Sex Secrets of an American Geisha (24 page)

Do you see “don’t eat carbohydrates” anywhere in that list? No, of course not. Well then, Younger Sister, you might ask me, “How can I lose weight when you don’t even help me to eat the right foods in the right amounts?” I have to answer by reminding you that you are not the average woman who wants to lose weight, picks a diet, crosses her fingers for luck, and hopes it will work. No, instead, you are an American Geisha Younger Sister who is different from the average woman. You are a woman who wants to be in love and married to a Good Man, and soon. You are a woman who has made this goal one of her very highest priorities. You have a Geisha Determination to succeed in your weight-loss goal, not only to help you be married soon but also to help you take the best care of your physical body.

“Sure,” you might say to your Older Sister, “I want to be in love, mar ried, beautiful, and healthy. But thousands of other women probably have felt similarly. Yet they’re not able to lose weight, at least not permanently.”

I would suggest to you that most women who diet are not as persis tently conscious as you are of the strong connection between weight and finding (and keeping) beauty, love, and marriage. If they are less aware of that important connection, then they will be less determined than you to be successful in reaching their weight goals. You bought this book and have read this far. I know you are committed. I know you are motivated. I know you have a Geisha Determination to reach your most beautiful and healthy weight, then to attract your Good Man, fall in love, and marry. And to stay hot and sexy in the marriage. Now, read the next paragraph very carefully, Younger Sister.

The Key to Your Weight Loss Success:
Awareness

There are four elements to the Geisha Plan: marriage, love, awareness, and beauty. I’ve suggested to you, dear Younger Sister, that weight loss can (will!) lead to beauty, then to love and marriage to your Good Man. The key to actually making all this happen is the third element of the Geisha Plan, awareness.

The daily chart you posted on the fridge is not for keeping track of the food or calories you consume. It is for keeping track of only two things: your lowest weight each day and exactly how much exercise you do each day. As simple as this is, it was the key to my weight loss and remains the key to my weight maintenance. By weighing yourself and recording your weight daily, you will never be surprised by a large weight gain, such as might happen if you weighed yourself only weekly. This is the key to your success: always being aware (consistently conscious) of your weight. I want you to be a loser—a loser of excess weight, a loser of weight as a negative issue for you, a loser of your poor body image. When you stay conscious of your weight on a daily basis, you will become the loser of whatever number of pounds you choose. Then you will become a winner in gaining control over your body.

Just as I do not suggest what you should eat, I do not suggest how you should exercise. By recording the exercise you’ve done on any given day (a blank in the chart meaning no exercise), you’ll remain aware of your level of physical activity on a daily basis.

Set up your Weight and Exercise Chart as follows (this can easily be done in Word or Excel so that you can save the format and update the chart monthly):

• On an 8½ x 11-inch sheet of paper (use one sheet per month), cre ate six columns.
  
• Across the top, label the columns:
  

1. Day

2. Date

3. Weight

4, 5, and 6.

• Fill in three specific exercises of your choice (for exam ple, strength training, biking, stair-climbing, aerobics class, yoga video, brisk walking). Make sure you list activities you are likely to actually do. Or just write “exercise” in each of the three columns if there are many different activities you like to choose from.
  
• Under “Day,” fill in Monday through Sunday, all the way down the page.
  
• Under “Date,” type or write the corresponding date.
  
• Draw row lines across the paper, one per day.
  

Prepare several blank charts so that you have a chart ready to go when the new month starts.

Come up with a way to measure and record how much of each exercise you do. Current guidelines from various experts recommend getting fortyfive minutes of moderately intense exercise at least five days a week (and not necessarily all at once), so one suggestion is to count each fifteen-minute “unit” of exercise you complete, since you have three spaces on your chart for exercise activity. If you attend an hour-long aerobics class, you’ve achieved a bonus fifteen minutes for the day! Another example: “hiking along the river at a brisk pace, thirty minutes.” It counts for two of your three fifteen-minute units.

Awareness + Desire =
Geisha Determination = Success

The life of the Asian Geisha has always demanded of its practitioners a strong sense of perseverance. First, the earliest phase consists of little more than being an observant maid in an okiya or geisha house. Then a girl must commit to years of training, followed by more years as an apprentice or Younger Sister. Finally she becomes a full-fledged geisha. I hold great re spect for the successful Asian Geisha’s commitment, persistence, and deter mination.

You, too, dear American Geisha Younger Sister, need that same Geisha Determination in order to do all that is necessary to accomplish your goal of a good marriage to a Good Man. Without determination it would be unlikely that most women could do all that is necessary to achieve their goals. My respect for your commitment to beauty, love, marriage, and awareness of your day-to-day progress is great.

Again, awareness truly is the key to your success. It is the foundation of all the other goals. That is why I had you post your two affirmations on the fridge, so you will look at them daily and stay aware of how important love and marriage are to you. I asked you to post your weight/exercise chart be low the affirmations so you will record and look at your results daily and stay aware of how you are doing. And finally, I asked you to post your pic tures above the affirmations, so that you may stay aware of how your new habits are making you more beautiful and healthy. (I still keep my weight and exercise chart up to date even after six years of marriage. Rich keeps one, too. And, yes, they are still posted on the fridge.)

That is all there is to it, my sweet Younger Sister. You do not need a specific diet to get to your most beautiful weight. Instead, what you need is great motivation . . .

. . . to have beauty, love, and a happy marriage and

. . . to remain consistently conscious (aware) of how you are doing (specifically, recording daily weight and daily exercise) on your way to reaching your goal within twelve to eighteen months.

Based on your awareness of your daily weight and exercise and your great motivation to marry your Good Man, you will immediately adjust your intake of food or your output of exercise when the scale says you have gained weight or the exercise columns show two or three blank days in a row. When you are aware that your weight and exercise habits need adjust ing, your great motivation won’t let you accept the situation. Being aware of your power to choose, you will do the right thing. Older Sister trusts you.

Exercise and Eating Tips

Before I wrap up this chapter with a few helpful hints, I want to emphasize the element of awareness just one more time because it is so critically im portant to your weight loss success. If you stay aware of your weight and your exercise levels, you will be successful. Even if your weight and exercise results are not good for a day, still faithfully record the results. If, over a ten day period, you gain seven pounds and do no exercise, continue to record your weight and exercise every day. Hey, no one is perfect. You’ll have lapses. You’ll occasionally backslide and get lazy. However, if you continue to stay conscious of both your weight and exercise, and continue to post monthly snapshots on the fridge, your great motivation to achieve beauty, love, and marriage will lead you to your goals.

Now, I’d like to leave you with a few tips for success. The Asian Geisha Younger Sister learns tips from her Older Sister by actually accompanying the Older Sister to work and observing firsthand how the Older Sister en ters a room, converses with clients, offers to pour drinks, or bids good-bye. Dear Younger Sister, I was alone and without an Older Sister as I struggled SSA text Q4pc.qxd 9/26/2006 9:50 PM Page 151 A Plan to Achieve Your Best Weight—and Maintain It! * 151 to figure out how to lose weight and how to attract and to interact with men. Though I cannot be with you except in spirit, I want you to avoid struggle. I want you to enjoy becoming more beautiful, feminine, and healthy, and to enjoy the pursuit of and marriage to a Good Man.

If you are already married or in a committed relationship, let your part ner know what you are doing about your exercise and eating, and seek his support. Let him know that his love and support inspire you to develop better exercise and eating habits.

EXERCISE TIPS

An exercise plan of whatever type (since it burns calories) is necessary to balance your eating plan of whatever type (since it supplies calories). Again, I am leaving it to you to determine both your specific exercise plan and your specific eating plan. Many books, classes, and videos are available to guide you. The American Geisha Plan only requires that you record your weight and the exercise activities you complete each day.

Exercise can make you feel so good. Rich and I live in a one-bedroom, 687-square-foot condominium. We exercise at home, using a workout bench, a stair-stepper, a sit-up machine, an electric jogging machine, a large exercise ball, two bicycles (kept on our patio), a pull-up bar, and a yoga mat for floor exercises, as well as various free weights. My point is you don’t need much space to be able to exercise at home. Sure, it is cramped. But we are much better at exercising at home than we are at finding the time and motivation to drive to a gym. We’re even a little bit proud that both our living room and bedroom seem more like “gym rooms.” Consider investing in some exercise equipment you will enjoy using, even if it crowds the space you live in (you can find room for it). If you can develop a regular, consis tent exercise regimen, and if you change it occasionally to keep it fresh and motivating, you’ll take a major step toward achieving your most beautiful, ideal weight.

Exercise has been proven to produce pleasure-inducing endorphins in the brain, enhance mood, and boost confidence and self-esteem. It helps you overcome negative body image, aiding you in accepting and loving the body you have even as you sculpt yourself into the art piece that you want your body to become.

Here is a list of pointers for developing good exercise habits:

• At any time—perhaps at the end of each month—consider changing some of your exercises to help keep things fresh, new, and moti vating.
  
• You have plenty of time to exercise. Do it instead of watching TV or overeating.
  
• Struggling with an urge to overeat? Go for a brisk walk instead.
  
• Difficult feelings? Don’t eat—exercise! A vigorous workout like kickboxing is great for letting off steam and boosting mood, and yoga works well for reducing anxiety and learning to relax.
  
• Even a minute or two or three of free time can be turned into push ups, sit-ups, stretching. Do it several times a day and your exercise chart will fill up with meaningful levels of activity.
  
• A study at Vanderbilt University, in Nashville, Tennessee, found that “hearty laughter” burned 160 calories per hour and boosted me tabolism by as much as 20 percent, so watch sitcoms. I don’t know that you could count it toward your daily exercise goals, but con sider it a bonus.
  
• If you exercise consistently, you may be able to raise your resting metabolic rate, which can help you to burn more calories even when you are not exercising.
  
• Learn to love exercise for its own sake. When you make the choice to exercise, you gain feelings of control over your life, you feel better physically (more alert, more toned, more aware of your sexy animal body), and you feel better psychologically (“runner’s high” isn’t limited to runners but can be enjoyed by all exercisers). Plus you’re taking a concrete step toward reaching your ideal weight, one of the goals in your plan to achieve beauty, love, and marriage within twelve to eighteen months. What’s not to love about all that?