what you will eat and what you won’t dare eat. You’ve decided in advance not to eat that second helping of whatever. You’ve gotten specific with your plan. You have begun action on the small things that will win the game for you.
The Ten-Minute Factor
He was about fifty years old and had smoked most of his life. It was usually just a pack a day, but he admitted to a couple of packs some days on the weekend—especially when he went fishing. I knew he was left-handed, in what hand he held his cigarettes, because of the nicotine stain between two of the fingers on his left hand.
I was seeing him for his final follow-up after I had worked him up for a possible cancer in his lung. He didn’t have any insurance but told me, “I will pay you a little every month.” The tumor had turned out not to be malignant, but I explained that if he continued smoking, a cancerous tumor could develop in his lung. I used the example of him standing in the middle of the road in front of my office and seeing a tractor-trailer truck coming down the hill. I asked him if he would get out of the road or just stand there and let it run over him. (He made his living driving tractor-trailers.) He stated he would get out of the road.
I then informed him his cigarettes were that truck, and if he didn’t quit smoking, he would eventually get run over. I told him about the ten-minute factor, explaining that everyone can control their addiction for a ten-minute period and that he could quit smoking if he would apply that little secret to his own smoking habits. “Whenever you get the urge to smoke,” I said, “just tell yourself you are not going to do it for the next ten minutes. Then get to doing something else. Whenever the urge hits you again, do the same thing.” That’s about all I told him, not expecting him to do it, especially on Saturdays.
I want to introduce you to this dynamic secret too. It not only works for quitting smoking but also allows you to be successful in controlling your weight and your eating habits. This trick makes it possible for you not to snack on that piece of chocolate or not to order that steak. It will enable you to make a salad with fruit on it. It is the most important and amazing self-control tool I know. It is the spark that makes things happen, the spark that gives you hope.
I know individuals who have controlled their addiction to harmful foods by using this method. I know people who have never smoked another cigarette after adopting this process. And you can control what you eat by using this same principle. It is the motivating force for learning self-control. It is one of the foundations of forming habits. Use this factor once, and then a second and third time, and before long, a habit is ingrained into your mind.
It is called the ten-minute factor. It is a dynamic component of reasoning that doesn’t suggest what you can do—it demands it (at least for a period of ten minutes). I first heard of it when I was in Alaska, fishing with a man in his sixties who had at one time been addicted to drugs as well as to cigarettes. As he was showing me one of his favorite fishing sites on the backside of a cove of a large lake, he told me his story.
He had been in prison because he couldn’t control his habits. One day he realized that he couldn’t control them for the rest of his life—but he could control them for ten minutes. He tried this concept with his smoking. Whenever he had an urge to smoke, he would simply tell himself he wasn’t quitting smoking for good, that he would allow himself a cigarette later on that day, but for the next ten minutes, he was in charge—and he was not going to smoke.
He would then get busy doing something else and not light up. He would go outside and work on something, or get a cup of coffee, or start reading, or turn on the television. He said the urge to smoke would return in an hour or so, and he would trigger his ten-minute factor again. He pointed out that since implementing the ten-minute factor over twenty years ago he had never smoked another cigarette. He said it worked the same way with alcohol and drugs. He was motivated to change his lifestyle, and he committed to it, ten minutes at a time.
That story impressed me so much that I began applying his strategy to the wrong foods I had a craving for. I began sharing it with others who had made the decision to change their lifestyle of eating, as well as of weight control and exercise. I shared it with my patients who had lung disease and smoked. The ten-minute factor secret has worked time and again with the addiction of smoking. It has worked on drug addiction and alcohol addiction.
The reason it is so important for success in the Prescription for Life plan is that you are addicted to the foods you eat. An addiction is the end result of habit. Before someone gets addicted to smoking or alcohol, they develop a habit of smoking or drinking. You become addicted to chocolate or cheese or any other foods that really taste good simply because you develop a habit of eating these foods, develop a desire for their taste, and then continue eating them on a regular basis. Poor eating habits turn into eating addictions.
You are going to learn how to begin working on avoiding certain foods you may be addicted to. The same way bad eating habits lead to an addiction, good eating habits help you develop a good eating lifestyle.
At some point you are going to have to make a decision. It is so important, because it could change your life in so many different aspects. Don’t take the ten-minute factor lightly. You don’t want to be one of those who keep sitting on a fence, simply thinking about losing weight, or developing the proper eating habits, or starting to exercise (someday). This is a tool that will allow you to do something about developing your lifestyle. To decide today to exercise, to lose weight, or to stop eating the wrong foods is a process. It takes about two months to be able to substitute one good food for a harmful one. The nice part is that down the road you will enjoy the new, healthy food the way you enjoyed the old, damaging one. The day will come when you could not care less about eating a bite of a food that is so dear to you today. In fact, you will look back and believe that food was not all that good to begin with.
Smoking is the worst addiction to overcome. We can learn by looking at the worst. I know there are advertisements about patches and pills that make you “cut down” on the desire to smoke. I have operated on numerous patients who were addicted to smoking. I have had some patients beat the addiction and many who could not. True knowledge comes from learning how the ones who quit did so. But I have never had a patient who cut down on smoking and then was able to quit permanently.
I recall an instructor I had when I was rotating through orthopedics in my surgical training. He very proudly announced to all of us medical students that he was on a program to beat his addiction to smoking. He even announced the date it would happen. It was about three months down the road. He smoked fewer and fewer cigarettes per day, checking off the daily time chart he was following. He slowed down, day by day, and finally the last day of the plan arrived. We all gathered in the doctor’s lounge to watch him smoke his last cigarette.
He smiled and gave an upward glance of sureness as he tapped a cigarette out of the pack and tossed the remaining cigarettes into the wastebasket. He stretched out both arms as he held his cigarette lighter in his left hand and the lone survivor cigarette in his right. As he brought both hands toward his mouth, he announced, very distinctly, “My last one,” and lit it up. We all smiled and clapped as he took a long drag and inhaled. I will never forget how he smashed the cigarette butt in the ashtray as he looked around the room, smiling at each of us only as one could in complete victory.
His cessation of smoking lasted a total of three days before he lit up again. His immediate reason for failure? Desire. He said, almost sadly, that his desire for smoking was still there. He had tapered down to one cigarette per day, but tapering hadn’t overcome the desire.
Moderation won’t beat desire. Moderation can get you killed.
He taught me a lesson about controlling smoking, or eating the wrong foods, or beating any other addiction. You have to gain control over the desire, or you will never beat the addiction. And to beat the desire, don’t taper. Abstain.
If you acknowledge your addiction to foods like cookies and ice cream and donuts and candy, cheese, red meats, and multiple fried foods, you can overcome that addiction. It won’t be by slowing down, day by day, in hopes that on a certain day in the future you won’t have any desire for that particular food. Abstain completely from it for a two-month period, ten minutes at a time. Not just eating less and less of it for two months, believing the desire won’t be there three days later. You abstain completely while developing new habit foods to build your new eating lifestyle.
Let me point out the key to beating the addiction of certain lethal foods you like: get rid of the bad stuff in your home. Do you think it would be smart for someone who is addicted to alcohol to keep a fifth of Jack Daniels in his cupboard? Should he have it just in case his willpower broke one day? I don’t think so. Why have something that is going to be a constant temptation nearby?
It’s the same thing with harmful foods. Let’s say you get ready for bed, walk through the kitchen, and all of a sudden you have the desire for a piece of chocolate. You know exactly where you keep some. Odds are you will go to your hiding place and pull out a piece and eat it. After all, you deserve it because you ran three miles that day, didn’t eat a single piece of bread at the restaurant where you had dinner, and haven’t eaten any dessert in over a week. However, if there is no chocolate in the house, this time you’ll simply go on back to your bedroom.
Beating the addiction to foods begins at home. Commit to not having any of your addictive foods in your household. Get rid of the foods containing the “bad threes”: saturated fat, trans fat, and cholesterol. Get rid of the bad cooking oil. Switch out your butter for a substitute that has zero saturated fat, zero trans fat, and zero cholesterol. Have skim milk rather than either 2 percent or whole milk in your refrigerator. Get rid of your high saturated fat cookies and cakes and processed foods. Throw out the cheese. Toss out any chips that aren’t zero, zero, zero. Breaking down any unhealthy eating addictions you may have and laying the foundation for good eating habits take only ten minutes at a time.
A Ten-Minute Success Story
I was seeing patients in my office one afternoon when my nurse told me a gentleman wanted to see me. He didn’t have an appointment but wanted just a minute to talk in the hallway.
I looked up the hallway toward the lobby and saw him. He had on tan Carhartt pants, covering a pair of well-worn work boots. The rim of his baseball cap was also well-worn, especially at the left front corner of the bill. His smile was as big as his extended hand, held out to me as I walked up the hall.
As he shook my hand, he said, “It’s been exactly one year.”
I wasn’t sure what in the world he was talking about, but he continued.
“It’s been a year since I walked out of your office. When I got in my truck, I pulled the pack of cigarettes out of my pocket and laid them on my dash. They stayed there for the next two months. I wanted to prove to myself that I could beat the habit. Every day, I would look at those cigarettes and shake my head. Ten minutes was all it took. Every time I wanted one, I wouldn’t smoke it for ten minutes, just like you said. Finally, I didn’t even want one anymore, and I threw them away. And as of today, I haven’t smoked in a year, and I just wanted to let you know. I got out of the way of that truck you talked about coming down the road.”
I started to congratulate him, but he was already walking back up the hallway, past the nurse and another patient. It took him only a moment exactly a year ago in the examining room to make his decision and only ten minutes at a time to make it happen. I am glad he wanted me to know. He will never understand how it pleased me to know he had made a commitment because of what I said.
This patient was told how to improve his lifestyle, and he did something about it. You can do the same. This is when you will link your blood lipid profile to your arteries. This is when you begin to understand that what you eat directly affects your arteries.
Habits: How to Autopilot Life
Over 95 percent of what we do, we do out of habit. Every night when you go to bed, you get in on the same side. You don’t stop to think which side of the bed you sleep on or which side your spouse is going to end up on tonight. No, out of habit, you simply get into bed and go to sleep. Some habits are easy to change, but most are difficult.
Habits are important to develop properly because they are the foundation to consistent behavior.
I am a pilot, and I have flown the narrow airway across Cuba at twenty-eight hundred feet. I have flown a smaller aircraft up the Alaskan highway at eight hundred feet. I have flown through gorgeous weather as well as through storms. At times, so many things that require your full concentration are happening that you need all the help you can get. Bad weather is one of the signals that tells me to throw on the autopilot switch. The autopilot is a big help. You simply set the course, and it aids in holding the line.
Habits become your lifestyle autopilot. Develop the right habits related to exercise, the foods you eat, and weight control, and then turn on your autopilot. What once was a challenging decision as to whether you are going to eat a certain food becomes no decision at all. There is no decision to be made about exercising, because you are going to exercise today. Once you stand on the scale and see that you are a pound over your goal weight, you don’t have to decide there will be no snacks today and that your meal portions are going to be smaller. At that point, your habits come into play and you will do ten things automatically because your mind goes on autopilot once you step off the scale. Your habits eventually become your lifestyle autopilot, and flying through the day becomes so much easier.
Use the ten-minute factor to help develop your habits. Small steps set up big changes in your life. Develop habits that protect you before the event happens. Decide before you go into a restaurant that you are not going to eat the bread before the meal—such calories are completely superfluous. Eating x number of calories of bread before your entrée does not mean you are going to eat x number fewer calories of your main meal. Decide before you go into a restaurant that you are not going to pick up two or three mints from a tray when you exit. The next time you are already at your goal weight and allow yourself to eat a snack, use the ten-minute factor to eat fruit or nuts this time.
Sooner than you think, you will have formed habits that require no instant decision making. With developing your habits, you will build hope and optimism that you are going to be successful in developing your ideal lifestyle. You will begin seeing yourself younger today. The Prescription for Life plan gives new light to a dark picture.
Setting Goals
A person’s goal is everything. The higher the goal, the more the success in what you are attempting. Because your most prized possession is your health, make it your goal to succeed in your Prescription for Life plan.
Setting your goal is the single most essential thing in losing your excess weight. Without a goal, you can’t make it happen. You can memorize all the secrets concerning losing weight, but it won’t happen unless you set a goal. Reaching a goal requires both decision and commitment. A decision alone won’t get you there. Without the self-commitment, it will be a battle for naught. The other side of the coin is just as simple: if you set your goal weight and commit to it, you will reach that ideal weight.
Researchers at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago interviewed more than twelve hundred elder adults and found something interesting concerning setting goals. They aren’t certain why, but their study found that the individuals who had goals were about half as likely to die over a five-year follow-up as those who didn’t have definite plans for their future.
If yesterday you had a life-debilitating heart attack or began developing dementia caused from the blockage of your arteries to your brain, I guarantee you that today I could sell this plan to you. And you would do everything possible to get your hands on whatever amount of money you needed to buy it.
I only ask you to be true to yourself. How do you want to live out the rest of your life? How do you want to live out this next year? And probably the most important question is, How do you want to live out the rest of today?
The purpose of the Prescription for Life plan is not to give you a list of black-and-white do’s and don’ts. It is to inform you so that you can make your own decisions about the direction you are going to take. Your goals will decide the quality of the rest of your days here on earth.
I am big into setting goals. As a matter of fact, shortly after completing my surgical training, I wrote a book on goal setting. Ninety-two percent of people never set a goal. They have “want-to-be,” “would-like-to-be,” and “wish” lists, but they never get around to actually deciding on a goal for their lives. Ninety-two percent.
And on top of that, only a fraction of the ones who do set goals ever write them down. There is something almost magical about writing your goals down on paper. That is what I would like you to do today. Set your goals to develop the very best lifestyle possible as an individual, and write them down. (Even if it’s on a napkin, write them down.)
After you get them on paper, carry them with you in your wallet or purse. Post them in places where you can review them daily. Stick them on your bathroom mirror. Renew your commitment to achieve your goals daily. By the end of this book, you will have written specific goals concerning foods you will eat as well as foods you will never taste again. You will have specific goals for your exercise. You will have a goal weight set in stone, and after you achieve your ideal weight, you will stick to that weight.
You will be specific about your lifestyle. It will be yours and yours alone. Your plan will not be exactly like anyone else’s; you will fine-tune it to your personality, your body build, what you do in your life. It won’t be one size fits all; it will be customized for you.
You begin by setting major goals about each of your three strategies. These will be the goals you set for how you want to end up. You will set up a major goal concerning your eating habits, your weight, and your exercise schedule. You will determine the major goal of what you want your lifestyle to be a year from now, two years from now.
As we go further, you will break those major goals down into intermediate goals. These intermediate goals will be more specific and to the point. These intermediate goals will give you the details of what you are going to have to do to accomplish your major goals. These are the “by such-and-such-a-date” goals.
Finally, and most important, will be your immediate action goals. These will be goals for what you will do today to set the foundation on which you will build your major lifestyle. These immediate action goals will be the ones that require action today. These are the goals you must reach before going to bed tonight. The reason I say the immediate action goals are the most important ones you will set is because in the overall structure of goal setting, your immediate action goals tell you by the end of the day whether or not you are going to reach your major goals. These are the kinds of goals that would have kept Susie from reaching into the bowl of mints on the way out of the restaurant that evening.
If you don’t act on your immediate action goals, you will never reach your major goals. Your mind receives a reward each time you accomplish an immediate action goal. The reward is knowing that you are on track in achieving your major goals. Immediate action goals let you know your plan is going to work. They give you true hope. They are the kinds of goals Lombardi would have been talking about when he emphasized the small things making the biggest difference in reaching victory.
Setting goals results in positive emotions. They teach you to believe in yourself when everyone else questions your future success. Here is how it works.
Let’s say you need something to motivate you to change your eating habits. You need motivation to lose weight and to have an exercise routine that is similar to going to work every day. Set a major goal on paper. Begin organizing your changes in life that will be required to reach that major goal. Set a specific time to exercise. You have your ideal goal weight nailed down. You have a list of foods you are not going to eat. You have written down the majority of everyday meals you are going to consume. By getting the specifics written, you have the intermediate goal system in order.
Now comes the motivating part of the system. With the immediate action goals you are going to accomplish right now, today, you are going to feel immediate success and accomplishment with each immediate action you do. With every immediate action goal you accomplish, you are going to begin seeing yourself already eating the proper foods, already weighing that ideal weight, and already completing the exercise routine you are striving for. With each immediate action goal accomplished, you are chipping away on the major goal and will grasp the realization that you are capable of developing the healthy lifestyle you desire. The immediate action part is your motivator. It is the key to your hope and optimism.
Your positive mind-set will build day by day as you progress through each immediate action goal for each day. To reach your full potential, to reach your major goal of being as young as possible, you must succeed in your immediate action goals. Those actions generate the hope that little alterations lead to big changes. You will have victory in not eating that dessert, passing up the afternoon chocolate chip cookie, and applying the ten-minute factor. Those small victories show you that the big can happen. As you achieve each immediate action goal, you realize you can succeed. You develop the habit of winning.
Nothing’s free in life. This plan will mean doing some things you don’t like to do. Become a member of the elite 8 percent who set goals. Set your major, intermediate, and immediate action goals. Write them down and concentrate on them—today. The Prescription for Life plan will show you how to achieve them.
And last, make yourself accountable to someone. It may be your spouse or a friend who has also realized the necessity of changing their lifestyle. Or it may be a group that wants the encouragement from others who are on the same pathway.
Peer pressure works in mysterious ways. Get with a partner or group to develop your habits together. Organize your own group. Get with individuals at work to make the commitment. Get a group at your church to join you. Or friends from another group you meet with on a routine basis. Communicate daily. Encourage one another. Reinforce the good and underline the bad for each other. Exercise together. Set a time to go to the gym. Ask others what they had for lunch. Accountability and teamwork go hand in hand. A recent study shows that participants with an accountability partner lost 20 percent more weight than individuals who were also losing weight but did not have accountability partners.