our Mind is the Fattest Part of Your Body Losing weight is a habit not a goal.

This is the most important thing I can stress. If you think of it as a goal, you will be like the other 80% of people out there who shoot for a goal and lose it right after it has been achieved. eight is a dynamic thing ! it changes, fluctuates and it is a direct reflection of your lifestyle. Therefore your weight level must be a habit and not a goal. "emember that. ith that said, your brain is the fattest part of your body. In this case you don#t want to shed any weight off of your brain, but shed the heavy thoughts that keep you from re!structuring a healthy lifestyle that is ongoing and encouraging of the new body fat level$shape you want. Thoughts about what you eat and when, how you eat, what e%ercise you do and why, so on and so forth. & lot of people say you have to want it first. I say more than that ! wanting isn#t enough. 'ou have to find enjoyment and pleasure out of the new habits of e%ercise and diet. That is what is going to keep you wanting it for the long!term. The best way to accomplish this is through meditation and visuali(ation. "eally take the time out of the day to start constructing a )vision board) *a collage of pictures of your new life, role models and so on+ of what you would like to see in your life. ,editate on your current life, how you got there and where you are going. "eally get in touch with what is going on behind your eating and e%ercise *or lack thereof+ behaviors. -nly once you get a stronger foothold in yourself through awareness can you implement the basic *and simple+ knowledge that is re.uired to look better and live better. A Pound of Fat is 3500 Calories Long ago in one of my psychology classes we were talking about weight loss. e had a great teacher and he liked to be very simple in what he talked to us about, so he /ust laid it out pretty straight ! a pound of fat is a little over 0100 calories. & gram of fat is 2 calories and a pound of fat is 310 grams. If you want to lose a pound of fat you have to eliminate that many calories from your life either through diet, e%ercise or a combination of both. 4retty simple right5 ell, sort of. Let#s say you want to lose a pound of fat per week, so that by this time ne%t year you will be 10lbs lighter. ell, a pound a week means you have to get rid of 100 calories per day ! and that means whatever you are doing right now diet and e%ercise!wise, add another !100 calories to it. 6o, whatever your goal is ! reali(e there is a numerical e.uivalent to it. The hard part is actually doing that elimination. The Myth About Exercise as a Primary ei!ht "oss Method I remember at this point in the class the teacher asked us what might be easier in accomplishing this daily goal ! do e%ercise or ad/ust diet5 7aturally, most of us thought e%ercise was the way to go. &fterall, it is such a hyped!up thing and all those calories when you workout or run for endless hours don#t compare to whatever measly things you can do in ad/usting your diet, right5 rong again. -ver the millions of years of evolution our bodies have become very efficient at how we manage energy. &fterall, for the greater part of this time it#s not like we had a almart hanging out on the 6avannah to go to when we needed a snack. 6carcity was the name of the game so our bodies had to conserve energy in how we moved around or else we would die. 8ust because we have almart today doesn#t mean that our evolution has caught up to it.

I learned that day in class something that changed my entire view on e%ercise. )9ow many calories do you think running a : minute mile burns5) the teacher asked. e all threw out our estimates, all grossly over the actual amount. )&bout ;00 calories) he said. )7ow which is easier ! taking that soda every day out of your diet or running a mile every time you have a soda5) The truth about e%ercise is that it is overrated as a weight loss method. The fitness industry is a multi!billion dollar enterprise that gains from people thinking that endless hours of working out will achieve the body they want. "egardless of how much you work out, it will never be as good of a way to lose body fat as it is to tweak your diet first. <%ercise takes hours per day to e.ual the amount of calorie tweaking and eliminating you can do through diet instantly. Boostin! #M# That said, e%ercise is a necessary part of a healthy life. I e%ercise daily. The benefits of e%ercise are more about other factors than they are about losing body fat, though. <%ercise makes you feel good emotionally, it is good for stress and also improving the strength of the body in all it#s functions. The primary reason that can be tied to weight loss in

e%ercise is the effect it has on resting metabolic rate *","+ ! that is, the amount of calories you burn /ust sitting around, and this is very important. =ut this relates more to e%ercise that promotes muscle tone rather than aerobic e%ercise. Thinking back to our ancestors again, remember that we had to traverse e%tremely long distances to gain resources. In fact some researchers have found that ancient man could put today#s long distance runners to shame ! often traveling upwards of 30 miles a day for food and resources. 4oint of the story> our bodies are adapted for long!distance e%ercise. The problem with )cardio) workouts is that they do not offer benefits after the e%ercise is done. They may burn good calories in the time you do it, but afterward your body is at rest and does not have any ma/or repair to do. hen you do strength training with weights or resistance to promote muscle growth, that is when your body gets the most benefit from e%ercise. The reason is that muscles consume energy, and the more muscle mass you have the more energy you consume /ust walking around. The muscles pull the energy from your fat reserves and your body#s metabolism is higher and can tackle calories much easier than someone with a low muscle mass and low metabolism that will store fat .uickly. $iet% $iet% $iet &side your weekly e%ercise regimen, diet is everything. 4lain and simple. If your diet sucks you will never get anywhere in your weight loss goal. -bviously getting rid of sugars and starches *bread, pastries, soda, etc.+ is the main problem for most people, but when you eat can also be /ust as important as what you eat. Ironically enough it#s not )fat) foods that make you fat. Tribes around the world have eaten animal fat for generations like whale blubber in the <skimos and so on. There is no recorded instance of a heart attack in any of these populations. The problem is not necessarily fat because fat actually makes us feel full and satiated. &lthough there are bad fats to be wary of, the main focus right now is going to be on carbohydrates. ?arbohydrates are things that give you immediate energy ! sugars, breads, so on and so forth. hy do these have a higher contribution to body fat5 =ecause, again, their primary purpose is to give immediate energy. 6o, if you eat a nice bowl of pasta your body recogni(es the immediate dump of carbs and gets ready to go. =ut let#s say you eat that bowl of pasta at ; in the morning and watch T@ for another hour before going to bed. ell, your body senses the energy availability but then your brain tells it that it won#t be doing anything soon, so guess what the body does5 It says, )-A, let#s put this away for some other time.) Let#s put this away for some other time. -ver, and over these little events are what lead to increase in body fat in most situations. 8ust look at the recent rise in obesity in children. It#s scary, actually. ?hildren are young and they are supposed to have the highest metabolism out of all of us, but yet they are becoming obese. The prodigious amount of sugar they consume cannot be handled by their bodies and is much more energy than they can possibly e%pend, so the body stores it as fat. -ver time you start getting diabetes and all kinds of other problems that shouldn#t even e%ist in the natural world. "ess is More The final basic point is that less is more. Learn to eat less and more fre.uently, and learn to eat slowly. -ver time your body will get adapted to this and your metabolism will actually increase a little. I eat about every 0 hours and even with all the working out I do I can#t tell you I eat more than B000 calories per day. The reason is that when you have 0 meals a day as opposed to 1 or :, you are more likely to overeat. The hunger sensation will be so overwhelming that you will lose control, stuff your face and put in more calories than you actually need. The goal is to avoid having such an overwhelming sense of hunger that it hi/acks your sense of discipline. 6o, eat more fre.uently and chew slowly. It takes about ;1!B0 minutes for your stomach to send a signal to your brain once it has begun to receive food, yet most of us stuff our faces in /ust a few minutes long before our brain knows that we are actually full. This over!eating is instinctual because there was scarcity in the wild and whatever we got was going to be it for that day. =ut in a world where food is readily available this is yet another natural behavior that has turned against us. In the end remember that like anything, losing weight is a fre.uency that you vibrate at. =eing B0, 00, 10lbs thinner isn#t a goal that you will reach and then go back to where you were before eating /unk and not working out. =eing thinner is a total makeover ! a new you. & new fre.uency, a new lifestyle. & new set of habits and ideas. & new set of foods and activities to find en/oyment from /ust like you did before. The things we eat and do support and are a

reflection of what fre.uency we vibrate at ! a person that is in good shape does not eat /unk food and is inactive and vice versa. -f course, there is much more detail to losing weight especially if you are approaching or have passed critical life stages such as menopause, andropause and so on. e can#t deny the body changes. =ut we are all relatively genetically the same, so these things still apply. -ften times people have lost motivation to change their lives and its, again, more about shedding the mental pounds before the physical ones. If 8ack LaLanne can be fit into his 20#s and a slew of other people can, so can you with the right set of consistent choices and lifestyle, regardless of your specific genetic makeup.