The 20/20 Diet (9 page)

last a lifetime because when you set up your world and your relation-

ships to support your weight loss goal, you set yourself up for success

that lasts. As you start implementing this plan in your life, you’ll begin to take back control over your thoughts, your relationshi
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p with and

understanding of food and nutrition, important aspects of your lifestyle and environment, and your commitment to exercise. And ultimately, I

believe you’ll win back control over your weight.

What’s Your Excuse?

Let’s talk about your typical, go-to excuse when you’re trying to jus-

tify your bad behavior. When you’ve given yourself permission to eat

a large pizza, the whole plate of frie
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d mozzarella sticks, a ginormous

The Obesity Disease

The American Medical Association recently changed its definition

of obesity from a “complex disorder” or a “chronic condition” to that

of “disease requiring a range of medical interventions to advance

obesity treatmen
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t and prevention.” The medical experts are taking

this threat to public health extremely seriously, and so should you.

While I’m at it, I’d like to give you a quick rundown of the top

health conditions that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

lists as caused or aggravated by obesity: coronary heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, type 2 diabetes, cancers such as breast and colon,

live
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r and gal bladder disease, sleep apnea, respiratory problems, degen-

eration of cartilage and bone (osteoporosis), reproductive health com-

plications such as infertility, and mental health conditions.

Use your 20/20 foresight to think of your future self as you

make this decision to take your health seriously.

46 | The 20/20 Diet

soda, or any other variety of unhealthy food, how have you been jus-

tifying that self-defeating behavior?

I asked about people’s justifications for overeating or indulging in

unhealthy foods in the survey, and I’d like you to answer honestly too:

Rate the followìng justifications for overeating or indulging in

unhealthy foods in terms of how frequently, commonly
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, or intensely

you do it (where 1 = the least common/intense, and 10 = the most

common/intense method). For example, if you constantly tell

yourself you will burn off the extra calories, you might rate that

justification as a 9 or 10, whereas if you only occasionally use that

justification, you might give it a 2 or 3. Choose N/A for any

options that do not apply to you.

I tell myself . . .

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9 10 N/A

that I will burn off the

extra calories

that if others around me

can do it, so can I

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that it was peer pressure

that it’s worth it because

it tastes good

to live in the moment;

I’

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ll do better tomorrow

that I’m hungry or that I

physically need the food

that I can’t afford

healthier, fresh foods

Th
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e top three excuses people from our survey identified with the most

were:

1. I tell myself to live in the moment; I’ll do better tomorrow.

2. I tell myself it’s worth it because it tastes good.

3. I tell myself I’m hungry and I physically need the food.

Getting Out of Your Own Way | 47

Take a moment to think about all the lies you’ve told yourself in

the past, all the ways you gave yourself permission to engage in bad

behavior. Isn’t it amazing how easily you can cheat yourself out of the

right
choices by convincing yourself that you “deserve” the
wrong
ones?

It’s highly il ogical when you think about it. You deserve a better life, you deserve better health, and you deserve to lose weight. But in the

moment, you’re reacting to a trigger, so you convince yoursel
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f that you

“deserve” the pizza and beer. In your mind, you’re cal ing it a reward

when, in actuality, it is a punishment. You’ll tell yourself something,

anything
, in order to make it OK for you to have momentary pleasure.

It’s time to stop these self-defeating patterns. The next time you

find yourself drooling over some ridiculously inappropriate food choice, take control of your thoughts. Replace the excuse to indulge with a rational thought from this list or one of your own so you have a clear-cut

strategy when you have a moment of weakness:

 Choices I make now will impac

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t my future. I will turn down this

temptation now so that I don’t regret my decision later.

 The payoff of instant gratification isn’t enough for me any-

more. I care too much about reaching my goals to sacrifice

them for something that tastes good in a fleeting moment.

 If I’m genuinely experiencing physical hunger, I will eat some-

thing from this plan to hold me over until the next mealtime.

What’s Your Rout
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ine?

If I asked you about your food routine, what would you say? Do you even

have one? Or is eating more like a haphazard, “grab ’n go,” stuff some-

thing in your face when it’s convenient scenario most days of the week?

Many of the overweight patients I’ve worked with and counseled

over t
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he years report that they pretty much eat whatever is around,

whenever they can. But the
lack
of a purposeful routine is still a routine.

It’s not a healthy one and it’s not one that lends itself to weight loss, but it’s a routine nonetheless. And it actual y could be a huge factor in your current weight problem, because the latest theories indicates that
when
(or how often) we eat is just as important as
what
we eat.

48 | The 20/20 Diet

For one full day, write down everything that goes in your mouth.

From the coffee with cream and sugar in the car to the handful of

chocolate candies at work, the chicken nuggets you grabbed at the

drive-thru to the bag of chips you inhaled while watching a sitcom;

write it
all
down. You can record it in a food journal, in your phone, a spiral notebook, or a collection of Post-it notes. You should eat like you normally do on an average day; the only thing that’
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s different is

that you’ll record it and keep that record.

To make this even more useful, you’re also going to write down the

time that you ate the foods and a little information about what you were thinking about when you ate them. If you weren’t thinking at al , you can just write “nothing”—that’s fine. Or if you ate as a response to hunger

and all you were thinking about was that you were absolutely famished,

write “famished.” Alternatively, if you’re thinking about how stressed out, pissed off, or exhausted you are, say so. All of it is very useful data.

This exercise is going to provide y
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ou with a world of information.

It will reveal to you what kind of
value
you are assigning to your food currently. I’ll get into that more later, but for right now, make a pact with yourself that, starting when you wake up tomorrow, you will

record everything that you consume.

When the chart is filled in, look at your results. Do you notice a

pattern? Are you coming to realize that more of your food choices are

based on an emotion, a trigger, or just pure habit rather than a physi-

cal need to eat? Or did you let yourself get so hungry that by the time

you finally ate, y
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ou severely overate?

My One-Day Food Journal

Time of Day

Food or Drink

What I’m Thinking About

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Getting Out of Your Own Way | 49

We’re going to look at these habits and trends in more depth a

little later, but for now, this is a great starting point for acknowledging your routine—one that we will change together.

Are You Ready? (Or Just Pretending?)

Do you want to be thinner but aren’t willing to give up yo
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ur favorite

foods? You’d love to be healthier but exercise is out of the question?

Are you still thinking, “I suppose I’ll get around to losing weight at

some point down the road”? If those thoughts ring true, then you are

not ready and there is little or nothing that I can say to convince you

to get ready at this point.

If, however, you have hit rock bottom and you know there is

no option anymore, you are ready to throw out your old ways that

weren’t working and make immediate, necessary changes to achieve

your goal.

Life rewards action. Stop thinkin
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g about losing weight and take

action. Now is the time to get out of your chair and into the game,

because life won’t wait around for you to make up your mind.

In the next chapter, you will make a plan for achieving your goals

and then, watch out world, you’re on a mission and no one can stop

you!

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50 | The 20/20 Diet

4

SET THE RIGHT GOAL

To map out a course of action and follow it to an end requir
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es courage.

—
Ralph Waldo Emerson

Setting the right goal in the right way is imperative. In
The Ultimate
Weight Solution
, I talked about defining your “get-real weight,”

and I coined that term for two reaso
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ns.

First, you have to get real about what is safe and achievable for

you. If you’re a six-foot-tall woman with broad, swimmer’s shoulders

and quadriceps thicker than most tree trunks and you want to weigh

125 pounds like all of your pint-sized friends, you would be setting an

unrealistic, unhealthy, and likely unachievable goal weight.

You also have to get real about your target weight from a psycho-

logical perspective. You can’t just pluck a number from thin air that

you want to see on the scale because you’ll set yourself right back on

the loopty loop y
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ou know all too well. Think about your relationship

with your body and set goals toward liking it, being proud of it,

accepting it for all of your God-given uniqueness, and treating it with

respect and love. You will experience a psychological shift in how you

feel about your body as you go through the steps in this program.

Wa
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tch Your Transformation

People are posting selfies all over the Internet these days, but I’m asking you to take a selfie that is for your eyes only. We already know

how powerful it can be to look at the past, and we know you’ve got

51

to clearly envision all that lies ahead. Now let’s create markers to help you track your progress and pave your route.

Take a “before” photo of yourself when you start this plan, and

then take photos at the end of each week so that you can watch the

physical transformation occurring. You see yourself in the mirror

every day, which can make it easy to miss physical changes, so that’s

where the photos come in very handy for continued motiva
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tion.

Also, take some simple starting measurements. Stand up straight

and don’t suck in or push out your stomach; just keep it neutral. Don’t

flex your muscles either. You want to get an accurate, neutral reading

for all of these. As you progress through the plan, take the same mea-

surements and record them in the chart below to help you track your

progress and keep you motivated. You’ll likely notice an improvement

overall in muscle tone and your physical shape.

The point is not to obsess over these numbers. Again, these are

simply opportunities to gauge your pr
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ogress and pat yourself on the

back as you feel pride over creating positive results.

Starting

After

After

After

Measurements

Phase 1

Phase 2

Phase 3

Weight in pounds

Around waist at

belly button

Around low

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er abdomen

(just above hips)

Around hips at

widest area

Ar

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ound widest part

of upper arms

Around widest part

of thighs

52 | The 20/20 Diet

Waist Circumference Warning

Quite a bit of research has been done in the area of measuring

risk factors for cardiometabolic diseases such as diabetes, hyper-

tension, and coronary heart disease, and one very simple way to

determine your own risk is to look at your waist meas
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urement.

In general, if you are a woman and your waist circumfer-

ence is greater than 35 inches around, or if you’re a man and it’s

greater than 40 inches around, then you are at an increased risk