How I figured out Food, Fitness and the Mentality of Weightloss — and how you can too
Not that many years ago I was fat.
As in really fat.
As in, I didn’t have many friends, sat at home and played videogames by myself kind of sad.
As in, the only exercise I got was walking to the fridge kind of fat.
There were many reasons why I was fat, and I’m going to list the five most meaningful reasons here.
Reason number 1:
I was fat because I ate my feelings. Whenever I felt sad or lonely or depressed — which was a lot — I would eat as a means of coping with my emotions. In case you were wondering, this is not a good strategy of all, and if there is one thing that contributed to my weight, and overall unhealthy lifestyle, this was it.
This is a normal response for people who are overweight (Geliebter and Aversa, 2003), and it makes sense, because it makes you feel good. When something I didn’t like happened, or I experienced a situation which made me feel bad my response was to eat.
Eat, eat, eat.
This made me feel good in the short run, but it made me feel terrible and depressed in the long run.
Eventually, this response became an addiction, and like all addicts, I needed more with every fix to satisfy my craving and get my high. It might not be obvious, but this type of response is unquestionably a pattern of addiction.
You take something — in this case sugary, fatty foods and drinks — in order to feel good, or ease some pain, and every time you “shoot up” it gets worse. You want more — and you’ll go to any length to get it. This is obviously my personal story, but this notion of eating as a way of dealing with emotions because it feels good, is supported by science in a huge way.
Two neuroscientists have found a link between binge-eating and addict-like behaviour (Johnson and Kenny 2010). Furthermore, there it has been established that binge-eating can be used as an escape. A valve to release pressure if you will. (Heatherton and Baumeister 1991)
So the answer to the question of why we binge eat is obvious.
It makes us feel good.
That’s all there is to it.
The chemicals that are released in our brains makes us feel good, and makes us crave that feeling again and again.
Scary, but simple and straightforward.
This explains a lot.
So don’t worry. If this is a habit of yours, don’t despair, because the chains of habit can be broken.
I managed to break mine, and I’ll show you how you can break yours in the pages to come.
Reason number 2:
I was fat because I did not have any self-restraint whatsoever. Whereas someone might eat one or two pieces of chocolate to cope with some stress I would eat one or two whole squares of chocolate. I once ate three entire bars of Rittersport in one sitting. That’s 1800 calories worth of chocolate, in something like 10 minutes. Very impressive if you ask me. But also a very sure-fire way to get fat.
This is linked to the first reason of eating my feelings, but there is a subtle difference, because I did not have a stop button. Never once did I think, that I should stop after the first or second or third serving. I ate until there was literally no more room in my stomach for food.
The science behind why this happens is interesting. When we talk about self-regulation (Baumeister and Heatherton 1996), i.e. the ability to not gorge on food, we talk about three parameters that are in play. The first parameter is standards, which I didn’t have at all, and that is one part of the explanation why my self-regulation was so incredibly weak.
The second part of self-regulation is Monitoring, i.e. being able to say at one point;
“ok, maybe I’ve had enough. Maybe I shouldn’t eat this 7th snickers bar”.
Again, this was not something I was able to do, and I’m willing to bet, that this is a very real reason why weight loss is such an incredibly hard challenge for so many people — myself included.
The last part of the trifecta of self-regulation (or lack thereof) is the Operating phase — i.e. the part our response is subconscious. One might say it’s the way we’re wired or programmed. It is our collection of habits, behaviour patterns and motivation, which controls most of our action without our even being aware of it. Self-regulation comes into play here, as a means of interrupting — or scrambling — that pattern.
This means that the Operating part of self-regulation is essentially the mechanism that is put into play when you want to make a change — the ability to say no, even though I was tempted.
This was not something that I possessed.
Whenever I felt temptation, I would give in to it.
No questions asked.
Every time.
You might argue that I had a weak mind at the time. That I wasn’t able to exercise self-control, or self-regulate, as it were. And you’d be right.
Absolutely, 100% right.
See, self-control is like a muscle (Muraven and Baumeister 2000). At this point my self-control muscle was very weak. Or to put it more bluntly, it was non-existent.
Reason number 3:
I didn’t have any friends who weren’t fat.
The group that you’re a part of, has more influence over you than you can ever imagine. For more than 2.5 million years, humans have lived in tribes, and in small societies, where not fitting in was death. So you did what the group did. In the modern world, this translates to you do what your friends do. I did what my friends did — I didn’t have many, and the ones I had were both fat — and that was eat, play video games, watch movies, and bitch about how we were fat, and didn’t have a chance with the hot looking chicks.
Reason number 4:
I was fat because my diet as a whole was very unhealthy. I ate a lot of junkfood, a lot of pizza and not that many fruits and vegetables. In short I had a diet which was extremely high in carbs, and I ate a lot of highly processed foods, with an incredibly high amount of added sugar. In addition to that I did not get anywhere near the protein or fibre that I needed, so I would walk around feeling hungry all the time. If you know anything at all about nutrition, you will know instantaneously that this is a recipe for disaster.
Reason number 5:
I didn’t exercise. As in not at all. I did zero physical activity. Zilch!
No wonder I was depressed. The body and the brain thrives on movement, and being active. Whether it is walking, or dancing or rowing, or whatever. As long as you’re moving, you’re happy. I wasn’t moving at all. Maybe I was walking to the fridge and back, but that hardly counts as exercise. I didn’t exercise, because whenever I did I would tire fast, and I couldn’t keep up with the other kids, whenever there were common physical activities, and there was no way in hell that I was just going to get up off of my fat ass and start exercising all on my lonesome.
Those were the five primary reasons why I was as fat as I was, and if any of the reasons overlap with why you’re fat, don’t worry — these are all challenges that can be overcome, problems that can be solved, by implementing the correct systems, in the right parts of your life.
How bad was it?
So maybe you’re wondering, how fat was I really?
I was so fat I had to go to fat camp — where I lost most of my excess weight.
I even managed to keep it off for a while.
However, like most people I hadn’t developed a system that worked, so I gained all the weight back again.
Then I lost the weight again.
Then I gained it back.
See the hard part isn’t losing weight. Or even keeping it off — for a while.
The hard part is battling all of our mental enemies, and fighting all of the non-physical battles related to weight-loss.
See most people think it’s easy.
Eat less calories than you consume.
Exercise and eat more greens and less chips and candy.
Thanks dumbass! like I didn’t know that was the case.
“Wait, so you’re telling me that I won’t lose weight, if I eat this giant pizza?”
Fuck.
Give me a fucking break.
The reason I was fat, was obviously because I took in more calories than I burned. No question. But that wasn’t the root cause.
The root cause was that I had issues to deal with, and a weak and flabby mental state, which in turn made my issues harder to deal with, which then caused me to eat one.
The feedback loop from hell, ladies and gentlemen.
See the reason we overeat — or at least the reason that I did — was because I was unhappy. People were mean to me, I didn’t have many friends, I felt depressed and lonely, and I felt like my life wasn’t on the right track, and I felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel.
And all these issues combined to make me want to eat more — which I did, because I had the backbone of an octopus.
The thing that most people don’t realize is that when you’re as fat as I was, eating is an addiction.
Eating is a coping mechanism, that we use, because it is soothing, and because it keeps our emotions in check. Emotions that are too ugly to deal with, and too deeply buried to dig out of the closet. Emotions that are so deeply buried that they are part of the fundamental makeup of who we are as individuals. Except they aren’t.
The only way to deal with our bullshit and to become healthy is to dig these ugly emotions out into the light kicking and screaming. It is not going to be pretty. It wasn’t for me. But it was worth it. Now you might have to hurt some feelings along the way, of some people who are close to you and who you love, but it will be worth it in the end.
Remember, you are doing this for you. It is your life, and you are the one who is going to have to live, so you have to what you have to do.
The physical battle, is not the issue — the issue is the mental battle. That is the battle that we must win at all costs, if we want to be healthy — which we do; trust me.
My story
Let me tell you a little more about myself.
When I was 12 years old, I weighed just around 200 pounds — and to make matters worse I was kind of a short kid.
As you can probably imagine I was — to put things in plain English — a Fat Fuck.
Why was I a Fat Fuck?
Good question.
The answer is more complicated than it might appear at first glance, and in order to find the right answer, we are going to have to dig deep down into the human psyche. As I mentioned above, overeating is a type of coping mechanism, and it was definitely mine. Now what kind of things would a young kid like me have to cope with?
Apart from the usual stuff of trying to figure things out, and learning how the world works, I always felt like a bit of an outsider. I felt bored at school, I didn’t quite feel comfortable around my family, and I didn’t really feel like I fit in anywhere. Now, I don’t think that this is that unusual for a child at that age, but as I mentioned, people have different outlets, different coping mechanisms, and this was mine.
The first time I remember going on a diet, and setting a specific weightloss related goal for myself was second grade. As far as I remember I felt happy enough, and fit in pretty well with all the other kids. I might have had my quirks, but most kids do. So there I was, 8 years old and trying to lose weight. So now I was painfully aware that I was different, and the other kids started noticing it too.
Around the same time, a thing that happened, was that people started poking fun at me, because they could tell I was different. First of all, I was physically different, because I was fat, but I was also a bit different mentally, and people can sense that — kids and adults alike — and they point it out. Not necessarily in a mean way — although more often than not it is in a mean way — but because it is always easier to point to someone else’s faults than to deal with your own faults.
All of this made me aggressive, made me lash out, and that isolated me from the other kids, because naturally they didn’t want to be around a fat, aggressive weirdo.
My family realized that something was up, but they couldn’t help but poke fun at me, and at one point my nickname at home was Sumo. As in Sumo-wrestler — as in we’re basically calling you fat — not in a mean way though. I’m pretty sure the people closest to me didn’t realize the effect it had, but it was pretty severe. And it made everything that much worse. All the negativity started gathering momentum and pulling me further downwards. In fact, the train was just starting to gather steam.
So, it all started innocently enough, with my parents trying to help me shed a little of the extra weight, and trying in different ways to help me. My family tried incentivizing me, which didn’t work for reasons we’ll get into later. We tried going to a dietitian, which didn’t work either — for different, albeit similar reasons. My family tried the carrot and the stick, and nothing worked, because it failed to address the root cause of the problem.
What all started as a minor issue, and a small nuisance, then snowballed, and turned into something ugly. It turned into a seemingly unmanageable situation where — all of the sudden — I felt all alone, and I started overeating to cope with my problems — and that’s when the real bad spiral started kicking in.
The bus-stop moment
Momentum is a funny thing — it can either spur you forward, to ever greater heights, or it can pull you further and further down, until you eventually hit rock-bottom. Or at least what seems like rock-bottom at the time.
In other words — you’re either getting fitter or you’re getting fatter.
And at this point I was definitely getting fatter.
Anyway, so there I was, isolated, fat, lonely and sad. Without any friends to speak of, and feeling really sorry for myself, and so I was doing what every good fatty would be expected to do. I kept eating to deal with my emotions.
Now, there is one thing I need to mention in the interest of providing context, which is that I was obviously still a kid, so a lot of my choices were influenced by the adults around me. At this point my mom had asked the people at my school to keep an eye on me, to make sure I wasn’t eating anything I wasn’t supposed to. Yeah, good luck with that.
Because of how the world works, this meant that I was essentially left to my own devices when my parents weren’t looking. Most of the time this kept me in check, but every once in a while I managed to sneak in a little snack. One snack led to more snacks, and all of the sudden I was able to sneak in a whole bunch of snacks in a day, and so I managed to balloon a lot in a short period of time.
This sequence of events led me down the path, on which I encountered my darkest moment.
Alone, at a bus-stop — not even waiting for the bus — just sitting there, because I was too ashamed to go home. With my hands full of chocolate cake, and stuffing my face — enjoying the brief moment of respite, before I had to return to my miserable life — my biggest fear was approaching.
One of the adults who actually cared, and who would tell on me (I figured, but probably not) was approaching. She was all smiles, and seemed happy to see me, but all I could think was fuck fuck fuck as I frantically tried to hide the cake behind my back. And even though I had my whole mouth full of cake I managed to exchange a few sentences that were polite enough that she left without further enquiry, and I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved in my life.
The story never did get back to my mom, so either I managed to hide the cake in a clever enough fashion that she never noticed, or she didn’t realize what was going on, or didn’t care. At any rate, I managed to get away with my mischief, but never have I ever felt so ashamed in my life. Ashamed at myself, for wanting to hide such a trivial thing, and ashamed at what this addiction — because that is what it is — was doing to me, and at that point I knew I had to make a change.
However, change is difficult. Change is problematic, and change doesn’t come easy. Where do I even start? I felt like I’d made many attempts to lose weight, and none of them had worked.
I had tried incentives, I had tried a diet and exercise plan, I’d tried different types of exercise to see if there were any who appealed to me, and I’d gotten to the end of my rope. I felt like I’d tried everything, and nothing had worked.
However I had one bullet left in the chamber — namely fat camp.
Big-time loser
When I arrived at fat camp, I felt like a huge loser. I was a huge loser. I was out of control. Physically and mentally. I didn’t have any friends, and I felt isolated and alone. But a funny thing happened when I got to fat camp, because I realized that other people had issues that were similar to mine. I was not alone in this. Other people had done it before me. And more importantly, I was in this with other people. I had a network to support me, that I could lean against, when the going got tough, and that helped me on numerous occasions. Whenever I felt like I couldn’t go on, or I felt like scared, or alone, or I was about to give up — which happened almost once a day — I would look to the people who were in the same boat as me, and realize — They’re not giving up. No way I’m giving up then!
It might sound simple, and banal — and it is. But the effect of having a support system of like-minded individuals around you, who you can look to, when the going gets tough is indispensable. Because things will move slowly in the beginning. Very slowly. In fact it’ll seem like you’re putting in so much effort, and not losing a single gram. Maybe you’re doing everything right, and nothing happens. Personally, I felt like things weren’t moving at all. I felt like I was doing everything in my power, and nothing happened. At this stage it is so important to persevere. You have to keep going. Because eventually you will start losing the weight.
In the beginning you should count it as a victory that you’re not getting heavier. I never did, but it clearly was. I was accustomed to getting fatter every week, so simply staying at the same weight should be counted as a win, even though it did not feel that way at the time. However, staying at the same weight for a short period is a win. And you should count it as such, because it is one step in the direction of creating momentum.
In my first week of fat camp I simply stayed the same. Which was super frustrating, because I knew in my heart of hearts that I was doing all the right things, and it was so so hard to do. Changing anything is hard. And being away from my family at a fairly tender age, without being familiar with any
one, or with the environment in general, I felt scared, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. I was at the point of crying myself to sleep every night, and blow the whole thing off. I wanted so badly to go home. Call it quits and just go on being fat. In layman’s terms, I was experiencing what Steven Pressfield aptly calls The Resistance.
The Resistance is what you experience, when you’re trying to change something in your life. The bigger the change the larger the Resistance you feel. I was making a large change. A huge change in fact, and so I was experiencing a huge amount of resistance. And that shit hurts. It hurt deep inside the bones of my body. And I don’t mean that in a metaphorical way. I felt so bad that I was actually experiencing physical symptoms. My entire body was aching with resistance.
But due to my family, and the people around me — who I am eternally thankful for, for their support — I managed to persevere. Sometime between the second and third week I started feeling results. It’s weird, because you wouldn’t think that you’d feel such minor changes. 200 grams here, 500 grams there, but I did. They were real. I could sense it. And at weigh-in, the scale reflected it. I’d never felt so elated in my life. The scale reflected what I felt in my heart of hearts. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to set me down the path of losing weight, and the first step is always the hardest.
Building Momentum
Having pulled off, what felt like one of the most difficult feats of my life thus far — in fact it felt like I had pulled off the most difficult feat in life, period — I started to gain momentum. I lost 800 grams the next week, then 1.1 kilo, then 1.3, and before I knew it, I was well on my way to looking the healthiest I had ever looked, and being in the best shape of my life. I felt better, and looked better, than I ever had before in my life, and I was well on my way to achieving my goal.
Managing Expectations
What I experienced once I started building momentum was that I got to a point, where I figured everything would come fast and easy. Not so. One of the most important things I learned after I started gaining momentum, was that it’s easy to get carried away. After a month and a half of steady progress I started expecting that things would come fast and easy. I expected to wake up with a rock-hard six pack every day. That obviously never happened. I let myself get excited, and started to believe that things were going to be easy. They weren’t. And they aren’t. You still have to show up every day. You have to do the work. No one is going to do it for you. And one of the most important parts of the work is to manage your expectations. Realize that things will never come easy. Things will get easier, the better you get, and more you work. But that doesn’t mean that they are easy.
I had to realize that losing weight, and keep losing weight was hard work. I had to show up. I had to eat right. Exercise. Get my mind right. Stay on the straight and narrow and only then would the results show. If I held up my end of the bargain, the universe would hold up its end of the bargain — but it is a long, steady, slow race. Don’t get fooled into thinking that it’s a sprint. Don’t get fooled into thinking you can do it all at once. This is a trap. You’re undertaking an enormous project (no pun intended), and it is a marathon. In fact, it’s more like an ultra race. A 100K race. You have to keep moving. One foot in front of the other. Keep moving. That’s all you need to think about. Just keep heading in the right direction. Keep heading towards what looks like the finish line, and you will eventually get there.
It takes time.
It did for me, and it did for you.
The sooner I realized this, the sooner I got my act together, and started putting in the work.
Cheat Day
Another thing I learned, was that it was ok to cheat. Not every day. And not whenever you felt like it — but every once in a while cheating was allowed. A funny thing happened, when you allow yourself to cheat once a week; whenever you feel the craving, and you feel like you want to stuff your face with sweets, or eat your emotions, you put it off — you wait until the cheat day. You tell yourself: “On Sunday I am SO going to stuff my face with this that and the other thing”.
It works like a charm. In fact — you’re using the principle of procrastination to your advantage. You’re letting yourself off the hook in a sense, but in a positive way. You know how you never get the things done, that you continue postponing? Same thing goes for overeating. And then when you do allow yourself to cheat, you’re doing it in a much more controlled way than normal, which keeps you from breaking your stride.
Regressing
To me the most difficult part of losing weight initially occurred some time after I got back from fat camp. Right after I got back, I felt like I could walk on water, and I still had a little ways to go, before I had reached my initial weight-loss goal, and so I had no trouble keeping the momentum going. The hard part though, came around eight months after I had reached my weight-loss goal.
I’d gotten skinnier than I ever had been before, and I felt happier than I ever had before, and everything seemed to be moving in the right direction. A funny thing that happens though, is that after you lose the weight, you think to yourself, “Hm, I’ve accomplished my goal — that was easy”. I literally remember thinking those words to myself. Even though it hadn’t been easy. In fact, it’d been the hardest thing I’d ever done in my life — my biggest challenge. And now it was over — or so I thought.
I failed to set a new goal after my initial weight-loss, and then something weird starting happening. Very subtly, and in tiny tiny increments complacency started kicking in. I would cheat a little more on cheat days. Then all of a sudden I’d cheat on non-cheat days. It didn’t happen all at once. It happened so slowly so as to be unnoticeable. Slowly but surely, I was reversing all the momentum I’d built for myself. I was back on the path to being fat again.
Remember — you’re always either getting fitter, or getting fatter.
And at this point, I was definitely on my way to becoming fatter.
I managed to gain most of the weight back, that I’d lost before I realized that what was up. I couldn’t believe it. Here I was — in the best shape of my life, and I’d managed to lose grip again. What the hell was wrong with me?! How could I let this happen to myself?! Again?!
I was so angry with myself because I had actually managed to achieve my goal, and then due to my own stupidity and complacency, I’d managed to piss it all away, in a manner of months.
I later learned, that this is not uncommon at all. Most people find it easier to lose the initial weight, than they do maintaining it after. This happened to me, and I know exactly why. I got complacent — I was very pleased with myself and my results, and I failed to set new goals. In other words I was only looking backwards, and looking to what I’d achieved, instead of looking forward, and sticking to the system that had gotten me this far.
Sliding back is not uncommon, but Jesus Christ is it ever frustrating when it happens. Luckily for me, I wasn’t very far removed from a system that I knew worked, and so all I had to do (simple, not easy) was to get back to that system, and put in the mental and physical effort, and I knew that the results would follow.
Reversing the momentum
The thing about losing weight, is that as soon as you’ve done it once, you get to know the underlying mechanisms, but more importantly, you get a sense of mastery, a sense that yes it can be done.
It is not impossible.
That’s also why I think that losing the weight the second time around, was a little less difficult than the first time. First of all I’d “only” gained 80% of the weight back — I was still fat — but it didn’t feel like I had to start from scratch. At any rate I knew what I had to do to reverse momentum. It was pretty straightforward, but that’s not to say that it was easy. What I had to do however, was to drink water and coffee instead of soda or other types sugary drinks. I had to switch the quick carbs, and processed foods in my diet for greens and slow carbs, such as brown rice. And most importantly I had to start exercising.
When taken together this seems like a daunting task, and it seems like it’s going to take forever, but it’s not, and it won’t.
The first step is by far the hardest — but also the most important one.
The first step is to say no the first time.
To order the salad instead of the pizza.
To go for a 10 minute run — just getting out of the door and move your body.
Once you take the first step, the second and third step follows more easily. The more steps you take, the easier it gets.
Momentum has a tendency to build on itself — you’re either getting fitter or getting fatter — that’s just how the world works.
Another thing about Momentum though, is that it is a lot easier to rebuild, than it is to build in the first place — at least in my experience.
Getting started was a lot easier the second time around.
So if you’re in a position of having lost weight, and then regained it all, don’t despair.
There is hope — but there is also a lesson to learn. I knew what I had to change if I wanted to be successful in achieving sustained change.
Changing one thing
It’s incredibly easy to get pleased with oneself after having lost a lot of weight. In fact, it’s almost impossible not to. I mean how could you not? Here you are — having accomplished one of the most difficult feats in the world, and you feel like you can literally do anything. So unless you have an incredibly tough mental state of mind, you’re likely to get complacent — I know I sure as hell did — and that will eventually lead to regression.
The one change that I made, after I lost weight the second time around, was to set new goals. I was almost positive that this was the missing piece to the puzzle, and that if I did this, and continued to do it, I would not slide back, but continue to move forward — and it was.
Different people have different goals, and if you have your own goals, then that’s great, and you should chase those with all means necessary. However, with the hope of providing a bit of inspiration, I will share some of the goals that I set for myself, and why I did or didn’t achieve them.
- Becoming a professional footballer: Failed: way too big, long-term, audacious and unrealistic. Failing this goal eventually led to my first backslide
- Exercise a for at least 15 minutes every day: Achieved: This was my first short term goal that I reached. It was very hands-on, relatively easy to do, and most importantly it was completely within my own control.
- Exercise for 30 minutes each day: Achieved: See above.
- Run 10 kilometers: Achieved: This happened around six months after I’d set my first goal, and at this point, I’d already gotten back to where I wanted to be weight-wise, but at this point it wasn’t about the weight at all, but about getting to a specific point physically.
- Complete my first mini-triathlon (500 metres swimming, 40K biking and 10 running): Achieved: This was the first competition I’d ever competed in, and it was incredibly satisfying. I enjoyed every minute of it, and at this point I felt like momentum was working for me — as opposed to against me — to a huge degree.
- Run my first marathon: Achieved: This happened in 2014, and was incredibly rewarding. After finishing I swore that I’d never do it again — but I’ve changed my mind, as you will see from goal 9.
- Compete in the CrossFit open: Achieved: After running my first marathon, my focus shifted to CrossFit, which is a lot of fun, and competing in the Open is an incredible experience.
- Become a part of the 1000 pound club: Achieved: Contrary to what you might think, this actually has nothing to do with one’s personal weight, but has everything to do with how much you can deadlift, squat and bench press. If you can get to a 1000 pounds in total, you are part of the 1000 pound club. With a 435 pound deadlift, 308 pound squat and 265 pound bench press I managed to get to a total of 1108 pounds. An achievement that I’m hugely proud of, but that again has nothing to with my weight.
- Run my second marathon: To be seen. As of this writing I am signed up for the 2018 Athens marathon.
- Row a sub 6 minute 2K on the erg. To be seen: This is a super hairy and audacious goal, because getting to this point takes intense focus and practice over a long period of time. This also means this it’s the perfect goal for someone like me, at the point I’m at now, because of the momentum I’ve built.
As I hope you understand I’ve not put my goals in here to brag — even though I am definitely proud of them — but to illustrate how you can shift your focus away from your weight, and towards goals of physical activity. These are way more fun and rewarding to work towards, and they are much more likely to ensure your success.
Coming up
In the coming chapters I’m going to help you along the path of winning the mental battle, and build a system that you can stick to, through good times and bad. A system which will make sure that you don’t fall off the slippery path that is weight-loss.
Chapter 2: Five reasons I was fat
Everyone struggles with their own shit, and their individual reasons for why they are going through what they are going through.
What I’ve learnt from experience though, is that there are enough common denominators, when it comes to being fat, that when everything is stripped away, it can be boiled down to these five reasons:
1. Eating your emotions
2. Lack of self-restraint
3. All your friends are fat
4. Lack of exercise
5. Unhealthy eating
There is no question, that in order to be the best you can be, and to lose unwanted weight — no matter how much — you need to eat right, and be active.
In order to get there however, we need to work on some fundamental issues, and the underlying reasons, why it is so difficult to get to that point in the first place.
So let’s start from the top shall we?
1. Eating your emotions:
Eating your emotions is a sure-fire way to overweight. I know this from experience. When I was at my worst, I would eat my emotions constantly. The negative feelings piled up, one on top of the other, and I couldn’t seem to get out of the rut.
If you’re anything like me at the time, I am sure that you don’t have the thickest of skin, when it comes to weight-related matters. As a result, you’re experiencing a lot of negative emotions, which in turn causes you to eat more unhealthy things, which then exacerbates the situation even further.
Moreover, when you decide to eat your emotions, it’s probably on the sweetest, greasiest, most high-calorie item you can get your hands on. Now don’t get me wrong, there is not anything wrong with this, but if you’re looking to be a skinnier, healthier, happier you, then this is a very bad strategy.
Strategy for change:
Because of the fact that eating your emotions is a coping mechanism, for unwanted emotions, it is one of the hardest things in your life to change. The way I dealt with it — and the best strategy I’ve come across — is to simply replace a bad behaviour with a better one. Incidentally, this also lines up with the psychological research on the subject[1].
To me, the question then becomes, well what strategy do we replace it with?
There are plenty of alternatives, and there are plenty bad ones too. For instance, we could start replacing it with smoking — I did this for a while, and it actually worked. However, I would not recommend this, due to the obvious negative long-term effects it has on the body. Then there’s drinking to cope with your emotions — again not something that I’d recommend.
There are also less destructive mechanisms and quite a few of them line up our long-term goal.
For instance, one coping mechanism could be to go for a walk — and eventually a run. This has worked wonders for me, because it’s a strategy that doesn’t require much. Almost anyone can go for a walk — if you can’t then you should probably consider other methods than reading this book — and the fun part is, the longer you walk, the better you feel. You can literally walk all of your bad feelings away. If this sounds like bullshit to you, I’ll provide anecdotal as well as scientific evidence for why it works.
Let’s start with the anecdotal:
When I just started dealing with my weight-problem, one of the first activities that we did as a group (fat-camp, remember?) was to go for long walks. Naturally, none of us were in great physical shape, so this was a great place to start from a conditioning perspective, but it also helped us experience what mere walking can actually do. It helps brighten up the mood — for everyone.
Every single person was in a great mood, when we went for these walks, and it was a key part of the initial bonding experience. Another thing that’s worth noting here, is that people hated it to begin with. For the first 10–15 minutes people were bitching, and some were even literally crying — that’s how much resistance they felt to the idea of exercise — but after a while, people slowly but surely started getting their shit together.
About 20 or so minutes in to the initial walk, people were chatting, laughing and having a great time, despite the fact that 2 hours earlier, no one knew each other.
This is how powerful just going for a walk is.
I have no doubt, that if the only thing you get from this book, is replacing your primary coping mechanism from eating to walking, your life will fundamentally change in a huge way.
And now the scientific version: Evolutionary physiology and psychology
Ever since humans first started started their heads up off the ground, and started foraging for food in small bands we have had two things going for us. We were good at bonding with each other, and acting in groups, and we were good at moving around to where there was plenty of food. If you weren’t, you didn’t mate, and your genes died along with you. This means that for literally millions of years we’ve been wired to get along well with others and to walk. For 2 million years. 2 million! Were we living in hunter/gatherer societies, literally walking from place to place. Walking to find food, walking to gather food, walking to get water. Everything we did, and had to do in order to survive necessitated walking. If you didn’t walk you died. This means that our brains over literally millions of years have been cultured to walk by the force of evolution.
Now you might wonder what on earth this has to do with losing weight.
The point is that walking feels good because evolution has made it so. This means that walking can be used as a very potent coping mechanism for negative emotion.
Incidentally walking also happens to burn calories.
A lot. Of calories.
Next time you feel sad, depressed or down in the dumps, go for a walk. Or next time you just like brightening your mood go for a walk. In fact why not go for a walk right now.
It’ll literally get your juices flowing, and I guarantee that when you come back you will feel better, smarter, happier and more on top of things then you have in a long time.
Try it out and see for yourself.
Always keep in mind, that change is not easy. Change takes time, and you will not be able to stop eating your emotions from one day to the next. But if you start slowly substituting a destructive coping mechanism, for a productive one, you will slowly but surely start making progress. In a time that will seem incomprehensibly long when you’re going through it, but unfathomably short in hindsight, you will have made immense progress, and might have managed to substitute over-eating for walking.
With that in mind, let’s move on to the next reason you’re fat and what to do about that one.
2. Lack of self-restraint.
The thing about eating unhealthily is not bad in and of itself. In fact, if you had enough self-restraint to only have miniscule portions, you could theoretically subsist on a diet of pop, chocolate cake and chips — however I highly recommend not trying this at home. The point is that you want to hit your daily calorie target of 2100–2300 calories for men and 1700–1900 calories for women, and you can do this in several different ways. In other words: You can have whatever you want, as long as you only have a little. What’s bad is the lack of self-restraint that goes into over-eating, when you have a weight-problem. To be fair this factor is as bad as eating your emotions, and they usually go together.
When it comes to self-restraint, this remains one of my biggest challenges to this day, and I realize how hard it cultivate and cope with.
However, there are a few things which makes it less difficult, so let’s explore those in some depth:
Strategies for change
In my experience there are ways people go about making changes in this way. Some do it cold-turkey and simply attempt quitting everything all at once, and institute all the required self-restraint from the beginning. Although it works for some people, I will say that I have rarely seen it work long, and my preferred strategy — and the one that has worked for me — is to do things gradually. This also lines up with the research, which suggests that self-control can be increased over time[2]
This means that you allow yourself a certain portion of something that you’re craving and then keep it at that. Meaning, that if you allow yourself to eat half a chocolate bar, and actively cultivate self-restraint, and work on it, as a thing you are improving in your life, then it gradually gets easier. This also plays into the concept of cheat days, which we’ll explore later on in this book.
Interestingly however, self-restraint is like a muscle — the more you use it, the stronger it
gets, and the more mental fitness you cultivate, the more your physical fitness will reflect it.
Personal story
I’ve already related my bus-stop moment to you, which is very telling of my lack of self-restraint, but in that case, it was also very much a case of eating my emotions. So I want to tell you a story which truly showcases how lack of self-restraint can influence your decision-making.
I am at home watching a movie, feeling sorry for myself — which was the norm at this point — and I needed something to snack on. Now I know that I’m supposed to watch my weight at this point, and so eating snacks is not exactly what I’m supposed to be doing. However, I still manage to convince myself, that I’ll just have one cookie.
I’m sure you know how this plays out.
After having the first cookie, I manage to convince myself, that it’s ok to have another one.
“Just one more” — Famous last words.
Before I knew it, I’d eaten the entire box of cookies, plus some additional candy that was lying around, and other random miscellaneous things that were in the cupboards.
And the funny thing is, even though I have managed to get rid of my excess weight, and I am living a healthy lifestyle, this is a problem that I continue to struggle with.
The things I binge on are less unhealthy — natural peanut butter, carrots, dark chocolate — but it’s still essentially the same thing.
Occasionally, I display a complete lack of self-restraint when it comes to stuffing my face.
However, the number of occasions on which this happens, continue to decline, but still it’s kind of disconcerting.
What I hope to display with this story is two-fold though: One is that things will not change overnight. The behaviours that got you started down the path of overweight will take time to change. Maybe they will never disappear completely, and that’s ok. What you need to be aware of is how you react when they happen, and how you can substitute items and behaviours to increase your likelihood of maintaining your weight-loss.
For instance, you might switch candy for apples and peanut-butter, because — trust me on this one — there is only so much peanut butter you can eat before you start feeling really full. So even though you binge, you get some actual nutrition, and satisfy your craving.
The good news:
Look, I realize how hard building self-restraint is — I’ve been there. In fact, I’m still there. I’ve had to start from the very bottom, with literally 0 self-restraint, and build it gradually, until I am now on a level of around 75 on a scale that goes to 100. So I know how it feels, every step of the way, and I’m not going to lie to you, it is going to be exceptionally hard, but it’s going to be worth it a million times over.
Having said that however, the good news is this: Like anything else that goes into this massive change that you’re making, the first part is the hardest part, and so you can rest assured it gets easier with time.
3. All your friends are fat
It has long been an established fact that we become like the people we surround ourselves with[3]. Let me illustrate with a brief, but concise personal example. When I was fat, my three closest friends were fat too. Now that I’m healthy, my three closest friends are the people I go to the gym with.
This is no coincidence, and I’m going to assume, that the people you feel the closest to are very similar to you — simply because we like people who are like us[4]. This means that in order to change who you are, you need to change some part of the people you hang out with most often. I’m not saying change your friends — I certainly didn’t — I’m saying encourage them to go to the gym with you, or simply find one friend, partner or buddy who you can work out with, and who will hold you to your commitment.
Strategy for change
Public commitment — having someone hold you to your pledge to be healthy — is one of the most powerful strategies for change[5]. The reason is because of the way you present yourself to others, has a profound effect on how you view yourself, which in turn affects your behaviour.
The crux of the matter is, that the more people who can help you go to the gym, eat healthily, and support you mentally — preferably by being healthy themselves — the more you increase your odds of achieving sustained and sustainable change.
4. Lack of Exercise
Many an article on weight-loss and healthy living have argued whether exercising is more important than diet or vice versa. This is missing the point completely. They are both important when it comes to weight-loss, and in order to achieve the best possible outcome you’re going to need both.
The documented benefits of exercise are incredibly numerous, but they include health and well-being[6], improved cognitive function[7] and yada yada yada. You get it. Exercise is good, and you’re probably sick of hearing about it.
However, if you’re truly committed to leading a healthier lifestyle, and being the best version of yourself — and I know, that you are — then you need to exercise. Ironically, the benefits mentioned above, and the extra calories burned are not all that important in the scheme of things.
What is way more important is the personal discipline and self-esteem[8] you build in the course of exercising on a regular basis, that is way more important, and will provide you with way more benefits down the road. In order to illustrate this, let me share another personal story
From Couch potato to marathon-finisher
You won’t be surprised to hear, that at the height of my fatness the majority of my physical activity was walking from the couch to the fridge. Maybe from the chair I used for gaming in to the fridge.
You get the picture. It’s not pretty. The point of the story is that I did not get any exercise at all. So what changed? How did I manage to go from completely lethargic unmovable and very sizable object I 2001 to a finisher of the Copenhagen Marathon in 2014? In other words, how did I go from one extreme end of the fatness/fitness scale to another one, on the opposite end?
I did using the principle of incrementalism[9].
Incrementalism?
As the name implies, incrementalism is the art of doing things incrementally. Now, before you chastise me for stating that which is painfully obvious, I will explain what I mean in a little more detail. The point of incrementalism is that you start with the smallest possible step, and then gradually build and improve from that initial step. This makes seemingly insurmountable tasks — such as running a marathon — less daunting, because at one point it becomes the next logical step, from the point you’re currently at.
Let’s go back to the story above:
In 2001 when I was at my worst point physically and mentally, the very first step of exercising was initially going for a walk. Not a very long walk, but simply something to get the body used to getting up and moving. It might have lasted 10 minutes — if that.
The next walk I took the day after, and that might have lasted 12 minutes.
The day after it was 15.
Then I stayed at 15 minutes for a while, just to get used to it.
Then I got to 17, 20, 25.
At this point walking was easy, and it was something that I wanted to do, because it made me feel good. So walking was a reward in and of itself. That’s how it starts. And the most important thing — by far — is to just start.
It doesn’t matter if you’re walking for 1 or 2 minutes to begin with.
The point is that the first step is for you to get out of the house. One suggestion could be that you simply get out of the place you’re at currently, and go for a walk — walk until you get to the first light post, and then walk back.
That’s it.
Baby steps to begin with — but the first steps are always the hardest. Tomorrow, when you go for your next walk, just walk to the second light post. Keep that rhythm going, and stay constistent. Keep walking every day. And keep walking a tiny bit further every day.
Before you know it, walking will have become too easy, and you’ll want to gravitate to running at least some of the distance.
That’s how it starts.
The snowball rolls from there.
You slowly, but surely gain momentum and before you know it, you will be achieving feats you had no idea were possible.
That’s how it happened for me.
Walking turned to walking further, which led to running, which led to rowing, cycling and weight training, which led to all kinds of research and insights into the physical, nutritional and mental aspect of human beings.
Which has led to a point in my life, where I am now fitter and happier than I have ever been in my life.
The reason I am saying this, is because I want to illustrate how far you can get with incrementalism, and how far you can get if you start just.
5. Eating (and drinking) the wrong things
When it comes to weight-loss, the Holy Grail has always been diet and exercise. In that order. I disagree with that. Completely. It all starts with the mental aspects. Get your head in the right place, and the results will follow. Having said that, you will need to start eating and drinking more of the right things, and less of the wrong things in order to succeed.
The good news is that it is a fairly simple system to implement. You don’t need to count calories of live off of steamed broccoli for the rest of your life. Stick to eating mostly protein and greens, i.e. eggs, meat, (eggs and bacon anyone?), peppers, carrots, beans, and a lot of other good stuff. Try making your way around the greens section of the supermarket and I bet you can come up with a lot of really good ideas about how to eat healthy.
The system that I use focus on the things that I can eat with a good conscience, and I want to share the bulk of it with you:
- All meats
- All fish — salmon remains a personal favorite
- Eggs
- Brown rice
- All greens — the more the better
- All beans — the more the better
- Canned tomatoes — works with almost everything
- All types of nuts
- Dark chocolate
Pro-tip: Eat apples and all-natural peanut butter as a snack. It fills you up, and satisfies your craving. And it won’t allow you to binge, simply because you can’t because you get full.
When it comes to what to drink, stick to the following:
- Water
- Coffee (black — no cream, no sugar)
- Tea (also no cream, no sugar)
Stay away from soft drinks like iced tea, soda and the like. When in doubt drink water. Switch it up with carbonated and/or flavoured water, as long as it doesn’t have any added sugar.
Simple and straightforward.
The essence of the system is this:
Eat as many — and as much of — natural things as you can.
Stay away from processed foods, sugar and starch (bread, pasta and other things with flour) at all costs.
Eat a lot of times during the day[10].
Allow yourself to cheat occasionally, but no more than once per week.
Stick to items that are in this list and you’ll start noticing the results in no time.
Dieting right really is that simple.
Keep in mind though, that in this case incrementalism also works wonders, and in order to achieve the best long-term results, you can start by changing one meal at a time. Maybe today you start by eating a really healthy breakfast. Tomorrow it’s a healthy breakfast and lunch.
Small steps.
Get that momentum going.
Keep it going — and before long you’ll start seeing tremendous results.
However, large and noticeable results take time to come to fruition.
Things don’t happen overnight.
Therefore we need to not get ahead of ourselves — which leads us elegantly into the next chapter.
Chapter 3: Managing Expectations
One of the hardest things for me to this day, is to manage expectations. As Sharot (2011) points out, humans are cognitively wired to be overly optimistic. This means that we think we can accomplish our goals in 3–5 days, and we get disappointed when we don’t. That’s when we fall off the wagon, binge and feel like none of this matters, and that we might as well give up. Trust me — I’ve been there — I know how it feels.
During my first weight loss I almost quit after the third day. In fact, if it hadn’t been for the support of my immediate family I would have quit. And I would probably still have been fat.
My excuse for quitting, you ask? I’d already lost 200 grams.
I’d say that this is what most people — including myself — struggle the most with. The optimism bias is such a basic part of the human condition that it seems almost trivial to point out, but the point is that managing expectations is one of the hardest parts about weight loss. However, it is crucial to master. You won’t get anywhere without it.
Personal story
As I’ve mentioned, I wanted to quit after three days, because I felt like I’d already made enough progress. However, in order to understand just how much of a struggle managing expectations really is, we need to go further back in time, to the point at which I initially started to deal with my issues.
My first diet was around the time I was 8 years old. I had started diverging from the path of just being a chubby kid, to the path of serious weight-problem unless it is checked at the door.
Therefore I was put on an initial diet, consisting of salad leaves and carrots. I’m not joking. This was viewed as the way to go at the time. If there is not yet a definition of crash dieting in the Oxford dictionary, then this should be it from now on.
As you might expect, this didn’t last long, so we ventured into a new arena — this time into the arena of goal-setting and rewards.
My goal was to lose 10 kilos, and when I’d reached that goal I was to be rewarded with a toy that I really wanted. Surprisingly this didn’t work either. It was particularly surprising because one would think that that kind of reward would be really motivating — and it was. But it still didn’t work. Why? It turns out that when things outside of us motivate us, the motivation inside of us fades away[11]. This means that when we set up a prize that we can aim for, the thing itself no longer motivates us[12].
Case in point; I was more motivated to get my hands on the toy than I was to lose weight, and as soon as I encountered resistance, it was very easy to give up, because the intrinsic motivation wasn’t strong enough.
I lasted a tiny bit longer than the first time around when I was crash dieting, but not by much. The reason — apart from the wrong type of motivation — was that there wasn’t yet a sustainable system put in place, that I could rely on, and fall back on when things started getting out of hand. In addition, I hadn’t yet gotten to a point where I could manage my expectations — I still expected things to happen overnight, and I was very disappointed when they didn’t.
Even when I finally managed to lose my weight (both times) and subsequently move toward new goals (bodily and otherwise) I’ve expected things to happen way quicker than they actually did. I felt like I was chipping away at a rock, and making zero progress, until all of the sudden the rock split into a 1000 pieces and everything seemed to happen at once.
The point of the story is the fact that things take time. It’s a process. If you expect things to happen from one day to the next, you’re not going to have a good time. Unfortunately, you need to get used to the fact that it is a process. And you have to trust the process. Even learning to manage expectations is a process. I feel like I am just getting there now — insofar as getting to the realizations that things take time. The only thing that matters is having a sustainable system in place, which holds you up, and carries you through the tough times. It doesn’t matter if it’s in matters related to weight loss, money, writing or any other goals that you may have.
Things take time. Even getting to that realization takes time.
It took me 10 years to get to this realization. It took me 15 years to feel like I was no longer a fatty.
So be patient.
That is the only way you’re going to succeed.
Strategy for change
The strategy for change when it comes to managing expectations is a purely mental exercise. Therefore, you need to be very vigilant in your thought-process, so that you don’t get ahead of yourself. In a sense you need to watch your thoughts, so that every time you think to yourself “I should be hitting such and such a target in two weeks” or “When I get to x weight I’ll do this thing for mysel” bring your mind back to the task at hand. Bring it back to what you need to do today.
Don’t focus on the when’s and the if’s, but focus exclusively on your system, and what needs to be done, and what you can do today to help yourself in the best possible way.
Fell off the wagon and binged?
That sucks, but you can still go to the gym, and stay on track with your diet and workout regime from now on.
Missed a workout?
Not the end of the world. Just make sure you get back on the horse as soon as possible. Make sure that you make your next workout.
Whatever you do, keep your thoughts centred on what is in your control. What you can do right now. What you can do today. No more than that.
If you stick to that, and keep applying that thought process, you will see results before you know it.
Things happen when they happen, and everyone is different. All you can do is take one step at a time, and stay on course.
If you do that, then there is only one outcome — success.
Chapter 4: Creating a system
A system is a set of procedures according to which something gets done — in other words, the way you do things. The better your system the better your results. This goes for anything — especially weight loss. Or to be more specific — being healthy.
Because that is the ultimate goal here, and if you want to be healthy then one of your top priorities is setting up a system that supports that goal.
As we’ve talked about there are three things that are essential to this goal:
First off:
Mentality
you need to get a grasp on your thoughts. Stay realistic, grounded and focused. Keep your mind on the things you can do today to support your weight loss. As soon as you find yourself straying away from that and towards future goals, or something that is not the immediate task at hand, you need to gently guide your mind back towards what you need to be doing right now, and doing it well.
Stay focused.
Don’t overreach, and don’t get ahead of yourself.
That’s the mental part of the system in a nutshell.
Part two:
Workouts
You need to work out more often than not.
This is where a system truly shines. Do you do your workouts in a gym? Do you swim laps at a pool? Do you go for a run? Do you combine these things into a coherent whole?
Next up you need to consider when you’re going to the gym. Do you go in the morning to start the day off in a great way? Or maybe you’re more of an after-work person.
The specifics don’t matter that much. What matters is that you set your system up to support you in the best possible way.
In order to give you some inspiration as to what a system might look like, I’m going to share my system with you, and you are obviously more than welcome to follow it.
On most of my gym-days I go to the gym in the morning before work. This means getting up early to start the day. This was excruciating in the beginning, but it gets easier the more you do it. The reason I do this is because no one is going to set up a meeting with you or try to hang out with you at 6 o’clock in the morning. At least it hasn’t happened yet. And so there is no guilty conscience of me feeling like I should be doing something else. This is my time, and I deliberately set it aside for myself in order to get my workouts done first thing in the morning.
Next up is the way I workout. I prefer two types of workouts — the rowing machine and the ski erg — both are great low impact[13] cardio workouts that you can do no matter your current level of fitness.
I split my workouts into three different categories: intervals, which are short and hard. Tempo workouts, which are a bit longer, but less hard, and finally, distance workouts, which are the longest, but the least hard.
I work out Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday and rest Mondays and Fridays.
What’s important to remember here is that this is non-negotiable. There is no way in hell, that I am not going to do my workout. It’s not a “If I feel like it”-thing. It’s a “No matter if the world burns, I’ve lost my job and my cat’s died” — kind of thing.
No matter what has happened, or is happening, I am going to go to the gym and get my workout in, because I know that it is going to make me feel better. It’s going to set the tone for the entire day, and as a results, no matter what happens, I get to think to myself — “Well, at least I got a good workout in today”.
This shows the beauty of the system, but also the simplicity. Making it non-negotiable turns it from an optional thing, to an unconditional thing, and that makes all the difference in the world.
Next up:
Nutrition
Diets are hard. In fact dieting is probably the single most sucky factor of losing weight. The thing about diets is that they’re all wrong. No matter which diet you follow — whether it be Adkins, Weight Watchers the 3-day diet, the 17 Day Diet or whichever other diet you can think of. None of them works — at least not in the long run.
Trust me — I’ve tried every single one of them and none of them have worked in the long run.
The reason none of them works is because they all rest on a flawed assumption. They all rest on the assumption that you can diet for a while, and then go back to the way you used to live, and you will somehow still see results.
This is obviously ridiculous, and unsustainable.
It won’t work, and so we need to change our approach. What we are looking for then, is not the next miracle diet or a drug or meal replacements or herb-based diet-pills.
What we are looking for is a system. A good old fashioned list of do’s and don’ts, put in to a framework that is easy to understand, and even easier to follow.
I am going to share my system here, as well as the thoughts that have gone into developing my system. I want to point out though, that my system might not be the optimal system for you. You can start by following my system, and doing what I do, but I encourage you to experiment and see how you react to different things — maybe you will want to incorporate more mushrooms in your diet, or less meat and more beans, or you might want to drink more water and less coffee.
The fundamentals of the system however — the framework — will work every time. If you stick to this system and change your habits — change your lifestyle and in effect change your life — then you will also lose the weight.
One last caveat before I take you through my system: Keep in mind, that it will take time to show results. It is not a magic bullet. I am not a snake-oil salesman. I am here to tell you what works, what doesn’t, and why that is the case.
Speaking from personal experience though, I can promise you one thing:
If you stick to this system, you will slowly but surely move towards living a life of health that you never thought possible.
Before we move into the nuts and bolts of the system I want you to change your mindset and stop thinking in terms of diets and eating habits, and move towards thinking in terms of nutrition and lifestyle.
Your body can’t subsist on a diet. Your body subsists on nutrition. On protein and fibre, carbohydrates and water. The complex processes that happen in our brain and body are hugely dependant on what we eat and drink. If we live off of sugar, fat and processed foods, then it’s no wonder that the body feels like shit — tired, drained and below par. This in turn affects our mood, and we start to spiral downwards from there.
Not only that, but we will feel dehydrated. If we drink soda, iced tea or energy drinks, then we won’t get all the water the body needs, and therefore we will soon start feeling worse because of this.
Your body is made mostly of water. Stay hydrated. If you’re in doubt as to whether or not you’re getting enough water look at your pee (No, I’m not joking). If it’s clear you’re in the clear. If not — drink more water. Simple as that. That change alone can work wonders for your mood and weight loss.
If you focus on foods that have a high nutritional value, and focus on staying hydrated, you are well on your way towards a sustainable lifestyle.
Eating and drinking the right way can change your life — it certainly changed mine.
The core of the Lifestyle-system
There are six pillars in this system
- The plate model
- Single-plate eating
- 6 meals a day (three small, three large)
- Cheat-Day
- Drink Smart
- Sleep tight
Let’s go through each one of them in turn, shall we?
The Plate Model
The beauty of the Plate Model is in its simplicity.
The idea is that you divide your plate into four quarters and divide them like this:
- One quarter meat or protein.
o Eggs
o Beef
o Salmon
o Tuna
You get the idea
One quarter healthy fats
o Black beans
o Avocado
o Chick peas
o Olives
o Kidney Beans
o Nuts
o Bean Pasta (Google it — it’s really good and you should try it out)
One half veggies
o Peppers
o Tomatoes
o Peas
o Mushrooms
o Literally the options are endless
This is pretty simple, and you should be able to implement this in your life easily.
Keep this in mind whenever you make a meal: One quarter protein, one quarter healthy fats and one half veggies. I’ll bet that once you have done this a few times, you’ll realize how easy it is to stick to, and it will start becoming second nature, before you know it.
The next pillar in our system is:
Single-Plate Eating
This is exactly what it sounds like. Stick to one plate. Don’t go for seconds. I don’t give a shit how hungry you think you are. Stick to a single plate, and then wait for the next meal. This might take some getting used to, but no body needs more than a full plate of food. Anything more is just eating your feelings.
It’s as simple as that.
No hocus pocus.
Stick to one plate.
(at least) 6 meals a day
Since this is my system, I am going to tell you what has worked for me. Eating 6 times, a day has worked wonders for me. First of all, it makes it easier to stick to eating one plate of food per meal, because you won’t feel like you’re starved and haven’t eaten all day because — well, you have.
Moreover, you won’t feel like eating that many unhealthy snacks, because you’ve armed yourself with an artillery of snacks — nuts, apples, carrots, peppers and nut-butters of all kinds (all-natural of course). You can eat these snacks without feeling a tinge of guilt, because they have nutritional value, and will help hold you over until your next bigger meal.
Here’s how I eat in a typical day:
Breakfast: Two eggs and my morning smoothie[14].
First snack: Two carrots
Lunch: According to the plate model.
Second snack: An apple with all-natural peanut-butter.
Third snack: Two more carrots
Dinner: According to the plate model.
Fourth snack: Another apple and peanut butter.
Fifth snack: “Dessert” — made from my own recipe which is tasty and nutritional, while being all natural without flour, sugar or any other foods which are not super high in nutritional value (you can get the recipe by signing up for my newsletter — I guarantee you’re gonna love it!)
So that comes to five snacks and three bigger meals.
You can mix and match between meals and snacks as you please, as long as you stick to healthy snacks.
One of my biggest fears when changing my lifestyle was to go hungry.
Trust me. You won’t.
Always keep this in mind.
If you’re going hungry, you’re doing it wrong.
Cheat Day
This is an integral part of the system. It helps keep you sane, because sometimes you just feel like stuffing your face with cake and candy. It happens. Make that a part of your system and allow yourself to cheat one day of the week. Mine is Sunday. Pick yours, and stick to it. Cling to it, in a huge way. When the going gets tough — which it will — you can always fall back on Cheat Day. This way you can say to yourself: “I really want to eat these five candy bars, 10 pancakes and drink this 2-litre chocolate milk, but I can’t right now, because it’s not Sunday today”. When Sunday rolls around you can indulge in all the things, you have been craving all week.
This method works wonders, and I encourage you massively to pick a Cheat Day. I only have one caveat.
Don’t cheat on your Cheat Day. You must stick to it. If you suddenly start cutting corners you will fall off the wagon soon enough. Show willpower. I know you can. If I had it in me, then you can be 100% certain that you do too.
Drink smart
It has taken me many years to realize this, but what we drink has a huge influence on how our body feels, and in turn our mood and in turn weight loss and overall bodily performance. It seems obvious, but to many people it’s not. Energy drinks, pop and coffee is what most people drink throughout the day, and then they don’t understand why they get tired after lunch.
This used to be me.
Remember — all this is based on personal experience, and I know what a huge difference this makes.
Drink water.
Lots and lots of water.
Stick to a few cups of coffee and a few cups of tea, to switch it up every occasionally. But trust me — drinking water consistently, and whenever you feel thirsty will give you the single biggest benefit out of the things we’ve discussed so far.
However important you think it is at this point — it’s more important.
The best thing you can do for yourself is drink lots and lots of water.
One final note — don’t drink coffee after four in the afternoon. The half-life of caffeine is around 6 hours (Statland and Demas 1980), which means that if you drink your last cup of coffee at four, you’re still going to have half that amount of caffeine in you around the time you go to bed. This will in turn affect your sleep, and if you sleep poorly, you are going to have a bad time.
With this elegant bridge — let’s move right on to our final subject in this system.
Sleep Tight
In order to function optimally we need between 7.53 and 7.93 hours of sleep per night (Taillard, Philip and Bioulac 1999). Not only that but you need between 7 and 8 hours of sleep per night. Otherwise you’re not going to function properly. You’re going to be less productive, feel less alert and overall, you’re not going to be on top of your game. This translates directly to weight loss, because sleep deprivation impacts your overall mental capacity. We know that willpower is a limited resource (Duckworth et. al. 2011) and if you don’t sleep the amount your body requires, you’re going to have less willpower than you otherwise would have, which means that you make losing weight unnecessarily hard on yourself.
Prioritize sleep. Make sure you’re getting 7.5–8 others.
In fact make it your top priority. Get enough good sleep, and good things will necessarily follow.
Again, this is something that I know from first-hand experience.
I used to fall asleep to the TV, wake up in the middle the night, being on the phone which was beeping and vibrating and all kinds of things. Turn it off. Create an environment for yourself where it is easy to sleep, and in which you won’t be interrupted when you are sleeping.
There is no overstating how critical this is, and changing this is another key change you must make in order to reach your goal of living a healthy lifestyle.
Conclusion
We’ve gone through a lot in this section, so let’s sum up, so that we can get an overview.
Creating a system starts with getting the mentality right. You need to be aware of the fact that you are most likely to become over-optimistic and impatient. That’s just human nature, and it is completely fine. It just shows that you’re eager to reach your goal. However, you want to make sure you stay focused, and stay in tune with what you can do on a daily basis — better yet, what can you do right now? — to achieve the outcome that you’re looking for. Get the mentality right, and the rest will follow.
Next up we talked about nutrition. How to develop a system that is simple, that you can rely on — how to structure your eating patterns to support your healthy lifestyle: The Plate Model, the idea of only ever going for one plate and eating things that are natural and have high nutritional value. Stick to medium sized meals and small snacks throughout the day — at least 6, but more is ok. I’m usually at 8 or 9.
Keep it small. Don’t go hungry. If you feel hungry. Eat a snack.
We also talked about how important staying hydrated is. Drink water. Lots of it. Throughout the day. Whenever you feel thirsty or depleted. Drink water. It works wonders.
Get your sleep. Prioritize it, like it is one of the most important things in the world because, well — it is. Get 7.5–8 hours per day, and your body will start feeling better instantly. You’ll have more energy, more willpower, be able to stay focused longer, and most importantly, you will feel better overall.
These are the six pillars of my system for being healthy. If you follow the steps outlined in the previous section you will start losing weight in no time. More importantly, you will start feeling better within a week.
This is no wonder drug, or pill or a quick-fix. This is treating the body the way it’s supposed to be treated — giving it everything it needs. If you do this, you will be truly skinny, healthy and happier than you ever thought you would be.
I know that we’ve talked about quite a few things here, and I get that it can seem overwhelming. Start small. Do one thing at a time. Start by drinking more water every day. That’s an easy one to do. Then, once you’ve made a habit of that, focus on getting enough good sleep every night. Now you’ve got the ball rolling, and you can start building your healthy patterns, with the steps outlined above.
So that’s it right?
Pretty much.
There is only one question left to ask:
Chapter 6: Is it worth it?
In a word, yes!
Unequivocally and emphatically, yes!
Changing my mind-set and my lifestyle, is the single most important thing I’ve ever done for myself. When I think back to how depressed I was, and how hopeless everything felt at the time, it might have literally saved my life.
Moreover, when I compare to the way I feel (and look) now, the difference is almost ridiculous. I’ve disassociated myself so much from being overweight, that it feels like I was a different person back then. Interestingly, this just happens to be true. Every cell in the body is replaced every 7–10 years (Frisén, et. al. 2005) and so I am quite literally a different person, than I was back then.
My point is, that when you undertake this mammoth project of changing your lifestyle, it is going to hurt. There are going to be days and night where you feel like quitting. And you might even actually quit once or twice, and that’s ok. As long as you get back on track, and keep moving towards the person you want to be.
You will have to change your thoughts, your behaviours, maybe even some of the people that you spend time with, and it’s going to take time. It’s going to be painful. There is no denying that. Every change is painful, and the bigger the pain, the more pain you are going to experience. Changing your lifestyle in this way, is a change that is so fundamental, and so mind-blowing, that the pain is going to be excruciating.
But will it be worth it?
Yes it will.
It will be worth it one hundred thousand times over.
It will be worth it more than I can ever describe to you in words. The only way you’re going to know how good it feels — how amazing it is to overcome this obstacle, which is literally life-threatening — is to live it.
The aim of this article is to give you the tools to start your own journey, and live through your own changes. If it helps you get started, or helps push you along the way, I will have done my job.
All the best on your journey
Nick
[1] Johnston 2006: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2223178/
[10] Whenever you get hungry, sneak in a small meal. Eat some carrots, some peanuts, anything small to keep the body fuelled and hydrated. I promise you, that if you stick to this scheme consistently you will start feeling better very quickly, and the results will start showing very quickly.
[11] This might sound like fluffy psychobabble, but there is solid evidence to support this notion.
[12] Deci, Ryan and Koestner 2009
[13] meaning they don’t strain your joints such as .e.g. running does
[14] An example could be strawberries, carrots and soymilk
