The Petite Advantage Diet (3 page)

BOOK: The Petite Advantage Diet
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2.
My work is research-based. Almost everything I will tell you to do in this plan is supported by research. If something I say is what I call a “Karasism”–an observation or experience that is not supported by research, but rather by my own results–I will tell you.

 

3.
I’m not going to rest until you are a success. The word “tenacious” has been used to describe me for as long as I can remember. I won’t let you quit; I won’t let you get discouraged; I won’t let you stay at a weight at which you are not happy. As your guide, I will get you to your ultimate destination.

 

4.
I’ve been there. I was an overweight child and young adult. I know how hard it is just to get started, and then actually to stick with a plan. But I also know how amazing it feels to take back control over your mind and body.

 

So, here it is, just for you. This is the first comprehensive weight-loss plan specifically written for Petites. The key to this plan’s success is putting it all together, which I will help you do. Many of the tips in this book offer just a
slight
increase in metabolism (like drinking tea and spicing up your food), or just a
few
extra calories burned (by exercising in the most effective way and getting out of your chair), or an
optimized
hormonal balance for weight loss (through sleep and reduced stress). While many researchers have historically downplayed the effects of these simple techniques on weight loss, for Petites, every possible additional calorie burned is essential to success. It’s a bit like compound interest; a little here and a little there and you end up “the millionaire next door.” My goal is to make you the “skinny-mini bitch” next door.

 
 
 
CHAPTER
1
SELFISH IS GOOD!

I
s that the first time you have ever heard that phrase? I believe wholeheartedly in being selfish when it comes to caring for yourself and I also believe that being selfish and placing yourself first is critically important to your success at weight loss.

For the past five years, I have been speaking at Oprah’s live magazine events called “O You!” The events promote Oprah’s “live your best life” message and include all of her contributors and favorites, like Suze Orman, Nate Berkus, Dr. Mehmet Oz (I’ve been on his show a number of times and he’s a great guy), Martha Beck, and Stacy London, to name a few. When I first prepared my speech, I hadn’t touched upon this concept of “selfish is good.” It wasn’t until I kept hammering another phrase–“put yourself first and everyone benefits; put yourself first and everyone benefits”–that one of the women raised her hand (she was actually a Petite) and said: “But isn’t that selfish?” To which I replied: “Yes, but selfish is
good
! Selfish is
smart
. Selfish is what makes you live your best life, because you are giving yourself the best
first
and that will enable you to give your best back to others.” The women cheered, loudly. I don’t know where it came from, but I just blurted it out and it resonated immediately with the audience and with me. The event became a bit like a rock concert and I actually made them stand up and chant with me: “Selfish is good; selfish is smart!”

This is the first belief system I want you to work on. The old belief is: “Everything and everyone else comes first and I come last.” You believed, in the past, that:

 

• Your family comes first.

 

• Your home comes first.

 

• Your aging/ill parents, siblings, or friends come first.

 

• Your job comes first.

 

• Your church and community responsibilities come first.

 

Let’s examine that for a moment. You are the cog that holds all these moving parts in place, yet you assign to yourself little or no value. Are you supposed to just pick up whatever crumb of time is left over to make a better food choice, to sleep, to exercise, to breathe, to do whatever is required to take care of yourself (and lose weight) so that you can then take care of everyone and everything else? Do you see why this doesn’t make sense?

Your first “official” selfish act is to adopt this program. I want you to work it with intensity
and
consider that you are staging your own, personal intervention.

Changing Your Belief System
 

According to Martin Fishbein, Ph.D. and Distinguished Professor at the University of Pennsylvania (which happens to be my alma mater), “The study of health behavior is really a way to determine how to design interventions that change or reinforce beliefs.” I like that approach a lot. Let’s face it: changing your belief system does require an intervention similar to what we see on television or in movies when people “stage” an intervention for alcohol or drug abuse. Drug addicts and alcoholics believe they are really okay, that they don’t really have a problem.
1
You may be thinking: “But alcohol and drug addition is a disease.” Ah, that’s a great point. In fact, researchers at Tufts University are looking into whether food addiction is truly an addiction and their preliminary research indicates that the answer is yes. Overeating is also a disease–and one that happens to be extremely contagious. I will cover that in chapter 9, as I urge you to look at the potential “obesogenic” environment in which you live and work, and the people with whom you live and work. Food addiction is a function of both the mind and the body. Your body is not meant to be overweight. You’ve trained it to be that way and made it accustomed to asking for more food. You may also have trained your brain to behave the way it does around the whole subject of food, especially an unhealthy combination of salt, sugar, and fat. If you are struggling with your weight, and have been for a while, you need to start owning your behavior and not making excuses. Owning bad dietary behavior is the first step to changing your belief system. Once you change your belief system, I will give you a plan to follow that proves that you can lose weight without starving or excessively exercising.

What do they tell you on an airplane when the oxygen masks come down in the event of a change in pressure?
Put
your
mask on first; then help your children and the elderly. Why? Because in that way, you are strong enough to take charge and take care of those in need. Our instinct is
not
to do that, even though we have been told repeatedly to do so. We think we should help everyone else first, while desperately gasping for air and possibly passing out. But once you are toast, who is going to be there to help the others? Do you see this flawed belief system? Ask yourself if you would put on your own oxygen mask first? If your answer is “no,” let’s work on making that a “yes.”

How can I help you believe–really believe–that selfish is good? That will occur the moment you begin this plan, as the following changes begin to occur:

1.
You will immediately start to lose weight. Seeing the scale go down will inspire you. Yes, you
are
going to get on the scale. But I will be there with you, spiritually holding your hand as you take those two big steps to success–on the scale each day.

 

2.
Your clothes will instantly start to fit better, since you are embarking upon an exercise program that blasts off the inches faster than ever before. That’s the recomposition I was telling you about in the introduction. You will very quickly feel leaner and sexier and–trust me–both selfish
and
sexy is good!

 

3.
Your energy levels will soar, since you will be taking much better care of both your mind and your body. Energy levels also soar as you lose weight, since everything you do on a daily basis becomes that much easier. I believe energy levels are like bank accounts in which you make deposits and withdrawals. The more I teach you how to deposit more energy and make smaller withdrawals, the more your energy levels will explode.

 
Why People Fail
 

Why is this especially important for Petites? Well, as you will see in the next chapter when we work the numbers, you need to be committed for this plan to work and to work the plan so that you don’t end up last on your list. As a Petite, you have a limited margin for error, but don’t be discouraged by that. As I said in the introduction, you have probably been on plans that didn’t work because they were more suitable for taller women and didn’t speak directly to you. This program will work–in just twenty-one days!

Here is a statistic that may shock you: 97 percent of all people who attempt weight loss regain all the weight (and then some) in a five-year period. Now, before you get discouraged, I want you to understand that my personal success rate is around 75 percent. That’s right, 75 percent of the people I have personally coached, or who have worked with my team of trainers, or who have followed the programs outlined in my past books have lost weight and
kept it off
. I know this to be true because the vast majority of them are in regular contact with me. But I’ve been in this business for decades. There are very few competitive authors or doctors or trainers or dietitians who can claim that much experience or that consistent a success rate. There are also very few comparable professionals who have worked one-on-one with as many people as I have over the years. It’s that direct contact that makes the difference and, through trial and error, this has led to this winning program. I’ve helped thousands of petite women slim down and stay slim and I will do the same for you.

And I know why I succeed where so many fail. Because I provide a comprehensive plan and don’t just deal with one variable, like what you eat. To promise weight loss by changing one variable alone (like eliminating carbs, which hasn’t worked) is a sham and a waste of your time. In this book, I give you
everything
you need to achieve success.

Most people have only a 3 percent chance of success because:

 

• They tried a gimmick (Tai Bo–
please
!) that didn’t work, got discouraged, and then went back to their old belief system and behaviors and proceeded to gain even more weight.

 

• They lost a few pounds by changing one variable (this time, they stopped eating by 7:00
P.M.

wrong
!), then resumed their old belief system and behaviors as soon as they were “done” with their weight-loss plan. They subsequently gained all the weight back and then some.

 
No More Excuses
 

I wrote my second book,
Flip the Switch
, because so many readers wrote to me and said, “I love the concepts in your book but I just can’t get started.” They then listed excuses, and the beliefs that accompanied them:

 

• I have bad genes.

 

• I have a slow metabolism.

 

• I don’t have the time.

 

• I can’t get the energy.

 

• I
hate
to exercise.

 

• I
love
to eat.

 

• I’m a woman (yes, they actually used that as an excuse).

 

• It’s just too late for me to even try.

 

These readers were passionately holding on to what kept them overweight and, in many instances, gaining weight. But by educating my readers and proving to them that they would lose weight (which is what will happen to you), I created the necessary shift in their belief system that translated into far better results-producing behavior.

For a moment, let me address the last bullet point above: “It’s just too late for me to even try.” Petites, it’s
never
too late. You can start, right now, to make a shift in your body weight, your body’s composition, your posture, your energy levels, the aging process, you name it. All you have to do is follow this plan, trust me, and truly believe that it will work. I’ve even helped Petites in their eighties get into far better shape, lose weight, and live a pain-free life. The wear and tear on your joints from excess weight is not something I can repair, but I can take pressure off those joints by strengthening the muscles, the tendons that connect muscles to bones, and the ligaments that connect bones to other bones. That “support team” eases the pain and, in many instances, eliminates it. If you are a Petite, odds are that you have a mother or sister or children who are also Petites. Please don’t ever feel that it’s just too late. It’s not.

I was very fortunate that my first book,
The Business Plan for the Body
, came out exactly when Diane Sawyer went public with her twenty-five-pound weight loss. She achieved this dramatic result by following my plan, exactly as it was outlined in that book. Diane told the world on
Good Morning America
that, not only did she lose weight, but she experienced her first “recomposition.” She even showed provocative before-and-after pictures, demonstrating the results, which were very impressive. The plan took a lot of inches off her body, which truly shocked her. She had to buy a whole new wardrobe. Her arms alone each lost four inches. Think about that–four inches from each arm. Once again, she was proudly sporting sleeveless tops. Her hips and glutes also shrank, just as they did for Gayle King, Oprah’s BFF. Gayle got with my program because the magazine profiled Diane’s success, then put four other women to the test–one in her twenties, one in her thirties, one in her forties (Gayle), and one in her fifties. Gayle became my second “celebrity” success story. The participant in her thirties, Cindy Paragallo, is a Petite. She shrank noticeably, losing eleven pounds of fat. To this day, she looks great and just had her second child.

BOOK: The Petite Advantage Diet
4.9Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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