“Our bodies are our gardens … our wills are gardeners.”
– William Shakespeare
We all have goals and aspirations of being somehow better than we presently are. We dream of waking up with energy, getting dressed and feeling great about the reflection in the mirror, of feeling appreciated and welcome at a satisfying job. We want to go through the day feeling fulfilled. We want to make contributions to other people’s lives, and then come home to a warm and welcoming family. Sounds idealistic, doesn’t it? Some might call it unrealistic, but I know without question that kind of life is possible.
As a kid I had an ideal vision of the life I would lead. I would have a great body – wide shoulders, a rippling six-pack, plump pecs – and a beautiful girlfriend on my arm. I’d become popular. And one day I would get the job of my dreams, helping others. I had complete conviction that I was going to lead that life. At first, though, things didn’t seem to be going as planned. The future seemed bleak and overwhelming. I felt beaten down by the few years of life I had behind me. I’d surrendered my self-control and had almost let go of my dreams.
While we may feel as if the problems that arise in our lives are exclusive to us, life can seem to get in the way for everyone. No one has a smooth and easy life, much as we might think others do. As the great Scottish poet Robbie Burns began and John Steinbeck restated, “The best-laid schemes of mice and men often go awry.” Illness, financial and emotional problems, family issues and time constraints tend to drain us of the exciting dreams and ideals we once had, leaving us feeling empty and hopeless if we lose our perspective.
Although everyone experiences a few unexpected bumps in the road of life, we can control whether or not we let them ruin the journey. Unfortunately, I learned this lesson by going through a difficult situation with my mother. During my childhood, she had always been such a source of love and support, but as I got older, the psychological pain of her past began to haunt her and she turned to a heavy mix of prescription drugs and alcohol to self medicate. By the time I was a teen, she was a full-blown alcoholic and prescription drug addict. This affected my daily life in ways I would never have been able to imagine, and I never told a soul about it. I spent so much futile effort trying to change my life by attempting to control my mother’s addictions to pills and alcohol, but my life didn’t actually change until I realized that the only person I could control was myself. Once I understood that reality, my life changed drastically for the better, and has been improving ever since.
You need to focus on changing you – not blaming everyone and everything else for your problems. As Carl Jung said, “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.” Are you ready to wake up? In this chapter, I will help you look inside by asking you questions that will get you to think about your motivations and goals. I know they are inside of you somewhere – you just need to find them and hold on to them. To make lasting changes, you have to stay on purpose with improving yourself, on a continuous basis. Most people regain the weight they lose because they stop setting goals and they don't continue to condition their identity as a fit and healthy person.
You likely don’t think of your finances as having an endpoint. Finances are something you will always have to manage. But for some reason, people look at weight loss as something they have to intensely focus on until it has been handled and then they can relax. What kind of success plan is that? What if you managed your finances intently for six months and then simply stopped?
I will never forget the day I decided I was going to take complete control of my destiny, lose weight and, more importantly, do everything I possibly could to inspire others. In those days, I wore a size 50 pant. I came home from school exhausted, although I hadn’t done much. Weighing 360 pounds is draining; just moving is hard. On that day I plopped down on my bed and turned on the TV. While most guys at 17 would be hanging out with girls and other friends after school, I lay alone in bed trying to distract myself with cartoons. When I was heavy, the only thing I used besides food to try and combat my depression was cartoons. But as I lay on my back watching TV that day, I noticed that every time I breathed in, my stomach would inflate to the point that it blocked my view. It was devastating.
I felt warm, wet tears stream down my face. I was miserable. I was tired of being the boy who never went to dances or had any friends. I was fed up with not being able to shop at a mall because they didn’t carry clothes in my size. I was sick of being scared to death of approaching a girl, knowing I would automatically be rejected. I was tired of being the last person to be picked to participate in games or other events. I was frustrated with myself for letting food control me. I was done with my life. At this very young age I was confronted with my own mortality and felt true despair. I almost didn’t see a positive way out. I whispered to God, “If you help me lose this weight and get the body I deserve, I will do everything in my power to help others who are suffering like I am. I promise, God, I will dedicate my life to helping as many people as I can. Just please help me!”
“As I lay on my back watching TV that day, I noticed that every time I breathed in, my stomach would inflate to the point that it blocked my view. It was devastating.”
I rolled over on my side, still crying, and drifted off to sleep. When I awoke, I felt a strange calm wash over me. I suddenly knew that things were going to work out because I was ready to assume responsibility and take control. My dreams would be a reality as long as I was willing to do the work to make them happen. This Tony Robbins quote happens to sum up my realization quite well, “I’ve continued to recognize the power individuals have to change virtually anything and everything in their lives in an instant. I’ve learned that the resources we need to turn our dreams into reality are within us, merely waiting for the day when we decide to wake up and claim our birthright.” And that’s exactly what I did. Two years later, after eating healthy foods and exercising every day, I had burned through 160 pounds of fat and was finally living my destiny.
“I remember saying to myself, ‘Wow, I went from being totally ostracized because of my weight to having people fly in from across the country to work with me … how cool is that?!’”
Now almost a decade after that first day, it really has hit me that I am living life by my own design. I’ll tell you about the moment I knew my dream had come true. I was reading emails one morning and a client of mine, who’d lost 46 pounds in just three months, had sent me a message about a friend of his who desperately needed to lose weight. He begged me to help Elaine (not her real name), explaining that she’d tried everything before with no lasting success and was stuck in a place she hated. She couldn’t maintain a healthy relationship since she didn’t even love herself. My client offered to fly me out on a private jet to see her in Colorado, but even with that offer I needed to speak with her myself before I would commit to helping her. I had learned through my mother’s battle with drug and alcohol addiction and my own struggle with obesity that no one can create lasting change in their life until they are ready to totally commit. No amount of begging, crying or cajoling from even the closest of friends or family makes a difference.
I spoke to Elaine about her challenges. I blatantly told her that I wasn’t convinced she was ready. She was very wishy-washy about her goals. That all changed when I asked her about her future. I said to her, “Elaine, I know you’ve put yourself out there and have tried before to no avail, but let me ask you a question. Where will you be in a year if you weigh 360 pounds instead of 300?” She had mentioned to me earlier in the conversation that her work demanded she travel by commercial plane. At her size it was already challenging. She grew silent but finally said, “Oh my God, I wouldn’t be able to grow my business anymore, which means I would start to struggle financially!”
Everyone’s motivation is different. For Elaine, being diabetic, having high blood pressure and being alone were not enough to cause her to commit to the necessary changes in her life. She loved her business and wanted to be able to express herself through it. When I helped her to discover that she could lose her business unless she changed her lifestyle, she was ready to make that change. I didn’t have to fly to Colorado; she flew in to see me and did so every two weeks thereafter. Each flight, her plane voyage got easier and more comfortable as she continued to lose weight. What are your reasons to change?
I remember saying to myself, “Wow, I went from being totally ostracized because of my weight to having people fly in from across the country to work with me … how cool is that?!” I knew I was creating the life I had always wanted and I was keeping my word with God. At that moment I knew I was empowered with the strategies to help people not just locally, but nationally. I had gone from lying in bed alone on Friday nights, feeling I was worthless and that I didn’t have the ability to influence anything in my own life, let alone others’, to living my dream of helping other people even two states away. And this was all because I made the decision to no longer accept that my destiny was determined by my environment, my family history or my own history. It’s never too early or too late to start. Today is your day to begin.
“It’s never too early or too late to start. Today is your day to begin.”
You may be wondering how a 17-year-old kid could have made such a powerful change in his own life, and eventually in the lives of others. The answer is profoundly simple. I decided to make myself the priority. I refused to continue to let aspects of life get in the way of my goals. I decided I could do anything I wanted and, most importantly, I took action. I was going to create and commit to a schedule of eating and an exercise routine that worked for me. It all changed the moment I made that decision. Decisions are powerful, yet most people are afraid to make any significant ones.
Since then, I’ve spent every waking moment doing everything I can to ignite a fire in the people I’m blessed to cross paths with. I start by reminding them about what is possible. I help them reawaken the vision of life they once had, and can still tap into.
We all have an unbelievable amount of personal power to achieve our dreams, yet few of us tap into it. Why? Think about Walt Disney. He almost went bankrupt several times, and at one time he couldn’t even afford a pair of shoes. He was betrayed by those he trusted. Yet still he kept his dream alive and never settled for anything less than what he envisioned. He built the largest entertainment empire that has ever existed, and has brought so much joy to the world because of his sheer hard-headedness and determination. He said, “All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them.” But even when we hear such inspiring and exciting stories and learn what’s possible if we reach for our dreams, we can still feel complacent.
Humans certainly are complex! We all know how to lose weight: eat less and exercise more. It’s simple math, right? I’ll also add that we should eat properly and exercise more regularly. So while we spend millions trying to find the perfect diet, I think the most important question isn’t “What diet do I need to follow to lose weight?” but rather, “How do I get myself so ecstatic about what’s possible for me that I will stick to whatever plan I embark on?” As Tony Robbins said, “It is not knowing what to do, it’s doing what you know.” How do you motivate yourself to make that change in your life? And even more importantly, how do you stay motivated and keep yourself off the diet roller coaster where, chances are, you will reach your goal only to end up right back where you started – or even heavier – like more than 90 percent of people do?
You may have grown comfortable, even in your misery. Maybe you’ve accepted that being fat is who you are. If you’ve built that into your identity, then we have some work to do. To succeed you must get disturbed and uncomfortable with yourself – not the inner you, who you should love, but your outward representation.
You may not want to change the way you live your life, but you have to accept that life is all about change. Change is inevitable. You are not the same as you were last year. For better or for worse, you are different. Every member of your family is different than they were 10 years ago, aren’t they? You know change is inevitable, but if you are not controlling the changes you can control, you are practically guaranteeing that the changes you experience in the future will be negative rather than positive.
You need to ask yourself the
following questions:
If I do not change my habits, if I continue making the unhealthy decisions I know I’m making and I continue to gain weight as I have been, then will I have changed for the better or for the worse one year from now?
How will I feel about the reflection staring back in the mirror a year from now if I do not make the necessary changes?
How will my health be in a year if I’ve gained another 10, 20, 30 or 60 pounds?
If I do not make the necessary changes to my lifestyle, will I be living the life I dreamed about when I was younger?
Am I contributing to the lives of others the way I am able to?
“How will I feel about the reflection staring back in the mirror a year from now if I do not make the necessary changes?”
You have your daily routine. You’re comfortable. Maybe you’re the one who brings donuts to share with your coworkers, and they count on you to bring them. Your dad brings home fried chicken with extra-large fries, two-liter bottles of soda and chocolate pie every Friday night. You and your friends order in pizza and wings every Sunday as you watch football. These are habits that must be changed for you to achieve your goals. As they say, losing weight is simple, but it’s not easy.
The first step you must take in order to succeed is to make the decision that you are not a “fat” person. You must clarify this in your mind. Instead of looking at yourself as being a “fat” person, tell yourself that you are a fit person who is presently carrying around a lot of extra fat.
MOTIVATION
To a scientist, motivation determines all behavior of every species, including humans. If motivation determines everything we do, then it follows that motivation determines whether you remain overweight or whether you will achieve your goal and become the size you want to be. Although I feel it is extremely helpful to figure out what motivated you to become overweight, it is even more important to ensure your motivation for losing weight is strong, and that your motivation to keep the weight off remains strong once you’ve achieved your goal.
Many people have negative feelings toward dieting because they have found it painful in the past. Deprivation, anxiety, fear and even depression can be associated with making huge changes in the foods you’re eating. Vegetables were so foreign to me that I remember vomiting the first time I took a bite of canned peas. Talk about a strong negative association! Granted they’re not canned, but now I eat several kinds of vegetables on a daily basis. How did I cross this road? I’ve conditioned myself to focus on the benefits that action would create in my life. Instead of indulging in short-term thinking, I’ve forced myself to look ahead to the future impact of the actions I’m taking today. A rock-hard six-pack, more energy, lasting health … these things all come to my mind when I conjure up the thought of veggies. This is because I have rewired my brain to make a positive association – quite a contrast from the days when I weighed 360 pounds.
NO PAIN, NO LONG-TERM GAIN
The reason we can have a hard time sticking to a new eating and exercise plan is that we experience pain. We have to either suffer the pain of changing or we have to suffer the pain of staying the way we are now (or getting bigger). We have a choice in which type of pain we must endure, but we must endure one of the two.
The first is the pain that comes from the discipline of changing. It can be painful to alter your current way of doing things. Change can be difficult, but it becomes fun once you replace your old pleasure with a healthier one. The second type of pain isn’t so enjoyable. That’s the pain of regret. The pain of regret comes when we don’t do what our gut (or the little Jiminy Cricket on our shoulder) tells us we should. When we violate our own rules and values by making a decision to seek short-term pleasure, we experience a much longer-lasting pain. Ouch! What I’d like to give you are the strategies that will not only help you create change, but also make those changes last.
“We have to either suffer the pain of changing or we have to suffer the pain of staying the way we are now.”
USING THE THREE R’s TO MAKE WEIGHT LOSS HAPPEN – AND LAST!
THE FIRST “R”: REASON
You might want to lose 10 pounds to look your best for a reunion, or you might need to lose 300 pounds to avoid an early death. You may simply wish you looked better in a bikini, or you may want to lose weight so badly that you cry yourself to sleep at night. No matter how badly you want to lose weight, this doesn’t mean you feel motivated to do what you’ve got to do each day in order to succeed. You’re looking for results, but you have to ask yourself, “What is the point? What will motivate me to continue even after I have achieved the results I’m after?” If you don’t feel motivated, or motivated enough, then how can you make yourself feel that way?
“Stop accepting subpar standards – they’ll only bring about subpar results and ultimately a subpar life.”
The most important element of motivation is that you have to discover what gets you going. Maybe you’re on the verge of getting diabetes but that doesn’t seem real to you and therefore does not inspire you to change. Maybe the thing that will really get you to change is the fact that you want to get a date. Don’t worry about having the “correct” motivation. It does you no good to repeat words that sound impressive but mean nothing to you. Many times, clients come to me and say they don’t know what they want. That’s a start, because from there we can find out what they don’t want. Ask yourself those tough questions I listed earlier, and look hard at the reality. If you continue eating the way you do, how will you feel when you look in the mirror next year? What are the things you’ll hear from those you love? If you’re in a relationship now but continue to get heavier and loathe yourself even more, will your soul mate still feel the same about you? If you keep getting heavier will you settle for a person not worthy of you just so you can have someone in your life? The answers might be scary to think about, but these are important questions to ask.
THE SECOND “R”: RESULTS
You are a unique and special person. You may dislike things you’ve done in your life – the people you’ve hurt, the decisions you’ve made, the opportunities you’ve missed – we all do. But by picking up this book you’ve chosen to take a step in a positive direction. You must decide that since you are a good and unique person, you deserve the best. This means setting your sights on bigger and better things. You deserve to eat foods that nourish your body instead of settling for whatever is easy, convenient and cheap. You deserve to be able to travel in comfort. You deserve not to be talked down to because of your size or the way the fat on your body makes you look. You deserve to be in a relationship that fulfills you, not one in which you are ridiculed or made fun of. You deserve to find the time to exercise and do the things that are helping to bring about the life you desire. Stop accepting subpar standards – they’ll only bring about subpar results and ultimately a subpar life.
Take a look at the following list of adjectives and choose 10 that describe you. If you can find more than 10 – all the better! Write those words down on a piece of paper with the words “I am” at the top of the page. Look at that list every day as a reminder of why you deserve to treat yourself properly.
USE IMAGERY AND AUTO-SUGGESTION
Close your eyes. Think about how you would like to be. Think of a real, achievable goal. Is it to fit into that old pair of jeans buried in the back of your closet? You know, the ones that used to fit you? Is it to see your blood pressure return to normal? Is it to hear the person you’ve been dreaming about say “Yes!” when you finally ask him or her out? Is it to feel the warm loving hand of the person you want to spend your life with nestled in yours? Maybe your goal is to be able to spend more quality time with your children. Can you fit on the roller coaster with your son? Whatever your goal is, make it concrete: I will fit into my old jeans and they will not be too tight. My blood pressure will be 120/80. I will have the girl/boy of my dreams. I will not settle. I will ride the roller coaster with my son.
“Choose something very important to you, and live that success in your mind. Act as if it’s already in your possession.”
Choose something very important to you, and live that success in your mind. Act as if it’s already in your possession. This is an all-important key. In order to put the right energy out in the universe to attract the circumstances you’re after, you must begin to act as if your desire is already yours to hold. You have to emotionalize your desire to bring it about. Simply repeating the words “I will be skinny, I will be skinny, I will be skinny,” will do nothing! You must have a concrete goal and you have to get charged up about it. Scream it out! You have to make your goal compelling if you’re going to stick to it!
Take the image of your desire and make a visual reminder of it. This can be a note you write, a picture from a magazine, an old photo of yourself, a piece of clothing or a dream board. Whatever works for you. Every night and every morning, remind yourself of your goal by taking a moment to regard this item. I find first thing in the morning and right before bed is ideal. Spend a good 10 to 15 minutes concentrating on this vision. Don’t question whether or not you will achieve it. Accept that it is real and that it is waiting for you. This will keep your goal at the top of your mind, helping to reinforce your determination each and every day.
When I have a goal, I follow Napoleon Hill’s formula for impressing the subconscious. First, I write down that specific goal and put a copy up everywhere I know I’ll see it: the bathroom mirror, the fridge, the TV. Every night before I go to bed and every morning when I wake up, I go to that note. I read it, and then I close my eyes and concentrate. I envision what achieving that goal will feel like. I picture myself already there. I get myself to actually “feel” what it is like knowing my goal is already in my possession. That reinforces my strength to do what I have to do each day to help that vision become reality.
Write your goal out. State what it is you’re after, set a definite date for its achievement, write down what you intend to do in exchange for achieving this goal, and end with: “My goal is now awaiting transfer to me in proportion to the amount of focus, dedication, commitment and hard work I’m giving to it!” You must repeat your statement each morning upon waking and every night before bed – with emotion. Don’t just speed through it without feeling! As Napoleon Hill stated, “If you repeat a million times the famous Émile Coué formula, ‘Day by day, in every way, I am getting better and better,’ without mixing emotion and faith with your words, you will experience no desirable results. Your subconscious mind recognizes and acts only upon thoughts which have been well-mixed with emotion or feeling.” Energy is power, and you have to be willing to be excited in order to reach your dreams.
KEEP YOUR EYES ON THE PRIZE
The practice of goal setting is an important key for keeping motivated and therefore achieving your goal. If you have an arbitrary non-compelling goal like “I want to lose weight” then this is not nearly as powerful as saying “My goal is to weigh 180 pounds and have a 32-inch waist by December 1st!” Think of your long-term goal first, then break that down into short-and medium-term goals, and include these goals in your visual reminders.
Let’s use Maria (not her real name) to illustrate this example. Maria weighed 212 pounds at 5'5". As a young teenager she had been, in her words, skinny. She developed a rounded, more “womanly” figure into her late teens and early 20s, which she liked. She married, and says her ideal body was on her wedding day. She weighed 135 pounds. Through the years she had three kids, and with each successive pregnancy she gained more weight, finally ending up at the 212 pounds she weighed when this journey began, at age 34. She wanted to weigh 135 pounds again but each time she’d tried to lose weight she failed and had begun to feel like it was pointless to try. But with the help of a coach she developed a plan, and one year later Maria was back to the 135 pounds she had been on her wedding day.
Here’s how Maria used goal setting to reach her desired weight:
She already knew the weight she wanted to be, but when she had dieted before she had always given herself too short a time to reach that goal. She would go on fad diets to try to get there too quickly and when she didn’t reach her unrealistic goals she’d give up and her weight would climb right back up. Once she realized that she’d wasted many years getting fatter while trying to lose weight too rapidly, she was more receptive to giving herself the more realistic timeframe of one year.
Key: Your goal must be attainable. Losing 80 pounds in three months is an unreasonable goal. If you see that you are not going to achieve that unreasonable goal, you will get a sense of failure from losing 10 pounds in a month, for example, even though that is a huge success! Losing 80 pounds in a year is a reasonable goal that allows time for body-adjusting plateaus, which will inevitably occur.
Maria then broke this larger goal into smaller goals. She had daily goals, weekly goals and monthly goals alongside her long-term goal. They say all great journeys start with a single step, and while that’s true, it sure helps to have some markers along the way. Maria wrote down all these goals in a notebook, and kept some out as visual cues. She made a collage of images of bodies she not only liked, but also resembled her own. (It can be counterproductive to put up an image of a 5'11" fashion model if your natural shape is 5'2" and curvy.) Then she wrote down her daily and weekly goals and put them up in places that worked for her. Her daily goal went on her bathroom mirror and her weekly goal went up on the fridge.
Key: Have attainable goals for every timeframe. A long-term goal can be intimidating and not very immediate. If you focus instead on what you are working toward each day and week, then you are constantly achieving and constantly moving closer to your eventual goal without getting overwhelmed.
Maria allowed herself to feel a real sense of accomplishment for every single goal met. Over the years she had got in the common habit of putting herself down and minimizing her successes. This time around she pulled her daily goal down from the mirror each evening, read it and thought about whether she had achieved it. When she concluded she had, she gave herself a big pat on the back. She then put that note in a scrapbook, so she could go back over time to see all she had accomplished. Whenever she felt down or like she was going nowhere, she got that book out and it invariably made her feel powerful, successful and in control of her destiny.
Key: Celebrate your successes, no matter how small. Don’t minimize their importance. Every step in the right direction will bring you closer to your goal.
Maria did not let occasional slip-ups convince her to go back to her old habits. Those who are consistently thin eat treats sometimes, and may even overeat sometimes. The rest of the time they eat properly. These thin people do not eat a couple of cookies and convince themselves that they’re failures so they might as well finish the bag. They enjoy their treat and then go back to their healthy eating plan. Even if they go totally off the rails one evening, and they may feel rotten the next day and even depressed, they do not use that as an excuse to go on a week-long binge. They go back to their healthy eating plan.
Key: No one is perfect. Very few people follow any diet plan without the occasional treat or slip-up. If you have that daily goal pasted on your mirror and you do not achieve it, then make doubly sure you achieve it the next day. I list the things I’m not too excited about doing but that I know I have to do on a legal pad each night before going to bed. I then force myself to get those things done first the next day so I know I get to enjoy the rest of the day. The same goes for working out. If I’m not excited about doing a particular exercise, I force myself to get it out of the way first.
Maria learned all about the lifestyles of the women who had the type of body she was after. One of the main things she learned was that most of them practiced moderation rather than denial. That was important to her, because she did not want to feel deprived. Once she learned that most thin people stay that way with consistency as opposed to abstinence, she felt she could really live with this way of life. She stopped looking at a “diet” as a temporary fix and began to see it as a lifelong eating plan – one that included treats in moderation. She also learned that she did not have to exercise every day without fail – something she had found hard to do with her work and family responsibilities. She found that exercising for an hour, four times a week consistently was enough for her and she managed to fit those four hours into her busy schedule.
Key: Modeling is an important key to success. Find the people who have what you want and study what they do. A bonus to this is that you will likely find it isn’t as difficult as you thought it would be. Napoleon Hill calls for the creation of a Master Mind group – a group of people who have the specialized knowledge you may lack at the present moment. Hill says, “The accumulation of great success calls for power, and power is acquired through highly organized and intelligently directed specialized knowledge, but that knowledge does not necessarily have to be in the possession of the person who achieves the success.” In other words, learn from and model yourself after people who have what you want.
“If you can discover the reason you overeat, you can find the intention of that behavior.”
“Sometimes you have to go outside of your comfort zone and get to a place you’re not used to.”
TYPES OF MOTIVATION
According to psychologists there are two basic types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. To help you figure out the best way to get motivated, let’s have a look at them.
Intrinsic motivation means you are motivated to perform an action because you get something out of it. To use intrinsic motivation to reach your goal, you need to get to the point where the actions that will bring you to your goal are pleasurable. People who yo-yo diet do so because the method they use to bring about their weight loss is too painful to keep up. Fad diets involve deprivation, low energy, poor mood and even feelings of desperation. It can be scary and painful. This method takes away the perceived pleasure of eating junk food and offers no pleasure in return, so a person would not have any intrinsic motivation to continue.
If you can discover the reason you overeat, you can find the intention of that behavior. In other words, what do you get out of it? Once you discover that, you can get to work at preserving the pleasure by simply replacing the negative behavior with a positive behavior. For example, my parents are both smokers. I tell them all the time how much danger they’re in because of it, and that there is no question they will get cancer or lung disease if they continue. If they don’t quit, then coughing, gagging up phlegm and breathing through oxygen tanks are all inevitably in their future. But guess what? They don’t change. Why? Because the pleasure they associate with smoking is stronger than the pain they associate with quitting. The things I talk to them about are things that would make me change, but not them. My parents’ response to me is always, “Well, Uncle Vito smoked until he was 100 without cancer and, besides, when it’s your time, it’s your time!” For many smokers the motivation is never strong enough until they actually are in the position where cancer is making excruciatingly painful sponges out of their lungs, or until they literally cannot smoke or they will blow up their oxygen tank. But by then it’s too late.
If you struggle with weight, maybe knowing you will likely get diabetes or heart disease isn’t enough. Maybe the thought of losing your eyesight isn’t real enough. You won’t be motivated to change until you find out you have to stick a long, cold, silver needle into your arm to inject insulin. Or maybe the thought of spending $100 or more a week on insulin and other diabetic supplies, just so you won’t die, will motivate you. Maybe you don’t look at yourself in the mirror anymore because you can’t bear the way you appear. Or maybe you find you don’t want to go out with your friends anymore because you feel uncomfortable with the way you look. You have to find where your own personal pain is, and irritate yourself with that pain. When you associate pain with your current behavior and at the same time associate pleasure with the necessary changes, it happens! You make the shift instantly.
The trick is finding a positive behavior that will replace the pleasure you receive from your negative behavior. For example, if you distract yourself from the pain you’re feeling by eating junk food and watching TV, like I did, then seek out a method to get the same distraction (the pleasure) while propelling yourself toward your goal. Why not go to a gym and watch your favorite TV show while walking on the treadmill instead of watching it while lying on the couch eating Funyuns? You still achieve the pleasurable distraction, but you have replaced the negative behavior with a positive one. If going to the gym is too intimidating for you, or if it’s counterproductive because it makes you oversensitive about how much extra fat you have, then put a treadmill or exercise bike in your TV room and exercise there while watching your favorite show. However, I strongly encourage you to get out of the negative environment that has reinforced the bad eating behavior for so long. Sometimes you have to go outside of your comfort zone and get to a place you’re not used to. You just may discover you like it! How about simply walking to the museum or art gallery and then walking around inside while you look at our world of wonder? That will help you achieve your goal of distraction while associating pleasure with the positive behavior of walking. Find what you like and create a way to combine a positive behavior with something that gives you pleasure.
Many people binge because they get an endorphin rush when they do so. A great way to get an endorphin rush is to exercise. Sure the first few times may hurt, but as you keep doing it and get better at it, you will find you get a feeling of euphoria from exercise far greater than the euphoria you ever experienced from bingeing – and without the regret.
Sports are great for intrinsic motivation. Most people who play soccer, basketball, badminton, football, racquetball or any other sport do so because they enjoy playing these sports, not because they get fans, fame or a sweet endorsement deal. If you can find any sport or game that you like to play, then this is a great replacement for overeating. And you have endless choices. You don’t have to play something that needs real exertion to replace the pleasure you feel from overeating. How about table tennis in the basement? With the advent of motion-controlled video games, there’s no excuse not to move! Obviously a more active sport or game will be more helpful for weight loss, but as long as your game replaces overeating and you enjoy it, this is a positive step. And you may find as you lose weight you want to try other sports that are more challenging.
There are as many reasons people become overweight as there are overweight people. You will have to figure out your own intrinsic motivation for overeating and under-exercising, and overcome that with an intrinsic motivation for positive behavior.
Extrinsic motivation means you are motivated to do something because of a positive or negative message you encounter from outside yourself. Most of us are primarily either “moving-toward” people or “moving-away” people. A “moving-toward” person might go to work each day because she wants to make money. A “moving-away” person might go to work so he won’t seem useless (to avoid the pain of disapproval). Perhaps you don’t steal from stores because you don’t want to get in trouble with the police (moving away). Or you perform on stage because you like the applause and attention you get (moving toward).
In general, intrinsic motivation is stronger than extrinsic motivation, and in fact thinking too much about external motivation rather than internal can be what causes our failure to reach our goals. Our family tells us to lose weight, or we hear other people’s negative comments, for example. While these are both motivators, they are extrinsic and therefore don’t mean as much to us. Our family members and unkind strangers can’t understand why their words do not inspire us to change, but – as with my parents and smoking – we won’t lose weight until we find our internal motivation.
Sometimes, however, we are not completely aware of what motivates us. When you binge on an entire container of ice cream, you might say you are doing it because you like the taste. While that might be your motivation for eating a bite or two, what drives you to eat a gallon? In this case, you likely have an unconscious motivation to do so. Seeking help from a counselor is great because he or she can often help you realize the motivations you might be missing. Maybe there is something within you that wants to stay overweight because you have some idea that fat insulates you from the world. Maybe in some way you desire the invisibility you think obesity offers you. Whatever the unconscious reason you eat excessively, the key is to find something stronger that motivates you to not eat the ice cream, and use that to propel you.
SELF-CONTROL AND SELF-MOTIVATION
Some people seem to have an internal drive that makes them seek achievement. You likely remember some of these people from your school days – in addition to being the best athletes, they were also the best students and were always the first to raise their hand with the answer. When you thought of them, you likely thought about how lucky they were to have abilities in all areas. But while natural ability may allow a person to do well, it does not enable that person to excel. Excellence is never the result of ability but rather the result of motivation. Excellence requires dedication, which in turn requires both motivation and self-control. Without motivation and self-control, the most talented person can end up mediocre, whereas a person with sincere drive, focus and self-control can end up on top – even without so-called natural ability.
You might be saying to yourself right now, “I have motivation, otherwise I wouldn’t be reading this book! Of course I want to lose weight!” But wanting to lose weight is very different from having the motivation to do what you have to do to achieve your weight-loss goal. Millions of people want to be successful, yet so few are willing to commit to the consistent level of action required to achieve the success they desire and deserve. Today you want to lose weight. You might not eat any junk food today. You might join a gym and set up an appointment with a personal trainer. But what about tomorrow, next week, a month from now, three months, six months, or even a year down the road?
“You need motivation, and you need motivation strong enough that it will help you with your self-control.”
The desire to lose weight might get you through a day, but to get through the time it takes to actually lose the weight and keep it off, you need something a little more. You need motivation, and you need motivation strong enough that it will help you with your self-control.
AND THEN THERE’S MAINTENANCE
What’s going to happen after you lose the weight? I assure you there is no doubt in my mind that you can and will lose. The concern I have is this: After you’ve succeeded in losing weight, will you be as committed to maintaining your weight loss as you were to losing it? Clients who work with me after their weight loss is complete do maintain what they’ve achieved. Maintenance strategies are powerful, but they must be applied and conditioned consistently. Did you know the best athletes in the world all have coaches? They don’t stop using a coach once they’ve reached the top. They have daily, weekly, monthly and yearly plans, just like they did when they were working toward the goals they eventually achieved. You may not have a personal coach, but use this book as your coach to achieve and maintain the weight loss you desire and deserve.
Once you’ve achieved your goal, your reason to maintain your health and weight must be so compelling that you continue to make great choices in both food and exercise. No matter which diet you follow, you will have to restrict yourself in the short term because you are correcting the excesses of the past. But as soon as you are back to where you want to be, or maybe at a place you’ve never been before, lighter than ever, you have to remain goal oriented and find something to focus on other than seeing the number on the scale go down, because that has now stopped. Going back to your bad habits is not an option unless you want to relive that agony. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” How are you going to live today to ensure the future is in line with what you want? How are you going to be sure you remain accountable?
“Going back to your bad habits is not an option unless you want to relive that agony.”
PICTURE ME AT 17
What was my motivation to lose weight? I wanted to show myself that I wasn’t bound by my circumstances or by the labels others had given me. In a way, I was saying to the world, I can be whoever I want to be, do whatever I want to do, achieve anything I decide I’m going to achieve. I wanted to prove that my family’s history of addictions and obesity along with the requisite health problems would not be the predictor of my own future.
I grew up in a blue-collar urban environment, where shootings and robberies were common, where not going to college was the path most followed, where eating was usually the highlight of a person’s day and healthy choices weren’t even considered. Food was food, and you were supposed to be happy that your family could afford to order pizza or go to McDonald’s. That was my life.
I remember when I was 17 and 360 pounds, driving past my high school on homecoming night in my little Honda Civic. I was looking at the colored lights flashing through the windows, hearing all the booming party music and watching the shadows of my classmates dancing with their dates behind the clouded gym windows. More and more smiling couples walked in, hand in hand, the doors closing tightly behind them. I sat in my car, all alone, my breath turning to vapor in the cool fall air, saying to myself, “Wow, what an analogy. All the fun and excitement going on inside, and here I am on the outside, separated by huge walls and a door I could easily walk through if I chose to.” The one thing holding me back was my belief about myself.
“I started to shift my focus from what I didn’t want to what I wanted.”
I was tired of being tired. I was sick of not being part of the fun. Of missing out on the greatest feeling in the world – holding the hand of a girl I really loved and who really loved me. Even though I was an awesome piano player, often performing with the jazz band at an all-girls school, I was totally ignored, repeatedly, because of my size. I’d hurry back to the bus in humiliation while all the other guys exchanged numbers with the throngs of female admirers. I would sit on the bus, anxiously wanting to escape the feeling of not being good enough. It was time to change.
I started to shift my focus from what I didn’t want to what I wanted. I zeroed in on pictures of guys who had the type of body I wanted. Looking at magazines, watching TV, at the movies – everywhere I looked I found examples of the type of body I was after. In the mall, I would note how fit the models in the Abercrombie & Fitch posters looked. I tried to learn everything I could about those who lived the lifestyle I wanted. I reminded myself that with consistency in a healthy diet and exercise regimen, I could get my body to look that great too.
Your job right this second is to decide exactly what you want, where you’re headed, precisely what it’s going to take, how you will remain accountable and which foods you need to buy to get there! Once you’ve decided what you want and are entirely focused on it, something magical will happen – all sorts of opportunities will become apparent. Out of the blue someone will call asking if you’d like to join a gym with them because they want to lose weight; people will be volunteering to help you almost magically; commercials and advertisements will all seem to have a secret message in them just for you. Decide what you want today so the universe can begin to help you find it!
NO, I DIDN’T FORGET THE THIRD “R”!
You’ll have to wait a bit to get to step three. The third “R” stands for “Road” and involves mapping out what you will be eating. This will be covered in Chapters 8 and 9, but hang in there for a bit – we have a little more ground to cover first!
SUCCESS STORY
“I sometimes feel like I have superpowers.”
NAME: Gene Dobbs Bradford
AGE: 44
HEIGHT: 6'4"
WEIGHT BEFORE: 268 lbs
WEIGHT AFTER: 219 lbs
WEIGHT LOSS: 49 lbs
WEIGHT GAIN CAN HAPPEN TO THE BEST OF US – EVEN SERIOUS ATHLETES. Where do things go wrong? The trouble usually begins when we stop paying attention to what we eat.
Such was the case with Gene Dobbs Bradford. Gene followed a strict exercise routine that included training for kung fu tournaments as well as several triathlons. But when he decided to return to school to work toward his MBA, he had to scale back his two-hour-plus daily fitness routine. Unfortunately, he neglected to scale back his eating habits as well, and he quickly topped the scales at 268 pounds – much more than his 6'4" frame could handle.
As a result of his weight gain, Gene began feeling sluggish and low on energy. Worst of all, he suffered from sleep apnea, which kept both him and his wife tossing and turning. He was forced to use a cumbersome CPAP machine at night just so he could keep breathing.
Gene knew it was time for a change, so for his 44th birthday present he gave himself one year of good health. Part of this deal included losing the weight he had put on while studying. Although he had lost weight in the past using Weight Watchers, he was never able to get down to his goal weight of 220 pounds. Gene knew that he needed to do something different this time around. As fate would have it, that’s exactly when he stumbled upon Charles D’Angelo’s plan for success.
After working with Charles, Gene was able to whittle himself down to a svelte 219 pounds. And as the weight disappeared, so did Gene’s sleep apnea. He is now sleeping soundly, as is his wife. Best of all, Gene’s energy has returned! “I have much more energy than I ever had and I feel like my thinking is getting clearer every day,” he says. “I am training for a marathon, and I have shaved a full minute off of my previous pace. I sometimes feel like I have superpowers.”
“To stay motivated all Gene has to do is look at his before picture. He remembers how much time and effort he dedicated to his weight loss and how easy it is to let it all go.”
To stay motivated all Gene has to do is look at his before picture. He remembers how much time and effort he dedicated to his weight loss and how easy it is to let it all go. Gene never wants to get back there again! He follows Charles’ advice to “stay focused” at all times because he knows that it takes solid commitment to achieve the body of your dreams.