Right before the holidays, I was shopping at the local grocery store. As I pulled into the parking lot, I saw how packed it was. Busy day!

I located a parking spot and pulled in. Just as I got out of my car, I noticed two families (each comprised of a mom and 3 kids) loading groceries into their respective cars, a minivan and a SUV. Struggles ensued!

Both moms were contending with tired and cranky children, specifically their male kids. I felt a wave of compassion. I remember shopping with young children. It’s never easy.

However, I got fascinated by the mirror images I was seeing. Two moms. Two different cars. Three kids each. Their female children behaving quite nicely, their boys in the beginning stages of a meltdown – whining, crying, complaining. One mother had a baby and one had a toddler. No issues with them at the moment.

As I went to the back of my car to get my shopping bags, I heard one mom say, “Jimmy, just get in the car! I’m going to get your box of donuts for you.”

Jimmy looked to be about six or seven. My healthy eating antenna went up.

I left the back of my car, coming along the other side, closer to the second family, where I heard the mother say, “Eric, you say you’re hungry. Would you like me to get you a string cheese from the bag, if I can find it?”

I moved slowly and stopped a few times.

Now, I know I caught a moment in time here. I argued in my mind it could have been a very stressful day.

But… the word that kept reverberating in my head wasn’t donut and wasn’t box… it was…

YOUR

“Your box of donuts.”

There was a box purchased just for him.

I thought, on your worst day, would you hand your kid a BOX of donuts designated as HIS?

I’m sure I don’t have to tell you the relative sizes of the families. Their size follows their food habits

My Questions

My questions for you are…

With all the information on healthy eating for kids; the publicity around the fact that roughly one-third of kids carry unhealthy weight; and the fact childhood diabetes, a direct result, is an epidemic… WHY would someone do this to their kid?

• Research shows that nearly 60 percent of overweight children age 5 to 17 had at least one risk factor for cardiovascular disease and 25 percent had two or more. And obese kids have an 80 percent chance of staying obese their entire lives. – The American Heart Association
  

Is it as simple as not caring? Not having the luxury of caring?

Is it denial?

Is it some sort of child-pleasing? Are we afraid to say no to our kids?

Is it justification for our (the parents’) weight? I remember one of my friends shrugging off her extra 200 lbs, by explaining, “We’re just a big family.”

And how do we help kids being programmed to eat out their frustrations with sugary treats?

Moderation

Now, one donut might be different. Although the protein snack would have been better for Jimmy in every way, I like a donut once in a while too.

One. Occasionally. Any healthy person’s body can deal with that.

How do we help Jimmy and Jimmy’s mom?

In today’s world, are we supposed to look the other way?

After losing 72 pounds – a process of weight loss that was different than any other time I lost weight in my life – I wanted to help others who struggle with weight loss. My own process had taught me thousands of lessons – and I’d struggled through without the benefit of assistance or support. Imagine what it would be like with that valuable cheerleader in your corner!

Most people I consulted in my 30-year weight struggle had no idea how to lose weight permanently – including doctors, nutritionists, therapists, personal trainers, dietitians and weight loss gurus. (Not much has changed there – They still don’t know the difference between losing weight and losing weight permanently.)

Because my DESIRE to lose weight and be healthy was so great, I had managed the setbacks and roadblocks, I had adjusted to every curve in the road, and I had grown tremendously as a person. I started helping people as a personal trainer and nutrition coach… but quickly realized I needed a greater tool and began my coach training with the sole intention of helping others lose weight by dealing with the grey matter between their ears – what was really holding them back.

But, I quickly learned change is change – no matter what area of life – and, once started, it spills all over life. Change is the most enlivening feeling on earth!!

I’ve coached thousands of clients on four continents… here are some of the highlights I recall today.

Vivid Memories

Some memories stick with you more than others. Clients learn to open their hearts wide in order to learn, grow and begin to love themselves. It’s a miracle to watch.

I remember the first time a client left coaching, saying she couldn’t do it. After just a short time, she had been losing weight and making decisions differently, but she had been met by judgment and criticism by her best friend. She looked ahead and decided she couldn’t stand to lose weight – it would hurt her friend too much. I was astounded she’d give up her health and body comfort in fear of hurting someone else. I often wonder where that dysfunctional relationship led her.

Like the folks who stay in a marriage that’s not working (I’ve encountered many of these too!), eating away their sadness, anger and frustrations, and repressing their needs… many people can’t see that a friend who holds you back isn’t a friend at all.

I still tingle at the memory of a client who realized she had a “collapsing syndrome” occurring in her life. Every time she got a little successful, she sabotaged it. How we do food is how we do everything.

She did the same thing in business and relationships. We had work to do. Years later, excess weight was a blip in her history, and she confided she had amassed a net worth of seven figures. Wow.

Heartbreak

My heart breaks when potential clients deny their own denial.

I’ll never forget the first client who, getting an idea this was going to lead to deep, fundamental change, told me, “I’m not sure I need to lose weight. I know I’m a spiritual being… I’m not my body.” Five years later, I ran into her at an event. “I’d love to see you again, but I can’t lose weight now, I have breast cancer!” she reported.

When will we learn current health doesn’t equal future health, if we are abusing the body? There are no shortage of excuses in the world, if you want to live that way.

I also had a client trace her secretive, late night eating to her sexual frustration. She admitted she’d rather eat than ask her husband for the kind of attention that would lead to an orgasm.

Why? She felt it took too long. When I asked what that was, she said “45 minutes” with some shame. Now, it doesn’t matter how long an orgasm takes, your partner better be making it happen. (And, yes, anyone can make an orgasm occur with self pleasure – that wasn’t her need.)

Now, many women need more than 45 minutes to reach orgasm, depending in the activity they are pursuing.  At any rate, she deliberately pretended it didn’t matter, and she had been doing that for 30 years. I asked her to add up how much time they had spent on her husband’s orgasms in 30 years, while she was secretly eating and drinking away her desire and needs.

Don’t ever think life coaches are tough. I had to mute the phone while I cried during that call. Denying our needs, and pretending it doesn’t matter isn’t a life… it’s self-abandonment.

Wins

When  I started my business,  I didn’t charge much for coaching, largely because I was new at it. But I had one client show up who wanted to loses weight so badly, she changed her whole life to make it happen.

She taught me the value of what I do.

She was on welfare and couldn’t afford my rather meager fees. She was estranged from her entire family, largely because she had just given birth while unmarried. She felt her family disapproved of her choices in life, so she had cut them off completely.

I challenged her with this question – how do you want to live?

She asked me to give her three weeks to do “some work on this.”

To tell you the truth, I didn’t expect to hear from her again.

But, three weeks later, she called and arranged her first appointment. In that short period of time, she had reconciled with her mother, who had been offering to care for her baby while she worked. (She had been refusing out of pride and fear of engaging with her critical parent.) She had secured a job and her mother had helped her with her first month’s coaching fees.

I knew I had something very special here – it’s a coach’s dream – a client willing and ready to change.

Six months later, someone she had met through work recruited her to another workplace. She came to a coaching appointment with a checklist of all her expenses and wanted to work with me on asking for that amount in her interview. She was scared. She felt it was “too much to ask for.”

I explained, if she wanted to “just cover her expenses”, she’d struggle. I challenged her to ask for double the amount she had decided upon.

At her next appointment, she told me “They agreed so fast, I think I could have asked for more.”

Always ask for more!

I coached her for years. Beyond losing weight and making some big decisions about how she wanted to raise her son, she started her own business and today, she owns her own home too. That’s along way from welfare.

Every January, I have past clients who email me, or send a card, thanking me for their time spent coaching. Because they live differently now, they’ve kept their weight loss, well into the 5-year “permanent zone.” They don’t fear regaining it.

Many clients come to coaching and realize the problem really isn’t food (no shit – it never is), it’s career, relationships or the ability to attend to themselves. One client said, “I lost 200 lbs of spouse and that was the key to restarting my life. Now, I’m going in my own direction.”

A partner who holds you back, diminishes you, or doesn’t allow your light to brightly shine, isn’t the right partner for you.

It’s about weight and it’s not.

Excess weight which makes us uncomfortable in our bodies is a symptom. In taking charge of weight, my clients also taken charge of their own happiness and success.

And that makes my job the best one in the world.

It’s a milkshake with a mere few bites left in the bottom, stored in the freezer.

Why does this make me happy?

• Is it some sort of trick, or sign?

• Am I taunting myself with “forbidden” foods?

• Is someone else tempting me or sabotaging my weight loss success?

• Am I breaking all the “diet rules” by having this in my freezer???

No!

Not only do I have absolutely NO forbidden foods on a mysterious list – which is addictive behavior! – I am responsible for my own actions and no one can SABOTAGE me. My food addiction is healed, a thing of the past.

This is my son’s milkshake.

I might eat ice cream occasionally, if I want it, but milkshakes aren’t my thing.

I’m thrilled when I see this in the freezer because it’s a great big sign of HEALTHY.

First of all, my son is 24 years old, 6’1″ tall and weighs about 160 lbs. From what I can tell, he occasionally has one of these “mixer” shakes with his baseball team, after a game.

He left this in the freezer to finish another time, and he did this freely, of  his own accord. He eats when and what he wants and he STOPS when cued by his body.

ALL children of any age do this naturally, if they are not taught to “clean their plates” or “eat everything” or “be grateful you  are not starving like other children in less fortunate places in the world.”

He’s ALWAYS done this… stop when he’s had enough. It’s his natural behavior with food. He has NEVER had a weight problem.

When he was young, and I was losing weight (those 100 pounds I lost, which never returned), I was eating everything on my plate. I was trying to “control” portions by measuring how much I put on the plate, and failing constantly because I felt so LIMITED, even when I put the food there. I noticed he stopped eating, without warning, at a different point every meal. Sometimes, he left a lot on his plate, sometimes very little.

I got curious. I started asking questions.

He TAUGHT ME what normal eating was. He taught me to search for, and identify my own satiation cues, which I’d lost during years of destructive dieting. I learned to respect his decisions first, then my own.

This plastic cup with the little bit of ice cream is a bigger sign too… during weight loss and the healing of my food addiction, I was happy to be free of compulsivity around food, but I really REALLY didn’t want my son to be addicted. I learned addictive behavior at the hands of two addicted parents and I made the decision to STOP the mindless passing along of a hereditary mindset based on deficiency.

When I see this sight in the freezer… I see that he’s still honoring his body and its cues. He’s listening and being attentive. He NOT addicted.

I am so happy for him!

I also have to think twice when potential client tells me they make the food they prepare “for their kids” and sacrifice time and attention to themselves “for their kids.”

Maybe the best thing we can do for our children is to STOP our own madness around food, dieting and deprivation… and learn true healthy habits together.

It comes about one-third of the way into the movie. Kroc walks up to the McDonald brothers’ hamburger stand in San Bernadino, California and, before he finishes paying, is handed a paper bag containing his order.

He’s amazed. “What’s that?” he asks.

Kroc, a nearly defeated 54-year-old salesman, smells a good burger and idea. Before you can mix a fake milkshake, he’s franchising McDonald’s all over the Midwest.

It’s an insightful film. Kroc’s desperation to redeem his past failures drive him towards financial success. He begins to maximize profits at the cost of quality, starting with the famous fake milkshake made from powder. (The McDonald brothers are left behind, complaining about their values about quality being diluted, through a series of contracts giving Kroc more and more power.)

I was struck, watching the film, that this was the beginning of it all: America’s disconnection from the food they eat; the birth of fast food culture, and the obesity epidemic too.

Suddenly, we could pretend it didn’t take a great deal of work to make a meal. We didn’t have to shop, or plan, or prepare anymore. We didn’t have to respect the food, when we didn’t chop, slice, cook and prepare it. It appeared magically.

You could ignore the resulting fat accumulation around your waist just as easily.

Instead of nutrition, food became cheap and meaningless, something eaten without attention while you drove the kids to soccer, or ran to another appointment. Under Ray’s watch, real ingredients were stretched with cheap fillers and hidden ingredients – including sugar in every product (‘cept the fries and coffee) to keep you coming back for more.

It was all about the profits.

Profits reigned over health, reason and hunger. Hunger became a marketplace – the food drove more hunger and the advertising permeated every crevice of marketing and advertising.

All because one failed, ego-driven guy was looking for redemption after a lifetime of small sales out of the trunk of his car.

To many, the McDonalds story, and Ray Kroc’s story, is one of complete mastery and success.

There is no doubt it changed the way we live, and how we view food. Our collective faces turned from our greater good, to greed.

When he died, he left behind a $1.5 billion dollar bank account, which his widow donated to charity.

The only problem, not one penny went to clean up the heart disease, diabetes and obesity left behind by those millions of burgers and fries.

We hear a thousand new messages every year about how to lose weight – new diets, new approaches, new “bad” foods, new fads, new “don’ts”, and new research, which is almost always paid for by an interested Diet World company.

We hear very little about how to lose weight and maintain weight loss all the way to a permanent state.

Permanent weight loss is my entire focus. The last time I lost weight was my last. It didn’t just happen that way. I had that determination going into it. And minus 92 pounds and holding steady at 17 years (on March 13, 2017) is damned well permanent in my book.

Does it have to be confusing?

No. Let’s get clear right now. Losing weight is not hard, complicated or impossible.

Getting yourself to do it might be.

In order to end our negative habits, we need to take charge of our psychology and get powerful in our decision-making. That is all. What it takes is different for each individual.

“Taking charge of psychology” means ending self-sabotage and self-destructive tendencies. Within each of us, there is a complicated interweaving of learned behaviors, food triggers, emotional eating, poor beliefs, negative thoughts, overthinking, protectiveness, and maybe even neurosis.

Wrestling with dieting can make anyone neurotic, needy and just plain defensive. Doing it for years can engrain poor habits and lock them in place.

That’s why I teach folks how to take charge.

Why are so many people talking about weight loss?

There’s only one reason for the constant stream of talk and written words about weight loss.

It’s important.

Carrying too much weight feels terrible, and makes life more difficult. I remember the huge effort it took to drag myself out of the driver’s seat of my car. I used to shop drooped over the shopping cart, because it helped me move my bulk around the store. I couldn’t hold my body straight for very long. I faced the end of every day and the beginning of most exhausted.

We were meant to inhabit and enjoy our bodies, to experience great pleasure in the feelings of movement, touch, sensation. The angels, it is said, envy us because we have bodies. Do you feel the envy of angels?

The other reason it’s often discussed is it’s one of the biggest money-makers on the planet. The diet industry, or Diet World, as I call them, will say and do anything to make money. Since (see above) it’s important to people, they are easy to manipulate.

Diet World makes around $60-70 BILLION a year, with no tangible long-term results.

NONE.

That’s a pretty good gig, if you have no conscience. The internet has made it even easier to “mark” those interested in weight loss and manipulate them.

Every time we buy into a Diet World program or product, we support them, and get more failure and confusion. We are PAYING them for this debilitation.

They win when we are confused.

Diet World wins when we are confused, because we are vulnerable. We can’t trust ourselves, or see beyond all the data and miracle products, so we’ll plunk down the credit card.

We also never get sustainable results when we are confused. We are just playing victim in Diet World.

So many overweight people seem to be saying “just accept and love yourself even though you are fat” – isn’t that easier?

In the short term, maybe, if you truly believe and practice it. In the long term, no.

That’s because, if you carry enough extra weight ( around 50+ pounds) to seriously impact health, you’ll come face-to-face with the result of excess weight eventually, in the form of diabetes, cancer, heart disease, incurable fatty liver disease (which is growing astronomically in the U.S.), and reduced energy, resilience and immune function.

Don’t misunderstand me. I believe in loving yourself. And I focus on that with my clients. And I’m the first to say I had to learn how to do that.

But I didn’t learn to love myself by insisting I had the right to stay fat. I learned to love myself by staying close to myself during a transformative learning process which got me healthier. I learned to love and respect my determination, my vulnerability, my insistence I was important enough to be receive excellent self-care.

Many misinterpret weight as a primary indicator of health, when it is only one factor and, indeed, one that is often over-emphasized. A healthy weight actually exists in a wider range than what shows up on those old fashioned insurance charts used by your doctor – and certainly the newer BMI is similarly ridiculous with strong people who carry a lot of muscle falling into the “obese” category on them!

Heredity and excess dieting often hinder people from achieving those numbers on the charts but that doesn’t exclude a healthy life.

I’m not talking about throwing all caution to the wind and protecting an excessive overweight stage; I’m talking about finding the best health you can inside the body you have.

Here are eight indicators of health I use to help my clients determine an appropriate weight and get healthy.

Remember, only YOU can determine an appropriate weight for you.

1. Energy – this is the premier indicator of health. Do you have energy to complete all the tasks and endeavors you want to complete? Do you go to bed stress-free, tired but not groggy, and sleep easily? And do you wake up refreshed and eager to get out of bed and greet the day?

2. Blood Pressure – Blood pressure is considered normal if it below 140/90 in most countries. In the United States, many doctors suddenly switched to lower readings of 120/80 recently. Why? The answer may involve pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, who has many new blood pressure drugs available. It is important to measure your blood pressure often and calculate an average since the readings will fluctuate dramatically throughout the day and often rise after exercise, eating certain foods, or in the presence of medical staff (“white coat syndrome”).

3. Pulse – Resting pulse is considered healthy between 50 and 100 beats per minute. This is an important factor for the fitness of your heart. Well conditioned athletes will have a resting heart rate of 40-60 beats per minute.

4. Cholesterol – Cholesterol readings should be 60 and higher for HDL (good) cholesterol and less than 130 for LDL (bad) cholesterol with less than 100 being optimal. In addition, triglycerides are often measured with cholesterol and should be less than 150.

5. Weight – Your weight should be one that you are happy with, one that is easily maintained without strenuous dieting or deprivation and one that is consistent. Most people find it is the weight they were in high school/11th grade. Among the hundreds of clients I’ve worked with, many discover a 30 lb. weight range. They begin to feel uncomfortable in the upper 10 lbs of the range, and feel hungry or find it difficult to maintain the lower 10 lb range. Your perfect range may be very different than medical charts for weight, which were actually drawn up by the insurance companies so they could document reasons to charge more to insure “overweight” people.

6. Responsive Immune System – A healthy person is rarely ill and fights off colds or flu quickly with little interference from drugs. Also, a healthy person uses little or no regular drug therapy and resorts to pain relievers for headaches or bodyaches only rarely. A strong immune system is a sign of health.

7. Blood Sugar Levels – Eight-hour fasting blood sugar levels should be between 70-100. In addition, blood sugar levels (and energy levels) should remain fairly consistent throughout the day, regardless of eating cycles. Prediabetics will experience a “wider swing” of high and low blood sugar – high energy after eating followed by an “energy crash” 2-3 hours later, when they’ll experience hunger and need to eat again.

8. Fitness Level – Can you run, kick and punch? I often ask my seminar audiences if they are in danger, can they run several blocks for help? If threatened, are they comfortable fleeing or fighting? This is a basic need of every human, the ability to defend themselves. I learned from my experience as a police officer that many victims of crime and rape are overweight. They are “easy marks” to criminals who require power over someone in order to carry out a crime.

Health is more important than weight. Quite thin people may fit the advertising industry’s picture of health but they are often very unhealthy since they go to radical extremes to lower their weight, including disordered eating, highly-restrictive dieting, binging, fasting and bizarre fasts, purges and “cleanses.”

Often, someone who appears, again by advertising/media standards, to be overweight will actually be the picture of health – energetic, robust, having a positive attitude, and rarely sick.

Where would you rate yourself on these health factors?

What can you do to improve the levels of your health today?

What will you focus on this year in order to improve your health?

No matter our weight or size, we can all improve health with every choice. Good luck!

After years of pretending she was concerned for her health, I watched her dip in and out of diets, always despondent when they didn’t work. She embraced (and had personal evidence) diets were never going to work, but she preferred to keep “trying”, rather than face herself.

Am I surprised? No. Not really.

This is the saddest part of my work as a professional weight loss coach.

I’ve helped hundreds directly with coaching and thousands through my online programs, but not everyone wants to lose weight, and lose weight permanently.

Anne (a pseudonym) gave me permission to share her story with you.

She called me for help, but never quite signed on to begin a coaching relationship. Or a class.

She had a million excuses.

Actually, she was waiting for something to force her to act. (We usually wait for something ominous to force our hand – by then, it’s too late.)

Anne wanted someone else to take away her excuses. The rock-and-roll and in-and-out of diets seems comforting after a while, always living in the future, living in hope with no action.

Of course, hope with no action is fantasy.

Anne knows that now.

Really, she didn’t want to change. Most of us don’t!

Many people cling to the thinnest shred of any possible reason NOT to take charge. It’s a big step. They know there are no excuses available after they begin to work with me – they sense I teach an ultimate form of RESPONSIBILITY. (After all, I teach a class in responsibility called Own Every Bite!)

I get it.

I could not have seen my own weight rise to 242 lbs., if I didn’t have to work through the same shit everyone else has to work through to get to a point of change.

And I’ve had more than one potential client decide not to pursue coaching or healing their food addiction, clinging to their “safe” world of food-as-problem-solver and food-as-soothing-agent, and wind up right back in my office a few years later with a breast cancer diagnosis or diabetes (excess weight is a major contributing factor to both). Even then, they don’t quite see the connection of what they have created in their bodies, but their doctor told them to get their act together.

I don’t really want to see you in my enLIGHTen Your Life! Mastermind Class or as an individual coaching client when your doctor sends you… I want you to show up BEFORE that… when there’s still time for you to make positive change and ALTER the path you are traveling, a path that leads to poor health, body breakdown, and loss of power.

I want to see you when you recognize you have choices and are choosing health and self-care over your old martyrdom story of “everyone else comes first.”

No job, no relationship, and even the kids don’t come before your health. If you don’t put the oxygen mask on yourself first, you can’t help them. You won’t be there to help them.

And you’ll have given them a piss-poor example of how to manage life if you can only cope by stuffing your face.

No, you are not hiding that from the kids either. They know fat. Just like they know if you secretly drink, or drug, or cut yourself.

Believe me, I was once in your shoes. I walked that walk, until I got a new one.

Here’s what I think keeps most of us from receiving help: 

SHAME

It takes some real humble acceptance to recognize and admit we need help, or need to learn a new way to cope.

We often feel, if we avoid getting help, we’ll solve fat alone, and no one will be the wiser to what we’ve been doing or (worse!) what we’ve been thinking about ourselves. Because we feel a lot of shame about our physical condition.

Here’s what I think encourages us to move beyond addictions:

WORTHINESS

Somewhere, deep inside, you have to know you are worth more than the scraps you are getting in life. After all, if you were getting what you truly need, there would be no drive to augment life with excess food.

• That boring job, with the stress and headaches? Yes, you can do better.
• A terrible parent or relative who constantly judges and puts you down? Yes, you can find supportive, loving new “family.”
• The ungrateful children or siblings, who don’t understand your needs? Yes, we all need to be understood and loved. It’s possible.
• A spouse or partner who doesn’t hear, see or revere you? This costs a fortune in esteem.
• The toxic relationship you’ve forged with yourself, where you berate or excuse (or both) yourself for your choices and habits… it’s time to release it.

Overeating is about making up for something, stuffing real feelings, hiding.

We all need to love ourselves enough to choose to live differently.

My phone has been ringing with some mighty disheartened folks, asking for my opinion.

First of all, the regain is real. I won’t tell you it’s not. Over the past 15 years, I’ve coached many clients who lost weight in an all-out, highly restrictive, biggest loser fashion – weight loss surgery, fad diets, fasting, liquid protein diets – and ALL of them regained ALL the weight.

I personally did this many times myself, before losing 92 lbs permanently. There is no shame in regaining weight. It’s what the body is programmed to do when assaulted. I mean that word “assaulted.”

The problem with highly restrictive diets is we must leave the body out of the weight loss effort, literally wreaking violence internally.

This wave of reaction I’m feeling about the Biggest Loser article reminds me of one of my most vivid memories, which occurred right before I decided to lose weight permanently.

I was in the medical school library, and I had just found several studies showing how weight is regained rapidly after highly restrictive diets. I admit to being just as stunned as many of you are right now. The numbers I found on the National Weight Control Registry (which follows real life losers) were:

99% of people losing more than 25 lbs. on a
diet, regained that weight at a rate of 108%.

For years, I’ve taught these figures in my enLIGHTen Your Life! weight loss class – to discourage fads and rapid weight loss and get students focused on change that lasts, and because we all deserve the truth.

Now, that day, I considered these numbers seriously.

I sensed they were true.

I had lost hundreds of pounds on diets, regaining all my weight (and more!) with each effort. In fact, as best I could recall of my own bloody diet history, regaining about 108% fit!

I specifically remembered a huge effort I made with food combining (“Fit for Life”) where I lost 50 lbs. but regained 60 fast!

There’s no messing with the facts.

So, that day, instead of reacting by playing victim (“why me?”, “it’s not fair!”) and railing against the truth, I accepted it. My gut, a/k/a my intuition, told me it felt true.

And then I responded. I went with the flow of the truth. I said, “I guess I will have to be one of the 1%.”

So, let’s get a new perspective. Although  many people live their lives as victims, we are NOT going that route. There are (as always) some positives and opportunities here.

Let’s reframe this news for our own success!

1. The Truth Comes Out

The show has made millions of dollars for many people, including trainers and advertisers, and it has done so by shamelessly exploiting participants’ health and destroying their futures for monetary gain.

Although many health professionals, like me, have been screaming about the dangers, we’re small fish swimming against a host of diet industry vultures.

Until this research project, participants signed ironclad non-disclosure agreements and, although most of us knew they were regaining, the general public didn’t know the truth.

You deserve to know the truth, so you can make better decisions for yourself. When I first learned about the regain rates of diets (99% regain within 2 years), I decided to beat these diet industry scammers at their own game – and I approached weight loss differently. It was a key to my success.

2. It’s a Blueprint for What NOT to DO

The first Catalyst Principle of Permanent Weight Loss is: Don’t do anything to lose weight you can’t do forever.

People taken out of their real environments and involved in a reality show can’t continue to exercise 9-10 hours a day, eat tiny portions of food, or access the medical and training attention they had while on the show. Even Oprah, with all her money, can’t do this.

It’s a setup.

3. Diet Mentality is Shaming

We have all suffered from what I call Diet Mentality. That’s the heavily engrained thinking pattern that says:

1. You are either on/off a diet.

2. You are good/bad depending on what you eat.

3. The number on the scale has something to do with your self-worth or self-esteem.

Even if you never lose another pound, end this nonsense today. (If you don’t know how, hire me as your coach today. I don’t put up with that attitude.)

Refuse to shame yourself for EVER regaining weight after a highly restrictive diet or weight loss surgery.

Your body was programmed to do that. Understand the process more by reading this blog post, “Avoiding “Dieting Fatter” Syndrome – How to Get Permanent Weight Loss.”

4. The Fantasy is Over

Yep, we’ve all lived the fantasy of “I’ll fix it later.”

In fact, that describes most Americans’ attitude about health these days:

Beat the shit out of the body today,
neglect and abuse it,
and hope the docs can fix it later.

Well, that ain’t working.

It’s time to get real.

5. What to Do Now

Stop concentrating on food, food restriction and diets that come from outside you. That will only get you more food and food issues.

Stop thinking you have to fix it all today. It’s a process.

Stop thinking of change as occurring outside yourself.

Stop thinking it will be fast. I’ve lost 92 lbs and it took many many adjustment throughout the past 20 years… physical, mental, emotional and spiritual.

In order to lose weight permanently, we don’t change food.

We don’t change exercise.

We don’t change fat.

We change ourselves.

Weight doesn’t exist outside us. It’s a symptom of what’s not working in us.

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The article details research showing how the Biggest Loser participants (and anyone rapidly losing weight) regains at an astonishing rate, destroys their metabolism, experiences great shame, and crushes their esteem.

Not only did I discover those truths in my own diet-and-regain merry-go-round of a life, I turned that vital information to my advantage in losing 92 lbs and sustaining the weight loss long-term. (74 lbs sustained since 2000 + another 18 lbs sustained since 2011).

Before that, shame was my middle name as I spent over 20 years losing and regaining.

What burns my butt is the disingenuous nature of the doctors and researchers in this article. You can’t tell me they didn’t understand these concepts, which I was able to learn as a layman in the medical school library. If it is news to them, we need to take a serious look at medical school training today.

Of course, I admit I had to explain it to my brother-in-law, a doctor, who claimed to have heard nothing of it in medical school.

Fat people, he claimed, were weak willed. Oh, brother(in-law)!

Why should I, simply a fairly intelligent woman who conquered a food addiction, be telling the supposed professionals about permanent weight loss?

• Because they are only out to change the number on the scale and don’t have the patient’s long-term welfare in mind?
• Because they take home their paycheck, regardless of success?
• Because they are not (trained to be) invested in the health of their patients?
• Or perhaps, like many people, they loathe and “feel sorry” for their overweight patients?

Scary True Story

I once stood in front of 200 people in a bariatric surgery support group and explained how weight returns after rapid weight loss. Yes, people were horrified, especially the ones who had already experienced the surgery.

I still hear from some of them from time to time, thanking me, because they decided not to have the surgery upon hearing my remarks. Good for them. Even if they never lost another pound, or gained one, they are healthier today, than if they had a body-disrupting surgery which rarely works long-term.

Weight regain after surgery is another dirty little secret of the medical community. As patients regain weight, they slink away in shame, their numbers simply being omitted from studies. I’ve coached many former surgery patients, all of whom have regained ALL their weight and more.

But, the scary part of my presentation that night was the doctors’ faces.

I’ll never forget it. It has helped fuel my truth-telling mission throughout the past 13 years.

In the back row. Mouths agape, eyes bugging out of their heads, shocked.

Yes.

They had no idea how weight regain happens naturally. After all, when they looked around, after a year, it must have looked like they were doing good work.

They were full of themselves, patting themselves on the back.

But, they didn’t understand permanent weight loss and they were coming face-to-face with someone who did that night. I’m not about to hide the truth to protect their big egos or wallets.

After that night, I know one thing. They had to avoid looking at themselves in the mirror.

The Body Rules

The Times article points out the superiority of the body. It has its own intelligence and life-preserving capability. It wins. Every time.

In my enLIGHTen Your Life! mastermind weight loss program, I teach what I call the Catalyst Principles of Permanent Weight Loss.

Here are three of the most powerful ones:

1. Don’t do anything to lose weight you can’t do forever. (The weight will just come back.)

2. The body adjusts to what you give it. Give it less calories for a while (called a “diet”), it’ll learn to operate on that amount. What happens next will break your heart.

3. Stop judging yourself by the number on the scale. Not helpful. Too many variables you can’t see or control. End of story.

I’ve coached clients who did Slimfast 3x a day for a year GAINING weight on just 1000 calories a day. I’ve helped clients rebuild metabolism, a slow and arduous task, but it can be done, if the damage done via dieting is not too drastic.

Getting Wiser?

I can’t believe it’s news! As a society, we have to get smarter about the diet industry and their lies.

We’ve got to end the shame-based approach to weight.

And – very important – we have to accept a wider variety of sizes and shapes than the advertising, movie and tv industries offer. If I had any support in high school, telling me my weight was ok, I could have saved myself twenty years of pain, because I naturally wound up back at that weight I had thought was so unacceptable. In fact, most of my clients would love to get back to high school weight.

It’s time to find a healthier approach, one that actively teaches sustainable eating and activity habits, as well as intervenes when we veer into using food as a drug.

Our shame-based attitude focuses on failure and is guaranteed to simply produce more of what we don’t really need:  fat.

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Get back to the body’s wisdom in this bodycentric virtual class, Own Every Bite!

If you don’t understand the elements of the body and how rapid weight loss affects them, read this post: Avoiding “Dieting Fatter” Syndrome – How to Get Permanent Weight Loss.

This one is an oldie, but a goodie:

Why I Hate ‘The Biggest Loser”

Additional good reading on the blog:

Avoiding “Dieting Fatter” Syndrome – How to Get Permanent Weight Loss

Secrets and Lies – and Knowing the Truth

Finding Your Unique “Optimal” Weight

Stop Renting Weight Loss!    

The New York Times Article: After ‘The Biggest Loser,’ Their Bodies Fought to Regain Weight

I read the post with interest. I had never thought about missing anything from my days at 242 lbs. I was HAPPY to leave those pounds, that mindset, and any regrets behind me.

Here were the five things she missed:

I could pig out whenever I wanted

When I was fat, and people liked me, I knew it was real.

I didn’t worry about what to eat

Now, I threaten people

Other people left me alone

I call bullshit!

Let’s look at those “missing” items.

I could pig out whenever I wanted

OMFG – Really? That’s something to covet in life? With the amazing array of fun and interesting things to do in this wide world, pigging out is coveted?

Here’s the thing: she’s attached more meaning to the freedom of overeating than to the freedom of health or the freedom from compulsivity.

Attachment and meaning are our choices.

That’s a shift that has to happen as we lose weight, in order to truly change.

Overeating is hard on your body. It’s abusive. Even if it is occasional, and doesn’t create excess weight, it taxes the body’s ability to respond effectively. And, if the mindlessness of a binge is something desired, it’s time to take a look at what we are running from.

When I was fat, and people liked me, I knew it was real

Uh, no.

When you were fat, people may have liked you or disliked you, but what you interpreted as “liked” may have been many other things: pity, sympathy, compassion, kindness, mercy, sadness, tenderness, benevolence, comfort, charity, distress, goodness, humanity, cheerfulness, jealousy, hatred, disdain, disgust… or a thousand other things.

Many of us believe it’s ok to be pitied, but it’s one of the most toxic forms of emotion – it’s hatred, a hatred that says, “thank god it’s you who is fat, and not me.”

Don’t mistake another’s emotion. You don’t know what will happen to that person who likes you fat until you are thin. Some of them will no longer “like” you… it’s like a litmus test. And it’s about them, not you.

So, what I’m saying is… it isn’t that people liked her then, and it was real, and she lost that. There’s a saying, “what was ever yours, can never leave.” Her situation thin is no different.

Are there people who will judge you for your weight? Yes. And there are people who will judge you for thin. The issue is judging.

You can learn to discern a judgmental friend, family member or acquaintance NOW, without losing a pound. And your life will get a lot better, trust me.

I didn’t worry about what to eat

Again, I’m not buying this one. It’s a red herring. You spend the same time getting or making good food and getting or making bad food.

And don’t tell me, after eating something that doesn’t promote healthy, you don’t waste MORE time in denial, blame, shame or mental energy trying to convince yourself you can fix what’s already done.

Or time spent moaning and groaning in pain, lethargy or regret.

Spend your time wisely.

Now, I threaten people

I say, this is none of her business. How people react, whether it’s jealousy, envy, resentment, or complete joy and admiration… who cares?

If we are wrapped up in other people’s opinions, we are linking our state of mind, maybe even our happiness, to some person’s random thoughts. It really doesn’t matter if that person is a close friend, or a complete stranger.

The same goes for those times when we think about other people. The street goes both ways. Don’t waste mental energy on other people, whether that is coveting or pitying.

What we think matters, because we create our reality from thoughts and we only have control over our own thoughts.

Other people left me alone

Hmmmmm. A curious one, right?

You don’t have to have anyone’s attention if you don’t want it.

If you just want to hide from life, there are ways to do that, without negatively impacting your health.

This goes for physical attraction from others too. Many of my clients realize they hold onto excess weight as a buffer against sexual interest from others. That interest makes them uncomfortable, or even anxious.

Personally, I love feeling sexual attraction, towards or from me. It’s part of the energy of life. It doesn’t faze me one way or the other.

The world isn’t going to end over a little attraction. Or even a lot.

If you want to be left alone, let me teach you about boundaries. You can create them effectively, efficiently, with absolutely no cost involved. Developing the skills to do this is part of losing weight, and it’s a life skill we all need to perfect.

Conclusion

It’s a good to test whether real attitude shift has occurred with weight loss. That’s how you make sure it’s permanent weight loss.

If you notice something is getting in your way, or there is “something you miss” about your fatter days, discover what it is. It’s there to be changed, reframed or healed.