The 20/20 Diet (11 page)

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Create Accountability

Next, you need to identify someone, or several people, to whom you can

be accountable. You should tell them a
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bout your goal, your timeline for

achieving it, and the steps you’re taking so that you can check in with

them on a weekly basis and update them on how you’re progressing.

You should also feel comfortable enough with the person or people

that you can call on them if you’re feeling frustrated or if you want

to share and celebrate milestones along the way. This can be a trusted

friend, a family member, a spouse, or anyone close to you.

Below, list the person or people to whom you will be accountable:

My Partner(s) in
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Accountability

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Congratulations on creating this imperative strategy for identify-

ing and reaching your goal.
Knowing
what you want is the first step toward
getting
what you want, and it creates a positive momentum toward making it real. You’re making some serious headway.

60 | The 20/20 Diet

Clean Up Your Environment

Imagine a scenario with me. You’re sitting in a room, and this room

has wall-to-wall zebra rugs, a zebra-stripe pattern on every inch of

wallpaper and on every chair, there are photos of zebras on the wall,

sounds of the Serengeti are playing in the room, and when you look

out the window, a herd of zebras walk by. Literally all o
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f your senses

are being bombarded with a zebra message.

And then imagine that I ask you to think about something, any-

thing . . . except zebras. What are you going to think about? If you

didn’t say zebras, you’re not paying attention! It would take a lot of

concentration and blocking out of your immediate surroundings in

order to think about something other than a four-legged animal with

black and white stripes.

That is an abundantly obvious example, but let me ask you this:

If all of your senses were being satu
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rated with images and smells of

all the crap foods that led to your weight gain, why
would
you do anything other than think about them, salivate over them, and ultimately eat them? Asking yourself not to eat junk food when you are

surrounded by it is practically a form of torture.

Overweight people, as a general rule, tend to be externally con-

trolled—more so than people of average weight. For example, if two

groups of people, one overweight and one of average weight, were

served lunch that clearly wasn’t enough food, but they were told there

was more food i
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n the fridge if they wanted it, which group do you

think would go and get more food? The answer might surprise you.

The people of average weight are more likely to get more food because

they hadn’t had enough to feel satisfied. They are controlled by inter-

nal stimuli, physical hunger. Because the overweight group is exter-

nally controlled, they eat what is there and stop. They likely wouldn’t

se
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ek more from the fridge. But if the two groups were served a massive

amount of food (think “family style” meal), who is more likely to con-

tinue eating until every plate is licked clean? The overweight group,

because they see the food in front of them and so they continue to eat

way past the point of being full.

Set the Right Goal | 61

Many of the decisions you’re making about what you eat probably

have to do with reactions to some kind of external stimuli. You see the

candy in the jar on the counter, and even though you weren’t think-

ing about candy—you weren’t even thinking about
eating
(since you weren’t experiencing physical hunger)—what do you do? You open the

jar, grab a handful, and pop it in your mouth—maybe without even

realizing you did it. You reacted to a visual stimulus. It’s
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as basic as

that. And the fix is just as basic. Remove the stimulus and replace it

with a healthy alternative.

Notice I said remove it
and
replace it. It’s not enough just to clear the house out of all junk food because eventually you are going to get

hungry, and when you do, if there’s literally nothing to eat except a

jar of year-old pickles and some stale crackers, you’re probably going

to return to old habits and hit the drive-thru or order a pizza. Instead, you have to replace the unhealthy choices with healthy ones.

Listen, I can cure obesity, smoking
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, and alcoholism with 100 per-

cent efficiency. No kidding! If you’re smoking four packs a day and I

parachute you into the Antarctic with no tobacco, guess what? You’re

cured. Right? Control the environment and you can eliminate these

problems. If you don’t have access to the substance, you can’t abuse it.

The reason food addiction is more difficult to manage than alco-

hol or smoking is because you
must
interact with food. You don’t ever have to interact again with alcohol or tobacco, but food—well, it’s

pretty basic for survival. But you can still program your environment

so you don’t rel
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y on emotions for your food decisions. If you wake

up in the middle of the night craving potato chips, it’s pretty hard

to give in and eat them if they’re not there. Sure, you could get up,

get dressed, drive down to the convenience store, and buy some, but

that’s a lot harder than just walking into the kitchen and bingeing. So

you’ve got to set up your environment so in those moments when you

don’
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t feel strong, or your commitment is waning, your environment

props you up.

Since I first discussed the concept of a “no-fail environment”

in
The Ultimate Weight Solution
, the definition of “environment”

has expanded significantly. Sure, you still live, work, and play

in physical spaces. But as technology has exploded and become

62 | The 20/20 Diet

more readily available to an enormous cross section of society,

our “space” now extends to cyberspace. Think of all the millions

of times you might be exposed to messages relating to food: in

e-mail, on social media, when surfing the web, and so on. Whether

it’s in the form of online advertising or friends posting images of

their colossal dessert, it can be overwhelming. There’s even a trend

called “food porn” where people apparently post phot
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os of drool-

worthy foods online. Not to mention what you’re watching on TV,

looking at on your e-reader, or staring at in magazines! Our society is

food obsessed, but
you
don’t have to be.

So, let’s investigate all the areas of your life that are crying out for you to convert to no-fail environments. The first step is to identify

your cues. What are your “candy jar on the counter” stimuli? Here are

some examples of cues that might often cause you to eat even when

you are not physically hungry:

Common Food Cues

 Fast-food restaurants along yo
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ur common routes

 Cooking or food-centered TV shows

 Images of food on social media/photo-sharing sites

 TV and Internet commercials

 Vending machines

 Seeing foods in the fridge, freezer, pantry, etc.

 Billboard
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s advertising restaurants or foods

 Magazine advertisements

 Certain foods or drinks that typically cause cravings

 Smells of food emanating from restaurants

 Birthday parties or gatherings of any kind

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 Being in places where you have typically allowed yourself to

“pig out” in the past

Some or all of these may apply to you, or you might have other

cues. Take a moment to analyze your own external food cues. Of

course you cannot remove every single cue from your life. There are,

Set the Right Goal | 63

however, many simple changes you can make to reduce the number of

cues you experience on a daily basis. The most obvious one is clearing

your kitchen of processed junk foods like chips, candy, soda, white

bread, sugary cereal, pastries—you get the point! If it’s something that will call out your name and tempt you to the point of you losing control, then it needs to go.

I’ve always said, the McGraw men are tough: we c
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an handle

anything except pain and temptation. Sound familiar? It’s OK—

most people are that way. If something hurts, they quit. If some-

thing’s available, they start. So if you go home and your environ-

ment is chock-full of your personal poison, you are going to fail.

This is why I don’t recommend alcoholics go get jobs as bartenders.

I mean, come on. Even Homer Simpson could figure that one out!

Isn’t the same true for you? If you are a recovering obesity patient

or just looking to achieve a healthy weight, we don’t need you going

into (or living in) a target-rich impuls
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e food environment.

This extends outside your home too. If there’s a fast-food joint

you pass on the way to work every day and it instantly puts you in

a state of milkshake dreams, you might need to find a new route,

even if it adds a few minutes to your commute. Or you might

need to remove a friend from your social media accounts if he or

she constantly tempts you with food references. Hey, it’s nothing

against her. Instead, add people who enhance what you’re doing

by posting their exercise routines or giving healthy ideas for meals.

And if you’re “ad
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dicted” to the latest show about decadent foods

but by the final credits you’ve consumed approximately 10,000

empty calories, it might be time to install parental controls on that

TV to keep
yourself
from tuning in. So I’m asking you to identify your external food cues, and then come up with ways to reduce

your exposure to them.

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n the next chapter, you’ll find a clear list of foods with which

you should stock your kitchen so that you have the right options to

reach for when your stomach starts growling. As we know, hungry

people will eventually eat (as they should!), and I want you to be

prepared with the
right
foods.

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“But What Will My Kids Eat?”

If you’re worried about clearing out the kitchen of all the crap and

thinking, “My kids aren’t on a diet; I can’t expect them to give up

their favorites and eat this healthy stuff,” this is my response: That

is a higher form of parental insanity. You weren’t bor
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n craving

high-fat, high-sugar junk food. Your palate has
learned
to crave those foods. So now you’re going to start training your kids’ palates by gorging them with high-fat, high-sugar, and high-sodium

foods so that becomes the norm for them too? If you do that,

you’re setting them up for complete failure.

As our country’s obesity crisis grows, kids are anything but

excluded. In fact, according to the Centers for Disease Control and

Prevention, in the past three decades, childhood obesity has doubled

and obesity in adolescents has more t
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han
tripled
. More than one third

of the kids in this country are overweight or obese. To me, that’s just a tragedy. And of the overweight or obese children, 80 percent of them

grow up to be overweight and obese adults. Why don’t you take a guess

at how much that costs us in additional medical costs? The answer is

$190 bil ion.

I want to make you urgently aware of the fact that you are

imprinting in your children’s minds what their relationship with food

should resemble, and you are setting up habits for them that they

will carry throu
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gh the
rest of their lives
. Twenty years from now, do

you want them to be in the same boat you are right now? Do you

want them to struggle with their weight, suffer through bul ying, or

even get diagnosed with a life-threatening disease? Of course not! You

don’t let your kids sit around and smoke cigarettes all day, do you? So

why would you feed them what amounts to poison on a daily basis?

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f you teach your kids to choose a bowl of berries for dessert instead

of an enormous ice cream sundae, that’s a pattern they will continue