…and have kept it off for 9 years so far.
I busted my ass and continue to today- that’s how. If you came here looking for the magic pill you are in the wrong place and [spoiler alert] it doesn’t exist. Anything easy isn’t worth doing and anything worth doing isn’t easy. This is one of the guiding principles I have lived my life by since I started to figure things out in my early thirties.
And I’ve kept it off “so far”. I say so far because this isn’t just some temporary diet you go on to lose weight and then it magically stays off forever no matter what you do after the “diet” period. This is a complete lifestyle change and in order to accomplish that you need to have a complete mindset shift. It’s all in your head…ALL OF IT! And here is what I promise you….you will come out feeling better, looking better, having better sex (if this one doesn’t excite you I might not be able to help you :), eating better, sleeping better; better f-ing everything! If you don’t believe me try it and prove me wrong. If you think everything isn’t better on the other side of 60lbs try it and if I am wrong you can always go back to being fat like the over 30% of the US that is obese or the over 60% that is overweight. Being fat is easy.
I know most people who keep reading these blogs are hoping to find the next “magic pill,” diet, or workout routine that will *poof*, make you thin and fit. Then those people get upset and blame the diet, the workout routine, or even the personal trainer when, “oh, that didn’t work for me”. The truth is they all work. Some diets will work better for some than they do for others but at the end of the day it all comes down to eating healthy foods on a regular basis. For the most part we all know what healthy food is but the inconvenient truth is that it is not convenient to eat healthy food consistently. So most of us don’t.
The problem is most people go into losing weight or a “diet’ with the mindset that it is temporary and wonder why they don’t work. Yet 3 months after the “diet” you are back to eating the same way you were and still saying it didn’t work. Let me tell you something right now: if you need to lose 60lbs like I did, you need to make a lifestyle change, period. Give yourself a cheat day (don’t overdo it on those days) but you need to eat right all day every day for 6 days a week forever. If you change the conversations you are having with yourself inside your head you can accomplish anything. The problem is that the stories that you keep telling yourself enable you to make your poor eating choices.
Let me know if any of these excuses sound familiar: I’m too busy to eat right, I don’t have the time, I deserve to eat it, I had a “rough” day, or “fill in your own excuse here”. I could go on and on but I think you get the idea.
For me, I started with a few small but permanent changes. Like using Ezekiel bread for sandwiches instead of regular bread. Eventually, I happily gave up bread altogether but I used Ezekiel bread for about 2 years before I gave up bread altogether . I also started to eat salads and I didn’t like salads unless they were drenched in ranch. At the time, a good friend of mine owned a store that sold flavored olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I was able to test and try these different flavors of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. That is what got me eating salads- Blood Orange flavored olive oil and an aged balsamic vinegar. I guess it was fate that my friend happened to own that kind of store at that time. Slowly I added in more and more vegetables. I am now at the point that I crave asparagus and broccoli and could eat a cucumber by itself. 10 years ago I didn’t eat any of that stuff. Your body will make a shift to start liking and preferring the good stuff once you consistently give it to yourself. Like forever.
A big part of my success in continuing to eat healthy was and still is using a “6-pack” meal prep cooler/backpack (as in 6-pack abs not that 6-pack, weirdo). I personally could not have done it without this. Prior to losing the weight I was on the go all the time so one of the stories I kept telling myself was that I need to eat fast food all the time because I was on the go a lot for work.. Once I found out about this life saving meal prep bag/cooler I had no excuses because my healthy food was always with me. I say life saving because my natural medicine doctor, Dr. Paul Milkulski (Proactive Natural Medicine Schaumburg, IL,) told me it is very likely I would have had a “cardiac episode” by the time I was 40 if I didn’t make some dramatic changes.
Here is something that you can start right now today and that’s drinking water. A lot of water. Did the stories you’ve been telling yourself just take over as to why you cannot do this already? There are so many issues that can have that are related to you being dehydrated. If you drink more water you would feel a lot better. I mean a lot! I was told to drink at least half my body weight in ounces a day. This ends up being A LOT of water. So much water that you need to be drinking at least every 90-120 minutes. I drink water like I do a lot of things in my life- in batches; meaning I will chug a ton of water 4-6 times a day. That way I don’t “forget’ to drink it. Sorry, not sorry if I just took one of your excuses as to why you don’t drink enough water away there 🙂
It took me about three months of eating stuff I didn’t love to get to the point where I started to like the food I was eating and the more I ate good healthy food, the more my body liked it. The difference I made was a mindset shift: now I look at food as literal fuel to energize my day and my life. Before I felt the exact opposite. I often felt the food was holding me back, weighing me down, bloating me, and just making me feel lousy. I was eating to offset my blood sugar highs and lows and that is a very dangerous game to play friend.
I would have unexplained bouts of fatigue and couldn’t figure it out. I got tested to see if I was allergic or intolerant to gluten but I wasn’t. Initially I was happy about that because I didn’t want to be one of those “gluten-free” people 🙂 HOWEVER, once I started to track my diet on paper, it made me wonder. Dr. Paul said that even though the gluten tests came back negative that we should test removing it from my diet for a few months and see what happens. And guess what? The bouts of unexplained fatigue disappeared and then so did gluten from my diet forever.
After adding in all the healthy foods, I gave up junk food and processed sugar which is similar to the addictive qualities in cocaine. So eating that Snickers bar (or whatever your sugary “snack” of choice is) is right on par with doing a huge rail of coke. So let that sink in as you eat that garbage, especially in front of your kids.
And the next time you eat anything at your beloved Starbucks check how many grams of added sugar are in it. It’s disgusting but they are out to make money and that will addict you to it. No different than adding nicotine to cigarettes to get you hooked. Both are completely legal. Thanks for having our back Food and Drug Administration (FDA) [sarcasm]. Stay tuned for more blog posts on the garbage that the FDA puts its stamp of approval on… for the right price of course.
“Food Cocaine” is how I refer to processed sugar in my head now to remind me what it truly is. It’s all a series of mindset shifts. Once you figure out how to start changing the stories that you tell yourself you will be unstoppable!
Let this sink in for a min…if you are on your high horse because you never have or don’t use drugs or alcohol, then think again if you regularly eat sugary foods or snacks. You are an addict too, just to something that society has tricked you into thinking is acceptable. GOTCHA SUCKERS!!! But now that you know, you can make the fundamental switch if you choose to.
Finally, I gave up pop or soda/coke – whatever you call this sugary delicious poison (being from Chicago we call it pop). This was actually one of the hardest and last things for me to give up after I got my health in order (Alcohol was even easier to give up). Now I’m so far on the other side of it, that stuff makes me sick even if I have 1 sip. Aspartame is illegal in Europe. Why is it legal here? My point, again, is don’t assume the FDA or any government or other agency has your back. Do your own research on the stuff you put in your body. Sadly, you will be shocked over and over again.
I also can’t forget that at one point well into already being healthy, I decided to give up dairy. I only had it once or twice a week in small amounts and usually in taking bites of my kids ice cream. But with only that change to my diet I lost 7lbs in 10 days. So that was the end of dairy for me. That told me it was causing extremely bloating in my body, even as little as I actually ate it. I had heard for years that 95% of adults cannot properly process dairy and now I had a personal case study to prove it.
Once you make the fundamental shift in your head about diet and exercise your life will change in so many ways. I promise you will have better sex with your partner. And if you are single I promise you will meet and have better sex with better-looking people 🙂 If you don’t believe me then prove me wrong.
For me it all really started because I didn’t want to…well, I refused to buy a bigger pants size. I was up to having to buy a 40’’ waist and I’m only 5’7”! And I was like no f-ing way. But it still took me 2 years to figure myself out and how I was going to accomplish the monumental task of losing 60lbs.
At first, I lost 20lb and then put it right back on. Sound familiar? I was working out and eating better but still not great and that’s not going to cut it. Shit, you can only eat right and not work out and still lose the 60lb. However it doesn’t work the other way around; if you workout but do not eat right, you are not going to lose weight. The biggest truth is that eating right is the most important part of losing weight. Working out will help you do it faster and make your muscles more toned but working out is not required to lose the weight. That being said, I highly recommend it! It is exhilarating and there is no better feeling than leaving the gym after a good workout. That is my mindset going into a workout day. I focus on the feeling I feel after the workout is done.
This shit is all in your head you freaks, haha! But seriously it is! So stop making excuses and get to f-ing work! I know many of you were probably like me and didn’t know what to do at the gym. I’ve been working out 3-5 days a week for almost 10 years and guess what? I still look at Men’s Health magazine to get new workout routines to mix it up. I take a picture of the workout set from the magazine and add that to my workout routine. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel or keep making excuses that you don’t know what to do. There’s so much out there literally explaining it all step by step.
I have a handful of staple workouts that I keep in the rotation now, but I always look to add some new ones in to change it up a bit and keep it from getting stale.
Below is a quote that you will see a lot if you stay with me. This has been one of my guiding principles since I started to figure myself out:
“If you want it bad enough, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” – Jim Rohn
You are in multiple wars with yourself every single day and whether you like it or not, you are either winning or losing yours right now. We all need to be hyper-aware that we are at war with ourselves every-single-day, not just with alcohol but with everything. Some days are better than others but just because you are winning today doesn’t mean something outside of your control won’t change and you will be tested.
Am I perfect, of course not? Do I like to indulge? Of course, I do. I am actually writing this on Halloween night where I just ate more bags of candy that I took from my kid’s bags than I care to admit. (I LOVE Sour Patch Kids- LOVE them). My final meal would be a steak from Carnivore (Milwaukee, WI) and a bag of good old fashioned Sour Patch Kids. Or maybe the macadamia nut crusted Halibut from Wildfire (Schaumburg, IL), but it would definitely without a doubt still need to be topped off with a big bag of Sour Patch Kids as dessert. See?? We all have demons to fight. One of mine just happens to come in the form of small, colorful, delicious, sugar-coated pieces of poison.
At the end of the day you need to eat right 6 days a week and workout at least 3. If you make that happen you will be in really good shape. It is not hard to do unless you make it hard. Now get out of your own way and go lose that fucking weight!
Never Stop Growing. Ever.
JH
