The 20/20 Diet (8 page)

choose and I choose what I choose. I think I deserve to have a weight

that allows me to have good health, longevity, activity, and a posi-

tiv

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e body image. I will not accept less from myself because I think I

deserve better.

Am I a victim? No. If you are similarly situated, are you a victim?

No. You just need to inform yourself, because this information affects

your next steps.

38 | The 20/20 Diet

If you think you fit into the weight loss resistant category, you

should assess your weight loss needs with your doctor and let him or

her determine the best course of action, as this plan may not be appro-

priate for your distinct medical needs.

Putting It All Together

In the next chapter, I’m going to introduce you to som
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e of the psy-

chological underpinnings of this entire plan. I want to show you how

you can get out of your own way and stop sabotaging your weight loss

efforts. Remember, there’s no magic bullet that will make you thin

in the blink of an eye. But by gaining control over your decisions,

environment, and behaviors, you will shift how you look at food and

exercise to make healthy eating and exercise a lifelong habit.

Even if you haven’t seen your feet without sitting down for 20 years

(yes, you can add that to your 20/20 vi
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sion of how your life will change),

I’m going to show you that this is within the realm of possibility, and

that you can achieve your goals if you truly are ready.

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A Diet That Defies Your Logic | 39

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3

GETTING OUT OF

YOUR OWN WAY

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act,
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but a habit.

—
Aristotle

When you look at those people whom you admire—maybe

they’re skinny, glamorous, se
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em to have it all—do you say to

yourself, “They are better than me and I will never be able to look that way or feel the way they seem to feel. I guess I’ll never have what they have; I’ve seen myself try and fail too many times.” You may still feign excitement or get temporarily pumped up about some quick-fix fad

diet, but deep down, do you really believe you can do it? If not, you

won’t do it.

If, on the other hand, you look at your role models and think,

“Now it’s my turn,” then this is your chance to make it so. Listen, if

you continue to d
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o what you’ve always done, you will continue to have

what you’ve always had. If you do different, you will have different. If you begin to require more of yourself, that in and of itself is
different
.

It starts by adjusting your thinking. You’ve got to abandon all

your negative beliefs about yourself and replace them with positive

ones. You have to identify and embrace what it is that you are good

at, a
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s well as the qualities, traits, and characteristics that make you a

worthwhile human being.

I’ll give you an example from my life. When I was a kid, my personal

truth was severely damaged. My family was dirt poor, my father was a

bad alcoholic, and there were even times growing up when I was hungry

and homeless. I had to ral y just to feel like a second-class citizen! But 41

eventual y, and with a lot of help from some coaches, I found something

I could be proud of. As it turned out, I was a good athlete.

Now, obviously I was no Michael Jordan or Tom Brady, but on the

football field, I could run pretty darn fast and jump pretty darn high

and seemed to be able to catch and hang onto the ball better than most.

Once that whistle blew, my team didn’t care where I lived or who my

family was; they cared that I could play footbal . And whe
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n I looked

around to find that all of my teammates who I held in high esteem

were suddenly deferential to
me
, they believed
I
was superior, I thought,

“There must be something good about me because they’re choosing

team captain, and they choose me.” So I focused on that one, isolated

area, and that was enough for my self-worth to begin to grow.

Finding value in that one area gave me enough traction to stop put-

ting myself down for what I
wasn’t
blessed with and focus instead on what I
was
blessed with and worked hard doing. I was giving myself a fact-based attribution to my self-image.

You can do the same. There are fou
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r steps to get you started:

1. Decide what you are good at or what is good about you.

2. Observe yourself exhibiting those qualities or characteristics

or mastering a given function or activity.

3. Acknowledge that you are, in fact, living to your potential

and having some mastery in your life.

4. Make an attribution to yourself regarding that competency.

Now we need
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to apply this approach to how you feel about your

body and losing weight. You’ve got to decide, and real y believe, that

you can be good at losing weight. As you learn to eat healthy and incor-

porate exercise into your daily routine, you will observe yourself mas-

tering weight loss because the scale and the measuring tape will reflect that f
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act. You will change your personal truth to reflect the new reality

you’ve created. And as your personal truth begins to change, you wil

stop beating yourself up for all the mistakes you’ve made in the past.

Then you behave your way to success because once you’ve changed your

thoughts and beliefs about yourself, your behavior fol ows.

42 | The 20/20 Diet

Out with the Old

You need to begin this program with an open mind and a clean slate,

not just about who you are but also about diet and exercise. Whatever

you
think
you know about how to fuel your body and help it release the weight clearly hasn’t worked for you so far, so we’re going to introduce you to some new theories and tips that could hel
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p you succeed

this time.

Perhaps you haven’t been applying information you learned in the

past correctly. For example, you heard once that a low-fat diet was the

answer. So you bought every candy labeled “low-fat,” ate the whole

damn box, and then couldn’t figure out why the pounds weren’t melting

away! You thought, “Hey, the packaging says it’s a ‘low-fat food’ so I can eat the whole damn box!”

Well, guess what? Refined sugar, which is what that candy is made

of, doesn’t have any fat in it, but d
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o you really think you could eat

four pounds of it a day and not gain an ounce? Of course not! We now

know that the excess sugar, or what’s referred to as “simple carbohy-

drates,” gets converted to fat once it’s in your body, which translates to more pounds on the scale. You have to be armed with both the right

information and the correct way to apply that information. Now we

know better in so many areas that impact your body.

Right now, I want you to spend 30 seconds writing down all the

ways you’ve tried to lose weight in the past. If you’ve tried fasting all week and then p
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igging out on the weekend, write that down. If you

believe that the only way to get thin is to starve yourself, get that

down on paper. If you’ve tried existing purely on sliced turkey and

hamburger patties, add that to the list. Think of every diet, exercise

program, system, cleanse, product, and procedure that you’ve tried

and put them all down on paper.

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Once they’re in black and white, go through the list and cross out

each one that has failed you. As you cross them out, I want you to

acknowledge that these ideas did not work for you, but that you can stil succeed in reaching your weight loss goals. Now, crumple up the paper

and throw it away. Be as dramatic as you wish to drive the symbolism

Getting Out of Your Own Way | 43

home; I don’t care if you light it on fire (as long as you don’t burn your house down!). The idea is that you’re using your 20/20 hindsight to let

go of the past, start fresh, and open your mind to the new information

you’re going to learn and master.

Your Mind/Body Connection

A powerful tool you should have in your weight loss arsenal is cal
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led guided

imagery. Psychologists use this when working with cancer patients. They

ask them to think of their disease as ants attacking them, or to picture their own immune cells as Pac-Man characters gobbling up all the cancer

cells. This gives patients a sense of power and control over what can be a terrifying diagnosis. It also lowers stress and anxiety, alters brain waves, and has even been shown to increase the body’s natural immunity. It helps patients dealing with serious il ness, and it can also help you lose weight.

First, create a visual symbol for th
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e extra fat on your body. It could

be prison bars that are figuratively encasing and restricting you, or a

black cloak with the hood pulled up, hiding you from others, or a

massive python wrapped around your body, squeezing the life out of

you. Then ask yourself: Why have you allowed this to happen? Why

have you imprisoned yourself? Why are you hiding? Why have you

given yourself a death sentence?

Your weight problem has likely been a gradual process, probably

without conscious intent, but in most cases, arriving at this weight

was
your
decision
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, even if it was a subconscious one, because there was

some kind of payoff. You wouldn’t have continued the behaviors that

caused you to gain weight if there wasn’t any payoff.

For example, victims of molestation sometimes make a subcon-

scious choice to gain weight so they can feel sexual y irrelevant and thus thwart all interest from the opposite sex, even healthy interest. Other

peopl
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e turn to food for pleasure, companionship, a sense of calm, a

deep-seated need for immediate gratification, or an irrational form of

reward. Your payoffs could be any or a combination of these factors, but the point is that you need to first recognize them and then learn how to generate the very same payoffs, except with healthy behaviors this time.

I’ll help you do just that as we continue working in the chapters ahead.

44 | The 20/20 Diet

Now, go back to the symbol you’ve associated with your extra

weight. Imagine yourself losing weight and as you do, see yourself over-

powering, for example, that constricting snake so it’s forced to loosen its grip on you, or watch as you bend those prison bars with superhuman

strength, or as you peel off that heavy, black cloak.
You’re
in control now. As you begin to lose weight in real life, return to this symbol over and over, until final y, the visual no longer applies at al .

Why Wil power Doesn’t Work

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A huge part of getting your thinking right is to understand the funda-

mental difference between “control” and “willpower.” In our survey,

we asked why people typically quit or gave up on weight loss pro-

grams. We gave a list of common reasons, including hunger, cravings,

unsupportive friends and family, plateaus, and lack of willpower and

asked respondents to rate the extent t
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o which each issue affected their

decision to throw in the towel.

Before I reveal the intriguing results, I want you to answer this ques-

tion truthful y: If you’ve ever quit a diet or fal en off the weight loss wagon in the past, how much did your “lack of wil power” factor into

your decision to quit? Use a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 means it did not

play a role at all and 10 means it played an extreme role. If you answered

“10,” you are in good company. In our survey, 37.6 percent of people

said “lack of wil power” was the top cause of their past weight loss failures. They gave i
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t a score of 10 out of 10.

I’ve been saying it for years: wil power doesn’t work long term. It’s

a temporary fix. You think, “This is it! I’m going to do it this time! I’m going to bul doze my way through this and final y get skinny.” Come

on. You know how that story ends. You might manage to starve yourself

for a few days, and maybe you even drop a couple pounds. But then

wha
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t happens? All you think about are the foods you aren’t al owed to

eat until final y those thoughts give way to actions, that dam breaks,

and you find yourself devouring a large pepperoni pizza without coming

up for air. And then you blame yourself and decide you’ll just have to

muster up
more
wil power and it’ll work the next time. And so the ugly, self-defeating cycle starts all over again.

Getting Out of Your Own Way | 45

I want you to wipe the concept of wil power from your vernacular and

replace it with words and concepts like “control” and “programming.”

Wil power has no staying power. Control and programming can