The 20/20 Diet (2 page)

How about you? Are you ready? Has
your
time come? Is this the

moment that you will look back on and say, “I can tell yo
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u exactly the

moment I decided enough was enough. The exact moment I decided

I was not going to take this from myself anymore. The exact moment

I claimed my right to become master of my body and my mind and

create the results I so desperately wanted, yet cheated myself out of.”

I believe we all come to critical junctures in life, when we are at a

precipice where all things wrong can be made right. Let this be your

moment in time. The past is over, the future hasn’t happened yet, the

only time is right now. This can be your threshold moment of change.

The next year of your life is going t
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o go by whether you’re doing some-

thing about your weight or not. Now, think about what I just said: the

next year is going to go by. You cannot stop the march of time. Choose

denial and you will just get bigger and bigger. Ply yourself with too-

good-to-be-true schemes and you will just get bigger and bigger.

Don’t let days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and

months turn into years while you sit around not doing something that

you are fully and totally capable of doing. You can do this! I promise

you that you can, even if you have doubts. Since the next year of your

life is going t

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o go by whether you are doing something about your

weight or not, now is the time to get started.

I’m not going to insult your intelligence by blowing smoke at you

and telling you it will be automatic or even what you might call easy. If I did, you would know better in your heart of hearts, even if you chose

to believe me. So instead of conning you or helping you con yourself,

I wa
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nt you to know right up front that, just as my nephew did, you’re

going to have to change several aspects of your life. This does not

mean that you will feel like you are in prison or being punished with

hunger and deprivation, but there will be big changes. When you’re

ready, and I mean really ready, to make the necessary changes, you’ll

be surprised how doable it all is.

Introduction | 3

First, you’re going to have to
stop using food for anything other than
nutrition
. You cannot continue to use food to celebrate, or as a companion, or for entertainment, or comfort. You cannot medicate your-

self, your mood, or pain with food.

It is a simple but profound resolve: let’s agree to deal with psy-

chological problems psychologically, medical problems medically, and

social problems socially. Come on, let’s be real. If some schm
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uck broke

your heart because you caught him sexting with some Silicone Sally

from work, you know you can’t fix it by bonding with Ben and Jerry!

(By the way, you probably already knew he was a schmuck.)

My point is, you aren’t overweight because you use food; you are

overweight, at least in part, because you
misuse
food. Cheese puffs won’t fix your problems. I wish they could; I would go into the cheese

puffs business and become a billionaire! You need to eat to live, not

live to eat. You need to feed your body, not your fat. Even dumb ani-

mals do it! Think about it: Have you ev
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er,
ever
seen a
fat
coyote? How

about a fat mountain lion? No, you have not! They are hunters, good

hunters, and they eat what they
need
and go do whatever it is coyotes and mountain lions do. Mountain lions don’t go and eat an extra deer

because the cat in the next tree has a prettier coat of fur or was hang-

ing out with
her
tomcat.

Next resolve: you’ve got to
stop being a sucker
! People can tell you, “Eat everything you want and lose weight!” Come on, really?!

Or they’ll tell you about the new fad “kumquat soup diet” or “cab-

bage and cardboar
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d diet.” If you believe all of that, then you are a

“Double D”: dumb and desperate. That is the wrong kind of Double

D. You know better. You know the truth when you hear it, right?

The truth is, you have to be willing to make some changes and, yes,

you have to be willing to make some sacrifices. Unless and until you

stop using food for anything other than nutrition and stop believing

info
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mercial hype, you’re not going to lose weight and create habits

that can help keep it off. Sorry! It doesn’t matter if you do this diet

or 10 others: if you don’t get real with yourself, you simply will not

have the results you deserve.

Also critical to this mission is honing in on the mistakes and mis-

steps of your past. As the old saying goes, hindsight is 20/20. We all

4 | The 20/20 Diet

see things more clearly the morning after. There’s a reason Monday

morning quarterbacks have all the answers—they’ve got the benefit

of having already seen the whole game! That’s exactly what you and I

need to do, because the mistakes you’ve made over the years hold the

clues to getting it right this time. Let’s also look beyond your own setbacks at some of the common reasons other people fail on diets. I am

confident that you will see yourself reflected somewher
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e in that list,

and you will finally understand why you haven’t been able to succeed

at losing weight despite your numerous attempts.

Then I want you to take it a step further and have
foresight
that is 20/20. It may be hard for you to imagine how your life will change,

because it’s a goal you’ve only ever dreamed of in the abstract. But

you must have a clear vision of what it will look, smell, taste, and feel like when you proudly cross the finish line. Or, more accurately, the

starting line, because it’s the beginning of an entirely new landscape

for you when you look and feel the w
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ay you deserve.

Let’s get specific. How will it feel when you aren’t fighting your

clothes all day because they actually fit? And what emotions will you

experience when you see your new body reflected in the mirror? How

will your relationship with your family change when you’re able to

keep up with the kids at the park or simply get your chores done with-

out becoming out of breath? Let’s get right down to how every detail

of your day-to-day life will change and then follow that vision all the

way to reality by using the tools I’m giving you.

I’m bringin
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g this book out more than 10 years after my first

book on this same topic,
The Ultimate Weight Solution
. In that one, I talked about the “seven keys of weight loss freedom.” I’ve woven

all of them into the fabric of this diet, and (and this is an important

“and”) I have gone well beyond
The Ultimate Weight Solution
because emerging research and new theories provide new information about

ho
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w your body processes and reacts to food. As a result, this book

includes some new information and theories from bariatric research

(i.e., the study of obesity) that are important to the science of weight management.

You will be shocked at some of the revelations, especially those

involving genetics and biochemistry, because they may help explain

Introduction | 5

why, despite your best efforts, your body has been unwilling to shed

excess fat deposits. New research and theories have also yielded help-

ful information about certain common foods and specific exercise

patterns that I believe may be able to help you in your efforts to lose

weight. I’m excited about these new tools, and I think you will be too.

My goal is to bring you the newest information along with time-

proven keys for success. Paramount among those keys is “he
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aling feel-

ings.” That’s what I mean when I say you cannot use food for anything

other than nutrition. You’ve got to resolve your emotional needs rather

than react to them by eating. I repeat: you can’t deal with a psychological, social, financial, romantic, or any other kind of problem with food.

Another key is “right thinking.” If you don’t get your mind and

behavior right, you will never get your body right—you will never

lose the weight and adopt the lifelong behaviors needed to keep it off.

I’ve already started adjusting your thinking—by opening your eyes

to the idea that every pie-in-the-sky d
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iet or weight loss product on

the market isn’t the magical cure for your weight problem. I intend

to manipulate your thinking by showing you the truth about those

empty promises, those diet mirages that you keep chasing.

Have you ever seen an actual mirage? Plenty of times driving down

Texas roads on days so hot that even the trees are looking for shade,

I’ve seen what looks like a sparkling puddle of water on the asphalt

a little ways ahead of my car. But as I get closer to it, it vanishes. It’s called a highway mirage, and it’s an optical phenomenon caused by a

combination of th
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e hot air just above the road and a refraction of the

sun’s rays that create a mirror effect. Our brains fill in the blanks and tell us that there’s a puddle of water a hundred yards down the road.

It’s a false image, an illusion.

But it’s so convincing, right? I mean, this “water” is reflecting

oncoming traffic. It seems to have movement. It has all the qualities of a perf
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ectly good puddle, but in actuality, the ground is dry as can be.

How could your mind play a trick on you like that?

When you think about it, certain elements of the weight loss indus-

try aren’t so different from a mirage. Those advertisements you see for

pills, powders, systems, products, and programs that promise weight

loss without diet, exercise, or lifestyle changes are all very convincing.

6 | The 20/20 Diet

I’ll bet right off the top of your head, you can think of at least 10 different “miracle” products that claim to shrink waistlines, sculpt mus-

cles, or melt fat, many of which you’ve tried. They’re presented with

just enough pseudoscience to help your brain make the leap, fill in the

blanks, and buy into the illusion. It all sounds so technical, logical,

and real. So you press the “buy” button with the very best of inten-

tions, you try them out, and maybe you lose a few pounds
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, maybe you

don’t. (If you did lose some weight, it was probably a placebo effect

just from being focused on it for a while.) Either way, before you know

what happened, you’re right back where you started, or worse off with

some extra poundage hanging out around your waist or hips because

you had a false sense of security and ate anything that was dead or

seriously slowed down. Smoke, mirrors, and very clever (not to men-

tion expensive) marketing suckered you in. Again.

You’re not alone—far from it. Americans spend $61 billion each

year on weight loss products. This i
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s a $61 billion-a-year industry with

quite a few “miracle” products that don’t work! How is that possible?

If you had roller skates that wouldn’t skate, surfboards that wouldn’t

surf, and cars that wouldn’t drive, you would not continue to buy those

products. You’d be outraged! But diets that don’t work? No problem!

Millions of people line up to spend billions of dollars because they’re

desperate for the magic bullet easy fix.

Maybe you’re persuaded by one of those celebrities you see showing

off his or her new, svelte look while touting diet programs and weight

loss products o
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n TV commercials. Would you like to take a stab at

guessing how much they’re
paid
to lose that weight? The average range is probably between $500,000 and a cool $3 million. I’ll bet if someone

offered you a couple million bucks to lose weight, you’d pretty much

eat sawdust and chain yourself to the treadmill to earn that paycheck.

Until that offer comes your way, I want you to stop deluding your-

self
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. Those “miracle” weight loss products and programs you’ve been

using aren’t for weight loss; they’re gimmicks. You’ve been obsess-

ing about your weight and compulsively dieting, maybe for years.

Obsession is thought, compulsion is behavior, and we have a genera-

tion of obsessive-compulsive dieters. Why don’t we stop the insanity?

You need to be mature enough to recognize that weight goes on a lot

Introduction | 7

Listen to Your Gut

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), a government agency whose

motto is “Protecting America’s Consumers,” urges the media to have

their radar up for too-good-to-be-true weight loss scams. Before fea-

turing a weight loss product on the air, the FTC has asked that media

outlets consider seven “gut check claims,” which are stateme
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nts com-

monly made in bogus weight loss product ads. Unfortunately, not

everyone complies, and you’ll still see commercials, infomercials,

and TV segments on many products making these kinds of out-