The 20/20 Diet (4 page)

t a crap diet. It is seriously flawed because it goes against human

nature. And then you feel guilty for behaving precisely the way nature

has programmed you. That guilt (for behaving normally) crowds out

motivation and self-confidence and damages your personal truth, and

that’s when the slide begins.
Result: Failure.

14 | The 20/20 Diet

With this plan, I’ve got to get you to where you don’t feel imprisoned

by constant, gnawing hunger. This is not rocket science—when you

get natural y hungry, you need to have something to eat. Apparently

nobody has real y bothered to think about the fact that you simply can-

not go hungry on a diet! The first thing you will learn is how to dis-

tinguish between actual, physical hunger (defined as your body’s true

need for nutrition) and “mind hunger,” which is real y jus
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t a response to

a trigger, emotional or otherwise. This is fundamental: you must tune

in to your body and its needs and, as I have said, respond to emotional

needs emotional y and physical needs physical y. Once you’ve identi-

fied which needs are which and learned to respond accordingly, you’ve

fought 90 percent of the battle. I will give you my Hunger and Ful ness

Scale, which is an essential tool to help you recognize whether your

body real y needs food or if you’re just experiencing fake hunger in reaction to a trigger or out of habit. If it’s the latter, I’ll also show you how to keep from giving in and sabotagin
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g yourself.

As for nutrition, it’s likely you will need to reduce your current por-

tions in order to lose weight. But reducing your portions from the gar-

gantuan sizes you (and the rest of America, by the way) might be eating

now to a proper, healthy, weight-loss–inducing size does not mean you

have to be hungry. Why? Because it’s not just about eating less; it’s about eating more of the
right
foods. That’s why the dietitians that helped design this plan have looked at the latest theories and emerging research to find foods for this program that can help you feel ful er at mealtime and sustain tha
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t feeling after you’ve eaten. When you’re feeling true,

physical hunger, rest assured, you will have plenty to eat on this plan.

Result: Success.

Cravings

If you were a drug addict and you quit cold turkey, you’d experience

wit
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hdrawals. As you are starting this diet, you are very likely addicted

to other types of “drugs”: sugar, simple carbohydrates, salt, or fat.

But you weren’t born craving a Twinkie or a bag of greasy chips. You

learned
that palate. Here’s the bright side: I believe anything you can learn, you can
un
learn.

What Makes This Diet Different | 15

Certain diets simply don’t address that! They just throw you in

the deep end and don’t teach you how to swim. They expect you to

quit all your food addictions cold turkey and give you no plan or hope

for dealing with the cravings you will go through. Then it’s only a

matter of time until you give in, and guess what? Rebellion. Before

you know it, you’re making your third trip to the 24-hour conve-

nience store to get some “convenient” food (translation: y
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ou can eat

it like a wood chipper grinding up balsa wood and give yourself a

gut bomb you couldn’t process in a week). Or maybe you find your-

self waking up in the middle of the night and walking, zombie-like,

into the kitchen for a colossal pig-out session. You’re like those

gremlins in that movie who went nuts when they ate after mid-

night! Just like a drug addict, you feel defenseless against your ever-

increasing need for a fix.
Result: Failure.

They don’t tell you in other diets that you’re most likely going to

have some withdrawals at first, but i
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f you just bear down for a few

days, they should diminish. Whether your addictions are psychologi-

cal or physiological, they should diminish. But by not explaining this

to you, they leave you feeling hopeless, like there’s no end in sight.

There was a study done years ago in which researchers told one group

of subjects they were going to introduce a painful stimulus until they

were through with the test, and then they’d get $10 for their trouble.

They told another group the same thing,
except
that there was a panic button they could hit at any time so if the pain became too much,

they could stop i
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t. Well, the group who knew they were in control of

when it would stop could take four or five times more pain than the

other group who were just promised a reward in the end. The same is

true with your cravings.

In this plan, I’m going to help you get over your cravings by giving

you specific foods to help ease them, and I’m going to give you specific food
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s to help ease your cravings for junk food. You have learned to

like those unhealthy foods, but you
can
change your palate. Once that happens, you’ll look back and think, “OMG, I can’t believe I was eating

that!” That morning pastry you used to think was terrific will taste like you just bit into a hunk of lard that’s so sweet it’s sickening. I will try to help you get to that point through powerful insight
and
encouraging 16 | The 20/20 Diet

you to eat certain foods that are at least categorical y related to your craving so that you can satisfy that need in the interim.
Result: Success.

Feelings of restriction

Certain diets have lists (long ones!) of “taboo” foods—ones that you

absolutely, categorically, cannot eat no matter what. Simply stated,

that tactic leads to rebellion. Here’s how it usually play
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s out: You feel

restricted, like you’re stuck on this unbearable diet forever and you’ll never be allowed to eat a piece of bread or a steak ever again in your

life. Then you feel sorry for yourself, like you’re being punished, like you can’t go out with friends, enjoy the holidays, or go on a vacation.

It’s as though all the fun has been removed from your life—like you’re

missing out on everything because you’re “on a diet.” And that’s when

the first seeds of rebellion begin to take root in your mind.

When your diet makes certain foods taboo, you may actually feel a

heightened sense of excitement whe
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n you indulge in them, like you’re

doing something “naughty.” You think, “Shhh, don’t tell anyone, but

I’m eating a cupcake!” and then you gobble it up and enjoy that rush

of breaking the rules. Just like a recalcitrant teenager seeking a thrill, you rebel against the harsh restrictions of your diet and quickly return to all your bad habits.
Result: Failure.

To keep you from staging a rebellion against this plan, I knew I

couldn’t strap you with mile-long lists of “no-no” foods that are strictly forbidden, because all you’d want to do is rebel anyway. Instead, I

want you to kno
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w that losing weight does not require perfection or

absolutes. No one can achieve perfection, and if you go in thinking

that’s the goal, you’ll fail. What my plan requires is excellence. By that I mean that you’re on track
most
of the time, not every second of every day. Yes, you must recognize that weight loss requires a willingness

to change and an open mind. But it does not mean you must never

agai
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n eat certain foods. In fact, I created a system for safe splurging

on this plan, one that won’t leave you feeling guilty. You’re going to set a new pattern for yourself and the way you eat—but we’re looking at

a pattern across time. It’s not the end of the world if you step outside the bounds a little every now and then, and because it’s not, you won’t

automatically seek to rebel against the plan.
Result: Success.

What Makes This Diet Different | 17

Impracticality and expense

When I pick up the newspaper and read a headline like, “Shocking

Tragedy: Man Inexplicably Mauled by Pet Wolf, Raised from a Pup,”

I have to shake my head and wonder, “Did they really just use ‘pet’ and

‘wolf’ in the same sentence and it’s ‘shocking’ the guy was attacked?”

Come on, people. Wolves have been carnivorous predators for cen-

turies, and some arrogant fool finds a wolf pup, raises i
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t, teaches it

tricks, and then one day he comes home a few minutes late, the wolf

is famished, and suddenly the fool becomes dinner. Why? Because

there is a tendency for all organisms to drift back to their norm. That

wolf has deep-rooted instincts, and he’s going to act on them when he

deems it necessary.

We humans have core defining habits, values, beliefs, and behav-

iors that are also deeply entrenched. Sure, we can be pulled over to

a new position, but we are going to start drifting back. Therefore, if

your diet requires you to do somethin
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g that is seriously divergent from

your life pattern—if, all of a sudden, you can’t eat with your family or go out to restaurants, you have to eat at odd times that don’t fit your

schedule, and so on—you are going to drift back to what is deeply

entrenched. It’s called “instinctual drift.”

It’s a concept that applies not just to what we eat, but also to exercise.

In my case, for example, if you want to get me to exercise, bal et is not the way to go. That’s so outside of my norm—I mean, can you see me

in pointe shoes and a tutu? Not going to happen. But if you give me the

option to compet
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e in a sport involving a game and a ball of some sort,

where someone’s keeping score, now that appeals to my competitive

nature and macho upbringing. That’s where you need to meet me—on

the tennis court—not in hot yoga or Pilates. Likewise, diets that force

you far outside of your norm might work for a week, maybe two, but

very quickly you are going to drift back into what you know.

D
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iets also don’t work if they are so demanding that they seem to

take over your busy life. If you’re supposed to drink a special elixir

the moment you wake up, memorize lists of what you can and can’t

eat, and then juggle Tupperware containers all day with “mini-meals”

that you weighed and calculated, you might as well quit your day job,

because your diet becomes practically a full-time job! Or maybe you’re

18 | The 20/20 Diet

required to purchase expensive workout equipment (red flag) for a

regimen that a US Army infantryman could barely follow! If a diet

becomes an all-consuming obsession that doesn’t fit into your already

busting-at-the-seams (pun intended) life, it simply can’t be sustained.

Result: Failure.

If I’m going to prevent you from drifting back to the norm that’s

keeping you overweight and address this problem of im
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practicality,

then I’ve got to give you a well-rounded plan that you can tailor to the flow of your life pattern. Look, I know your days move at a lightning

pace—you’re in a perpetual state of go, go, go and there still aren’t

enough hours to get it all done. You’re not even sure if you locked

the front door, much less if you added up all the fat grams in your

breakfast correctly. So, I’m not going to give you impractical, time-

consuming diet to-do lists that you can’t sustain and that will cause

you to rebel. Instead, I’ll give you 30-second strategies, quick-prep

meals, and even exercise routines th
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at are fast and efficient so every-

thing can be easily integrated into your agenda. I’ve also taken math

out of the equation; on this plan, you don’t have to add up calories,

fat, sugar, carbs, or anything else. You’ll learn by doing—eating the

recommended meals and amounts of food in this plan can help you

adapt to the right portions and recognize how much food you should

be eating. The foods are easy to find and prepare, and you’ll even

know how to order when you’re eating out.

But let me be clear: if you have fallen into a lifestyle pattern that

is defined by f

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ood, if you truly live to eat, if you always have fattening

foods at your fingertips, and you never break a sweat unless it’s from

reaching into the back of the pantry for your candy stash, well, your

lifestyle is going to have to change. You have to be willing to make

your health a priority. I’m not going to tell you that you can have your cake and eat it too. I’m simply saying this plan helps you effect positive cha
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nge in a practical way.

This plan is also understandable and easy to follow; it’s manage-

able even for your hectic life. But it will fly in the face of the permeating logic that the only way to lose weight is to eat next to nothing

and avoid carbs (because they’re the devil, right?). I’m going to tell you things that are easy to understand and implement, as well as provide

What Makes This Diet Different | 19

you with information about new weight loss theories and emerging

science to help you meet your weight loss goals.
Result: Success.

Boredom