Introduction
Priority #1: Shifting Your Mindset
As the weight loss industry in the United States surpasses $72 billion per year, the number of
people who fall into the obesity category continues to climb. In 2017-2018, the Centers for
Disease Control estimated that 42.4% of our fellow Americans fall into the obesity category.
This number rose by 30.5% from their previous estimate in 1999-2000. If the weight loss
industry is so large with no shortage of diet plans and quick fixes, where is the problem? Where
is the disconnect? Could it be that there is more at play than only the foods we eat and how often
we exercise?
Since you're reading this book, chances are excellent that you're carrying around weight you
wish wasn't there. Perhaps you've been heavy your whole life, or maybe it's more of a recent
development, like after the birth of a child, a stressful life event, or perhaps your weight crept up
over the years. Now you look in the mirror and don't recognize the person staring back. For
many of us, the reaction to our reflection initiates a lot of negative internal dialogue..
“Why am I so fat?”
“I can’t believe I look like this!”
“Who would ever love me?”
“I swear there used to be cheekbones in there somewhere!”
“Will it ever get any better?”
“How could you let yourself get this way?”
And the list goes on and on. So much of our confidence and self-esteem are tied to our outer
physical appearance. We're conditioned to believe that slim and trim is the definition of beauty.
This is where it gets misrepresented. Many people think that the number on the scale has an
inverse relationship with self-esteem and self-confidence levels. Maybe you believe that the
lower your weight, the better you will feel about yourself; after all, skinny is beautiful, right?
So, for most people, the cycle begins as a self-destructive approach to dieting. Fad diets
involving dangerous diet pills, starvation, and beating yourself up for every slip create an overall
negative thought pattern. They also contribute to a dangerous cycle. In order to drop pounds to
achieve a certain weight or size, many people focus on shortcuts and every little tip and trick in
the world to shave a few calories. The end result is either one of two places:
1) You gave up because it was incredibly hard, and the results weren’t coming fast enough.
2) You stuck through it and dropped the weight, but never gained the good habits necessary
to sustain it for the long haul. You didn't develop healthy habits, and the lighter body you
created is only minimally healthier, solely because you're no longer carrying around
excess weight. You didn't change your mindset to love your body, so the likelihood is
that you will gain the weight back.
To achieve healthy and lasting weight loss, you need a mindset overhaul. Maybe you've been
told that you'll always be "fat" or that you'll never achieve your goal. Perhaps family and friends
have ridiculed you, or maybe this is your own internal narrative. Perhaps you've tried dieting
time and time again, and you've failed to meet your goal every time, so you feel like it's never
going to happen. It doesn't really matter where the negative talk comes from, the problem is that
your relationship with yourself is harmful. If you mentally beat yourself up for your past failures
and your current weight, there's no way you will ever love yourself enough to achieve the goal
you're looking for. You will always doubt your ability to reach your destination, so the chances
that you ever will are incredibly slim.
Think about the messages that circulate through your brain every day concerning your weight.
Are they positive or negative? Are they serving you and getting you any closer to your goals?
How do they make you feel? Finally, are they true?
If the messages are negative, then they aren't serving you very well, making you feel sad, upset,
angry, and probably depressed. Your experiences and past failures may try to convince you that
your current situation is truth. Still, in reality, it's only the truth of your past. Your future is
entirely unwritten, and able to be shaped and molded into anything that you want.
Do you want to carry your past failures into the future, creating more disappointment down the
road? Or do you want to change the way you think, create new habits, and achieve success as a
result? Of course, you do! And that's precisely what this eBook is here for. We're going to guide
you in a new direction, one that begins with changing your mindset about yourself, the way you
think about food, and how you fuel your body. Just do me a favor and take everything you
believe about yourself, dieting and nutrition in general, and put it in a box in the back of your
mind. Consider for a moment that there is a different way. There is a better way, a way that will
lead you toward developing healthier thoughts about yourself, your food, and the way you fuel
your body. You'll begin to understand that shifting your mindset from a self-destructive cycle to
caring for your body results in more dramatic changes and a much more pleasant ride!
Before we jump into how, we've got to understand why. If you've ever been to the doctor and a
stuffy physician looks at you over his wire-rimmed glasses, scolding you about your weight (or
maybe your grandma did that!), you already know. Here’s the important thing to remember: for
so many of us, the potential risks are always imaginary diseases that happen to others. Disease is
still a possibility, but until it becomes a reality, it is easy to brush off thinking that it won't
happen to us.
What you need to understand, is that it will likely happen to you someday. If you continue down
the path that you're on, one day, your blood pressure will go up (if it hasn’t already). One day,
your cells probably will get tired of all the extra insulin floating around. They're going to slam
the door, saying, "not today, Mr. Insulin!" and BAM! You're suddenly insulin resistant (more
about that coming up!). It happens. Every single day it happens to people who thought it would
never happen to them. It doesn't happen overnight; it's a gradual process of choosing the
McDonald's drive-thru over a healthy, home-cooked meal. Remember all those times that you
were too busy for breakfast and grabbed a cinnamon roll out of the vending machine? How about
all those delivery pizzas you ordered because you were too tired to cook? In the moment, it's
easy to think, "well, it's just this one time!" But this one time becomes a second time next
Thursday, and a third time on Saturday evening, because you forgot to go to the grocery store
and snowballs from there.
Even for those who make a habit of eating healthy, one poor food choice makes the next poor
choice just a little bit easier, and on it goes. The fantastic thing is that when you shift your
mindset from eating for weight loss to eating to fuel your body, the entire dialogue changes. It's
no longer about self-deprivation and eating as a way of shedding excess weight. Instead, it
becomes about paying attention to your food choices, how they make you feel, and making
positive choices for your body and your health every time.
Want to know the end result? Your body will begin to heal, and your weight will come down
because you'll lower inflammation, help balance your hormones, and create a safe place where
your body knows that you're taking care of it. It will begin to shed excess weight that it's holding
on to.
Now, there is one downside of this, if you can even call it that. When you start eating because
you love your body and want it to feel good and be healthy, you'll begin to notice things that
don’t make you feel good. Why does this happen? Once you remove most of the processed
foods, sugary soda, fast food, and everything with chemical additives, your body will begin to
detox. As a result, you will start to feel better, your energy levels will rise, the bloating will
decrease. When you eat, you will feel good, instead of that heavy, weird feeling you probably
experienced countless times. No, that wasn't normal digestion. That was your body telling you
that something wasn't right with your diet, but because you've always eaten that way, you
assumed it was normal.
My friend, feeling poorly is NOT normal. Constant headaches are not normal. Bloating is not
normal. Indigestion is not normal. Being tired all the time and drinking 7 cups of coffee before
noon IS NOT NORMAL. These are all symptoms your body is using to tell you that your diet is
not right. However, we live in a society filled with energy drinks, diuretics, antacids, pain pills,
and everything else that lines millions of medicine cabinets all over America. We think that the
normal state of adulthood is being tired and in pain.
There is a better way, and there is hope for you. If you stick through the remainder of this book,
we will present the case against the way most people eat these days. We won't leave you hanging
there, we will offer incredibly helpful suggestions, tips, and even recipes for a plan that works.
Your job is to finish this eBook, and also to read it with an open mind. No one likes diet plans
and recipes that leave you hungry, miserable, and deprived, so that’s certainly NOT what we’re
going to present to you here.
Our goal is to educate and empower you to transform your life, one step at a time, and enjoy the
journey. Whether you're showing no physical symptoms other than disliking your current size of
jeans, or maybe you already have high blood pressure and diabetes. Either way, it's not too late.
Making positive changes in your life will result in positive changes in your health, no matter the
diagnosis or severity. We'll come back to mindset a little later on, but for now, it's time to
identify the problem and examine why our bodies behave as they do.
