Heavy Brain

HEAVY BRAIN
By
TOMMY CALDWELL & DR. LAURA CARIA

Contents
PREFACE
HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

CONFIDENCE RATING
INTRODUCTION
CHAPTER BREAKDOWN
CHAPTER 1
WHAT WE BELIEVE ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS
CHAPTER 1 REFLECTIONS
CHAPTER 2
THE FOUR BARRIERS
CHAPTER 3
TRAUMA, CULTURE, AND DOPAMINE
CHAPTER 4
THE UNHEALTHY REWARD CYCLE (BARRIERS IN ACTION)
CHAPTER 5
READINESS FOR CHANGE?
CHAPTER 6
HEALTH WITHOUT STRINGS ATTACHED
CHAPTER 7
THE ROLE OF LIFESTYLE
CHAPTER 8
SELF ANALYSIS AND BRAIN TRAINING
CHAPTER 9
IN THE EVENT OF A RELAPSE…
FINAL THOUGHTS
CONFIDENCE RATING (AFTER)
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Preface
I didn’t write this book with the hope or intention of selling one million copies. In the world of weight loss, diet, and fitness, this isn’t the kind of book that sells. Whenever
I look at the weight loss section of my local bookstore it is packed with hundreds of diet books that promise the ‘next big thing’. Shelves are bursting with various styles of
promoted eating for weight loss (either by food selection, food avoidance, or food consumption method) and the weight loss methods in these books are promoted to the
consumer as something unique and forward thinking. Revolutionary even. ‘If you just eat this way, and not that way, all of your weight loss dreams will come true’. This is
the underlying promise we have become suckers for.
This book does not fit into that popular weight loss genre. Since I understand the innate human instinct to be driven toward ‘quick fix’ solutions that promise rapid results
with little effort on the end of the user I accepted that this book would not be a worldwide phenomenon or break any sales records long before I wrote the first words.
I picture this book’s future to be more as a dust collecting object that will only become relevant long after I am dead or on my way out of this world, at which point in time
people will understand why the thousands of diets, gadgets, supplements, cleanses, detoxes, resets, fitness trends, and everything else the weight loss industry has to offer
each year never give us long-term results in return.
The realist in me sees this book and says ‘no person is going to invest this much reading and self exploration into solving their weight loss problem’. I carry this lingering
pessimistic view of our ability to help ourselves because the reality of ‘give me results in 30 days with the least amount of effort or don’t give me anything at all’ is the
clear reality that props up an industry that has multibillion dollar annual sales while the overweight and obese populations continue to grow, both literally and figuratively.
It doesn’t matter that the quick fix solutions we have tried over and over again have never worked for long-term, sustainable weight loss. For some reason most of us can’t
get out of the cycle of spending money and sporadic bits of energy on weight loss solutions that give us hope but not results.
The more hopeful, optimistic part of me says ‘someone is going to read this book, and it is going to click for them’. ‘Someone out there wants to resolve their weight
problem and take control of their health once and for all, and they are waiting for a book like this to be printed’.
I wrote this book for that person.
If I can be honest with you, the chances that the person I wrote this for ends up being you are not good. Statistically speaking if you are picking up a book in the hopes that
it will solve your weight problems, you are much more likely to be the person who is looking for someone to come save you. Unfortunately this book can only put you in a
position to save yourself. So if you are looking for the book that is going to change your life by giving you some sort of magic weight loss concept you should move on as this
will be a (yet another) waste of your money.
If by some long shot you are the one in one thousand who picks up a book that puts the actual dietary strategies (you are surely pining for) behind a gateway of 250 pages of
material on the evolutionary and societal barriers to success, deep self exploration, and personal problem solving and enthusiastically says ‘this is exactly what I need and
exactly what I was looking for’ then I say congratulations. You, my friend, are a unicorn. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it, and I can’t wait
to hear about your paradigm shift and massive success story to follow.
To all of those who are knocking the dust off of this book in the year 2050 at which time the world will know and understand that the key to weight loss does not come from
diet and exercise centricity, let me say with the most arrogant of satisfactions, ‘I told you so’
How to use this book
Before we get to the official introductory chapter I should tell you how you are going to use this book, for the format is not that of your typical ‘diet’ book.
Each chapter of this book will have its main reading content, and either a set of ‘reflections’, a set of ‘tools’, or both will follow that content. The reflections and tools are
designed to allow you to take the concepts you read about in the chapter and properly apply their benefit to your life. The ‘reflections’ are designed to help you create an
internal dialogue that leads to the correction of your root problems. The problems that make it impossible for you to make applicable life changes to your daily habits,
behaviours, and choices that have made it impossible for you to succeed in your diet and exercise efforts. The ‘tools’ are designed to help you create a framework of
assessment and action so you can implement new, healthy habits, behaviours, and decision making back into your life. Don’t worry if those descriptions seem unclear to you
right now. They will make perfect sense once you get to the reflections and tools. You can either do the brief written work directly in the book after reading each chapter,
or you can do the work outside of the book on a notepad or even in your smartphone. Where you document and store the information isn’t important. Doing the work, is. In
reflection sections where I believe the written work may be more than a few lines long, I ask you to use an external writing source so you aren’t struggling to fit your
thoughts into the small pages of the book.
Don’t worry if this sounds like tedious ‘homework’. The reflection and tools sections after each chapter are short and brief, but participating in them will make a significant
difference in your ability to apply the strategies taught in this book.
In the first half of the book the chapters contain only reflections. My goal is to get you to a clear understanding of why you do the things you do that lead you to a state of
poor health. This is because understanding this part of yourself is the first step in getting to your individual solution. In the second half of the book I begin to introduce tools
because by that point you will be in a good position to begin using them effectively.
After the conclusion of the book I have inserted the MetFlex-Rx diet, exercise, and lifestyle guide. It is my hope that once you have completed the work within this book and
within yourself that you will be in the position to succeed in your diet and exercise efforts, and because of this I have provided you with a non-dogmatic, effective structure
for individualizing your diet and exercise needs to fit your unique history, goals, and lifestyle.
Confidence Rating
For the sake of gaining your own objective insight into how this book has helped you, I ask that you fill out this brief confidence rating system right now, and then again at
the end of the book where a second confidence rating system will be waiting for you. That way you can see how this book has positively impacted your psychology. Just
circle your answers directly on the page.
1= Not true at all
2= Somewhat true
3= True
4= Very true
5= 100% confidence
I am confident that I can take my health back

1 2 3 4 5
I feel good about my body

1 2 3 4 5
I am excited for the future of my health

1 2 3 4 5
I am in control of my health
1 2 3 4 5
I have the tools I need to succeed

1 2 3 4 5
This time, things will be different

1 2 3 4 5
I do not fear failure

1 2 3 4 5
I understand why I have failed in the past

1 2 3 4 5
I understand what I need to do to succeed

1 2 3 4 5
A year from now I won’t recognize the ‘old me’

1 2 3 4 5
Introduction
I have a confession to make. Despite spending more than half my life working inside of the health and fitness industry, I despise most of what it represents as well as the
majority of the ‘professionals’ who work within it. You may find that comment needlessly hyperbolic and I wouldn’t blame you for feeling that way, but when it comes to
the health and fitness industry (in particular the weight loss side of it) I couldn’t be more literal and serious.
Why such distaste you ask? Where do I begin? Let’s start with the glaring fact that we (the weight loss industry) aren’t actually helping anyone. Despite all of the clichéd,
subjective arguments you can make about there being ‘good people out there doing the ‘right things’ (which you will soon learn are not actually the ‘right things’) or the
pointing out of a handful of success stories featuring those who have succeeded in their health goals (at least at the time the picture was taken), it doesn’t add up on
paper.
When you look at the actual statistics there are only two connected realities worth accepting. The first is that obesity rates and the rates of lifestyle-based disease are
skyrocketing out of control. People are getting fatter, sicker, and less ‘fit’ with every passing day. If the amount of people who died each year from obesity or lifestyle
based diseases were dying from a spreading virus, bug bites, or terrorism, you’d all be moving to Nunavut and hiding under your beds. You can bend, shape, and spin the
reality of our health however you like in order to avoid the truth, but the truth is that whatever the health and fitness industry is offering the world is not working for more
than 95% of people who actively attempt to take control of their health. That’s right. Of all the North Americans (and most of the rest of the world) who attempt to get to a
healthy body weight less than 1 in 20 will see success. This dismal outcome comes in spite of our spending billions on billions of dollars on weight loss solutions (books,
gyms, ‘clubs’, online programs, pills, powders, at home equipment) that obviously aren’t doing a damn thing.
This leads me into my next issue. Fitness professionals not only believe they are actively changing the health of their clients, but they are becoming more and more
ignorantly boastful of their methods and client rates of ‘success’ despite the reality that the industry is failing in epic fashion. Statistically speaking, we all suck. Could you
imagine the public using any other private service that delivered less than 5% of the time? And what even qualifies you as a fitness professional these days? As long as you
have revealing clothing, airbrushes and filters, and an Instagram account you qualify. It is a bonus if you’re hocking a scientifically unsupported supplement that in turn
somehow gives you the title ‘coach’. Can you even spot an educated, proven professional through the fog of Instagram ass models, MLM (multi level marketing) snake oil
salespeople and fitness enthusiasts who believe their physiques immediately qualify them to solve the complex problems that lead people to growing waistlines and
increased health concerns? A few of the most popular health professionals in the modern world are Kim Kardashian, Kristin Cavallari, and Gwyneth Paltrow (to name a few).
Like it or not these are some of our leaders. Are you embarrassed for us (fitness professionals) yet?
Finally, I can’t think of another industry that collectively claims to offer a solution (weight loss) for a specific problem (being fat) and fails to produce results in over 95% of
their customers yet still uses the same set of limited, worthless solutions without anyone wondering why none of it is actually working. Trends have come and gone, but the
same theme of ‘eat this not that, do these exercises’ sprinkled in with the ingestion of a few magic supplements has always been the standard industry formula for success.
I am talking about diet, exercise, and nutritional product centric solutions that have been created and re-created a thousand times over the past 50 years only to result in
the overweight population growing 7 times in size over that same period.
The world of health, fitness, and weight loss is dishonest, ineffective, costly, arrogant, superficial, and worst of all, collectively unconscious (or just ignorant) to all of those
previously mentioned realities.
Note: *I am not saying there aren’t good people out there, and I’m not saying there aren’t many professionals who truly want to help people. What I am saying is
that the fitness industry is a statistical failure of epic proportion yet everyone continues to operate as if we are being effective in our jobs. It is Einstein defined
insanity.
That is why I wrote this book.
It isn’t necessarily popular (or particularly wise) to openly slap the collective faces of the industry that I have spent the last 15 years of my life working in, but I no doubt
that it is necessary. I am not concerned about my own personal industry popularity or lack of ‘back patting’ from my peers. Most people don’t appreciate it when you make
the case that their industry, job, and years of contribution have been a waste of time. Just remember that I don’t even like most of these people, so I’m not concerned. In
reality I can’t be concerned about such things for if I do not get you, the general public (as well as perhaps a few humble and forward thinking professionals), to
dramatically change the way you think about your health and what it takes to recover it and thrive, what has been the point of my career? I have coached thousands of
people including some of the world’s most elite athletes. I have opened multiple brick and mortar gyms that have housed enthusiastic members and (in my opinion) the best
coaching staff you’ll find under one roof. I have consulted for sports teams and rewarding community organizations.
That is all well and good and looks nice on a resume, but there is one thing I have yet to do: make even a tiny ‘dent’ in the mountain sized issue of weight gain, obesity, and
preventable disease. In other words I have spent most of my career failing to help the human beings on this planet who truly need my help. If I can’t do that, then what the
heck am I doing here? What’s the point?
The book you are about to read will challenge everything you know about diet and exercise and turn it up on its head. It will be difficult for you to accept at first because
you have spent your life believing that diet and exercise is the key to your health and weight loss efforts.
You should be open to the challenge of changing your thinking on this subject for if you are reading this book the combination of diet and exercise efforts that you have
likely repeated 20 times by now obviously didn’t work for you in the past. And no, losing 30 lbs, 4 years ago, only to gain it all back (if not more) cannot be considered
success any more than winning 10 million dollars in the lottery only to be bankrupt within 5 years makes you rich.
Regardless of that assuredly uncomfortable fact I know you will resist the truth that this book offers for a variety of perfectly natural and understandable but illogical
reasons. I will list the most likely of these reasons below as it is important you prepare yourself for them.
1. Every single T.V. doctor, personal trainer, and nutritionist on the face of the planet has touted diet and exercise efforts as the key to health and longevity.
Even though these highly publicized methods have never worked for you that doesn’t seem to stop you from wondering if this approach is perhaps, ineffective.
2. Diet and exercise are easy concepts to grasp and understand. You already have a framework for what they are and how they work. Despite the fact that of all
the diets you’ve tried and all the fad exercise programs you’ve purchased, and despite your most desperate commitment to change, these easy to understand
diet and exercise concepts have ultimately failed you. But you choose to believe that the one that’s going to work for you is out there somewhere. Perhaps in
a sealed bottle washed up onto a deserted island.
3. The actual long-term solution to your health problems (which is written in the following pages) requires you to face your own bullshit, own up to your
weaknesses, dismantle your excuses, and a put a significant amount of work into the fundamentals of your well being. That’s a lot harder than eating celery,
running on a treadmill, or taking a pill. Therefore most of you will become resistant to the idea due to yourself sabotaging defense system (which you will
understand more of by the end of this book)
The reason why I mentioned that resistance like this is perfectly natural is because human beings (despite our reigning intellectual dominance) are horribly flawed (which
you will discover in the first section of this book) and we aren’t designed to do what is best for our long-term health. We are much more satisfied with immediate
gratification and short term stimulation. We are cursed.
Luckily for you we aren’t ‘cursed’ in a way that is irreversible but we are ‘born to lose’ as they say, and if we don’t understand how to overcome the cards that are stacked
against us, success will never be within reach. But I am getting ahead of myself.
This book comes to you in three basic ‘parts’ each with their own goal, along with a bonus section on diet (which by the end of this book you will actually be able to get
something out of).
Part 1: The Four Barriers to Success (and how to overcome them)
In this first section of the book we establish what we currently believe about success and failure (both from the point of view of the you, the reader, and professionals like
me), why those beliefs are false, how those false beliefs are preventing you from getting to effective solutions, and how to identify the deeply rooted human mechanisms
that underlie our patterns of failure in fitness. These barriers to success are the primal conflict, the sensitivity x pain complex, our increasingly toxic social environment,
the battle between our system 1 and system 2 brain operations, and the biases and heuristic based thinking that makes it so difficult for humans to make the best decisions
for our long-term health. That might sound complex and abstract but once you are introduced to the information it will be very powerful and enlightening. You will learn
how our evolutionary faults, adverse life experiences, societal pressures and unhelpful brain all play a role in your failures.
This is followed by a more in depth analysis of what these barriers look like in ‘real life’. What is the chain of events that leads us to overeat, to snack when we aren’t
hungry, to be generally lazy, and to seemingly store so much fat with great efficiency? How are the adverse life events you’ve experienced throughout your short life history
influencing the food you put in your mouth?
By the end of part 1 you will understand what the real problems are that prevent you from succeeding, how they play out in your life, and what you can do to begin
correcting your most unhealthy, self sabotaging behaviours.
Part 2: Preparing Yourself for Change (laying the groundwork for success)
In the next section of the book we get prepared to implement the solutions to the problems learned in part 1 as well as the following solutions found throughout the rest of
the book. We have a tendency to grab fleeting moments of inspiration and jump into a diet and exercise process with both feet. We do this well before we are actually in a
position to help ourselves, which leads to a high rate of failure. We don’t lay down any of the groundwork or perform any of the necessary preparation activities required to
create a foundation for success. This lack of preparation and rush for results leaves us open to many of the self sabotaging thoughts and actions we fall into both consciously
and unconsciously that result in failure. Defensive, ego protecting systems and the common five stages of denial get to us before we accomplish our goal. This lack of
preparation along with how it leaves us highly exposed to self-sabotage and failure is the number one reason why most of us repeatedly fail and never find success and
happiness in our personal health.
By the end of part 2 you will understand what it means to be truly prepared for action and change, and why it is so critical for your success. You will have a better grasp on
why and how you always seem to be your worst enemy and what you can do to start being an ally instead.
Part 3: Taking Your Mind (and Body) Back
While all sections of the book are of critical importance, part 3 is where the life changing techniques live. At this point in the book you will fully understand why the key to
weight loss, improved health, and long-term results begins in your mind. I don’t mean that or teach that concept in some cheesy spiritual way. Your mind literally controls
your ability and capacity to change your body in a very clear way. Here we will discuss how you can create a new operating system that consistently leads you to your goals
rather than running on your current default system that pushes you toward failure. This section will teach you how to permanently change your most unhealthy behaviours
in an effective and gratifying way in order to stick to your diet and exercise efforts and see life long results. We will also look into how lifestyle factors like sleep quality
and stress management must be addressed in order to support much need behavioural change.
By the end of part 3 you will know how to use your mind effectively in order to begin reaching your goals as well as what supporting lifestyle exercises you can introduce in
order to help reinforce this process of success.
By the end of the book
When this book is finished you will have all the tools necessary to take control of your health once and for all. You will understand what is preventing you from succeeding
and how you can break down those barriers to success. You will know how to ‘deal with yourself’ in a way that leads to positive outcomes and an increase in healthy
behaviours. You will have learned how to prevent self-sabotage and your default system from running the show and controlling your fate. In short, you will have everything
you need to finally take advantage of any and all diet and exercise efforts, see maximum results, and never fail in fitness again.
If you read this book and do what is asked of you along the way you will be one of the 5% who sees long-term success once and for all. Even better, if many of you read this
book and do what is ask of you we can increase that 5% weight loss success rate in a meaningful way. I’m excited to see where this process takes you and to hear about your
personal breakthrough.
Chapter Breakdown
The 3 main sections of this book come in the form of the following chapters. Each of which will be described here, and while I believe you will get the most out of the book
by reading it start to finish in a linear way, in its entirety, I know many of you won’t. Like I said, human beings are flawed. For that reason I am listing the basics of what
each chapter has to offer here so you can jump from page to page in search of the one paragraph that will change your life. Yes, that was said with thick sarcasm, but I
understand you might be compelled to jump around the book rather than read it straight through. As long as you get what you need out of it, who am I to judge?
Chapter 1: The Lies We Tell Ourselves (and others)

Before you get to any meaningful solution you need to first clear the fog from your eyes. That’s what this section is all about. I discuss the false realities that we (both
professionals like me and people like you) believe about weight loss that isn’t true. I discuss why these common beliefs aren’t true as well as what the reality of our
difficulties is. This is crucial information to understand if you are to get to the real solutions.
Chapter 2: The Four Barriers to Success

Remember when I mentioned that human beings are highly flawed? This section goes into the details of why we are designed to fail so you can understand why it is so
difficult to make healthy choices even when you would cut off your right arm to lose 20 lbs. This chapter will give you insight into why your current state of health isn’t your
fault, but how it is your responsibility to take control of it right now.
Chapter 3: Trauma, Stress, and a Toxicity

While section 2 discusses how our evolutionary past has made it incredibly difficult to succeed, this section discusses how the more recent past, present, and future of
human evolution isn’t going to make matters any better for us. This is due to adverse life experiences, modern stress, and a culture that makes you hate yourself, and that
hate leads to the constant self sabotage of your efforts.
Chapter 4: The Unhealthy Reward Cycle

Here I take the basic concepts you will learn in the first three chapters and show you what it all looks like in ‘real life’. How does our caveperson brain and modern
environment turn into unrelenting cravings, overeating, technological addiction, and laziness? How do these underlying barriers actually play out in our day-to-day
unhealthy decision-making? I know this is all beginning to sound a bit ‘doom and gloom’ but spoiler alert: there’s a solution to these mounting problems.
Chapter 5: Readiness for Change

This is the chapter on how you can create the necessary fundamentals to succeed. How to identify areas where you are leaving yourself ‘exposed’ to failure and might need
to do some work before you try to transform your entire body and state of health. Being prepared to provide yourself with a solution is critical, and this section helps you
determine if you are truly ready to begin the process, and if not, what you can do to create a strong foundation for future success.
Chapter 6: Health Without Strings Attached

I don’t want to give too much away but one of the biggest barriers to your success is the reliance on your obsession with metric based goals (like the number on the scale)
instead of being driven by simple, healthy, daily actions to move you toward success and measure your efforts and progress. In other words your relationship with the scale
is crowding out a more fruitful relationship with your health values. This section will teach you how to become ‘autotelic’ in order to see the increased success that comes
with a healthier relationship with your goals and ‘self’.
Chapter 7: The Critical Role of Lifestyle

If you aren’t familiar with the 80/20 rule it is the concept that states 20% of your efforts are responsible for 80% of your results, and in my experience most people overlook
or under utilize that 20% in exchange for obsessing over the less helpful 80%. An example of this would be obsessing over whether broccoli or cauliflower is a better weight
loss food while failing to address the fact that you only sleep 4 hours per night. The 20% (the largest contributor to your health) comes in the form of your lifestyle efforts,
and without a focus on these efforts, success can never be maximized. Here you will learn why things like sleep quality and stress management are so important for long
term success (and health in general) and how to take control you your lifestyle right now.
Chapter 8: Self Analysis and Brain Training
At this point in the book you will fully understand why exercising your mind is so important for long-term success inside of your body. As soon as you read that line you
probably thought to yourself ‘oh great, another hippydippy guru talking about the mind-body connection’. I don’t blame you for feeling this way as the ‘power of the mind’
is often misunderstood and abused with dogmatic nonsense and unnecessary spiritual roots. I promise you that this will be the most important section of the book for your
personal development, and that it won’t come with any spiritual baggage. Before, during, and after the whole box of cookies has been eaten there are opportunities to
reinforce better decision making and to take control of the roots of your worst eating habits. Here I will teach you how that process will work, and why it will change your
life.
Chapter 9: In the Event of a Relapse

Success does not operate in a straight line. You know this by the clichéd squiggly line pictures that unsuccessful people post on Facebook to make themselves feel better
about not reaching their goals. Although most ‘perpetuators’ of this concept are indeed trying to soften the blow of their personal failure by showing that success is not a
linear process, the concept is nonetheless, true. You will fall off the wagon. You will relapse. Even after a year of epic success you will slip up. Heck, I have bad years in my
health. It just goes to show my commitment to success in the grand scheme of things. That doesn’t have to result in ‘failure as long as you know what step by step actions
you must take when you begin to see the scale moving in the wrong direction. This section will teach you what to do in such relapse situations and turn the process of
relapse into an opportunity to grow and become stronger and more successful.
After reading the pages in this book, or more importantly after applying what you learn in the pages of this book you will see your health change in a dramatic way. Perhaps
more importantly you will see your thinking change in a dramatic way which will in turn lead to long term health improvements. And changing your thinking is what it will
take you to succeed. You’ve spent year after year trying new diet, exercise, and product based solutions that don’t deliver. You need to begin asking yourself why (despite
your most rabid want for greater health and despite your 100 varied attempts to find the ‘secret’) you always end up in the same place. It’s time to try a new approach. It’s
time to change the way you see the problem and the solution. It’s time to take control of your health once and for all.
I know you’ve heard this before, but please, trust me.

Chapter 1
What We Believe About Weight Loss
I want to begin this chapter of the book by telling you a few stories that will help you understand what we (both fitness professionals and average people) believe to be true
about the reality of weight loss. What are the longstanding, deeply ingrained beliefs that are preventing you from finding the actual solution to your health problems? The
beliefs that the vast majority of the fitness world pushes onto clients and customers on a daily basis that have collectively resulted in a dismal 5% industry success rate (and
that is being optimistic).
The problem with false beliefs is that they prevent you from understanding what the real barriers are that prevent you from implementing solutions that work, and as long
as you continue to hang onto a false belief about the source of your weight loss struggles you will continue to search for answers in ineffective places. For example- if you
believe that you have a flat tire simply because there isn’t enough air in it when the actual reason for the flat tire is due to a puncture, you would start a cycle of endless
tire filling, day after day, always ending with the result of a flat tire the next morning- scratching your head and wondering why air keeps disappearing from your perfectly
adequate tire. If you understood, however, that the underlying issue was due to a hole in the tire’s air bladder you could just patch the hole and solve the problem in an
effective and sustainable way. False beliefs in fitness work the same way, and right now we believe the flat tire exists not because there is a hole in it, but because there is
an unexplainable absence of air. This has resulted in us continually filling the tire up (with diet books, gadgets, trendy exercise programs, online weight loss products, and
technologies) just to see it deflate again and never really getting anywhere.
This thought might lead you to ask the following question: ‘if less than 1 in 20 people succeed with ‘help’ from the weight loss industry, and this lack of success is due to
the collective belief in problems (and attached solutions) that are false, why don’t fitness professionals smarten up and change their approaches to be more effective? What
is the point in continuing with strategies that obviously aren’t working for people’? That is a great question and we will get into the details of its answer later on in the
book. For now I will just say that the combination of ego, biases, and heuristics (irrational, deeply ingrained ways of thinking) often prevent professionals from being
objective and self critical enough to see the ‘writing on the wall’. This particular wall writing should clearly state ‘YOU ARE NOT HELPING ANYONE’. If you dedicated 10+
years of your life to pushing a very specific strategy for achieving a specific outcome (like eat this, not that and achieve weight loss) it would be very easy to focus on the
few long-term successes you can promote while ignoring (or making excuses for) the thousands of failures that resulted from the same approach. Especially when your
livelihood and financial stability depend on people believing you have an answer for their weight problem. Look at any company who is pushing success stories in their
promotions. What you are seeing is the one person out of twenty who got a result from the system. It doesn’t even have to be a long-term result. The result only has to
exist long enough to have before and after pictures taken in which the person has become noticeably thinner. Nobody is showing you the 19 others who failed miserably
while following the exact same system or asking why the success ratio is so awful. If you don’t know much about the ego, biases, and heuristics that prevent professionals
from ditching their failing systems and beliefs in order to improve the success of their clients and customers, don’t worry, we will cover these in depth as we go through the
book. For the time being we need to establish these false beliefs- these ‘myths’ that prevent us from getting to the actual source of our fitness failures and then work on
the details from there- for if you understand these 3 common yet completely false beliefs you can begin to move toward the solution.
Let’s get to the stories.
Note: I summarize the purpose of all three stories at the end of the third story, so if you’re wondering where this is going whilst reading these ‘shorts’, please be
patient.
Brenda and Eric

Brenda is getting up in age. Not old by any means, but no longer in the mid to late twenty something range that most would consider ‘young’. Old enough that when she
looks at herself in the mirror in the morning she can see herself aging, sometimes as quickly as within a 24 hour period (it seemed). She is in her mid thirties and becoming
increasingly concerned about her weight gain. She put on a few of the typical pounds in university, added a few more in her early professional years, and by the time of her
34th birthday she weighed 50lbs more than she did in high school. Gulp. It goes without saying that like most of us, Brenda does not like what she sees in the mirror. She is
also suffering many of the other common daily reminders of letting her health ‘slip’. For instance when she recently tried on a pair of pants that were purchased just 6
months ago she could no longer do up the zipper. This in despite of many attempts to contort and ‘will’ her way into the pants. It just couldn’t possibly be her growing
body. These sorts of collective and cumulative reminders of Brenda’s slipping health have left her psychologically destroyed, and it goes without saying that Brenda is not in
a ‘good place’.
Eric is a young and budding strength coach and nutritionist at a fairly reputable gym close to Brenda’s work. He is enthusiastic about his job, he cares about his clients, and
many consider him to be one of the ‘good ones’ in an industry that his highly variable and unregulated. A few of Brenda’s colleagues have attended some of Eric’s group
weight loss classes and speak very highly of him. He’s also not hard on the eyes, which doesn’t appear to hurt their motivation and efforts in the gym when he is around.
One of the girls suggests that Brenda setup a consult with Eric to talk about getting a customized fitness and nutrition plan that she can do on her own. Something simple
and structured that Brenda can reference and follow in order to get her health (and her confidence) back under control. Brenda takes the suggestion.
A week later Brenda finds herself sitting in Eric’s small, but clean and adequate office. There’s a scale, some measuring tapes, body fat calipers, and the classic picture of a
cat hanging desperately from a tree branch that quotes ‘hang in there’! Brenda isn’t sure if the cat picture is to be taken seriously or if it is supposed to be an obvious
satire. Eric enters the room and they begin their greeting with some typical small talk before getting right into the conversation at hand. Eric wants to know how much
weight Brenda would like to lose and in how much time. He asks what she currently does for exercise as well as some general questions about her diet. All reasonable
questions considering what Brenda is there for. It appears that Eric is considering all the right things. After Brenda explains that she would like to lose 50 lbs ASAP and get
her old high school body back, Eric has enough information to begin his diagnostics. ‘Girth’ measurements, body fat, scale weight and height, and all of the other helpful
‘how fat are you’ metrics are taken.
Brenda waits patiently (or perhaps anxiously) while Eric performs some ‘on the spot’ calculations. ‘Well, Brenda’, Eric says ‘your body fat is currently at 39% and your BMI is
in the mid thirties. You have a lot of weight to lose’. Tell Brenda something she doesn’t know, Eric. ‘But the good news is that I can help you’. It will take hard work and
dedication on your part, but if you just do what I ask of you and do your best every day, we will get you to your goal’! Brenda is naturally skeptical of Eric’s promise, but
hopeful and intrigued by his stern confidence.
Eric tells Brenda that he is going to send her both a diet plan, and an at home exercise program within the next 3 days and that she should begin following it immediately.
Every month she is to come into his office for a ‘weigh in’ and other measurements so they can discuss her progress and any changes that will be made to the program. The
instructions have been laid out, the program is in Brenda’s possession, and it is time to see how this thing goes.
Without hesitation Brenda jumps right into her new program. She hits the grocery store with her custom-shopping list (from Eric). She cleans the junk food out of her
cupboard. She begins preparing some meals and snacks for the coming workweek, and she begins her at home workouts. Brenda is obviously inspired and jumping into her
program with both feet. She is motivated, she is determined, and to be honest she is already feeling a lot of satisfaction just from the act of getting started.
A few weeks go by and everything is looking good. Brenda is down 5 lbs and feeling confident. The initial weight loss is likely from the decreased water weight Brenda is
carrying from the lowered carb intake that Eric suggested, but who cares, 5 lbs is something to celebrate! Eric is ‘coming through’ on his promise and Brenda could not be
any happier.
At their first check in Brenda has lost 3% body fat (as per Eric’s measurements) and she is sent home with a ‘prescription’ to continue doing what she has been doing. Why
change anything when the process is working? Eric is happy, Brenda is happy, and they both have adequate fuel for a little ‘back-patting’. This enthusiasm, while earned,
does not last very long.
In the next month things don’t appear to be going quite so well for Brenda. As the weeks have gone by her progress has rapidly slowed down. In fact, it has completely
stopped. Nothing has changed for Brenda. She is still doing her best to watch what she eats and stay active. She is still following all the steps that Eric asked her to follow
but she isn’t losing any weight anymore. Worse, it appears that she may even be gaining some back. Brenda schedules an emergency check in with Eric.
At the check in with Eric the results aren’t as positive as they were the first time around. This is no surprise given the lack of progress that has lead to Brenda’s looming
meltdown. Brenda is actually up 3 lbs since her last check in and her body fat measurement is almost the same as the first one she had done at her initial meeting with Eric.
It seems as though all the progress that was motivating the two to celebrate just a few weeks ago has now been undone. Eric asks a series of questions relating to Brenda’s
diet and exercise regimen. Has Brenda really been exercising the way she claims to have been?
Has Brenda really been following her food plan as closely as she claims? Eric suggests that Brenda eat less food and increase her activity level, thus increasing her ‘caloric
deficit’. A classic move for increasing progress on the scale. A strategy that many of us intrinsically implement into our own lives when we don’t like amount of stomach fat
we can grab while in a seated position by increasing our time on the treadmill and becoming highly restrictive with our food intake. Eric prints off a new food plan with a
further reduction in carbohydrates and overall calories, and he adds in an extra exercise session per week for Brenda to follow. Brenda accepts the new plan and walks out
the door feeling defeated and considerably less hopeful than she felt after the last meeting. This doesn’t mean she is going to quit, but her once motivated mind is now
becoming filled with familiar self talk that says ‘you’re not good enough to take control of your health. You’re too weak and undisciplined. This is why you’re fat and why
you’ll never be fit again’. It’s a nasty little voice, isn’t it? But I am willing to bet it is also quite familiar to most of us.
Regardless of her emotional stress Brenda starts all over again and in spite of her deflated motivation she still manages to follow the instructions asked of her by Eric. She
shops for a bit less food, throws out much of what is in her cupboards, and adds the extra exercise session in (as per Eric’s requests). After the first week of the updated
plan Brenda is hungry, lethargic, and a bit ‘spacy’.
Probably due to the drop in calories and increase in exercise combined with her increasing stress and emotions of frustration and sadness, but Brenda soldiers on. Another
week goes by and Brenda is now just desperately hanging on. She has little to no energy, she is becoming increasingly depressed, and all she can think about is food. Brenda
has a brief mental snapshot of the poster in Eric’s office with the cat hanging from the tree branch. Brenda is no cat, she thinks. Predictably the thought offers no real
inspiration. The poster is a fugazi. By the end of the week Brenda is so low energy and ravenously hungry that she can no longer stand it. She breaks down and goes on a
‘tear’, eating through every piece of food in the house. The fridge, the pantry, the freezer. Cookies, crackers, cheese, chocolate. She can’t stop. Her brain has picked up on
the rapid stimulation of incoming calories that has now been intensified by the recent past of restrictive dieting and relentlessly begs for more and more. The more Brenda
eats, the harder it becomes to stop eating. She doesn’t even consciously taste the food at this point and her mannerisms are similar to those seen at international hot dog
eating contests. It is in some ways impressive to see.
Flash forward to an hour later. Brenda is lying on the couch, watching T.V., and has slumped into a food consumption driven depression. Her stomach hurts, her mouth is
sore and dry from all the salty snacks and sugar she consumed, and her hangover is beginning to set it. She is ashamed of herself, she feels overwhelming guilt, and that
voice in her head returns for the final blow- ‘here you are, Brenda. Doing exactly what we all knew Brenda would do. Your transformation journey is over (as predicted).
Welcome back to your real life’.
Defeated, sad, and self-destructed, Brenda has officially quit her fitness plan.
Susan and John

Now I would like to introduce you to Susan and John. Susan is your average middle-aged woman- 49 to be exact. With every passing year she becomes more concerned about
her increasing waistline, her decreasing bone mass, and her inevitable transition into menopause that looms over her like a dark cloud over an ocean ship. In the past 5
years Susan has tried every trick, method, gadget, and supplement to take control of her health. You name it and it is sitting in her basement, garage, or some closet in the
house. Workout DVD’s, in person weight loss consulting and various weight loss club memberships, ab wheels and twisters, an electronic that that shocks you into having
sculpted abdominals, shakes and oils that promised to turn her into a ‘fat burning machine’. The list is endless and you have to admire Susan’s commitment to purchasing
her way out of her health problems. All in all Susan has probably spent nearly $20,000 over the last 5 years and hasn’t lost a single pound (that she has been able to keep
off). In fact, year after year, she is continuing to gain weight. In spite of the clear evidence that the gadgets, supplements, and services that Susan has purchased (and
occasionally used) have never resulted in any long term weight loss, she continues to believe that the right product is out there and perhaps she just has not found it yet.
This mentality is at its most visible when Susan is up at 2 AM with her eyes glued to the latest fat burning machine on the shopping network.
Aware of Susan’s ongoing health frustrations a friend (let’s call her Jane) tells Susan about a great online weight loss program that changed Jane’s life. Jane used to be in
(as far as they both can gather) the same situation as Susan. Jane was growing increasingly heavy, scared, and frustrated with her state of health, but these days she looks
slim, secure, and happy. As with most people who have seen some temporary success in weight loss, Jane is now an evangelist for her online program (and associated coach,
John). The structure of the program as well as the accountability that comes with having her own personal coach has seemingly ‘worked’. Therefore in Jane’s mind
everyone should use the program and coach. Now this online personal trainer and program combination isn’t cheap, Jane warns, but if he can deliver the results to Susan
that she has been desperately striving after for all these years Susan would rob a bank to fund the cost of the combination program. If Susan sold all the useless fitness crap
that has piled up in her house on a third party sales website to other desperate suckers like her she could probably get 5 grand back in her pocket. Susan decides to take
Jane’s suggesting and contact her online personal trainer, John.
Flash-forward to a month later and Susan has officially become a client of John’s. For the past few weeks or so Jane has been speaking to John once per week through Skype
and it is going swimmingly. John is knowledgeable and motivating and Susan likes the structure and community encouragement that comes with the online program. Susan is
down 4 lbs in just 2 weeks and although she wishes she were down closer to 10 lbs, she is happy. John has Susan on a strict eating plan, he holds her accountable to her
exercise routine, and it all seems to be working for the two of them. Although the program is just in the very early phases Susan is happy and hopeful.
Another month goes by and things aren’t going quite as well as they did in the first month. This trend might be predictable for you by now. Susan is still talking to John once
per week and she is still doing her best with her diet and exercise program but the scale is not dictating any progress. Susan feels stuck, frustrated, and confused.
Underneath that sense of ‘confusion’ however is the same little voice that haunted Brenda (from our previous story) with the same basic internal messages. ‘Here we go. It
was only a matter of time. You knew that this process wouldn’t work for you. You’re hopeless and should just give up.’
John and Susan decide to get on a call and discuss her current lack of progress. John asks Susan in depth questions about her diet and where she may be slipping up. Susan
admits to sometimes snacking late at night when she is bored, missing breakfast in the morning when she is rushed, eating out on occasion when friends are in town and
sometimes going an entire day without truly restricting herself the way that John has asked. Susan is only human, right? John decides that it is time to increase Susan’s level
of activity and further restrict her diet. He also makes sure to ‘slap Susan’s wrist’ and remind her that if she really cared about losing weight she would be disciplined
enough to cut out all of the unhealthy actions that aren’t on John’s approved list. A little shaming goes a long way in John’s mind, and that is the only way to make more
progress he tells Susan. John and Susan are both looking to make up for ‘lost time’.
The two ‘walk away’ from the phone call with their own silent thoughts about Susan’s current lack of progress. John believes that Susan isn’t losing weight because she is
not committed and doesn’t actually value her health the way she says she does or the process of weight loss that John has asked her to follow. If she cared she would do
exactly what he asked, every day, without fail. No excuses. Since she has had some dietary slip-ups in the last month he can only conclude that she lacks commitment and
willpower. Even though John has not verbalized his thoughts and feelings he has already moved beyond the possibility of Susan’s success. He has seen her type before and
she simply doesn’t have ‘what it takes’.
Susan walks away with the same feelings but she internalizes them in a more destructive way. Susan now sees herself as weak, stupid, and undeserving of the health
changes that she wants so badly. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that the way she subconsciously feels about herself 24/7 is rising to the surface and becoming more
prominent in her thinking. Why else would she have so much trouble sticking to a restricted dietary structure? Susan says to herself ‘this is why I am fat. Because I am a
weak, uncommitted loser who doesn’t deserve to be happy and healthy’. The awful little voice has taken hold and is now in control. It is only a matter of time until Susan
begins missing weekly calls with John and slipping back into her old ways. John is fully expecting this ‘relapse’ from Susan and will quietly be happy about not ‘wasting his
time’ talking to her for much longer. John is content to collect his remaining paycheque(s) and move onto a more ambitious client. Susan, on the other hand will go back to
desperately seeking the magic pill, technology, or piece of exercise equipment that will change her life.
Ryan and Maggie
Ryan and Maggie have never known what it feels like to be ‘skinny’. They were both overweight on the day they met (about 7 years ago) and despite their best collective
‘couples’ effort to lose weight and feel good about themselves they have never made any progress that lasted for more than a few months. Ryan and Maggie, while raised
individually in their own families both had similar upbringings. Food was a big part of life at home and you’d be hard pressed to find a close relative of either who wasn’t
also struggling with their weight. Candy and treats were available 24/7 for as long as they could remember (often used to keep them quiet or to reward them for what their
parents deemed ideal behaviour), and their participation in formal exercise or community sports was never a large concern for either of their sets of parents as they were
going through childhood. They have both been ‘big’ for as long as they can remember, and they both came from families consisting of ‘big’ people who took part in the
lifestyle behaviors that you would associate with heavy people.
Regardless of having the cards stacked against them both Ryan and Maggie have tried many interventions to turn their health around. They have been in and out of weight
watchers enough times to count on two hands. They have a bookshelf full of dusty old diet books, and they have a closet packed with old exercise gadgets, but nothing has
ever worked for them for more than a few weeks or months. It has never been for lack of ‘want’ or not having the desire to improve their health. For some reason the pair
just cannot seem to make anything health related ‘stick’.
Ryan and Maggie, in a last ditch effort to take their health back, joined a couples weight loss retreat in Mexico. 10 days of cleansing, organic foods, enemas, and exercise.
Most of that sounds pretty great- all of it depending on how you feel about a saline solution being shot up your butt. There won’t be anywhere to go for junk food and there
will be no escape from the daily regime of health interventions provided by the resorts petiole soaked mentors. Ryan and Maggie would not have any way to escape the
health intervention, and if this wouldn’t work for them, nothing would.
Despite the rigorous schedule of exercise, juice only ‘meals’ (if you can call them that), and the routine shooting of water in their colons, Ryan and Maggie made it for the
whole 10 days and both lost almost 15 pounds in that brief time away. In fact, after the first few days had passed they both started to enjoy the routine.
‘There is hope’, they thought.
They walked away from the retreat feeling motivated and ready to take control of their health in their day-to-day lives. They might not be able to keep up with the routine
enemas, but everything else they learned while away on retreat they could bring into their day-to-day lives.
Upon returning back home Ryan and Maggie were inspired to stick to the ‘take home’ diet and exercise continuation plan provided by the resort. This at home routine
included the emphasis on fresh fruit and vegetables, low to no animal protein, healthy fats, and lots, and lots of juicing. Ryan and Maggie committed themselves to what
they started on the retreat and they kept each other accountable to the process.
A few weeks into the at home program and it was time to step back onto the scale. Ryan and Maggie gently held hands (and their breath) as they slowly, one toe at a time,
nervously transferred their weight onto their individual his and hers bathroom scales. I’m sure you can anticipate what came next. With paralyzing disappointment that hit
the pair like a Mike Tyson gut shot, the scale revealed that they had each gained back 10 of the 15 pounds they had lost at the retreat. ‘How is this possible’? they thought.
‘We have stuck to everything that was asked of us for the last 2 weeks and we’ve each gained back 60% of the weight we lost’! Unable to hold back her emotions, Maggie
broke down crying. Ryan stayed strong and did his best to comfort his sobbing wife, but he felt on the inside precisely what Maggie was expressing on the outside. Hope
turned to pain. Motivation turned to disappointment. Ryan and Maggie are again, shattered. As with our other weight loss industry victims Ryan and Maggie begin to
internalize with negativity and the harsh automatic thoughts that stem from their underlying belief systems. The belief that they were born fat, they grew up fat, and they
will die fat. Likely at a much younger age than the average person.
After a few sad hours the couple gathered their emotions and sat down to ask themselves ‘what now’? They spent the following hour looking for who or what they could
blame for their seemingly impossible circumstance. They have done everything possible to lose weight and be healthy. They have followed the advice of physicians, personal
trainers, nutritionists and celebrity gurus. They have tried. They really have. This leaves them with one conclusion and a single source of blame. It must be their genetics.
What else could be dooming them to a life of obesity in the face of all the efforts they have made aside from some familial genetic curse that sealed the fate of their
weight long before they were old enough to even care about it. It is a logical and convenient hypothesis for the two. A little bit of googling and they managed to find some
interesting and telling literature about ‘fat’ genes and ‘laziness’ genes that luckily explained and supported their personal obesity hypothesis. ‘We are fat because our
parents are fat, and we will die fat just like our ancestors who came before us’.
In the minds of Ryan and Maggie they never stood a chance and any efforts they made to improve their weight situation would be rendered ineffective by their genetic
predisposition(s). There is even the ‘science’ to back it, so they might as well go back to doing the things (like eating 4 bags of chips per night while watching 4 hours of
Netflix) that make them happy. If they are going to die young and fat, they might as well do it on their own terms.
So what was the point of these three stories? What am I trying to illustrate here? When you are trying to solve a problem in your life (in this case, a weight or health
problem) the first step you must take is understanding what the problem isn’t. Many times we believe solutions begin with identifying what the problem is, and that is
technically true- but the fact of the matter is that we rarely even correctly identify our core issues. This inability to identify our core issues (that lead to things like
excessive weight gain) stems from our misunderstanding of the problem. Like the great Charles Kettering said, ‘a problem well stated is a problem half-solved’.
Unfortunately we are usually stating the wrong set of problems. The stories you just read displayed some of the most common misunderstandings or ‘myths’ in weight loss
formulated in a way that they usually play out in our own lives. I have broken down these three basic myths next.
*note: there may be endless myths you are currently believing that are preventing you from taking control of your health. The three I am bringing to your
attention here are the three that I see most commonly in my coaching business. Feel free to identify your own.
The 3 Weight Loss Myths

Perhaps you gained an accurate sense of the 3 myths by reading the stories I presented to you. They are somewhat obvious but that is easy for me to say since I already
know exactly what they are. Assuming you didn’t catch them let me state them here. The 3 biggest myths in weight loss that we are told (and believe) that prevent us from
identifying the actual problem(s) are that:
1. Diet and exercise are the key to weight loss
2. When we can’t fully stick to diet and exercise plans, it is because we are weak and uncommitted
3. If we make our best diet and exercise efforts and do not succeed it is due to genetic predispositions
Does any of this sound familiar? Let me explain in detail why each one of these beliefs is 100% false (at least in the way they are explained to us and in the way in which we
understand them to be true). It should also be noted that if you cannot see these beliefs as false (after I have clearly proven why and how they are false), you will never
succeed. That isn’t just me trying to encourage you to believe what I have to say. It is just the reality of the situation. If you continue believing that diet and exercise
efforts are the key to weight loss, the your lack of commitment is due to your unique personal weaknesses, and that the likely source of your health issues is purely genetic
in nature, you will continue to get sucked into an unhelpful mindset and inaccurate set of stated problems that push you into unhelpful, unsustainable, and often expensive
‘solutions’.
Myth #1- Diet and Exercise Are the Key to Weight Loss
Let me begin this section by clearly stating that diet and exercise are indeed the stimulus for losing weight. By that I mean to say the food you put into your body, in the
quantities you put it into your body, minus the amount of energy you spend moving and operating your body is the equation that leads to weight loss. I am not arguing
otherwise. What I am trying to teach you here is that your failures in the countless number of attempts you have made to lose weight in the past had nothing to do with the
details of what you were eating and what exercises you were doing. Knowing what to eat or what exercises to do or what piece of equipment you should (or shouldn’t) be
using has nothing to do with your preventative barriers to success.
With that disclaimer out of the way let’s start with a few important statistics. In the following chart you will see the rise in obese populations since the 1960’s. If you note
the rise in the graph (and do some basic math) you can see that the obesity rate has grown fivefold in North America during that span of time. The multi-billion dollar
numbers you see is estimated growth in weight loss spending since the early 1990’s. Again, some quick math will tell you that in the span of less than 30 years our weight
loss product and service spending has grown almost sevenfold. Now I don’t want you to use all of your mental energy performing a third equation so I will summarize what
this information says for you in plain English. Even though our spending on education, products, services, and programs for losing weight has increased 7 times in the last 30
years, our rate of obesity has continued to skyrocket. To simplify this data even more: the more we learn, the more we spend, the more we try to diet and exercise our way
out of our weight problems the more weight we gain.
*weight loss spending increases vs. the rise in obesity since 1960
That might not be mind blowing information, but what if you took those same metrics and applied them to some other area of expected improvement. What would you
think about it then? Let’s say your local police budget is 10 Million dollars per year, and in the last 5 years crime rate has doubled. Your community government intervenes
and says ‘we are going to triple our spending to 30 million dollars per year in order to solve this problem! We are going to hire more officers. Buy more guns. And double the
amount of on duty officers at any given time’! This of course at the expense of the local taxpayers-, which is money well, spent if it solves a serious crime issue. Over the
next year (in spite of tripling taxpayer spending toward the local police force) crime rate grows 300%. Now as a rational person do you believe that the solution to the crime
problem is still going to be more police officers, more guns, and a further increase in taxpayer spending? I would hope not. You would likely consider the approach to be a
complete failure (assuming you are paying any attention). Well, that’s the same way you should view the diet and exercise centric focus and spending that is growing year
after year in the hopes of turning around the obesity epidemic.
It. Is. Not. Working
Especially when you consider the fact that diet and exercise information availability and education is now everywhere with unlimited access and excess. You can hop online
and find 10,000 free diet and exercise methods to follow on any given day. If the key to weight loss were simply to know what to eat and what exercises to do you wouldn’t
know a single overweight individual. This is of course not the reality of the situation.
The real reason we are collectively overweight and unhealthy runs much deeper than ideas as superficial as not knowing what to eat or what exercises to do, but more on
that in the next chapter.
Myth #2- If we can’t stick to diet and exercise efforts 100% of the time, we are weak and uncommitted
This is the most common belief by both fitness professionals and their struggling clients that is preventing any potential (and necessary) change in the weight loss industry,
and chances are you’ve experienced these thoughts and feelings first hand. From a fitness professional’s perspective diet and exercise success is just a matter of eating well
and exercising. They can do it, so their clients should be able to suck it up and do it to. The formula is simple. From the client perspective if we can’t stick to the diet and
exercise advice we are given it is because we are uniquely weak and undisciplined. There are fit people in this world. If we aren’t one of them what other explanation can
we have aside from fit people being strong and disciplined and fat people being weak?
The problem with this way of thinking is that it assumes that the person who is trying to lose the weight doesn’t care about or value their health- or he or she doesn’t have
the internal willpower of a healthy, fit person. Let’s start with the first assumption as it is the easiest one to bust. There is not a single person on the face of this planet
(whether he or she is willing to voice it or not) who wants to be overweight and unhealthy. There is not a single overweight, unhealthy person in this world who doesn’t
want to change their current health reality. To believe otherwise is quite frankly idiotic, so let’s stop accepting the idea that when people fall off of their diet and exercise
plan it is because they just ‘don’t care’.
The second assumption (that a lack of willpower is to blame) is a more complex myth to destroy but it is equally as silly. When an overweight individual compares himself or
herself to someone who is ‘in shape’, the common assumption is that the ‘in shape’ person has rock solid willpower and the overweight person has little to none (of that
same willpower). This seems completely logical especially when you consider that diet and exercise changes are just a series of daily choices you either make or don’t
make. If you make the correct choices, you succeed. If you make the incorrect choices, you fail. But here is the thing about willpower; nobody has very much of it at all.
Willpower is finite at best and non-existent at worst in all people- not just the ones who are struggling to lose weight. If you want to understand why and how this is true
you need to look into a concept called ‘ego depletion’. The concept of ego depletion goes as follows: basically you begin your day with a limited amount of ‘ego’ or ‘will’
that gets ‘chipped away’ at with every decision you make and every stress you face. And these don’t have to be serious choices or stresses either. Deciding what clothes to
wear in the morning, for example, requires a depletion of your tiny vault of precious will. By the time the average person has woken up, rushed to work, fought with a co-
worker, sworn at a fellow driver, and made the long commute back home there is nothing left to prevent them from eating the entire box of cookies that will temporarily
help them forget about how shitty their day was. There is no more willpower left to stick to reinforce good decision-making.
Your next natural question is going to be ‘ok, so if we all suffer from this ego depletion thing, how can there be any people in this world who are not overweight’? That’s a
good question and we will begin to uncover the answer to it in the next chapter.
Myth #3- If I stick to diet and exercise efforts but don’t lose weight it is because I am genetically cursed to my overweight fate.
This myth is the most popular one I see rising in today’s society, but it is also (in my opinion) the easiest one to bust due to a very clear scientific fact, or more accurately,
very clear sets of facts. If you remember the graph that charted the rise in obesity over the last 50-60 years you’ll remember that the rate of obesity has risen fivefold
during that time. Now 50-60 years may seem like a significant period of time to a single human being, but when you compare it to the entire history of what we know as the
modern human being it is a ‘blink of the eye’. Why is this important, you ask? Well here is the thing about genes: they need thousands (if not hundreds of thousands) of
years to make the minutest change to our physical structure. In fact (as you can see in the following image) our most significant physical changes take millions of years to
evolve in any meaningful way. That means that in order for our genetics to have evolved us into a community of genetically cursed overweight people, we would need at
least a handful of millennia. So you must ask yourself ‘if obesity was non-existent 100 years ago, but it takes many thousands of years to alter your genetics, how can
genetics be responsible for the acute rise in obesity over the last 60 years’? As I am sure you’ve gathered the answer is ‘it can’t’.
It is important that I clarify that I am not suggesting weight loss isn’t easier for some than others. It is. Some of us have a harder time finding exercise motivation. Some of
us have lower base metabolisms and/or don’t assimilate nutrition very well (* assimilation is the converting of food into usable energy and nutrients). But (and this is a big
but), it has been proven quite clearly that these genetic variations have a minor impact and in 100% controlled studies these variations did not prevent the study
participants from losing adequate amounts of weight. For instance when diet and exercise environments were in 100% control of the experimenters, all of the study
participants were able to lose significant amounts of weight, regardless of the potential minor genetic differences noted earlier. To summarize, genetics can play a small
role in your fitness, but not nearly to the degree of cursing you with obesity- and definitely not to the point of being responsible for a rapid obesity crisis. Something else is
going on here.
At this point in the book it is not important that you understand what you need to do to finally lose weight and be healthy in the long-term. We still have more digging to do
into why it is so hard for you to succeed (and there will be much more on that in the next few chapters). What is important at this point in the book is that you understand
the 3 big myths that prevent us from understanding what the true barriers are between success, and us, and that you can agree (or understand) why and how these myths
are completely false. For this reason I hope I have done an adequate job of convincing you of these realities in this chapter- for in order for you to understand what the real
problem is as well as what your solution to the actual problem is going to be, you must first understand that diet and exercise is not the problem, when you can’t make
healthy choices it is not because you are weak, uncommitted, or lacking in willpower, and obesity rates in North America (as well as worldwide) are not rising the way they
are because we are genetically cursed. If you can agree with my argument against those common misconceptions you are ready to understand what is really going on in your
health.
Chapter 1 Reflections
Reflection #1
How long have you believed that diet and exercise (efforts, knowledge, products etc) is the key to your weight loss success and that your lack of expertise in these areas is
what has lead you to your weight problems? How many times have you tried a diet and exercise based solution in the past? How many times did that system of diet and
exercise lead to long-term success?
Reflection #2
When you think about past failures in your diet and exercise efforts, how did you feel about yourself when you couldn’t reach your goal? Did you see yourself as weak and
undeserving of a ‘better body’? Do you believe that people who are fit ‘have it all together’ while you are a complete mess? Do you have a habit of seeing fitness failures as
part of your personality?
Reflection #3
Have you ever blamed your state of health on your genetic limitations? Do you look at your parents and your parents’ parents and think you are doomed to be unhealthy and
overweight? If you’ve tried to take control of your health in the past, and failed, did you attribute that failure to your genetics?
Reflection #4
If you found out that all of the previously mentioned common beliefs about health and fitness failure and you are completely false, could you find a sense of renewed
encouragement to take your health back?
Chapter 2
The Four Barriers
After reading the first chapter of this book I am hoping that I have convinced you of what the problem(s) (that prevents you from losing weight) are not. If I have done my
job you are now in a position to understand what the actual barriers are to your success. In this second chapter of the book we are going to cover the ins and outs of those
barriers and how being more aware of them will set you on a path toward success.
When we are trying to lose weight and take control of our health we are very good at understanding our problems (or at least what we have been told our problems are) on
a very superficial level. For example- I am willing to bet you are fully aware of the fact that you eat too much during mealtime and give in to relentless cravings for sweets
and high calorie foods (likely during your evening downtime). If you are uniquely self aware you might also feel as though there is a connection between what is going on in
your life each day (events, emotions, thoughts) and how food can act as a form of self medication for your woes. For example: you have a stressful day at work only to come
home and get into a petty fight with your significant other. All of this stress and emotion results in a devoured box of cookies, which temporarily took your mind off of the
perils of your everyday life. I’m sure you can bend and shape this example in some way that resembles what most of us would see as an average day.
What we aren’t particularly good at understanding is why food (and to a lesser but significant degree, laziness) is so hard to keep under control. Why are we so susceptible
to craving, snacking, overeating, and other self harming behaviours? We know they aren’t good for us in the long run and we know that partaking in these common dietary
problems leads us away from our ultimate goal of a healthy body and a slimmer waistline, but we just can’t seem to prevent ourselves from self-sabotaging actions.
In this section of the book I am going to introduce you to the 4 underlying barriers that are responsible for every single unhealthy action you take (as well as every healthy
action you fail to take) in life. These unhealthy driving forces will be known simply as the 4 barriers. For most people these barriers are operating completely subconsciously
which why you likely aren’t even aware of their existence and how significant their negative effects on your health are. Everything from why you continue to eat until
you’re sick, why bad days lead to more calories and uncontrolled snacking, how something that happened 10 years ago is increasing your waistline today, and why you are
far more likely to make a poor decision ‘right now’ at the cost of a good decision that will bring you what you really want down the line stem from one (or all) of these four
barriers.
As unique as each one of these barriers is (hence their separation in explanation), they are also deeply connected, and you will notice as we cover each section of this
chapter that there is significant crossover from one barrier into the next. By ‘crossover’ I mean that bits and pieces of each barrier are found in one or all of the other
barriers as well. While I have done my best to separate them for the sake of easier explanation (and easier digestion of the ideas by you, the reader) the lines between
these barriers are somewhat fuzzy. As you read on you will understand precisely what I mean. This explanation of the four barriers will help you learn the entire weight gain
model more adequately which will help you implement your custom solution in a more successful way. By the time you have completed this section of the book your
underlying reasons for perpetual failure will all make perfect sense to you, and you will fully understand the actual problems you face each day that prevent you from
getting fit. No, the problem is not a lack of dietary knowledge, dramatic exercise methods, or magic pills and powders. If those thoughts are creeping back into your mind
please go back and read chapter one again. The actual problem is much more sinister and serious, but once you understand what the problem actually is we can begin to
work on an effective solution for you.
Barrier #1 -The Primal Conflict (Lower Brain Problems)

Depending on what you believe human beings have been around a long time. The remains of human beings that are anatomically identical to modern humans (literally
identical to you and I in every way) have been dated as old as 300,000 years- although the general consensus is that what we know today as the ‘modern human being’
finished significant evolution between 100,000 and 300,000 years ago. To further clarify I am telling you that our genetics, our bodies, and the operation of our brains have
not changed in the last 100,000 to 300,000 years. You might be saying to yourself ‘well that is all very interesting, and thank you for the anthropology snippet, but what
does that have to do with me losing weight and being healthy’? That is a fair question, and if you are patient enough the following answer(s) via the concept of the four
barriers will tell you everything you need to know about why losing weight has been a near impossibility for you up until this point.
The reason why I bring up identical ancestors in a weight loss perspective is because our human history and the conflict between our old, out of date human brain (and
body) and our modern, rapidly changing environment is the key to understanding why you eat so much, why exercise can often lose out to Netflix, and why it seems like it is
so easy to pack on fat.
The human body as we know it today was not developed in the last hundred, thousand, or even hundred thousand years. Our body and brain as we know them today have
developed over millions of years depending on what we needed to survive and reproduce at any given point in human history. Today we are a product of the genetic
adaptations that gave us the best chance of reproductive survival, and with that we have some good features that continue to help us thrive and some less helpful features
that have become maladaptive (or harmful) to human beings.
As I’m sure you can guess life was vastly different for us one million years ago than it is today, and with the significant change in our environment (without significant
adaptations to our physiology) has come some evolutionary traits that don’t serve us so well in modern times. These are known as ‘evolutionary mismatches’ (as coined by
Daniel Lieberman, author of ‘The Story of the Human Body) and many evolutionary biologists hypothesize that these evolutionary mismatches are responsible for every
single lifestyle based disease and condition we face today- from poor eyesight and cavities to certain kinds of cancers and forms of diabetes.
I am hoping that the introduction I just gave you to this concept of evolutionary mismatch is non-complex and easy to understand, but just to be safe I will paint a picture of
how these evolutionary mismatches effect modern human beings in harmful ways by telling a story about a troglodyte (better known as caveman) named ‘Doug’.
The Story of Doug
Doug is a simple sapien. He lives in a nice sized cave with a few stone carvings, walls covered with the most fashionable parietal art, and a large sleeping rug made out of
the furs of a few local predators that he has gathered over the years. Like most of us, Doug spends each day doing pretty much the same stuff. He’s got a pretty steady
routine. He wakes when the sun rises, performs a few yawning stretches in his cave bed, and then gets his day started. He first spends 3-4 hours hunting and gathering
(which is his official career if one need be identified). When he is done his hunting and/or gathering he is usually chewing, swallowing, and digesting, whatever roots and
tubers he located from the forest floor. If he is lucky he will be spending less chewing time on more palatable and nutrient dense foods like berries, flowered vegetables,
and maybe even a roasted animal of some sort. If Doug isn’t hunting, gathering, or eating he is usually lounging around and contemplating the meaning of a seemingly
pointless life. It’s not a bad way to pass the time.
Sometimes, however, life can be a little more exciting for Doug. Some days he gets chased up a tree or into a hole by a fierce, caveman eating animal. Luckily for Doug he
has an acute stress response system that has allowed him to survive a handful of these deadly encounters in the past. Other days he gets to take part in the act of
reproduction which we can assume was as much fun then as it is today. But for the most part his life consists of a little bit of hunting, a little bit of gathering, and a little
bit of eating. It’s a simple life.
Doug has to spend so much time looking for food because food is both scarce and sometimes dangerous to attain. Doug doesn’t have the luxury of grocery stores or even
modern food preservation methods so every day he must source his own meals directly from nature. Because of this, Doug has a few evolutionary mechanisms that make him
more likely to survive his current reality of ‘hand to mouth’ living. For starters, Doug has insatiable cravings for sugar, fat, and other high-energy foods. The reason for this
is because if Doug can attain these high energy foods he is going to get to live a few more weeks, so his primal but intelligent brain wants to inspire him to seek high calorie,
high energy payoffs. Secondly, Doug is really good at retaining body fat and anything he eats that does not get used up as energy to perform his daily tasks gets shuttled into
his tissues as energy reserves in the form of muscle glycogen and body fat. The reason for this is because if Doug ingests high calorie dense foods he will want to store as
much of the calories as possible so he has a back up plan during times of little to no food. If Doug is carrying an extra 10 lbs of body fat he can go a month without food if
necessary. Thirdly, Doug has a tendency to be lazy whenever he has the opportunity to lounge around which is perfectly socially acceptable and even encouraged in hunter-
gatherer societies. In fact the idea of moving for non essential daily functions would get you a few odd looks and perhaps a one way ticket to the caveperson mental asylum.
‘Doug appears to be lifting rocks up and down and flexing his muscles for no apparent reason. We should hit him in the back of the head with an axe when he isn’t looking
and put him out of his misery’. This is because energy and calories are so hard to come in Doug’s world that to waste calories and stored body fat via nonessential activities
would be completely idiotic. Even suicidal. Lastly, Doug has an extremely fast and dramatic stress response. Danger is everywhere in Doug’s world, and those who think first
and act second, die. If Doug were to see a ‘tiger like’ shape rustling in the nearby bushes and stood there assessing whether the vague shape was indeed, a tiger, or just
Carl from the next cave over, Doug would not be around for very long. For this reason Doug is equipped with a hormonal engine that can help him see more clearly, fight
more intensely, and increase the sensitivity of all his essential survival functions.
This is what it takes to survive as a caveperson.
In case you haven’t put it together yet, you are Doug. You have the identical psychology and physiology that our friend Doug had for it was evolutionarily critical to possess
Doug’s ‘tools’ in order for our species to survive long enough to make babies. The only thing we don’t have is the environment in which those tools are necessary for
survival. This is the point I was aiming to make at in the beginning of this chapter. The evolutionary ‘tools’ that kept us alive for hundreds of thousands of years were
developed during times of scarcity and danger. At that time those tools served our ancestors very well. Well enough to make us the most dominant species in recordable
history. The downside to this evolutionary genius is that we now live in an environment that is completely maladaptive to that once helpful evolution and it is causing us a
lot of suffering.
We still crave sugar, fat, and other high-energy foods but now we have food available within 30 steps (or less) of wherever we are at any given moment. To make matters
worse our food has been agriculturally modified to be the sweetest, fattiest, most digestible and most desirable energy dense food possible. So now we have intense
cravings for once scarce foods that are now in our cupboard and 10 times as sweet and fatty as food was when we developed these mechanisms.
We still store fat incredibly efficiently and mobilize it (burn it) very poorly (or efficiently if you want to get technical). Only now we have such an excess of caloric intake
that we are storing fat to the point that it is killing more people than any other preventable action. Every calorie that is not used in an essential daily function is stored as
body fat and kept there until it is required for survival- but as you know modern human beings rarely require excess fat stores for anything useful.
We are still more likely to sit than stand, watch TV than exercise, and take the escalator instead of the stairs in order to conserve as much energy as possible, but now we
have literally hundreds of thousands of spare calories glued to our stomachs, thighs, and butts that don’t go anywhere because of our tendency to be lazy. There is a reason
why it is easier to sit on the couch than it is to run a mile. Exercise is innately uncomfortable for people because recreational exercise would’ve moved you one step closer
to death on the savannah. Exercise as we know it today was only used for critical activities during our most important evolutionary periods. For this reason exercise was not
designed to be acutely gratifying.
Finally, we still have that razor sharp stress response that spikes blood sugar, fires up our cortisol, and creates an unnatural hormonal ‘salad’ that helps keep us safe and
alive when immediate danger is present. But now Tigers aren’t chasing us once every few months. Well, most of us aren’t I assume. These days we are being chased by
debt, disease, work anxiety, and a collection of other chronic modern maladies that invoke the same stress response but in an unhelpful (if not seriously harmful) way.
Instead triggering a stress response once in a blue moon when imminent danger is present we have a version of that stress reaction several times per day. That ain’t good.
I don’t think I need further emphasize just how negatively these mismatches affect your health. I call this process of our old, once helpful brain and our incompatible
environment the ‘primal conflict’, and below I have provided an image to give you an idea of what this primal conflict looks like in most of our lives today.
You will see that in the red circle we have a (short) list of traits that once served us well in our old, evolutionary world. It is filled with stuff like the cravings, eating habits,
fat storage, energy preservation, and stress response parameters mentioned earlier in the chapter, but I have also added social anxiety and conformity as it plays a part in
our poor health outcomes as well. Back when we lived in tribes it was important for us to conform to the group and be contributors to the village. This kept us in the group
and having a group meant having help in the area of not dying. The roots of these social conformity and social anxiety drivers is why we are always comparing ourselves to
others and becoming anxious and depressed when we feel as though we don’t fit into a particular group. This furthers our unhealthy outcomes by pushing us toward harmful
coping strategies to help relieve the pain that comes from our social anxiety, but I am getting a bit ahead of myself here and we will talk more on that later.
In the blue circle you will see an equally short list of a few of the environmental realities we face today that are maladaptive to our old brain’s motivations. As I mentioned
we now have an abundance of high calorie foods with endless variety and convenience. We are now facing endless unnatural daily stresses that create chronic hormonal
cascades, we have the creation of drugs and alcohol to help soothe the pain that comes from these mismatches, and we have all of the comforts and technological time
wasting activities to take full advantage of our tendency toward laziness.
Evolutionary mismatch at its finest.
By the end of this section what I want you to understand above all else is that your problems are not unique. They are not specific to you. The primal drivers that push you
into your worst behaviours have nothing to do with your personality or the inherent choices that stem from your personality. This is important to understand because we
often feel isolated in our weight problems and feel as though we are choosing to be unhealthy in some dark, self-hating way. Don’t get me wrong, there is some of that
there and we will get to that eventually, but I am suggesting that at your biological core- the part of you that you didn’t have any control over- you are now designed to be
unhealthy. What you have, in fact, is a ‘curse’ of sorts that all human beings are affected by to some degree. Some of us more than others overall, and some of us more
than others in specific areas, but all in all we are suffering the consequences of this mismatch, together. That is not an excuse to let your health continue to slide. It might
not be your ‘fault’ that you struggle to lose weight and be healthy, but it’s still your responsibility to do something about it. Keep in mind that this also means that if we
see people around us who are fit and healthy, we can by all means be fit and healthy too. If a reasonable amount of human beings have found a way to overcome the primal
conflict and its evolutionary mismatches, you can do the same. At this point in the book you might not be sold on that promise, but you’ll come around.
I will make the point again that in this sense your current situation is not really your fault, and when it comes down to it you are just a human being doing what a human
being is designed to do. Eat calories. Move only when necessary. Store fat. By all anthropological accounts you are a glowing success of what a human being is supposed to
be. It just isn’t working out for you the way nature planned.
The last thing I want to mention before moving onto the next barrier is that there is indeed a way to take control of the primal conflict, just like there is an answer for each
of the following barriers we are about to discuss. After reading this first section of the chapter you might be feeling a little discouraged, albeit enlightened. You have
probably thought something like ‘if we are evolutionarily designed to be fat and lazy, what’s the point in trying’? That’s a fair question. I promise I would not have you
spend over an hour of your time reading about problems that there is no solution for. I am not that cruel. But we need to understand each problem (as well as the
interaction of all the problems in this book) before we get into the solution(s), so bare with me. For the time being do your best to ‘absorb’ the information I am giving you
about your true barriers to success and begin taking note of how each of them play out in your life and lead you into your most unhealthy behaviours. Doing so will leave you
prepared to properly implement your solutions when we get to that section of the book. In the meantime let’s move onto the next barrier.
Barrier #2- Our Toxic Culture and the BioPsychoSocial Landscape (Higher Brain Problems)
When discussing the ‘primal conflict’ we looked at deeply ingrained problems in our evolutionary history that have lead to maladaptation in the modern world (and our
modern lives). The subconscious reactions, drivers, and instincts that lead us to bigger waistlines and increased risk of disease. The issue of our toxic culture is a more
modern version of the same kind of problems. This specific set of problems is also connected to our biological nature but modernly destructive due to psychological
mismatches, unhelpful technology, and our mothers who are always trying to shove pie in our faces at every family event. That won’t mean very much to you right now, but
don’t worry, the concept will make sense very soon.
In order to stick with the same theme of storytelling I will tell you three stories to give you some insight into how our toxic culture and the absence of a biopsychosocial
approach to our health problems make them difficult to overcome. Let’s begin with the story of Jessica.
The Story of Jessica
Jessica is fairly ‘ordinary’ when it comes to your average thirty-something year old female. She has good group of friends, and supportive and loving family, and a job that
brings her stability and satisfaction. What Jessica is lacking in her life comes more along the lines of her physical and mental health. As Jessica has grown in age she has also
grown in pant sizes as well. Nothing particularly dramatic or even noticeable to anyone outside of her closest friends and family, but enough of a weight gain and
psychological concern to be a significant source of pain in Jessica’s life.
Jessica has never been what you would consider ‘skinny’ and for most of her life she never really thought about her weight all that much. In fact she never considered her
weight a problem until she crossed her mid-twenties, and to be honest she has only gained a modest 10lbs since that time. If you asked those close to Jessica they wouldn’t
have even noticed or acknowledged her weight gain, so why does this modest change seem to be hitting Jessica so hard?
As Jessica has gotten older and moved out on her own she has also increased her routine and amount of downtime each day. Jessica doesn’t go out very much during the
week and she would consider herself a ‘home body’- content to spend each evening at her home and reserving social events for the weekend. Most days Jessica comes home
after work, makes dinner, cleans up around the house, and then does pretty much the same thing. She catches up on the daytime T.V. women’s talk show she PVR’d earlier,
she might flip through a few gossip magazines, and she ends her night on her laptop checking out Instagram, Facebook, and perhaps Pinterest if she has time.
There’s a common theme between the shows, magazines, and social networks that Jessica frequents each evening. They each feature people who make Jessica feel inferior
in one way or another through the way they look, the lives they live, or what they seem to professionally ‘produce’ in either income or status. When Jessica watches her
T.V. show it often features the latest celebrity weight loss trend. When she reads her gossip magazines they are filled with both glamorous shots of the world’s most
‘beautiful’ people as well as surprisingly harsh physical criticisms of some of those same celebrities who have been caught on the beach wearing an unflattering bathing suit
while bending over to help their child build a sandcastle. Wasn’t Jessica Simpson featured as one of their most beautiful people 6 months ago and now this month they are
plastering pictures of her cover to cover talking about how she ‘hasn’t recovered well’ from her latest pregnancy?
When Jessica hops onto her laptop to check out social networks it isn’t much better, in fact it is in many ways worse. Both people who are close to Jessica as well as people
from the other side of the world she has never met before are all documenting their lives as if they have something to prove. Only the best photos taken with the best
lighting of life’s most perfect moments are on display in Jessica’s timeline. Filters, professional airbrushing, and other tricks of the trade make it impossible to distinguish if
half of the Instagram fitness people Jessica follows are even real human beings.
When Jessica ends her 3 hour-long media blitz she does not feel great about any aspect of her life. She is too single. She doesn’t make enough money. Her life lacks
excitement. And Jessica is terribly overweight, ugly, and not likely to find any love in her life.
Now keep in mind that Jessica is not what you would consider to be a fragile woman. She is by all means as strong as the next person. But for some reason Jessica can’t help
but be negatively affected (or INfected) by what she sees in all the various forms of media she consumes each day, and worse, she can’t escape it even though she knows
that it is hurting her psychologically. For some reason she is a glutton for the pain. She becomes resentful of even her closest friends sometimes when she sees the picture
perfect lives they are portraying on the social networks.
Jessica who was once a young, strong, resilient woman is now lacking confidence, self worth, and mental stability- and this combination of negative effects that have been
chipping away at her over the years is the cocktail that has lead her to believe that she is no longer beautiful, no longer healthy, and no longer ‘good enough’. Jessica’s
toxic culture has pushed her to into insecurity and emotional turmoil.
Now what would happen if Jessica went to a doctor and said that she was feeling depressed about weight, appearance, or general life reality? Well, depending on what
doctor Jessica ended up seeing one of two (or a combination of both) things would happen. One doctor might focus on the psychological aspect of Jessica’s problems, which
may result in the prescribing of some sort of antidepressant. Another doctor might focus on Jessica’s ‘weight problem’ and suggest she focus on diet and exercise efforts or
maybe even prescribe some sort of pill if she tested for any metabolic associated symptoms. What neither doctor is likely to do is reference the social and environmental
impact of Jessica’s problems and integrate those factors with her mind and body. Some professionals will gravitate toward our biological symptoms- our genetics, our weight
problem, what our blood tests say.
Some professionals will gravitate toward our psychological problems- our negative thoughts, our low self worth, our bouts of depression. Very few (if any) will take into
account our environment and social factors (our toxic culture) and a dismal amount will look at all three.
*note: I use doctors as the main professional example here for the sake of relatability. I am not picking on doctors and I am not claiming that this issue is any fault
of theirs. This same set of issues is standard across the board with all health professions due to the ‘chopped up’ education that comes with specializations.
The Story of Rick

Rick is your average ‘dude’ who has spent his entire life growing up in Western civilization. Rick likes beer, burgers, and sports just like most North American ‘fellas’. In the
first 40 years of Rick’s life he could drink a 12 pack, eat 2-3 cheeseburgers, and watch 4-6 hours of football highlights from his couch without it affecting his health in any
way that he would consider a concern. Sure, Rick has had a steadily growing ‘beer belly’ since his mid-twenties, but that’s just what happens to men who enjoy the finer
things in life, right?
Rick also works an extremely stressful job, which may or may not be related to his need to blow off excessive steam on the weekends. He works long hours, has a ton of
responsibility, and his job security isn’t the greatest. With the constant threat of layoffs and sending jobs overseas or having positions filled by robots the thought of
unemployment is always looming in Rick’s mind. To make matters worse Rick has been fighting with his wife on a more frequent basis. They both seem to be irritable and
perpetually resentful of one another to the point that the only time they communicate is when one of them has a passive aggressive attack to ‘needle’ the other one with.
The result is that Rick’s once seemingly immortal ‘dad bod’ is beginning to feel a little bit different than it did in the last 15 years of beer drinking, cheeseburger eating
adulthood. Rick is beginning to notice some ‘symptoms’ that he hasn’t experienced before. He seems to get easily fatigued, sometimes barely being able to get out of bed.
He finds himself getting dizzy for no apparent reason and needing to sit down more often. Perhaps the most annoying thing of all is that he is getting up to pee in the
middle of the night several times. Rick knows that something is just not right.
After several months of growing concerns Rick goes to see his family doctor who listens to Rick’s growing list of symptomatic concerns. The M.D. decides that they should
probably run some diagnostics. Not surprisingly Rick’s results come back with incredibly high blood pressure, cholesterol concerns, and a borderline diabetic blood glucose
reading. This isn’t anything that Rick’s doctor hasn’t seen before and many of these results he considers to be ‘normal’ for an aging man.
Rick’s doctor puts him on a handful of prescription drugs to help alleviate and control his symptoms, and Rick is sent home. Once a year blood work will be done to see if
anything changes (good or bad), but for now the doctor just wants to see Rick’s physical symptoms get under control. We will get back to Rick, but for right now let’s jump
to Annie.
The Story of Annie
Annie is a professional woman. She works at a prestigious law firm and is feared by many in her field. Annie thrives on being feared in this way and it is ‘by design’. Annie is
a defense lawyer who spends her days defending the worst criminals who enter the justice system- murderers, rapists, and pedophiles. The type of human associations that
leave you a little colder of a human being yourself.
Annie has always considered herself a strong woman, so much so that she is constantly aiming to prove her strength in what could be considered ‘over the top’ fashion.
Annie can be abrasive, combative, and appears to be ready for a fight. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that she lives for verbal and cognitive battles. With all that said
Annie’s once ‘ironclad’ personality is rapidly becoming frailer. It seems that in a matter of a few months she has started to become nothing but a shell of her once fierce
identity.
Annie has been crying at night, uncontrollably for the last month. She doesn't know why. Nothing in her life has changed and she can’t pin her grief on any one specific
thought or event. When she gets home she just sits down and cries. It is as if this overwhelming, thick emotion crashes over her like a giant wave and she begins to drown in
her own uncontrolled emotions.
While Annie has not had any dangerously negative thoughts or taken part in any self-harming behaviour during this time, she is seeing herself in a different light. A very
negative one at that (in Annie’s view). She feels weak. She feels fragile. She feels like everything both her father and ex-husband used to tell her she was inside. She is
beginning to feel like everything she despises in other people and coincidentally everything she used to despise in herself when being told how weak and ineffectual she was
by the prominent men in her life.
Growingly concerned with her ‘condition’, Annie goes to see a ‘shrink’ that came highly recommended by a friend of hers. After a week of sessions the psychiatrist, Dr. Moss
writes Annie a prescription for antidepressants and sleeping pills. Dr.Moss’ immediate concern is getting Annie’s psychological symptoms under control so she can function
day to day as needed. The roots of her condition will take time to uncover and aid. The two will continue with weekly follow-ups, but for now he sends Annie on her way
with a few prescriptions that will relieve Annie’s psychological pain.
Now what is the point of these three stories? After first read you might feel as though this is an attack on our medical system and the over-prescribing of symptom relieving
pharmaceuticals as a quicker, less laborious way of getting people out of doctor’s offices. While I don’t disagree that this prescription centric scenario is common and most
definitely an issue, that is not the point of these stories.
The first point of these stories (as told in Jessica’s story) is the effect that our toxic culture, society, and environment have on our health. We understand and connect with
the idea that what we put into our body and how often we exercise it directly affects our health. But how many of us make the same direct connection to the negative
effect of social media, poor relationships, productivity based human value, and a culture that seems to encourage poor health outcomes?
The second point of these stories (as told in the stories of Rick and Jessica) is to highlight the way we deal with complex issues. We isolate them into a specific field rather
than assessing the entire picture that leads to breakdowns in our health. If we have symptoms that lead to blood tests that show high blood pressure, it’s a biological issue
and our biology becomes the focus. If we have negative thoughts and overwhelming emotional breakdowns, it is a psychological issue and our minds become the focus. Our
complex lives are chopped up and slotted into conveniently created buckets where our problems are to live. I will explain what this has to do with your waistline
momentarily. For now I need you to understand the depths of this barrier. When we are facing issues in our health one of these areas (our biology, our psychology, or very
rarely, our society/environment) we chop out the single piece that seems to fit the assessment of our symptoms and focus on the relief of those associated symptoms
without considering how the other factors fit in. You have high blood pressure? It is a biological issue and we will treat the problem with a blood pressure lowering
medication.
The opposite of this simplified, chopped up method of diagnosis and ‘healing’ (if you can call it that) is a biopsychosocial approach to health problems. Sometimes this is
referred to as ‘functional medicine’. This approach understands that the mind cannot be separated from the body, and the mind and body cannot be separated from the
environment or society (toxic culture). And if health problems (including weight gain and obesity) are not addressed with a biopsychosocial lense, the long-term solutions
cannot be uncovered.
For example: yes, Rick has some concerning blood markers, and yes, isolating those biological symptoms and treating them with drugs might be helpful and necessary- but
what else could be contributing to Rick’s issues? Biologically he might be a little fat, he might have some genetic predispositions, and he might not be on the best diet. This
is what a physician will typically isolate and focus on the treatment of. But what about Rick’s psychology? He already has an extremely stressful job and now he is on his
way to a separation from his wife. The effects of poorly managed stress on our hormones are well documented and can play a large role in our health outcomes (more on
that in a later chapter). In Dr. Gabor Mate’s book ‘When the Body Says No’ he argues that stress is the ‘x-factor’ that underlies all disease, and without stress, most diseases
cannot exist. And what about societal or environmental contributions to our health issues? When you look at Annie’s situation it seems as though she has the self-
expectation to prove to the world the worth of all women. She has a society that already sees men as more powerful than women (especially in a role like law) and by the
sounds of it she has had some key men in her life who were threatened by her intelligence and strength- enough so to try and shove it deep down inside of her where her
power could not threaten emasculate them.
From a weight loss perspective this is incredibly relatable. When you look at your own health problems, including your weight issue how often do you consider all of the
factors that may be contributing to your poor health outcomes and the lack of success you see in your efforts.
Chances are you have a 100% biological focus on your weight. You likely believe that you have some underlying hormonal or genetic disadvantages that have lead to excess
weight gain. You probably also believe that your lack of exercise and poor dietary habits have maximized these underlying biological issues. You wouldn’t be wrong to make
any of those assumptions and they have all played a role in your declining health. But what about all of the other BSP factors? Have you considered how your social stresses,
financial anxieties, adverse life experiences have shattered your mental resilience? Have you thought about how societal factors like beauty standards and social media have
lead you to attach your worth to your weight and made you hate yourself? And lastly have you thought about how these psychological and societal factors are driving you to
eat and be too afraid and self-conscious to even take care of yourself at the most basic level?
If you want to begin changing your life you need to get past the focus on biology alone. That is genetics, body type, metabolism, and all the like. If you are overweight there
are social and psychological contributors that are making your problem harder to pinpoint and deal with and it is all connected. Your biological connection to weight gain is
the most superficial source of the problem, and this is why it is so easy for you to recognize diet and exercise as the solution for your problems. It is much harder to
consider the psychological and societal roots that are driving your biology to suffering.
Since many of us are visual learners I have provided an image below to help you understand how the biopsychosocial model might look like in weight loss.
Most of us are aware of our biology, and our biology is definitely a factor in our health and fitness. Hormonal issues, ability to gain muscle mass, and our internal motivation
for exercise have all been linked to genetic factors- but these biological issues in isolation rarely lead to weight gain. At least not weight gain that cannot be controlled or
reversed. Add in psychological issues like being sensitive to stress, being sad or frustrated, having a poor self-image or a tendency to rationalize your unhealthy actions and
the problem becomes more complex and more serious. Lastly when you consider factors like an unsupportive family, a society in which fast food, sugary drinks, excessive
drinking, and binge TV watching is considered to be ‘normal’, and media outlets that have created unrealistic beauty standards (in both men and women) that do nothing
more than make you feel terrible about yourself and you are left with a well reinforced negative health outcome. When you look at it this way the cards are really stacked
against you.
To clarify here is an example of how the BSP landscape works. Biologically you already have a shorter, wider frame and a metabolism that makes it a little harder to lose
weight. Due to growing up with this concern about your biological fate and your ‘stocky’ appearance you develop a poor self-image and an increasing sensitivity to hurtful
comments about your weight and your frame. Then you have a mother who can’t help but to point out the awkward way in which your clothes fit, or she is always asking
you ‘why you don’t look like your sister’. All the while dear ol’ mom is nagging you and questioning why you don’t want a second piece of pie or gravy on your potatoes at
dinner. There’s a lot going on here that is contributing to poor health in adulthood and it starts at a very young age. This was just a small example of the variety of factors
that play a part in an eventual disconnection from health, but I bet you can relate to them in some way.
Any one of these example factors can, on their own, be fairly simple to deal with. If you just had a short frame that made it difficult to wear flattering clothes but you also
had a supportive mom who encouraged you to be physically active and always love and take care yourself, the short frame is not that big of a problem. You will develop a
positive psychology that leads you to eating well, exercising, and minimizing social anxieties in spite of your ‘disadvantageous’ frame. Unfortunately a singular issue that is
purely biological, psychological, or social in nature is rarely what we are dealing with. When we look into the biopsychosocial interactions that create and reinforce our
health issues we see just how deep and complex weight problems can be. It’s not just a matter of what you put in your body, what exercises you do, or what your mom’s
hip to waist ratio is. It’s just as much about the psychology you’ve developed since the time you were an infant and the society and environment that has hurt you, confused
you, fed you calorie dense processed foods, and boxed you into a very difficult situation. Yet when we want to take control of our health we focus purely on the biological
problems and the biological solutions. This mindset is built to fail.
We will come back to the BSP landscape and what can be done to understand it and utilize its principles in order to better our health, but for now let’s move onto our next
barrier.
Barrier #3- The Need to ‘Cope’ (Complex modern stress without coping strategies)
In the first two barriers we spent a lot of time uncovering the underlying mechanisms in both our old, lower, primal brains (primal conflict) and our new, higher, modern
brains (BPS) that have given us an immediate disadvantage in our health. The explanation of these two barriers tells us a lot about why we do the things we do even though
they are hurting our health. While our third barrier is in the same ‘vein’ as the first two its roots have less to do with the long historic past of human beings and more to do
with your own personal life history. We are now moving away from the generalized human disadvantages we are facing and toward our increasingly unique set of problems.
To continue with the theme of this book let’s introduce this concept with a story.
The Story of Jenny
Jenny is your ‘average’ 35-year-old woman. She has a family who loves her, friends you care for her, reasonable job security, and a good life routine. Like most women her
age, however, Jenny is becoming less satisfied with her weight and appearance. Jenny does not have a significant other and according to her well-meaning (but often cruel)
mother ‘if she just lost a few pounds and cared about her appearance a little more, maybe she’d have a boyfriend by now’. Ironically Jenny’s mother is about 50 lbs
overweight herself, but she already has a husband so I suppose that qualifies you to belittle your daughter.
Jenny is active, although not incredibly so. She walks a few times each week, plays at a charity lawn bowling tournament on Thursday nights and tries to get to the gym at
least once per week. But thus far none of her efforts (modest as they may be) seem to make any difference in her body.
Although Jenny does try to be as healthy as possible there seems to be certain unhealthy habits that she just can’t kick. The big one(s) for her are late night snacking and
red wine consumption. Despite Jenny’s best efforts she cannot put down the cookie bag or the wine bottle between the hours of 8pm and midnight. There’s a clear pattern
to her evenings. After dinner she putters around the house doing some light cleaning and organizing, and then without much else to do she ends up sitting on the couch and
turning on the T.V. This is when the cookies and wine start ‘calling her name’ as she puts it. Jenny initially resists these sugar and alcohol based urges, but after about 5
minutes of mental anguish she tells herself that it’ll be ‘just a few cookies and a small glass of red wine. You deserve it today’! Then she proceeds to the pantry and wine
fridge. Flash-forward to an hour later and Jenny has consumed 4 glasses of wine (the entire bottle) and ½ of the bag of cookies. She feels sick to her stomach, guilty,
ashamed, and all of the other usual feelings one would get after a night of losing control like in this scenario. As with most people Jenny believes that this is the result of
the holes in her personality. Jenny sees herself as weak. Jenny believes that she doesn’t have any willpower. Jenny believes that this is the reason why she is fat, and this is
the reason why she is alone. Jenny routinely falls into this very, very bad mental headspace.
What Jenny didn’t consider, however, is what is currently happening at her work and what she has been dealing with every day of her recent professional life. You see,
Jenny does have an interested suitor in her life. Her 64 year old, married boss. For the better part of a year, despite her best efforts to show her disinterest Jenny’s boss
has proceeded to touch her and speak to her in inappropriate ways while they are alone together. Nothing dangerous or aggressive, but obviously unacceptable. Jenny has
repeatedly asked her boss to stop his advances, but with his arrogant assumption of power that he could use to ‘ruin her career’, he is not concerned with what Jenny does
not want.
Now you may be asking yourself (if you are somewhat ignorant to how abuse works) why Jenny does not just go and tell someone what is happening to her? Why doesn’t she
get him fired? Why doesn’t she sue him for every penny that he is worth? The truth is that Jenny feels powerless and her boss (being the predator he is) knows it. All
predators know what to look for in a victim and Jenny’s boss is a master at his craft. When asking yourself why Jenny doesn’t put a stop to this problem you also must
consider Jenny’s past. Jenny was once in a similar situation with an ‘uncle’ of hers. Not a blood relative but a family friend who was close enough to be trusted alone with
Jenny on occasion. When she was only 12 years old she experienced the same inappropriate touching, talking, and feelings of powerlessness from her ‘uncle’ that she is now
reliving in the workplace. Again, it was never ‘dangerous’ in the sense of physical or sexual harm but even then Jenny immediately knew that the advances were not okay.
The problem at that time (aside from the obvious) was that Jenny was afraid to ‘shame’ her parents or threaten the relationship between her ‘uncle’ and her father. He
was the best man at her parents wedding. How could she speak up if it meant ruining the family ties? Jenny’s ‘uncle’ was never shy about emphasizing all of the awful
things that would happen if she told anyone about his conduct. Jenny now as an adult is still that same little girl who believes she needs to save everyone around her the
pain of her trauma by just being quiet, so she will continue going to work and dealing with the inappropriateness of her boss and just hope that it one day stops.
I apologize for the potential ‘weight’ that a story like this can carry for some of you, but it is a common example that I need to make in order to connect you with this
barrier’s core concept and answer the question you are most definitely asking right now: ‘so what does this have to do with Jenny’s weight problem’?
Sensitivity x Pain = Coping Frequency and Severity
Everyone has some degree of unresolved issues from their past that stick with them as they continue on through life. We usually assume that the adverse life events that
affect us in a negative way long into the future stem from very sinister forms like physical and sexual abuse- but less acutely painful or damaging life experiences like
poverty, bullying, feeling like a social outcast, and even a sense of purposelessness can create deep seated defense systems that protect us in the short term but hurt us in
the long term. ‘Trauma’ as it is known comes in many forms and along a broad spectrum of degrees of seriousness. Those traumas dictate our sensitivity to future life pain
and how we self medicate and cope with daily life stresses, emotions, and issues. In other words the adverse events we face throughout life (along with our ability to
properly cope with those adverse life events at the time they are happening to us) determines how susceptible we are to unhealthy forms of self medication in the face of
feelings and emotions we did not develop the tools to deal with long into the future. As mentioned, life pain does not have to be as serious as the kind that Jenny is
currently experiencing with her boss’ sexual advances. Relationship issues, work stress, financial stress, health concerns, and even plain boredom can create more than
enough internal discomfort to push us toward self medication and coping.
And what are the most readily available ‘drugs’ we have access to for the purpose of self-medication? The answer is food, alcohol, sloth, and technology. While these
available sources of self-medication are vastly different from one another they all have one thing in common: the ability to distract us from our emotions and temporarily
numb us from the pain we feel.
Let’s take this concept and go back to Jenny’s story in order to connect the application to real life. Jenny has a high sensitivity to relationship issues with men due to her
early life experience with her ‘uncle’ that was made even worse by her feeling of helplessness and need to stay quiet about it (out of fear that bringing forward the abuse
would shatter her parents. The child becomes the protector for the parents instead of the other way around). Now as an adult Jenny is facing a similar (if not exact)
situation with her boss at work. Since she is already highly sensitive to abusive male relationships the negative effects of her boss’ unwelcome advances hit her hard and
make her feel more helpless than a grown woman who has not experienced this behaviour before would have (or a woman who has experienced the same advances but had
the immediate support of loved ones in order to combat the long term negative outcomes). The combination of her underlying sensitivity (past abuse) and the current pain
she is facing (workplace sexual harassment) has created a series of significant emotional pains that she never properly developed the tools to deal with in a ‘healthy’ way.
So Jenny self medicates with food and alcohol at the end of the day when her mind is most idle and all she can feel is the overwhelming pain and discomfort that the
workplace harassment invoked in her. Much like a drug addict who continues to abuse substances even though he knows the substance abuse is slowly killing him, the
negative outcome of Jenny’s self medication loses out to the immediate need for pain relief from her emotional distress. Sensitivity (adverse life experiences) x Pain
(current stress and emotional pain) = coping (food and alcohol). Jenny is simply trying to make herself feel better, or more accurately Jenny is simply trying to distract
herself from her current pain.
The case of Jenny is a somewhat extreme one. Not uncommon by any means, but certainly not a scenario that everyone can relate to. Perhaps I am being assumptive but I
am guessing a family friend did not sexually abuse the majority of the readers of this book at a young age and not currently experiencing blatant sexual harassment at work.
But her story gets the point I am trying to make across quite clearly. Jenny’s example might leave you sitting there and thinking to yourself ‘I was never abused, nor am I
currently being abused, and I still get lost in a bag of cookies and bottle of wine most nights, so your assessment of the cause of my personal weight issues is not accurate’.
That’s fair, but keep in mind that I said the causes of sensitivity and pain do not have to be even remotely extreme in order to lead us into food and drink based self-
medication. This just an initial example that people can grasp very clearly. In fact, the more extreme forms of abuse often leave such a painful mark that those who face
them (usually without support of loved ones) end up with severe drug and alcohol abuse issues. Food is the drug of choice for the person who does not understand that they
are even emotionally bruised.
For example, Let’s say you were bullied as a child. Nothing dramatic or violent but perhaps you moved to a new school and didn’t fit in well. You didn’t have a place in
your new school where you felt socially secure or where you felt like you could be yourself and still have good friendships. Over the next year of name calling, low self
esteem, and an underlying fear and distaste for going to school you develop an inability to properly cope with social stress because you are facing a novel (unnatural)
amount of it for any young boy or girl to properly handle. Even if you grow up, become confident, and have lots of friends you are still likely sensitive to certain social
stressors that you face in adult life. So now as an adult when you have interpersonal issues at work or at home they hit you much harder than a person who did not develop
that same childhood sensitivity to their social surroundings. The result is that when you run into those stressors in adulthood you do not cope with them well and you seek
self-medication. A good example of this is the person who always has to have a drink in one hand and food in the other when they go to a party. Someone who has struggled
with social issues at a young age will be far more likely to gravitate toward the consumption of alcohol and the occupation of their hands and mouth with food in order to
feel less exposed. You depend on the alcohol to quiet the social anxiety in your head and the food to occupy your hands and mouth in order to avoid the feeling of socially
awkward gestures or silences. A child who grew up in a socially secure environment with close friends and no bullying isn’t likely to require these ‘crutches’ in adulthood.
Another even simpler example could be the over-stimulated child. Imagine if you grew up and never had imaginative downtime without access to your technology or toys.
You grew up with gaming systems, TV, movies, the internet, and you never knew what it was like to deal with boredom. Now in adulthood when you are sitting around
between dinner and bedtime wondering what you’re going to do with yourself, you get painfully bored. Yes, boredom is seen as pain inside the brain. So what’s the easiest
way to get rid of brain pain that stems from boredom? Habitual chewing, drinking, and technological distraction like T.V., YouTube, Netflix, and social networks. This is a
common reason many of us snack all night long even though we are not hungry and getting heavier by the day. The pain of boredom is so extreme (due to our lack of
internal coping tools) that quieting that pain is more important than making healthy choices. Boredom also leaves us isolated with our thoughts, and when we are not
distracted we are more susceptible to the daily emotions and pains that push us into unhealthy self-coping mechanisms to numb those pains.
I am hoping that you managed to see yourself in at least one of those three examples, and I also hope that this connection has turned a light bulb on inside your brain as this
is an important connection to make for your recovery. Just in case you need some more examples of the pain x sensitivity model I have attached an image below that you
can reference.
Any past experience from the left combined with any current pain on the right can lead to coping via food, drink, sloth, or technology based self-medication and distraction.
The lists on each side of the pain x sensitivity model could be endless. These are just the most common examples I could think of while creating the image. I will break a
few examples down below to make sure you understand how this process fits into your life.
1. You had a verbally abusive dad when you were a child. Now when you face male authority (like dealing with your boss at work) it pushes you into high levels of
stress and anger. You distract yourself from this ‘pain’ with overeating and late night snacking
2. You had parents who used food to keep you quiet when you were growing up, almost like a surrogate babysitter. When you wanted stimulation and
interaction, you got food shoved in your face. Now when you are unstimulated and bored, you are drawn to food to relieve the pain of the boredom.
3. When you were young you never felt like you had anything in your life that you were great at. You felt like you didn’t have a place in the world or anything of
value to give. You felt like you didn’t have a purpose. Now as an adult you don’t feel as though your job is good enough. You are always comparing your life
and professional career to those around you feeling as though everyone is ahead of you. These thoughts and feelings of purposelessness and worthlessness push
into alcohol consumption at night to distract you from these uncomfortable emotions.
Again, the examples could be endless and they are not limited to the structure of this model. What you need to grasp is that any situation you have had exposure to that
you were not (at the time) equipped to deal with has likely created a certain sensitivity and set of defense mechanisms inside of you that hurt you in adult life. When your
personal sensitivities are exposed to a real-time ‘pain’ you will have trouble coping with that ‘pain’ in a healthy way and end up seeking out external coping methods to
soothe the pain you are feeling. Food, drink, sloth, and technology are the most readily available and socially acceptable forms of self-medication humans have access to
and we use them for everything from minor to major life problems. Most of the time we aren’t even conscious of the connection between our underlying pain and our
unhealthy actions. We just assume that stress, anxiety, sadness, anger, frustration, helplessness, worthlessness, and all the like are just the stuff that comes with being an
adult. We are disconnected from the roots of our unhealthy behaviours.
We will take a more in depth look at trauma and modern stress in the next chapter, but for now just let the concept of sensitivity x pain= coping ruminate in your brain.
While you do that we should move into the final barrier between you and weight loss success.
Barrier #4- System 1 vs. System 2

With everything we have covered this far you might be left with the following thought(s): this all makes a lot of sense, and now I understand the roots of all of my unhealthy
actions, but now can I just say ‘no’ to them? If I know where the roots of my most unhealthy behaviours come from, am I now equipped to stop them in their tracks? Because
I am usually mindlessly taking part in self harming acts while barely even realizing what I’m doing to myself until I am laying on the couch covered in food crumbs and
feeling like a total failure, and I’d like that process to stop.
Unfortunately the solution is not that simple. Don’t get me wrong, being ‘aware’ is a large contributor to your ability to break the cycle of unconscious, unhealthy actions,
but there are still some deeply entrenched human mismatches at play that we need to be aware of. The last of which is barrier number four: the battle between our system
1 and system 2 operating ‘machinery’.
As I’ve mentioned in this book as well as in most conversations I get into on this vast topic, you are going to run on an operating system. You are going to run on a program.
While the following is a simplistic view of a complex process when it comes down to it we either run on an unconscious, automatic, and often harmful program, or we run on
a conscious, rational, and often helpful program. System 1 and System 2 are the root drivers of these antagonistic programs, and most of us are using our unconscious,
automatic, and sometimes-harmful reactionary decision making (system 1) when we would be much better off using system 2 thinking.
This is a process coined by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky that the pair used to describe the function of both our lower (system 1) and higher (system 2) brain
functions. Our lower brain is fast, unconscious, and powerful, and our higher brain is slow, conscious, and rational. Our lower brain is the part of the brain that developed
over the past few million years, and because of its development very early in human existence it controls all of our ‘knee jerk’ instincts that function to keep us alive. The
reason why you jump at the sight of a snake out of the corner of your eye before realizing it is actually your garden hose is because of your system 1. If you took the time to
establish whether a snake like object in your periphery was indeed a snake or just a garden hose before acting, you might have ended up with snakebite. System 1 keeps you
alive in these situations through reacting first and assessing later (or not at all). Your system 2 was developed in a more recent human timeframe. Because of this your
system 2 brain helps us make rational decisions and is known as the ‘rational brain’, ‘higher brain’ or ‘social brain’. It is the part of the brain that takes many different
variables into account and aims to make the best possible decision for us with the available information, but it often must override our more dominant system 1. For
example, if a teenage boy sees a pretty girl across the room at a school dance it is not appropriate for him to run up and begin kissing and groping her, even if that is a
result he would very much like (at some point). His system 2 brain let’s him know that although the girl is pretty, and he’d like to kiss her, it is highly unacceptable to do so
without her enthusiastic permission. Without our system 2 we would be indistinguishable from other animals. This part of our brain that developed much more recently in
human history is what we use it to navigate our way through complex problem solving. System 1 is our subconscious baseline protection system and system 2 is our conscious
problem solving system.
*If you want to learn more about the details of these processes (as I have surely butchered them here) get Kahneman’s book ‘Thinking Fast and Slow’. For now,
let’s keep things simple.
So the question (as per usual) becomes ‘what does this have to do with my weight problem’? Well, the problem with system 1 is that although it can save your life when you
are about to step in front of a bus (I hear what I think is a bus, but is it actually a bus? Perhaps I should turn... SPLAT!) it is also responsible (at least in part) for your
unconscious decision-making that can often be less helpful in modern life. Your system 1 is responsible for your preference to make short term, stimulating decisions at the
cost of paying for those decisions with harmful outcomes in the future- and when you combine that with the fact that you are evolutionarily designed to prefer maladaptive
behaviours that were developed during times of scarcity for survival purposes (see primal conflict) you end up defaulting to many unhealthy choices via your strong system
1. This means that when you have the option of getting calorie dense, highly rewarding, sugary snacks in your body now, or eating a boring salad that offers no immediate
stimulation or relief but will help you lose 30 lbs over the next year, your system 1 bullies your system 2 out of the way and says ‘eat those cookies’! The primal push for
high-energy foods, overeating, energy conservation, and pain relief beats out the higher brain consideration that eating a box of cookies might not be in your best long-term
interest. This is also known as being ‘present biased’.
In case you require a visual representation of this process I have provided an image below in order to show you what this battle of system 1 and system 2 looks like in
modern decision making. I made this image (as well as all other images in this book) myself, so don’t judge the artistry, just the ease in which it explains the concept.
Our system 1 brain is always looking to drive our immediate ‘gut’ reactions that can help keep us alive in the moment, even at the cost of long-term survival. Our system 1
brain is not concerned with tomorrow. Its job is to keep us alive right now and it does that job quite well. Unfortunately we don’t live in an environment where that system
is as helpful as it once was. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that along with its helpfulness it is also rapidly increasing in its ability to harm us as well.
Our system 2 is the part of the brain that says ‘hey, if you eat all those cookies you are going to feel sick and ashamed. And if you continue to eat more and more, you
aren’t going to lose that weight you wanted to. Eating the cookies is a bad idea in the long run, so let’s just put them down and go do something else’. Unfortunately by the
time we have gotten that far, the cookies have long been eaten. Our system 2 is often much more helpful that our system 1 when it comes to making choices that best serve
us in the future, but much like an older brother who can easily overpower his younger sibling, the system 1 bullies the system 2 with his speed, power, and aggression.
System 2 is the nerdy weakling that knows best, but rarely gets the opportunity to be heard. Poor system 2, and poor us.
The good news is that your system 2 can be trained to be more effective and more powerful, and while you can never fully quiet your system 1 (which you wouldn’t want to
do for reasons of immediate survival), you can most certainly learn to override it. The ability to do this is critical for behavioural change as the ability to recognize
unhelpful system 1 decision making and replace it with helpful system 2 decision making will improve your overall quantity of health daily choices. We can do achieve this
through a process of specific thought development. In other words there are simple techniques we can use to change the way we think and begin abusing our system 1 less
and using our system 2 more frequently and appropriately. I will teach you how you can begin doing this (as well as how you can overcome the previously covered barriers)
in the following chapters, but we aren’t quite there yet.
I like to believe that this entire book is critical for your development and success in health. I have not filled any of these pages with information that I wouldn’t consider
absolutely necessary. In fact, I would prefer to give you the least amount of reading necessary to get your to your individual solution. But in writing this book something
tells me that this section on the real barriers to your success is the most critical and helpful. This is the section where you should begin to see your unhealthy patterns of
behaviour for what they are- and this is more important than the steps to the solution, because if you don’t understand what the problem actually is, the solution you seek
will never be effective and it will never stick. If you haven’t been able to visualize how the barriers in this section play out in your own unhealthy behaviour(s) it is probably
wise to read this section again. If, however, you felt as though this section was the story of your own life, you are ready to continue on.
Reflection #1
When have you found yourself getting caught up in issues of the primal conflict and believing that the issues were a matter of your personality (leading to self blame). Be
specific. For example ‘I have relentless cravings for sugary and fatty foods, and once I start eating them I can’t stop. I always thought this had to do with a weakness in
willpower but now I understand the drive for high-energy foods and overeating is an evolutionary mismatch’. Come up with as many examples as you can.
Reflection #2
How has your attitude about your personal health been hurt by our toxic culture? Do you see magazines of picture perfect models and feel inadequate about your
appearance? Do you get sucked into the smell of fast food that is pumped out of the ventilation system outside your local burger joint? Do the people around you normalize
unhealthy behaviours as being a necessary part of social life?
Reflection #3
Can you identify your worst health habits as being driven by the need to cope? Can you link emotions like stress and boredom to your worst eating habits? Can you link
thoughts and feelings like helplessness, purposelessness, and worthlessness to the drive for food based distractions?
Reflection #4
When learning about the battle between your system 1 and system 2 ‘brains’, could you spot where you fall into unhealthy behaviours without even thinking about it? Do
you find yourself sitting on the couch with an empty box of cookies and a stomachache wondering ‘what happened’? Where do you find yourself being unconsciously driven
to unhealthy acts without even considering the damage that the act will cause until after the act has taken place?
Chapter 3
Trauma, Culture, and Dopamine
We have talked about the connection between trauma, our environment, and the need to self medicate in the previous section, but I felt as though some additional content
on the specifics of this complex should be added in a shorter chapter (featured here). By all means you can skip this chapter if you like, but I would encourage you to spend
the 30 minutes it will take to read it as it will deepen your connection with what is happening inside of you when you perpetuate your most unhealthy behaviours.
If you think back to the first section of this book you will recall the suggestion that our 60 year rise in obesity and preventable disease does not appear to be due to a lack
diet and exercise resources, individual weakness or lack of willpower, or any significant genetic changes. So the question at this point in the book is ‘what is the actual’
problem we are facing. I believe this is best said by a brilliant author and mentor, Dr.Gabor Mate who once said “we do not have an obesity epidemic, we have a stress
epidemic’. Dr.Mate is suggesting (and I agree) that the cause of all our poor decision making, all of our self harm, and all of the uncontrolled searches for stimuli that lead
us into overeating, intense cravings, lack of exercise, low energy, and several other surface barriers to quality health come from our need to self medicate. You have
probably already pieced this together from the following sections, but in this section we are going to go through this subject with greater emphasis.
I know that this concept can be foreign to a lot of readers. You might be thinking to yourself ‘so you're telling me that my diet or lack of exercise is not the problem, but
inner ‘discomfort’ that pushes me to ‘self medicate’ with unhealthy actions is why I am not losing any weight’? Yes, that is precisely what I am suggesting, and by the end of
the book (if not by now) I will have proven this to you. In fact, this suggestion should not even be controversial at this point. To illustrate this connection I am going to
introduce you to the Food Relationship Origin and Sensitivity Test (FROST).
The FROST test was designed by ‘yours truly’ under the hypothesis that the more adverse life experiences a person has along with a lack of support and an unhealthy
familial upbringing would be directly related to that person’s increase in weight. Over 300 participants who were actively trying to take control of their health took the test
(anonymously via a third party survey provider) and filled out the survey in full. The results of the initial FROST survey were powerful. For each instance of an adverse life
event (abuse, bullying, poverty, etc.) or a lack of support (lack of resources, confidence, family values or supportive parents) the participants BMI increased by .33 points.
That might not mean too much to you so I will simplify it. A person who took the FROST test and had every adverse life event would have a BMI that was 13.2 points higher
than someone who didn’t experience any adverse life events. That is a difference of being a normal weight vs. class 2 obese. That is incredibly significant. To simplify the
concept even more, for every adverse life event someone faced their weight increased by a significant statistical measure.
What we face in life, especially the events we face that we do not have the tools to ‘deal with’ is directly correlated to a heavier body.
Like we discussed in the last chapter, adverse life experiences (trauma) increase our sensitivity to current pain (stress), which drives us into unhealthy coping habits (food,
alcohol, sloth etc). To further understand this process we need to understand a little bit about dopamine. Let’s do so with story about Kelly.
The Story of Kelly

Kelly has never been very effective when it comes to stress management. As a kid she lacked the tools and mental resilience to face the ‘catty’ girls at school who made her
life miserable on a daily basis. When she would tell her mother that she was having a tough time with her social life, her mother would simply tell her that ‘everyone gets
bullied and you’ll get over it. Toughen up, Kelly’. This unhelpful (and even harmful) response lead Kelly to bottle up all of her social fears and pains and she didn’t believe
her suffering was worth mentioning to her parents anymore. Who would want to take their most concerning issues to someone who aims to minimize them and make the
sufferer feel misunderstood? Those difficult school days combined with a lack of resources (an understanding, supportive parent for example) to properly deal with what she
was facing prevented Kelly from properly developing internal coping mechanisms for social stress. She had to learn to create her own unhealthy defense mechanisms in
place of the healthier coping interventions that she wasn’t provided. As Kelly got older and moved on in life school improved and the bullying eventually subsided, but the
damage to Kelly’s internal stress management tools was already done. Through College and on into her first few years in the workplace Kelly got along just ‘fine’. College
was a blast and she excelled in an educational environment. She had lots of friends and lots of growing confidence. When school finished she got a job she wanted right
away and loved her first year in the workforce. Kelly went through the majority of her early adult life ‘stress free’ and seemingly unaffected by her early childhood
problems. But then, things began to change.
As Kelly got older life got more serious. Demands at work started to grow beyond what she felt capable of keeping up with. She started to experience uncomfortable
conflicts with her superiors and felt like she was often being professionally sabotaged and ‘steamrolled’ by her colleagues (who were living a sort of ‘dog eat dog’ nature of
work life). At the end of the day Kelly started to come home more stressed, more exhausted, and more mentally ‘unstable’ than she had ever been in her life. Sometimes
Kelly felt like these stresses could be remedied with a glass of red wine. Not an excessive amount, just enough to help her relax and decompress on the couch. If it were a
really bad day she would add in a croissant or some other piece of pastry. If it were the day from hell she would add in one or two chocolate bars. While these food and
drink relaxation aids never made the problems go away, they sure made Kelly feel better for a few minutes, and any bit of distraction during her most stressful days was
worth its weight in gold. This feeling of numbness during hard times is what is commonly known as ‘taking the edge off’.
As time rolled on work didn’t get better, nor did Kelly’s decompression habits. The same amount of stress didn’t seem to be remedied by the same amount of food or wine.
As the weeks went by Kelly was increasing her wine, pastry, and chocolate intake to the point that she was going to bed with a buzz and waking up with a stomachache.
Food and alcohol had ‘hijacked’ Kelly’s dopamine reward system, and she began to experience a ‘snowball’ of overeating and weight gain due to her growing reliance on
the dopamine reward system for her daily self medication routine (along with technological distraction and sloth like behaviours).
As we now know, every negative emotion that Kelly is experiencing is triggered in her brain as some sort of ‘discomfort or ‘pain’’. Stress, anger, frustration, helplessness,
sadness, boredom- you name it, all say to the brain ‘something is happening here that we don’t like, let’s do something about it’. When the brain is experiencing some sort
of discomfort it looks to the dopamine reward system for fast relief. Many actions can cause an increase in the release of dopamine, but the most convenient and accessible
dopamine trigger(s) are highly palatable foods. The dopamine reward system in our brain was designed to inspire us to do things that kept us alive long enough to
reproduce. This is one of those evolutionary mechanisms that we discussed in the last section. Anytime we were able to find higher energy or calorie dense foods (sugar,
fat, salt) our brain would fire up the dopamine reward system and make us feel good as to say ‘we like these things, go get more of them’. This behavioural reinforcing
response got us to consistently seek out the foods that would keep us alive, make sex feel good, and convince us to lay around in the shade when we weren’t taking part in
any necessary survival or reproductive activities. This process of dopamine based behavioural reinforcement kept us around to spread our genes long enough (in some cases,
anyway) to expand the human race.
Now those same dopamine reward mechanisms live inside of our brain but they have not evolved to deal with the amount of stimulation that we can readily provide them
today. During the necessary evolution of our dopamine reward system we didn’t have access to sugar, fat, leisure, technological distraction, or even mates. Since the
dopamine response developed in times of scarcity it is not equipped to be stimulated ‘at will’. Now we are like the hospitalized war hero who has a morphine drip that he is
in 100% control of dosing. Any time we feel the slightest amount of discomfort we can stimulate our dopamine reward system at the ‘push of a button’ so to speak.
So what is the result of this dopamine reward system mismatch, and what does it have to do with Kelly? Well, Kelly is facing an unnatural amount of stress that she is not
equipped to deal with via internal stress management techniques (due to a lack of an understanding and supportive guardian during childhood in this example) so she seeks
for external sources of self medication to ‘take the edge off’ her adult anxieties. At first a small snack and a glass of red wine was enough to get her through the pain of her
relentlessly destructive evening thoughts. But when her brain became over stimulated with an increased frequency of dopamine triggers and following rewards it said to
itself ‘hey, Kelly here obviously has greater access to food than I thought. I’d better ask for more next time’. The brain does this by dulling the effects of the dopamine
reward system meaning that the same amount of once effective ‘self medication’ does not give the same amount of relief in the future, resulting in a need for Kelly to
increase her food and alcohol intake in order to receive the same amount of relief from her emotional stresses. Food and wine has ‘hijacked’ Kelly’s dopamine reward
system.
This process repeats itself over and over again. The more Kelly feeds her dopamine reward system with self-medicating behaviours the duller her response becomes, and the
more self-medicating she must do in the future in order to ‘take the edge off’ and find some comfort. This is a similar process to what leads to the eventual overdose of
hard drug addicts (who are essentially facing a more extreme version of the same problems you have, but that is an entirely different can of worms). The same ‘fix’ of drug
does not dull the pain for the addict the way it once did. The addict must then increase the dosage in order to get the same sense of relief. Over time the dosage gets so
high that the body cannot tolerate the toxicity of the drug and the addict’s body rejects the substance, often leading to death.
*if you want to learn more about addiction, which you should, read every piece of work Dr. Mate has ever written starting with ‘In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts’.
If you are following the concept I am presenting to you here you probably see this process happening inside of you on most days. To some degree this is happening inside of
all of us, but different people self medicate with different things based on the intensity of their past life experiences, the amount of resources they had to deal with those
experiences, the current environment they are living in and the resulting pain that they experience day to day. Some people gamble themselves into massive debt. Others
shop their way to bankruptcy. Some people become alcoholics. Some people become drug addicts. Some people become workaholics (which can be glorified in today’s toxic
culture but a workaholic is just a person who is trying to depress his or her own insecurity and prove their worth to the world). But by far the most common addiction and
form of self-medication we are seeing in the world today is the addiction to food, alcohol, technology, and sloth based distractions.
Why Now?
So why is this turning into an obesity crisis right now? I’m sure our grandparents and their parents had to deal with some pretty awful life experiences, so why is the obesity
crisis happening in such recent history? The answer to that question is twofold. The first answer is that 100 years ago we didn’t have the available medication that we have
right now. We barely had stores to buy food from let alone (literally) millions of calories in an arm’s reach via our fridge, cupboard, and commercial stores. We also didn’t
have food modified the way we do now. Processed foods have allowed for great palatability, greater sugar and fat concentrations, and more stimulation for the dopamine
reward system per unit of food. Even our produce (fruits and vegetables) is sweeter, larger, and more easily digestible and less nutrient dense than it once was. To
summarize our preferred medication is stronger, cheaper, more available, and more harmful than it was even 30 years ago, and it is only increasing in these attributes.
Food manufacturers even have teams of scientists whose company role is to figure out how to formulate foods that play into this dopamine reward system and keep
consumers coming back to their product as their drug of choice.
The second reason why obesity is a recent crisis is because of our toxic culture. We are facing such an unnatural amount of stress and have so few tools to properly manage
that stress that our drive to cope (via rapid fire daily pains) is on an entirely different level. Our great grandparents no doubt faced their own version of stress, but their
version of stress was dealing with a livestock shortage once every 5 years while our version of stress is the daily financial, work, school, family, relationship, social
comparison, health, and other accumulative stresses we are seemingly constantly under. We are the most traumatized and stressed out generation in human history and our
environment is now allowing us to play into that stress and trauma with unheard of access to unhealthy forms of self medication. The combination is leading us to critical
amounts of preventable diseases and conditions like obesity.
Being Clear about Trauma

In earlier sections of this book I have done my best to explain that ‘trauma’ can stem from something as simple as having a parent who you don’t feel understood you or
supported you in the way you needed during times of emotional stress. But I fear that the stigma of trauma might leave you feeling as though if you weren’t physically or
sexually abused that you have not faced any trauma in your life, therefore making trauma’s contribution to your adult health problems irrelevant. You could not be more
wrong. The following classification of trauma is not being explained to downplay serious traumas like various forms of abuse or to downplay the experiences of the people
who suffer them. In fact I am hoping that making trauma more relatable to the average person will help to understand the lifelong consequences and serious effects of the
more sinister forms as well.
It is now well known that trauma begins in the womb. Children who are born to stressed mothers have a higher incidence of a variety of diseases and conditions asthma
being a very well documented example. If you are born to a mother who faced an insurmountable degree of stress during her pregnancy you have a markedly higher chance
of developing asthma in your youth. The psychological state of your mother, even while you are still in the womb is capable of changing your state of health. Another
example is that children who are born to malnourished mothers, who are thus born underweight, are much more likely to develop increased fat storage (a concept known as
thrifty and non-thrifty genes) and grow into heavier children because the undernourishment environment of the womb has biologically prepared the child for a world of
scarcity.
Trauma isn’t isolated to childhood either. If you go into a car accident or witnessed someone get hit by a bus 5 minutes ago there is the possibility you could develop a
traumatic ‘bruise’ that leads you to the same set of problems that traumatic experiences can generate in earlier life. The most common form of this being PTSD that is
often experienced by first line workers who witness horrendous human death and suffering. This problem of adult trauma and the resulting PTSD in first like workers is such
a serious problem that we are now facing a suicide epidemic in our first responders. I myself have close friends who are suffering the consequences of merely ‘doing their
jobs’.
The first point I am aiming to make is that trauma does not need to be necessarily considered as some singular traumatic life event that happened who you were 8 years
old. Your exposure to trauma began the day you were conceived and ended a nanosecond ago. From the cradle to the grave, so to speak.
The second point about trauma that I want you to understand is that trauma does not have to be extreme. Especially when we are younger and have fewer tools to deal
with the events we face, we are highly susceptible to even the most minor forms of trauma. Think about the child who is being bullied at school who comes home to a
father who says ‘you just need to toughen up. Next time, punch him in the nose’! That child already feels scared, helpless, and like an outcast. He comes home to his
protector and hears ‘I am not here to support you, take care of this matter yourself in the most terrifying way’. That child is now left to cope with an unnatural amount of
stress and the result will not be a positive one right now or in the child’s future. Or what about the 14 girl who is having body image issues as she scrolls through her
Instagram account. ‘Is every girl in the entire world a friggin supermodel’ she wonders? She looks at herself in the mirror, grabs her modest (and perfectly healthy) amount
of stomach fat and feels awful about her appearance. She walks downstairs and begins making her lunch only to hear her oblivious mother say ‘are you sure you want to put
mayonnaise on that, you’re looking a little chunky these days’? This repeated reinforcement of her poor self image is going to traumatize her, and the result is not going to
be a series of dopamine reinforced, unhealthy coping behaviours in the future.
It is popular thinking today that we are a sensitive society and we need to ‘toughen up our youth’! I agree when it comes to things like teaching kids about loss and
perseverance or not having to change our language on a weekly basis as to not offend the latest 'offendable' subgroup. But when it comes to helping those we love to better
deal with problems that they don’t have the maturity, capacity, or resources to deal with on their own I would say we need to increase our awareness, support and
empathy. I also believe that those who believe otherwise were poorly raised and likely traumatized in their own lives. But I digress. For now let’s look at how trauma and
the dopamine reward system connect to our toxic culture.
Toxic Culture
‘Toxic Culture’ is a term coined by Dr. Gabor Mate to explain the increase in societal instability that is turning us all into some form of addict. From food systems, to
workplace expectations, to superficial media concentrations, to a society that thrives upon comparison and production. Dr. Mate explains how we now live in a society that
values its members only by what we ‘produce’, and if you are not a high producer, you are not valued by society. Perhaps you produce money, or you produce a certain
body composition, or you just produce a lot of effort (the workaholic who spends 16 hours a day doing 2 hours of meaningful work). This sort of production valued society is
revealed in modern trends like the often hash-tagged ‘rise and grind’ and ‘team no sleep’ attitudes that suggest working all day long (doing what, exactly?) and sacrificing
your sleep and general health in order to do so is something that you believe will get you admired by your peers.
Our toxic culture is maximized by our now (seemingly) infinite peer groups. There was a time when you would compare yourself to the other 50 workers in your small
village. This was a good thing as it helped to prevent some villagers from busting their butts while other villagers might prefer to sit on theirs, thus resulting in a giant gap
between levels of contribution between two people, thus further resulting in animosity and a lack of overall productivity. The ‘discomfort’ we would feel while seeing
someone produce more than us kept the majority of the community doing their share and increased the stability of the small society. Again, an example of an evolutionary
mechanism that was once helpful and is now maladaptive.
The problem today is that everyone you are connected to in your social networks is now your ‘community’ or your ‘village’. And worse, they are all full of shit. YouTube ads
that showcase entrepreneurs with their 6 cars and 10 acre Hollywood hills mansion in an attempt to get you to buy their online ‘self made millionaire’ product are all
renting the same mansion for their falsified videos. They don’t own that house or those cars, but you don’t know that Instagram filters and editing technology trims the
waist of female pseudo-models and increases the bicep size of their male counterparts. Every account showcases fabricated and falsified versions of the one moment in the
day where ‘post-er’ pretends to be ‘on top of the world’ and followers are left to believe that these isolated moments are the complete reality of a person’s life. All ups
and no downs.
The result of this unrealistic view of the lives of those around us is a depressed and stressed community of people who are insecure, sad, and constantly feeling awful about
their own lives. A comparative human nature that was once helpful has now become fully maladaptive in our toxic culture. This has lead to the ‘boom’ in shake and
supplement multi level marketing companies who prey on the insecurity of desperate men and women with the promise of shedding fat almost overnight. It is incredibly sad
to see and I wish more fitness professionals would openly revolt against these scum. But I will save my personal battles for my own time.
The point I am making is that our toxic culture is the 'maximizer' of process of trauma-pain-and coping, and it is not getting better, it is getting much worse. You no longer
require legitimate internal struggles to push you into unhealthy coping. Don’t get we wrong, all of those still exist as well, but even if they didn’t you would still struggle to
get through each day without need to cope in some way. Now all you have to do is spend 5 minutes on any social network and it will drive you to self-medication.
As mentioned throughout this I don’t want you to get to caught up in the ‘doom and gloom’ of our seemingly hopeless reality. I just want you to have a firm grasp on what
the problem is so I can help you remedy it in the most effective, long-lasting way, and that process begins right now.
In the next section of the book we are going to dive into what these barriers and problems actually look like in your day-to-day health. Thus far we have discussed the
problems we are facing in an almost abstract way so it is important that we make a clear connection to what it all looks like in your everyday life. In the next section we
begin with this process of taking everything we have learned about what stands between success and us and how these barriers fit into our day-to-day lives from a health
and fitness perspective.
Reflection #1
Can you identify unhealthy habits you get caught in that seem to get stronger and stronger with each action? For instance, if you get a craving for sugar and give into it, do
you find that your brain switches into and even more intense period of sugar cravings? What unhealthy habits have you found to gain greater and greater control over you
the more you participate in them and allow them into your daily life?
Reflection #2
Can you identify ‘trauma’ that you’ve experienced early on in life that might be connected to your sensitivity to certain unhealthy habits? Remember, the trauma does not
have to fall into the extreme common definition. Were you a social outcast as a child? Were your parents unsupportive or under protective of you when you were growing
up? Did you feel lost or without a sense of purpose in high school? Or worse, did you face abuse from someone in your life at any point in time?
Reflection #3
What is the most toxic part of our modern culture that you are affected by? Is it the comparative nature of social media leaving you to feel as though your life is not good
enough? Is it the societal and peer normalization of unhealthy eating, drinking, and obesity? Or perhaps it is the production based value system we operate under that says
you are only as valuable and worthy as the material you are producing each day. Think of a few examples that affect your mind in a negative way.
Chapter 4
The Unhealthy Reward Cycle (Barriers in Action)
If you have made it this far into the book, I congratulate you. Most people who are desperately seeking an answer for their weight problems are so obsessed with quick fixes
and diet-centric answers that they would never dive this deep into an alternative explanation for their out of control waistline. I am going to assume that you are the
minority, and being the minority you are also more likely the person who is going to turn his or her health around. Sometimes it's just nice to get some positive
reinforcement and that is what I am attempting to deliver to you right now. If you are still with me and reading this book with a certain level of enthusiasm I would
estimate that your chances of success are much higher than that of the average person. I also thank you for (and personally apologize for) the amount of time I spend
discussing the problems that lead us to health problems without offering any structured direction toward the solution. I know that it is typical to want to jump right into
applying change tactics as you identify your true internal issues, but as I mention throughout the book it is absolutely critical that you fully understand the root of self
harming behavior if you are going to stop harming yourself with food, drink, and a lack of activity. I hope that at this point you have been able to see how this process of
unhealthy behavior lives inside of you. I know that it resides in me and when I uncovered the truth in my own life that I am now passing onto you it was a life change
experience for me.
In this next chapter you will be rewarded for all of your dedication as we will now begin to look at how the previously discussed self-harming tendencies affect us in our
daily lives through a very specific health perspective. Thus far we have looked into our root issues in a fairly general sense- and rather than looking at the process of self
harm and weight gain in a somewhat abstract and generalized way we will now get specific. Getting specific will deepen your connection with your own root issues, which
will increase the likelihood that you will be able to apply successful long-term solutions to them. This process of deepening our connection to our problems begins with what
I like to call the unhealthy reward cycle- and image of which you will see next.
In the image above you will see the most basic process of what we have discussed up until this point and how it directly leads to weight gain, a high body fat percentage,
and both short and long-term health problems. None of this material is new to you at this point in the book, but now we can begin to clarify and organize everything we’ve
covered so far in the most helpful way rather than learning in a general setting. In the rest of this chapter we will dig deeper and deeper into the process of how we get
from pain to weight gain, but to begin I thought it would be easiest to start with the most basic visual of why we get fat.
The Trigger
All of our unhealthy actions have to begin with a trigger. These triggers vary by how sensitive we are (due to adverse life experiences) to that type trigger. This means that
anything from a fight with a loved one, to low finances, to feeling like you don’t currently have much of a purpose in life can all push you toward unhealthy coping.
Essentially these trigger-based scenarios are all a form of stress that triggers an emotion. We will talk more about emotion later but for now (for the sake of simplicity) let’s
just classify a ‘trigger’ as an event that causes you significant stress. Here is a longer list of daily events, both big and small that can act as the ‘trigger’ that leads us into
our most unhealthy behaviours.
Fighting with your spouse right before you go out the door to work
Being late and in a rush after sleeping in

Not getting an expected sales commission that you needed to pay a bill
Being cut off in traffic
Being stuck in a traffic jam
Reading an email from a coworker or boss with a negative undertone
Not hearing back from someone you really like after a date
Locking yourself out of your car or house
Missing the bus
Spilling coffee all over yourself while driving to work
The list goes on and on. What I am trying to establish with this list is that triggers that lead to unhealthy behaviours do not need to be severe, and they are usually chalked
up as ‘life’. While it is true that these sorts of incidents make up a large part of our daily lives the effect they can have on our future actions can be much more profound
than we tend to consider. I’m sure as you read my small list you can picture yourself in more than one of these stressful moments.
Severity
A trigger in isolation is rarely enough to hurt us in a considerable way. In fact, triggers that we can easily deal with (through personal tools and internal resources or outside
support) can quickly be extinguished, and therefore be a source of stress that disappears as quickly as it came. For instance, let’s say you look in your savings account and
you have a negative balance and bills are going to come out your account tomorrow. If you don’t find some money your mortgage will bounce. Sounds stressful. But let’s say
you have an investment account as well that you can easily liquidate into cash and you’ve got more than enough money in there that it won’t even affect your balance in a
meaningful way. Stress gone. Or let’s say you spill coffee all over yourself while trying to maneuver work tools while getting into your car. If you are still in your driveway
with lots of time to spare you can calmly snicker about the folly, go inside, change your shirt, and try again. If, however you spill coffee all over yourself while getting out
of your car in the work parking lot when you are already twenty minutes late, the situation is much more likely to affect you in a negative way.
Point being that the trigger alone is rarely enough to lead to unhealthy coping actions. This is a bit of a simplification (for example even if you spill coffee on your shirt at
home, if you are already in a bad mood the fact that you are at home and can easily change your shirt might not save you) but in general the concept of severity is true. Not
having the tools and resources to effectively deal with the trigger is what leads to the chances of future coping as well as the frequency and severity of your chosen self-
medication. So if someone calls you ‘fat ass’ as you’re crossing the street in busy traffic (hard to believe, but it happens) and you have a low self-image, you are not
equipped to deal with that stressor and you will likely harm yourself in some way in exchange for numbing your emotional pain. If you have a bad day at work and don’t
have anyone to come home to or a good friend to call in order to vent about your day, you are less likely to extinguish the stressor due to a lack of relationship based
support. Severity of a trigger is dictated by your ability to properly address and ‘deal with’ that stress- and in most of our lives we are poorly equipped to properly
extinguish these daily stressors in a healthy way.
The Behaviour
Now we get into the ‘behaviour’. The thing(s) that we do that acts as the surface level stimulus for our health issues. Examples of surface level behaviours would be
overeating at dinner until we feel like we could pop, snacking on high energy foods like chips, crackers, cookies, and ice cream until our stomachs are sore, laying on the
couch for 3 hours in front of the T.V. until Netflix judgingly asks ‘are you still watching this show’, or the various other forms of self sabotage we fall into. They can be as
unique and differentiated as our personalities, so don’t limit yourself to my examples. As you know by now taking part in these unhealthy behaviours is our attempt to self-
medicate the negative emotional effects of a stressor that we are not currently equipped to deal with. These behaviours are what we typically focus on when assessing what
is wrong with our lifestyle and what we need to change in order to get healthy and fit- not recognizing that the behaviour is superficial and it is actually the trigger that
could’ve happened 8 hours ago that has made it so difficult for us to avoid eventual self harming coping activities like these examples. When we eat 3 bags of chips before
bed after a long day at work we rarely say ‘I really need to start going to bed earlier so I stop rushing to work, spilling coffee all over myself and starting my day at level 10
anxiety, thus resulting in a greater likelihood that I will eat late at night to take my mind off of my horrible day’. Rather we just say ‘I need to stop eating junk at night’. I
hope you are beginning to see the issue with the latter framing of the problem.
The Reward
Here is the part of the unhealthy reward cycle that reinforces all of these poor behaviours and makes them ‘stick’. And worse, it makes them grow more powerful and
frequent. This is an extension of the dopamine reward cycle we discussed in the last chapter. Since you are quite familiar with the role of dopamine we won’t go into the
general concept again, but we will show how it fits into the reinforcement of the basic unhealthy reward process. Once the unhealthy behaviour is in action we get a
temporary relief from the underlying stressor, dopamine is released into the brain. When the precious dopamine is released (usually in a numbing effect rather than a
stimulating one) we feel ‘better’- in the very short term. In the long term (and medium term) we feel awful about our uncontrolled choice and worse off than we did before
taking part in the action that set off the reward mechanism, but as we know our system 1 takes precedence over our rational system 2 and chalks this brief moment of pain
relief as a positive thing. So even though we understand that eating cookies to take our mind off of our mother’s passive aggressive noting of our weight gain isn’t serving us
in the long run, that doesn’t stop our brain from recognizing the unhealthy reward cycle as a process it wants to continue motivating us to take part in.
To recap: First, we face a stressor. If we are not equipped to properly address and/or resolve that stressor in a positive way this increases the severity of our push to self
medicate. We self medicate with the most readily available sources of ‘painkillers’ like food, drink, sloth, and technological distraction. The temporary relief we get from
these various means of coping (via dopamine) reinforces the entire process and our need to take part in these ‘vices’ (food, drink, alcohol) grow as our dopamine reward
system begins to ‘dull’ and ask for a higher dosage of medicine in order to provide the same amount of relief in the future. This is how we get uncontrollably fat over the
course of a few years even though we want nothing more than to be fit.
As I’m sure you gathered this dopamine reward system is the same process we discussed in the previous chapter. I felt it necessary, however, to clearly put the process into
terms that you could understand from an operational perspective as the amount of information given up until this point is probably making your head spin. I apologize for
that, but again, it is necessary to cover. I hope that you can see the process inside of your own life more clearly now, and if you can’t you should read this section again
with greater focus.
If you understand the concept of the unhealthy reward cycle then you understand how your surface level behaviours get created and reinforced even though you wish you
could stop your reliance on them. For many people this is enough information to let this key concept sink in. Others, however, will benefit from a more in depth step by
step process known as the 7 steps of manifestation. This is just a more detailed process of what we covered here. If you don’t feel like more information on the topic will be
helpful please feel free to skip this next section. If, on the other hand you’d like to deepen your connection with this process please continue on.
The 7 Steps of Manifestation

While the explanation of the unhealthy reward cycle acts as a more base physiological explanation of why we get stuck in unhealthy coping behaviours (or more specifically
what triggers and reinforces this nasty process), the 7 steps of manifestation shows us what every single step of the process looks like in our day to day lives- and this
version includes a more emotional perspective which can be helpful for some people. This seven step process will allow you to see exactly what unhealthy behaviours look
like from the ‘a day in the life’ perspective- not just on a surface level (like in the unhealthy reward cycle) but also from the depths of your mind. Below I have provided an
image to introduce you to this more in depth process.
As you will see in the image above the basic steps of the unhealthy reward cycle are also present in the 7 steps of manifestation but a few more details have been added in.
Therefore this is not so much an additional concept as it is a more elaborate version of the basic reward cycle concept you just learned. I find that this elaborated process is
best learned in the form of a story so that you can see how these seven steps might play out in a person’s life which will increase the likelihood that you can see these seven
steps unfold in your own life as well. As I tell you the story of Jim be sure to plug your own day-to-day life experiences into the framework used in the story.
The story of Jim

It’s the Friday afternoon after a long week and Jim can’t wait for 4 o’clock to roll around so he can get the hell out of the office. He’s been in stressful meetings all week
long and driving around the city scrambling like ‘a chicken with its head cut-off’ in an attempt to tie up loose ends and hit his quarterly sales numbers. It’s been a long
week, but he persevered. Jim survives another season and will be getting his much needed bonus money. At the end of the day right as Jim is packing up his laptop to head
out for the weekend, his boss comes in. ‘Jim’ he said, ‘we need to talk about your performance this last quarter’. Jim is thinking to himself ‘what is there to talk about?
How
incredibly I performed this week to hit my quarterly goals’? Jim’s boss explains to Jim that his last two sales were actually split sales between him and his co-worker, Bob
from down the hall. Bob told Jim’s boss that it was he (Bob) who was actually the initial contact for the vendors on those sales, and although Jim did lead the final closing
on the sale, it was Bob who initiated it the relationship. Therefore Jim’s boss split the sales tally between the two men, and Jim has (by default) failed to hit his quarterly
goal. This means that Jim will not be receiving his much relied upon bonus this year. Jim’s boss walks out.
Now Jim was relying on that bonus money to pay some back bills and get out of a bit of debt that has been causing him some stress in the past few months. The bonus
would’ve covered these expenses and given Jim some breathing room, but now what is he going to do? Not to mention the fact that he was obviously double-crossed by a
scumbag coworker who is supposed to be Jim’s friend. That’s two harsh wounds to deal with in a matter of seconds.
This situation may not be the end of the world, especially when you’re used to living the rollercoaster life of a salesperson, but Jim has struggled with success throughout
his entire career. He came from a poor family with a lazy, unsuccessful father. Jim was always embarrassed about his father and their financial troubles from a very young
age. Jim has been fired from his two previous jobs and as he gets older he feels more and more like his father. A person who Jim essentially hates, therefore, hating himself
as well when seeing this man’s face whenever he looks in the mirror. The latest ‘proof’ of this father/son connection that has surfaced through Jim’s inability to reach his
sales goals has left him angry, anxious, defeated and a little scared. Jim isn’t in a great place.
‘Well, at least I have a wife to go home to’, Jim thinks. He arrives at his modest house and walks in the front door. His wife immediately senses that something is wrong and
inquires to Jim as to what the problem is. Jim explains what happened at work today in the hopes (or expectation) that his wife will give some comforting words and make
him feel better. Instead Jim’s wife emasculates him by saying ‘you always do this! You always let this happen! Why didn’t you go down the hall and punch Bob in the nose?
You’re just like your father, cowardly and unsuccessful’!
Ouch.
With his wife not quite filling the role of an essential source of support, Jim heads out to the bar to spend some time with his real friends. The overweight, surly, borderline
alcoholics who are happy to enable Jim’s current frustrations. Jim feels like this environment is the only solution to his almost unbearable anxiety. Jim gets to the bar with
the intention of having just a few drinks and a bite to eat (as is usually his intention). But in typical fashion two beers turns to eight and a ‘small bite turns into two plates
of nachos, ribs, and two-dozen wings. The consumption of food and alcohol is ‘taking the edge off’ of Jim’s internal struggles. He is laughing with his friends and his
problems seem to have disappeared from his mind- but he must keep chewing and swallowing to stay numb to his current emotional reality, so his consumption is seemingly
endless and goes on for hours.
The end of the night creeps in and Jim can’t possibly eat or drink anymore with risking a myocardial infarction- so he decides to wisely call a cab and return home. It
doesn’t take long for the emotional pain to begin its come back and this time with even greater intensity. During the cab ride home all of Jim’s fears and emotions come
screaming back into his head, only now he has the additional stress of having spent a lot of money that he needs in order to self medicate, and the self medication did
nothing more than temporarily dull his brain and make him sick. He feels ashamed. He feels guilty. He feels like a loser. Jim feels exactly the way he intended to avoid
tonight and he is paying for his actions physically, emotionally, and financially. Does any of this sound familiar? Jim has gotten caught in the seven steps of manifestation
from A-Z, just like all of us do (to some degree) when facing stressors that we are not equipped to deal with in a more positive way. While I’m sure you could pick out each
of the seven steps as you read through Jim’s story (and maybe you were even able to relate them to your life) we should still spend some time taking a look at each step
more specifically.
The Pain
As always the process of unhealthy behaviour begins with the ‘pain’. The fight at work, the person who called you a name, your fear of failure, your 27th awful first date
etc. This is the first domino. For Jim it was the stress and anxiety that came from missing is quarterly numbers as well as feeling double-crossed by a close coworker and
friend.
The Sensitivity
Your sensitivity to that pain is determined by your past ‘trauma’. Your social anxieties, your verbally abusive mother or father, your bullied past, or your early life ‘failures’
that now leave you with so much to prove to the world that you can’t take the slightest criticism. If you are particularly sensitive to this pain, you are more likely to fall
into unhealthy coping. Jim’s image of his unsuccessful father that he has carried with him all throughout his life has made him increasingly sensitive to what he considered
professional failure.
The Emotion
Then comes the emotion. The way the incident actually makes us ‘feel’. Stressed, anxious, sad, frustrated, emotionally shut down, or even bored. Let’s not forget about
the potential of simple boredom to bring us discomfort. Jim experiences anger, sadness, worthlessness, and worry all at the same time.
The Intensifier
Next we have the intensifier of the emotion (which we found under ‘severity’ in the unhealthy reward cycle). If we are able to properly deal with the emotion- if we are
equipped, then we can potentially prevent the coming harm. If we are not, however- if we feel helpless, isolated, uncertain, or if we are lacking necessary support the
emotion runs out of control. When Jim came home to an unsupportive wife who would rather worsen Jim’s internal self loathing than support him and say a few loving
words to help him feel better, his emotions intensified out of control.
The Coping
With an inability to properly extinguish the emotion we look toward our unhealthy form of self-medication. We eat until we are sick. We search out a sugar high. We drink,
and we drink, and we drink. We could go to the gym or out for a walk, but who wants to (or has the motivation to) go face the world when we can barely keep the tears out
of our eyes. We are stuck. Jim headed out to his usual pharmacy, the bar, where he could vent to his friends while eating and drinking to his heart’s content- acts that
release dopamine into his brain and distract him from his intense emotional pain.
The Reinforcement
Next comes that short-term reward, usually dullness of pain, which reinforces in our brain that we have taken the right action. Our brain remembers this temporary relief
and knows how to push you toward it in the future. Your brain also recognizes that quantity of intake in order to understand how much more it can potentially ask for in the
future. It manipulates this process by dulling your reward system. You now require more of the substance in the future to get the same feeling of relief. Jim had dopamine
is spades that he continued his dosage of with wings, nachos, and alcohol. As long as he was in a mode of consumption there was little room for emotional pain.
The Hangover
Oh, the unhealthy behaviour hangover. The shame, the guilt, the self hatred that comes in almost intolerable intensity while we are laying on the couch, depressed, and
with a significant stomach ache. This is the second flood of emotions that reinforce our negative assumptions about how weak, stupid, fat, and undeserving of results we
are. If we cared, why would we do this to ourselves? As you know by now this is not realistic or accurate thinking, but that probably isn’t going to make you feel much
better in the moment. While Jim was in the cab on the way home, without food or alcohol coming in or angry venting going out he was left to begin feeling his emotions,
this time with more intensity and helplessness than before he went to the bar.
The 7 Steps of Manifestation is a useful framework for understanding everything that has been discussed in the book up until this point. It is the precise series of events that
leads to weight gain and preventable disease in almost all people. I’m sure that as you read through the 7 steps (assuming you weren’t just ‘skimming’) you were able to see
many of your own uncontrolled behaviours stemming from this long series of interconnected events. This understanding of how the primal conflict, the biopsychosocial
landscape, the need to cope, and system 1 vs. system 2 brain operation manifest in your day to day unhealthy actions is going to be critical for your success moving forward.
But there is one more piece to the puzzle we must put into the mix before we dive into your personal solution. The significance of ‘root’ and ‘reinforcement’ recognition
when looking at how to address these large, ‘sticky’ behavioural issues.
Behaviours, Root, and Reinforcements

As I briefly mentioned earlier in the book we tend to recognize (if not obsess over) the big, unhealthy behaviours that we connect to our worst health outcomes. We focus
on uncontrollable overeating. We focus on snacking and the need for late night sugar, fat, and/or salt. We focus on eating pizza for lunch and drinking two bottles of wine
on Friday night. We have tendency to look at these behaviours as the source of the problem i.e. ‘I am fat because I can’t stop snacking at night’. As you now understand
there is a long chain of psychological interactions that lead you into your worst behaviours, but there are also ‘surface level’ actions we take that we must be aware of as
well, for it is these ‘surface level’ actions that allow the big unhealthy behaviours to exist in our daily lives. By ‘surface level’ actions I mean the actions you take that you
don’t immediately connect to the big unhealthy behaviour but that perpetuate your cycle of unhealthy behaviours. Whereas most of what we have talked about up until this
point has revolved more around the pure psychological and emotional sources of unhealthy behaviour, surface level actions are clear for us to see (once we understand their
connection to our BUBs (big unhealthy behaviours). This model of understanding how we kick-start and reinforce our worst health habits through these surface level actions
is known as the ‘roots and reinforcements’ model. I will explain this concept with a brief story.
The Story of Nancy

Nancy has a problem with late night snacking, but who doesn’t? Am I right?. And Nancy sees this late night snacking issue as her source of weight gain. When she looks at
herself in the mirror and sees sizeable adipose (fat) tissue growth where there once was very little, she blames it on her inability to cut out her late night snacking. Late
night snacking is the highlighted behavioural issue in Nancy’s eyes. She has steadily been gaining weight (about 10 lbs per year on average) for the last 5 years. Nancy has
tried everything to kick the habit of late night snacking. She has tried chewing gum. She has tried sugar detox programs. She has used every single ounce of her willpower to
fend off the unrelenting craving that seems to pop up into her brain like clockwork each evening, but she has had very little (otherwise known as ‘zero’) success. Sometimes
Nancy has gone up to a week without giving in to her cravings my gritting her teeth and engaging her limited will, but eventually she always falls back into the
uncontrollable snacking that happens between 8pm and midnight every single night of the week.
What Nancy hasn’t put much thought into is the connection of steps she takes each night that preempts the unhealthy behaviour. Nancy has always assumed that she has
some sort of genetic predisposition for sugar cravings and that when 8pm rolls around her brain sets off the trigger that let’s her know that it is time to commence eating.
What Nancy doesn’t know is that it is in fact her who is telling her brain that it is time to go into snack mode. This process of Nancy being the source of the brain trigger,
not the brain trigger being the source of the BUB (in this case, snacking) will become clearer in a few paragraphs.
Nancy is single (as of, coincidentally, 5 years ago when the weight gain began, but we can discuss that later) and since being on her own her nights have been very ‘routine’
in the most monotonous way. Nancy gets home from her long day at work and begins preparing her dinner which she usually sits down to eat at around 6:30PM. After dinner
Nancy cleans up, sits at the table, and ponders what she is going to do that evening. She could go for a walk or learn to play the piano she bought 2 years ago (that has been
steadily collecting dust ever since) but Nancy feels as though those tasks are too daunting to bother with at this time of night. She is tired and lacking the energy that would
be required to put her shoes on for a walk or take on the surely frustrating task of learning to play a musical instrument. Without any exciting (or viable) prospects for
entertainment Nancy heads to the couch, turns on her T.V., and opens up her laptop. The T.V. is running as background noise and Nancy mostly just cruises social networks,
scrolling and scrolling through various user profiles as the minutes and hours blindly pass her by. Then, just like clockwork, the craving sets in. Nancy attempts to block it
and resist it, but after only a few minutes of her brains request for sustenance she thinks to herself ‘oh, I’ll just have one or two squares of that chocolate bar, no more
than that’.
Side note: Nancy keeps adequate chocolate around for her nieces and nephews who visit once every 1-2 years.
Nancy eats her first two chocolate squares, let’s them briefly digest, and then goes back for a few more around 10 minutes after the eating the first few squares. Then she
has a few more. Then some popcorn. Then maybe some chips. Before Nancy knows it she has been sucked into a big unhealthy behavioural vortex filled with technology,
ass-sitting, and uncontrollable snacking that has left her bloated, ashamed, and thinking to herself ‘you weak idiot. This is why you are fat. You have no self-control’.
What do you think is going on here? Has Nancy simply succumbed to an unhealthy snacking problem set off her brain and perpetuated by her lack of will and weakness of
character? I have another, more sensible hypothesis. The problem is not Nancy’s lack of self control (per se). The problem is that Nancy has not established the necessary
awareness to recognize the steps she is taking every single day that seems to kick this uncontrollable late night snacking into motion. She is obsessed with blaming and
remedying the BUB (the act of consumption) and then associating the behaviour with a lack of willpower. Nancy sees this process as ‘I get a craving, I try to fight it, I lose
the fight because I am weaker than my craving, and the solution to this problem is to be reborn with greater willpower’. With what you have learned so far do you see this
as the source of Nancy’s behavioural issue? I hope not and if you have started putting the pieces together and identifying the roots and reinforcements that are actually
creating and reinforcing this BUB in Nancy’s life you are well on your way to solving the BUB issues in your own day to day life. This is where roots and reinforcements come
in.
*Note: it is important to point out that the ‘root and reinforcement’ model is a major part of behavioural issues, but not the whole part. As we know the
consumption of self-medicating foods that lead to temporary moments of relief increase future reliance on dopamine, which makes it more and more difficult to
say ‘no’ to our ‘go to’ forms of self-medication. We have covered this reality in full. We have also established the connection between the adverse life events that
that make us more sensitive to self-medication like late night snacking, so the problem is essentially 3 dimensional. The roots and reinforcements model I am
defining next is the third dimension of our BUB issues. We are already sensitive to self medication (due to adverse life events and real time pains). Our reliance on
self-medication grows as dopamine ‘hijacks’ our reward system (driving us to BUB’s in order to self medicate our real time problems). The third dimension (roots
and reinforcements) is the habitual groove we create by integrating a daily routine into our lives that helps to kick-start and reinforce this act of self-medication.
So what is really going on here?
If we ‘reverse engineer’ Nancy’s steps it can uncover a lot about where her late night snacking begins. In the ‘7 steps of manifestation model’ we would trace the steps all
the way back to the stress trigger that would push her to look at snacking as her choice of self-medication (i.e. what is the pain and emotion you have faced that you are
driven to self medicate?). In the ‘roots and reinforcements’ model however, we trace back to the root action(s) (or habits) that have, over time, made a sort of ‘groove’ in
Nancy’s daily routine that reinforce her entire self-medication (snacking) issue. Picture your pain and emotion as a bowling ball. The more pain you are in and the more
emotional turmoil you are suffering the bigger and faster the bowling ball grows. Now picture your preferred self-medication as the pins. If you can get the ball to the pins
you get the distraction, numbing, and temporary relief. Now picture the roots and reinforcements model as the lane that the bowling ball must travel to hit the pins. The
greater your application of roots and reinforcements, the faster, steeper, and more direct the bowling lane (groove) becomes. Thus making sure the ball consistently rolls
right into the pins with uncontrollable speed and accuracy. But let’s get back to Nancy.
If we trace back step by step from the act of Nancy’s ‘gorging’ what do we see? Right before succumbing to the first craving for a few squares of chocolate Nancy was
mindlessly scrolling through social networks. Before that she turned the T.V. on after sitting down on the couch in order to ‘relax’. Before that she briefly considered doing
something more productive like going for a walk or practicing the piano, but that was a fleeting thought. Before that she was finishing her dinner.
Do you see what is happening here?
It is not the case that Nancy’s BUB pops up each night, triggered by her relentless craving mind. It is an idle mind, unproductivity, and a lack of mental stimulation that has
lead Nancy into snacking mode. Sitting on the couch, turning on the T.V., and mindlessly scrolling through social networks has created an efficient ‘groove’ for Nancy to
‘bowl’ her pain and emotion down in order to hit her self medication ‘pins’. Boredom and a lack of stimulation is the ‘groove’ that Nancy has created and reinforced each
day that now efficiently pushes her to self medicate with great effectiveness and routine. Remember that boredom is technically an ‘emotion’ as far as it brings us a level
of discomfort that influences our BUB’s and actions. That is essentially what all emotions are. Dictators of action. And sometimes we create a fertile bed for these emotions
by the roots and reinforcing actions we take on day-to-day that create unhealthy routines. This process began the moment that Nancy decides to sit on the couch instead of
doing something productive. This is the ‘root’ habit in the chain. Sitting down and ‘relaxing’ is the beginning of the end for Nancy. This is followed up by the predictable
habit of turning on the T.V. and the (also) predictable habit of opening up her laptop. While Nancy mindlessly gets lost in technology her brain says ‘Nancy is going into
Zombie mode again, I don’t like this, I want some dopamine’. Then, like clockwork, Nancy gets the signal to eat in order to extinguish the discomfort of boredom that is
created and reinforced by this unstimulating groove she has created and repeated each day for the last five years.
‘Nancy is being fully honest with herself when she intends to only have a small indulgence (just two squares of chocolate!), but we know that our brain likes to push the
limits of dopamine production especially when someone like Nancy has dulled her receptors by taking part in the snacking almost every night for the better part of 5 years.
The behaviour, the craving, and the actual act of eating are not the problem. The lack of productivity and predictableness of Nancy’s lack of stimulation is the true issue.
There are always signs that the behaviour is coming both from an emotional standpoint (i.e. stress x helplessness: I got in a fight with my boss and I am not in a position to
stand up to him because he’ll fire me) and from an action standpoint (nothing to do after dinner, sit on the couch, turn on the T.V., hit the boredom zone).
I hope I am articulating this well and you understanding the connection of this model to everything you’ve learned to far. The systems are complex and this is a big reason
why people in fitness (as well as the average person) fail to properly address them. We don’t like hard work.
And what about Nancy’s reinforcements? We have talked about the pattern (or groove) that we build through our routine habits and the root actions that increase the
efficiency of that groove, but we have said too much about reinforcements of our BUB’s. Reinforcements are the actions or environments that are not part of the step by
step routine (groove) but also make our unhealthy behaviours more likely to thrive. In Nancy’s case she knows she has an issue with eating chocolate and chips. She knows
that even in the face of her most determined expression of willpower she succumbs to out of control snacking. So why is there even chocolate and chips in her house to
begin with? As most of us tend to do, Nancy ‘justifies’ this storage of dangerous treats by telling herself they are for her nieces and nephews. Even though (as mentioned in
her story) her nieces and nephews rarely visit, their mere existence gives her an excuse to keep junk in the house. Nancy also might be doing things like going to the grocery
store without first making a list based off of her health values. If Nancy took some time to consciously make a shopping list (based off of her health goals) before going to
the store she would be less likely to justify buying junk, but when she just goes out and ‘wings it’ it is much easier to grab a few snack foods, tossing them into the cart with
whatever falsified justification she pulls out of her pocket without putting too much thought into it. These are what are known as classic reinforcing actions. The things we
do that allow us continued access to our BUB’s.
Other examples of reinforcing behaviours would be hanging into a McDonald’s gift card you refuse to throw away that pushes you to get a McMuffin in the drive-thru when
you are rushing in the morning or never having your workout and shower gear with you in the car so you can stop at the gym on the way home if you have some spare time
(and enough inspiration). These are just some examples and there aren’t any limitations to what can be seen as a reinforcing action for your BUB’s. Just make the attempt
to begin recognizing them in your own life.
Root habits lead to a series to step by step follow up actions that ‘trigger’ the BUB. The reinforcements make it possible for this process to continue to thrive the way it has
or at the very least make it significantly more difficult to ‘cut out’ of your life.
Summing it all up (so far)

We have covered a ton of information in this book thus far, and I anticipate that the wheels in your head are turning at an incredibly high speed. In the next section we
move into building your own personal solution- but in the last piece of this section I feel it is important to summarize and connect everything we have learned so far so you
don’t forget about the initial concepts of this book.
The Evolutionary Barriers

The 4 barriers that kicked off this whole conversation (the primal conflict, biopsychosocial landscape, our need to cope, and system 1 vs. system 2 thinking) dictate our
subconscious need to take unhealthy actions in order to self medicate. These are the (unfortunately) very human maladaptation’s that once served us well in the past, but
in our modern environment are making us sick. These are the underlying drivers that are so hard to shut off because they were once (and in many ways, still are) so
necessary for our survival. The evolutionary barriers are our most basic, innate, and deeply ingrained drivers into bad unhealthy modern habits.
Stress, Trauma, and Toxicity

The three parts discussed in this section act as a more modern set of issues that exist in today’s human life. They are all intimately connected to our evolutionary barriers,
but they are the modern day mismatched stimuli that conflict with our evolutionary design. As human beings we face past trauma, real time stress, and societal toxicity
that turns our once useful evolutionary instincts against our health. These modern problems play into our evolutionary barriers for maximized health struggles.
The Unhealthy Reward Cycle

This model acts as the simplest way to connect the first two portions of the book to your health. You have a trigger (like stress) that is worsened by a lack of internal
resources (many times due to previous adverse life experiences or ‘trauma) that pushes you into an unhealthy coping behavior (like overeating), which is reinforced and
worsened by a dopamine response (reward) in the brain that exists as an evolutionary survival mechanism. This is the surface level process of why and how we partake in
unhealthy coping behaviours.
The 7 Steps of Manifestation
The ‘7 steps’ is a more in depth model of the basic reward cycle. Primal drivers, stress, emotions, behaviour, coping, and the aftermath. Everything from the trigger to the
emotional ‘hangover’ is described here to allow you to place every single contributor of your unhealthy actions into your day-to-day life for better self-analysis.
Behaviours, Roots, and Reinforcements

This final section shows you the more ‘surface level’ actions that have created a routine based ‘groove’ for your worst behaviours. Everything that came before in the book
explained the vast underlying interactions that subconsciously push us to be unhealthy. This model, however, teaches you how the surface level actions begin to reinforce
this process on a more conscious, habitual level. I am going to repost a section I wrote earlier in this chapter to pull this all together in a single paragraph. See below.
*Note: it is important to point out that the ‘root and reinforcement’ model is a major part of behavioural issues, but not the whole part. As we know the
consumption of self-medicating foods that lead to temporary moments of relief increase future reliance on dopamine, which makes it more and more difficult to
say ‘no’ to our common forms of self-medication. We have covered this reality in full. We have also established the connection between the adverse life events
that that make us more sensitive to self-medication like late night snacking, so the problem is essentially 3 dimensional. The roots and reinforcements model I am
defining next is the third dimension of our BUB issues. We are already sensitive to self- medication (due to adverse life events and real time pains). Our reliance
on self-medication grows as dopamine ‘hijacks’ our reward system (driving us to BUB’s in order to self medicate our real time problems). The third dimension
(roots and reinforcements) is the habitual groove we create by integrating a daily routine into our lives that helps to kickstart and reinforce this act of self-
medication.
We are sensitive to unhealthy coping due to our deeply ingrained biologically evolutionary barriers. The sensitivity and need for coping that comes from the evolutionary
barriers are maximized by the pain of modern life (stress, trauma, toxic culture). In our day-to-day lives we are creating efficient habitats (grooves) for these underlying
problems (and thus, our worst BUB’s) to thrive within via the roots and reinforcing actions we mindlessly take part in each day.
I hope you are still with me.
The first part of the book is now complete, and it is my hope that you fully understand the source(s) of your worst health behaviours (or BUB’s). If you have been nodding
your head along with the text in these pages and seeing yourself inside of the models I have presented you thus far, that is a good thing. In fact, it is critical that you have
been able to do so as it indicates that you will be able to begin implementing a successful solution and begin to take back control of your health.
In the next section of the book we will touch on how you begin your preparation for change for creating a platform for success is the only way to create sustainable health
outcomes. Congratulations for making it this far into the book, and I’ll see you in the next section.
Reflection #1
Think of a clear example of the unhealthy reward cycle that exists in your life including a trigger, a severity marker, a coping behaviour, and a reward. Here’s an example: I
have a meeting with my boss over the quality of my work and it doesn’t go well (trigger). I struggle with this because I have a history of feelings of worthlessness and am
always out to prove my worth to others. I base much of my worth on others’ opinions (severity). When I get home after a day like this I usually drink an entire bottle of wine
and eat a block of cheese (behaviour) because it takes my mind off of the pain of feeling professionally inadequate (reward). Write one or two examples like these onto a
notepad.
Reflection #2
Fill out the entire 7 steps of manifestation to really dig into the causes of your unhealthy reward cycle.
1. The Pain ____________________________________________________________
2. The Sensitivity ____________________________________________________________
3. The Emotion ____________________________________________________________
4. The Intensifier ____________________________________________________________
5. The Coping ____________________________________________________________
6. The Reinforcement ____________________________________________________________
7. The Hangover ____________________________________________________________
1. The Pain ____________________________________________________________
2. The Sensitivity ____________________________________________________________
3. The Emotion ____________________________________________________________
4. The Intensifier ____________________________________________________________
5. The Coping ____________________________________________________________
6. The Reinforcement ____________________________________________________________
7. The Hangover ____________________________________________________________
Reflection #3
List your big 3 behaviours and reverse engineer the roots that might lead to that behaviour. List as many ‘roots’ as you can that seem to come before the BUB (big unhealthy
behaviour).
Behaviour#1______________________________________________________
Root 1 ___________________________________________________________
Root 2 ___________________________________________________________
Root 3 ___________________________________________________________
Root 4 ___________________________________________________________
Behaviour #2______________________________________________________
Root 1 ___________________________________________________________
Root 2 ___________________________________________________________
Root 3 ___________________________________________________________
Root 4 ___________________________________________________________
Behaviour #3______________________________________________________
Root 1 ___________________________________________________________
Root 2 ___________________________________________________________
Root 3 ___________________________________________________________
Root 4 ___________________________________________________________
Chapter 5
Readiness for Change?
When you picked up this book you must’ve had some sort of underlying motivation or inspiration that pushed you to make the purchase. Perhaps you sat down for breakfast
this morning wearing a particularly tight pair of jeans that exposed the shocking amount of belly fat you are currently carrying. Perhaps someone (like your mother or
father) recently made a comment about your growing body. Perhaps you were just looking for a book that looked at weight loss from a seemingly abstract perspective. The
last one seems unlikely, but it’s possible. Regardless of what motivated you to pick up this book I want to be clear about something very important. That is that motivation,
inspiration, or whatever desire pushed you into taking this step toward getting your health back does not make you ready for the application of the methods of this book.
That is to say that ‘wanting’ to change is very different than being ‘prepared’ or ‘ready’ to actually change. This reality is the reason why I included this chapter.
While inspiration and motivation can be a great way to ‘kickstart’ the beginnings of your success, many times we ‘put the cart before the horse’ and throw ourselves into
the solution without laying the proper preparatory groundwork that is necessary for sustainability. Motivation and inspiration can act as the ‘nudge’ that pushes you into
action, but neither is enough to keep you in the game when the going gets tough- and trust me, the going will get tough. While it can be hard to take our foot off the gas
when we feel motivated and ready for action, taking action without being truly prepared is a big reason why so many inspired people end up failing in their first month of
any new life change. You are probably telling yourself that this won’t happen to you, but you would be naive to assume that you are any different than the general
population just based off of your statistic chances of failure (95%) alone. I don’t want to see that happen to you for the fifteenth time, and for that reason I wrote this
critical section on being prepared for change.
Many of you will hear a little voice in the back of your head right now that is begging you to skip this section and get to more action steps. Right now the voice is saying
‘pfft. You don’t need someone to tell you whether you’re ready or not. Just skip to the solution so you can start losing weight right now’! I would be surprised if this was
the first time this little voice made this sort of suggestion whilst you’ve been reading the book. I would also be surprised if this little voice hasn’t sabotaged you in the same
way less than 100 times already in your life. Although I cannot control you (or the little person in your head) I encourage you to take this piece of the process very seriously-
because without understanding and applying the preparation tactics necessary for making your solutions ‘stick’ you may very well end up in the same place you have so
many times in the past. Frustrated and unsuccessful.
Think of the following preparedness work as being the foundation and scaffolding needed to support your breakthrough. I apologize for the obvious analogous homebuilding
cliché, but it’s a fitting one for this section. If think of the techniques and methods that act as the solution to your weight problem as the drywall, paint, and fixtures-
preparedness is the concrete foundation and framing that must exist in order for those methods and techniques to stand up over time. Without preparedness your dietary
techniques have nothing to support their existence. If you don’t have some solid objects to hammer your drywall into, how will it hang? Jumping into actions without
establishing your readiness will leave you with the same conundrum as my house building analogy. No foundation = no house. No preparedness = no success.
What it means to be ‘ready’

Most people don’t understand the difference between ‘want to’ and ‘ready to’, and this is why most of us can’t go 30 days before giving up on our weight loss efforts.
Wanting to do something means that you have the desire to achieve a certain result. You want to be fit and healthy. Being ready to do something on the other hand is being
committed to doing the necessary work to achieve the desired result regardless of your rate of success or ‘hiccups’ you might face along the way. 95% of those who attempt
to take control of their health ‘want it’ but are not ‘ready for it’ and you must critically assess where you see yourself on the readiness scale as you read through this
section. I know you think you fall into the ‘ready’ bucket right now, but I encourage you to be critical of that assumption. In this section my aim is to teach you the
difference between the two (‘want to’ and ‘ready to’) and teach you how to get yourself ready for change so the success you find lasts forever.
The Enemy of ‘Ready’: The Fear of Vulnerability

Being ‘ready’ is not about convincing yourself that you want something badly enough. It’s easy to desire something and believe you can achieve it when you aren’t in the
thick of the challenges you’ll face while reaching for that result. Being ready is about allowing yourself to be vulnerable and being totally O.K. with that vulnerability. I
don’t mean vulnerable as in ‘fragile’ but vulnerable as in being O.K. with giving it everything you have even if you fall flat on your face- breaking through your fear of
failure and ignoring the insurmountable amount of pain that will come if you put everything you have into taking control of your health only to come up short again. It is
about being honest and realistic with your weaknesses and where you are going to struggle. It is about committing to taking healthy actions every single day no matter what
happens (or doesn’t happen) when you step on the scale. You might think that all sounds fairly easy. I can picture you rushing through this text and saying ‘yup, yup, yup got
it. I’m ready. What’s next’? But in order for you to out yourself into a position for success you need to do preparatory work and critical self analysis that you haven’t done in
the past- and there is a reason why you haven’t done this sort of critical self analysis and preparatory work before. The reason(s) is that doing so is hard work. It is exposing,
and it can be painful to look yourself in the mirror and say ‘this is why you have always failed in the past’. We have spent so much of our lives building up defense systems
and blockades between us and potential hurt that we can’t even see that we are sabotaging our own chances at success, health, and happiness in order to save our own
ego. We can’t see the little escape routes and backdoors we leave open so we can save face and place blame when we bail on our goals. More on that later. For now let’s
take a closer look at the root of our lack of preparedness of change: the avoidance of vulnerability.
As mentioned earlier in this section the reason why you might not be ready for change is because taking on a goal requires a large amount of vulnerability Especially when
the goal is very personal (like goals that revolve around your health and weight) and is also something that you have likely failed at improving many times in the past. We go
through life building a toughened skin each time we face some sort of hurt, adversity, or disappointment so that when we face the potential for that feeling in the future it
doesn’t hurt us as bad as it did the first time. Tough skin of this sort is not a positive trait (like many believe) as tough skin doesn’t just prevent the hurt from entering, but
it also prevents success from entering as well. For this reason we tend to set little ‘traps’ and ‘escape routes’ for our expected failure while not allowing ourselves to be
vulnerable enough to succeed. We set these excuse based traps and hatches to preemptively soften the blow of future failure, and we support these traps and escape routes
with a lack of (much needed) brutal honesty and the wealth of lies that we tell ourselves about our lack of success. So what do these escape routes look like? How do you
know if you are not being vulnerable enough to change? Non-fitness related example of this process is what often happens when you suffer a disappointing social
relationship.
What happens when you give yourself to a man or a woman only to have your heart trampled on? When you are open, vulnerable, hopeful, and falling for another person
only to find out you weren’t the only one or that the person was never really into you the way you were into them? You walk away from that relationship so hurt that you
build internal defense systems that prevent you from being hurt again in the same fashion in the future. You become closed, resentful of relationships, and you begin to
devalue the thought of a significant other. Many of us spin these sorts of feelings into being ‘strong’, but it is actually the total opposite of strength. It is an example of pure
fear. And how does that fear affect your ability to get into a successful relationship in the future? The answer is that it makes it nearly impossible to do so. Because of your
hardened defense systems (built up over previous experiences) you prevent yourself from being hurt again but at the cost of never being able to experience a successful
relationship. You protect yourself from love by never giving yourself an opportunity to experience it. This is what we do when we struggle with our health. When we
dedicate ourselves to a diet and exercise program only to fall short of our goal we create a system of defense that prevents us from being vulnerable enough to suffer the
same anguish from potential future failure. But much like the relationship analogy these defense systems also prevent us from being vulnerable enough to ever succeed in
the future. This is where many of our core issues that prevent our readiness for change and success come from.
This issue can also be explained more ‘superficially’ via the CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) concept called your ‘core beliefs and automatic thoughts’. Your core beliefs
are the often-nasty little filters your thoughts go through that make us feel bad about ourselves. These filters were built during the adverse life events that we covered
earlier in the book. A verbally abusive parent, a socially awkward or unhealthy childhood, being bullied and made fun of, or unfavorably comparing yourself to the celebrity
on the magazine cover can all build these negative core belief systems that leave their mark on the things we think and feel. Let’s relate this concept to the relationship
example used earlier. If you’ve shown admiration for enough people in life only to have been rejected by those people you might begin to tell yourself that the people you
fell for didn’t feel the same way because you are ugly, or fat, or boring. Depending on the image you have created of yourself based off of your assumptions about how
others see you, you could assume any number of reasons for this rejection. Over time these incidents create a set of core beliefs that you carry around with you in the
future and use to filter all of your future relationship thoughts through. Regardless of the reality of the situation you preemptively decide that your ‘failures’ stem from
these negative assumptions about your personality. In your health the process is the exact same. Your feelings of not being good enough or not ‘deserving’ enough to be
healthy, and/or being too weak and lazy to take your health back are examples of core beliefs you build after failing to lose weight during a program that you were really
committed to succeeding in. You left yourself vulnerable in the past while trying to get in shape, you didn’t reach success, and so over time you build a belief system and a
defense system that uses your worst assumptions about yourself to protect you from being exposed to the potential of proving that those assumptions are true. It is also
likely that beliefs like these began being built and reinforced in your mind at a very young age. These core beliefs (that can be either conscious or unconscious, but mostly
unconscious) lead to automatic thoughts. To use the relationship example again an automatic thought might be that when you ask someone you like out on a date, and they
decline, instead of assuming the rejection came from something likely (for example the person is dating someone else or perhaps not personally in a great place to step into
a relationship) you say to yourself ‘he or she said no because they find me unattractive’. You core beliefs of being unworthy of love have left you to first assume all
situational outcomes stem from a negative place. Simple examples of these automatic thoughts in health would go something like ‘you can’t stop eating chips because
you’re a fat, undeserving loser’ or ‘you never exercise because you’re weak and don’t have the willpower that healthy people do’. Those thoughts might sound incredibly
nasty, but let’s be honest, you are nastier to yourself than anyone else you encounter in daily life will ever be to you. These core beliefs and automatic thoughts have been
dictating your attitude toward your capabilities for a long time- and with thoughts and beliefs like those it is no surprise that you’re terrified to give something ‘your all’.
You have built such a thick skin of ego and emotional defense that now it has become impossible for you to succeed. You are paralyzed.
In the fear of having these beliefs and thoughts turn into a reality (thus proving everything we think about ourselves) we set our escape routes through the lies we tell
ourselves (and what we tell others). Both can be equally damaging. These protective lies can typically be categorized as being either superficial or deep. Superficial lies are
the ones we voice audibly (like the lies you tell the professional who is trying to help you) while deep lies are the ones we only voice to ourselves, usually in our mind. Both
superficial and deep lies can prevent us from succeeding, and since they stem from our core beliefs they can be hard to kick. For the sake of clarity here are some examples
of these common forms of self-sabotage.
Superficial Lies
What we say
‘I can dedicate myself and lose weight, no problem, I just need someone to tell me what to eat and what exercises to do’.
The reality
If this is true, why are you still looking for help? If success was a matter of having information and guidance you would’ve succeed 10 times over by now. This is you putting
the change on the expertise of another person so if it doesn’t work out, you can blame the professional or the process.
What we say
‘It’s my family. They are so unhealthy. My husband eats chips all night and my kids eat sugary cereals and snacks. They’re the reason why I keep failing’.
The reality
While having a household that doesn’t have the same values and goals as you certainly doesn’t help it isn’t a valid excuse for failure either. Instead of looking at yourself as
the source of your problems you are externalizing your problems onto other people.
What we say
‘I can do it, but I just want you to know that I’m not willing to give up my dark chocolate and red wine’!
The reality
First of all if you were prepared to change you would be willing (or at least open to) giving up anything. The refusal to give up unhealthy food and drink is not you taking a
stand, it is you saying ‘if I don’t succeed I can say it’s because I’m not willing to sacrifice life’s small joys for a better body’. I wonder what would make you happier having
your health back or chocolate.
Deep Lies
What we say
‘You don’t deserve this’.
‘Here you go, doing what you always do’
‘Mom was right. You are cursed with the family genetics’.
The reality
Deep lies can almost always be analyzed the same way. Taking our health back is something we value. We want it so badly. But we also lack the confidence (and success
history) to believe we can achieve it. Because of this we are reduced to telling ourselves these deep lies so that when we fail we can see it as ‘expected’- and if the failure
was expected we wouldn’t be hurt as badly if and when it happens. For instance if you start a new diet but go into it with refusal like ‘I’m not giving up my red wine and
chocolate’ what you are actually saying is ‘if I refuse to give up my red wine and chocolate I can always use that refusal as a my excuse for not reaching my goal’. We use
these deep lies to reinforce our defenses so that if we fail, we aren’t so hurt by it. We knew deep down that we weren’t really going to succeed so failure is less harmful to
us.
The critical part of this process (of superficial and deep lies we use to make ourselves less vulnerable to failure) is that if we did away with them all together we would
never fail. I know that sounds crazy but it’s true. If we let down our defenses and allowed ourselves to be vulnerable enough to be honest and give it everything we have we
would be so resilient and strong in the face of adversity that over time, in spite of many ups and downs, we would persist and reach our health goals. Once you start laying
the trap doors via thoughts like ‘I’m not willing to give up chocolate’ and ‘you’ll never be able keep this progress up, any day now that scale is going to move the in the
other direction’ you have already set the course for disaster. You have self-created and dictated your own failure.
If you are going to change you must first be ok with being fully vulnerable. Much like the person who has been hurt in love must get past the hurt in order to be open to love
again. You must be willing to face tough times with strength and deal with poor choices without personal judgment. You must be willing to persist with healthy actions
regardless of what the scale says. This is called ‘health without strings attached’. You have to be willing to leave all of your excuses behind and say ‘this is on me, nobody
else. If I fail, it’s because I let my negative thoughts get the best of me, and if I fail, that’s ok. It doesn’t say anything about me as a person and it’s just an opportunity to
learn about myself and improve. What matters is that I give this my all so I am not left with any doubts or unrealistic thoughts about my result’. That may sound like a tall
order, and it is, but when you allow vulnerability, shut down your negative beliefs and automatic thoughts, quit laying traps and escape routes, and avoid the lies you tell
(to yourself and others) in order to prepare for inevitable failure, you will succeed. Maybe not in 6 months or even 1 year, but eventually you will succeed. Be willing to give
it everything you have, even if you’ll end up disappointed. Otherwise you will never reach your goal and continue wasting your life jumping from one diet to the next.
Denial, False Realities, Enabler Seeking, and Normalization

While our previously investigated avoidance of vulnerability (and the lies we tell as a result) acts as the core source of your lack of preparation, there are many other forms
of self sabotage that come to the surface once we have begun our journey toward transformation. These additional readiness preventers come in a form that you are likely
more aware of in your day-to-day life. Or at least they come in a form you will more easily recognize once we establish what they are. These are the lies we tell and the
traps we set once we are already in the process of change (through implementing our diet and exercise efforts) and it is important that you recognize them for what they
are because they are going to creep into your head as you go along your process of transformation. The first of these additional readiness preventers and forms of self-
sabotage are known as the 5 stages of denial.
The 5 Stages of Denial
Every time we are about to make a self sabotaging decision or action along our transformation journey we preempt it with a thought that is meant to clear our conscience
or mask the true roots of the unhealthy behaviour. Every time you eat a food you know you shouldn’t eat or are about to skip the gym when you know you should go, one of
these thoughts will make it easier for you to do the wrong thing. These thoughts come in the form of rationalizations, justifications, minimizations, excuse making, and
refusal. Hence the 5 stages of denial. All of these self-sabotaging thoughts act as a ‘free-pass’ to engage in unhealthy behaviour against your better and more honest
judgment, and you will no doubt recognize many of the examples here from common scenarios in your own life. Here are some examples of all five of the stages of denial
using the consumption of pizza as the consistent learning scenario. I use pizza eating as the learning example because it is universally delicious and I can’t imagine there is
anyone who could not place him or herself in a situation where pizza might be tempting. If pizza doesn’t tempt you, I’m not sure why you are reading this book as it is the
world’s most delicious food.
Picture this typical scenario: your friend or significant other asks you if you want to order a pizza for dinner. ‘That jerk’, you think. ‘Don’t they know I am trying to change
my life over here’? You immediately understand that eating this pizza is not going to get you any closer to your goals but your lower brain (remember system 1?) is saying
‘cheese, bread, salt, calories...deliciousness! Eat that pizza. You won’t regret it’! So instead of making the suggesting that you both try something else for dinner that
would have less of a negative impact on your body and mind, you begin to construct thoughts that allow you to give into your lower brain while preventing you from
registering the event as an unhealthy act. You are laying your traps and escape routes that soften the ego blow that is going to come from knowingly self sabotaging your
dietary values. That is your background story, and here are the five basic denials you might utilize in order to put this process of unhealthy self defense into motion.
Rationalization: I worked hard this week, my body probably NEEDS pizza. If I eat something with fewer calories I probably won’t properly recover from my workouts
Justification: I worked hard this week, I DESERVE pizza. I earned it. Minimization: I’m only going to have a few slices, it’s probably the same amount of calories I would’ve
taken in getting a Greek salad or some other ‘health food’.
Excuse making: Well my friend wants pizza, how could I say no? He basically twisted my arm.
Refusal: Pizza is just protein, fat, and carbs- it’s not even bad for me. I get all of my food groups in one meal. Health at its finest.
Does any of this sound familiar?
When you formulate the situation inside of your mind in a favorable (albeit in an ultimately negative and unrealistic way) it makes it easier for you to go against your better
judgment and take part in unhealthy actions without immediate (preemptive) guilt. But we all know that guilt free indulgences can often be an oxymoron, and taking these
self justified actions will result in negative feelings of low self worth and a lack of progress toward your goal.
This where being brutally honest and having the ability to recognize these defensive excuses becomes crucial.
Now I’m not saying that if you’re trying to lose weight and improve your health you can never have a slice or two of pizza or put yourself in a scenario where pizza will
exist. ‘The 4 year old’s birthday party is at the local pizza joint? Sorry honey, we can’t go. Mommy isn’t allowed within 50 meters of a pizza place’. What I’m saying is that
when you use one (or all) of the 5 stages of denial to filter your thinking in order to protect yourself from the reality of the decision you are making, it not only makes it
easier to take part in unhealthy acts, but it also makes it more likely that you will mindlessly over indulge as you have convinced yourself that the consequences of your
unhealthy action are small or non-existent. If you were at least to stop yourself and say ‘don’t make any excuses. Don’t go down the path of denial. You know that eating
this pizza is not going to get you closer to your goals and you are likely going to feel bad, both psychologically and physiologically after you eat ½ a large pizza. Let’s limit
our self to 2 slices, no more. Take your time, chew slowly, and enjoy each bite. After that make a promise to yourself that you won’t continue eating. After a few slices you
are just going to mindlessly abuse the food’. Use the recognition of denial as an opportunity to create the mental landscape (via self talk) that moves you toward self-
control. Otherwise you will fall into the denial-based thinking that leads to a loss of all control. We will go into highly effective thinking processes in depth in future
chapters, but for now I want to continue with this path we’re on by talking about the connected issue of false realities.
False Realities
Another common problem have as epically fallible human beings is the inability to live in (or recollect) our current reality. Through a variety of automatic psychological
mechanisms known as heuristics and biases we tend to remember how our day, week, and month of dieting has gone through rose colored glasses. It is easier for us to paint
a picture of living the perfect, healthy life and blame our failure on things like genetic disadvantages, receiving poor nutritional advice, or ‘loving life, food, and wine too
much to become health obsessed’ than it is to be honest about the accumulation of our poor choices. Because of this we simply opt to remember brief (and sometimes
longer term) histories of our life through false realities. If we create past memories where our lack of success is somehow someone else’s fault because we did all the right
things, it hurts less when we fall flat on our growing bellies. This is just another example of the lies we tell ourselves (and to others) in order to protect our ego and set
defensive measures for our anticipated failure. Examples of this would be when we track our food intake we leave out the frequent bites of the cookies on the counter, the
cream in our 4 daily cups of coffee, and the liter of dressing on our salad and side vegetables. ‘I’ve only been eating 1400 calories per day, I should be losing weight’! This is
easy to say when you conveniently ignore the thousand calories you consumed through nibbles and bites that you let slide. We grossly overestimate how many calories we
burn through exercise and remember ourselves as been far more generally active than we actually are. ‘I’ve been working out 3-4 days per week every week and not seeing
any results’! Ok...but for the rest of the 150 hours of the week you are sitting on your ass and not doing much of anything at all. We fail to (or choose not to) remember our
weekend bender of alcohol and dinners out when retroactively talking about how healthy we were the week before. ‘I don’t get it. I stuck to my diet, went to the gym and
did all of the right things last week but I’m up 3 pounds. This is so frustrating. Nothing works for me’! Yeah, nothing works for anyone else when they binge eat and drink
every weekend and pretend it isn’t happening.
These sorts of patterns result in unrealistic recollections that make it hard to adjust what we are doing in order to continue progressing. This is why honesty and facts are so
important. If you’re lying to yourself about what actually goes into your body (as well as how often you are moving it) you can’t be a good judge of what you might need to
change or alter in your plan. ‘I’ve been working out 5 days per week, I’ve been eating really well, and just like always nothing is changing. Diet and exercise just don’t work
for me’! No. Diet and exercise don’t work for the pretend person you are recalling in your head who is far removed from the actual you who added on an extra 600 calories
per day in bites, nibbles, and neglected food toppings. How quickly we forget about the snacks we mindlessly eat at night, the hours spent on the couch, our accumulation
of wine bottles in the recycling bin and the fact that we are eating at a drive-thru on the way to work each morning. Again, it is easier to lie and to deceive than it is to be
brutally honest. We are willing to sacrifice our health in exchange for not taking responsibility for our actions and it is resulting in the inability for most of us to take our
health back.
As mentioned false realities are just another form of self-protection. It is natural. It is human. You are not unique or ‘bad’ in this scenario. But that doesn’t mean working
on removing the lies from yourself defensive approach to fitness isn’t your responsibility to fix. If we can convince ourselves and others that we gave it everything we had
(even though we obviously did not) we can justify quitting, failing, and blaming our lack of health on a non-existent genetic disorder, or the diet and exercise method we
used that has obviously failed us.
To sum up false realities: bullshit is a barrier. So cut it out.
Enabler Support
Who doesn’t love the friend who rushes over within 10 minutes when we are cracking a bottle of wine and opening up a box of pizza after a long week at work? All while
telling us that we look great, they don’t understand why we are trying to stay on a diet, and even tell us that our interest in getting healthy is psychologically concerning.
‘You know, it’s probably not even good for you to be cutting back on food and eating like a rabbit. I don’t even know how you’re surviving’. Picture your ‘friend’ saying this
with a mouthful of pizza, a 16 oz glass of wine, and 50 lbs to lose on her waistline. This your favorite type of friend who is much preferred than one who would show up and
tell you that a bad week at work isn’t a justification for eating and drinking your pain away.
There’s a reason why we don’t like to spend time with people who tell us the truth. They make us feel badly about the reality of our poor choices, and as we know, our ego
and defense systems do not like what reality has to offer. The trouble is that if we had more ‘truth tellers’ in our lives we would probably make far less poor personal and
social food decisions. But in our toxic culture it is considered ‘normal’ to indulge on a regular basis and be overweight and sick. It is ‘abnormal’ to be conscious of one’s
health and act accordingly, so finding and surrounding ourselves with truth tellers is a rare motivation. In our society people don’t make friends with us by constantly
reminding us of their mistakes, even though these are exactly the type of people we should want to surround ourselves with. Most people don’t want their friends and
family members pointing out that they complain about their weight out of one side of their mouth while shoveling potato chips into the other side. We don’t like to be
reminded of our incongruences and lies. For this reason we tend to go to those who we know will ‘play along’ with our lies rather than surround ourselves with crushing
‘truth tellers’ who say ‘garlic mashed side potatoes and a dark beer with dinner? Aren’t you on a diet?
When we are feeling down and discouraged we don’t call the friend who is going to tell us ‘it’s your fault, suck it up, and stop feeling sorry for yourself’. We are going to
call the friend that says ‘it’s ok, it’s not your fault, you’re only human, let’s meet and talk about it over a cheeseburger’. This works out well for both parties because the
enablers we seek out are coincidentally also the people who subconsciously wanted us to fail. I don’t mean that to say that enablers are intentionally sinister, but many
people who love us don’t want to see us succeed in an area where they feel weak- and if you look at your peer group they are likely suffering in many of the same ways you
are so they have the same negative core beliefs and fears that you do. When we take steps to change our health it is threatening to those around us who are insecure and
wish they could also change their health but don’t believe that they can do it. If you begin to get fitter and healthier how is that going to make your unhealthy friends feel?
Not too good, even ostracized, and that is a threat to their own veil of defensive lies and smokescreens. Enablers are the people in our lives who pressure us to eat and
drink foods and beverages that we already said ‘no’ to five times. They are the people who aim to make us feel like outcasts for ordering a salad instead of a baked potato.
These are the people who have put the spotlight on us for having only one glass of wine while they drink themselves into a stupor. ‘Whataya on a diet or something’? Lucky
for this group we usually seek out their current lack of health morals to make us feel better about ours. It’s the perfect unhealthy relationship and the unconditional
acceptance of our worst habits and behaviours makes them hard people to separate ourselves from.
It is important to note that this enabler relationship is the opposite of compassion while the approach that a truth teller would take is the epitome of compassion.
Compassion does not mean lying to someone about the reality of their life so they can continue to live in an unrealistic world and feel good about their lack of success. That
is cruel and unhelpful. Compassion means to help someone you love establishes the truth about their current reality so they can begin to integrate the tools necessary to
improve and thrive in life. If a parent looked at their child’s report card that said their child was violent with other kids, rude to teachers, and vandalizing school property
only to gently stroke their child and say ‘oh, it’s not your fault, you’re a good boy, those teachers just don’t know what they are talking about’- thus allowing the child to
down a destructive road- never addressing whatever internal pain was leading to this extreme acting out, would you consider them to be good, compassionate parents? Of
course not. Compassion cannot live outside of reality.
I’m not saying that you need to ditch a bunch of your friends and family members in order to be healthy (although there are occasions when that is precisely what I would
suggest). Support plays a huge role in success and you need relationships in order to have support, but you need to ask yourself what type of support you’re actually getting
from those around you. What I am saying is that you need to be aware of your tendency to look for support when you should be looking for a reality check and that some
people in your life are going to happily drag you down out of fear that you will outgrow them in some way. This is all within your control and it is your fault just as much (if
not more than) theirs. You know what you are going to get from the peer group who thinks your attempts to be healthy, happy, and confident are ‘weird’. The people you
surround yourself with makes a difference- especially when you are actively using those people to make you feel better about failing in areas where you are trying to
succeed. Just like the alcoholic who can’t keep himself away from the ol’ gang at the bar, you will often gravitate toward the group that reinforces your unhealthy coping
rather than the ones who remind you when you are compromising your health and goals. You might not be able to control the amount of enablers in your life, and for some
of us the worst ones are our husbands, wives, and significant others- but you can control your habit of looking to them to absolve your health sins. Just be aware of your
tendency to seek out enabler support instead of dealing with the reality of your unhealthy actions. Owning up to and investigating your unhealthy actions can be helpful, if
not liberating if you look at it through the correct lense. More on that in later chapters.
Normalization
The last piece of the preparation puzzle is being aware of (and ridding of) our tendency to normalize unhealthy behaviours or allow societal normalizations to support our
own moments of self-sabotage. I put this as the last section of this chapter because it has a little bit of everything we’ve covered thus far inside of it. An example of
normalization would be something along the lines of ‘food is a social thing and human beings are meant to connect over food and drink- so it’s weird to go to a party not eat
the dips and drink the alcohol’. Like I mentioned earlier in this chapter, the issue we face with normalization is the toxic culture that western society now lives in. While
it’s true that human beings are social eaters that has nothing to do with the foods we choose to put into our bodies. You can be social with a lean cut of meat and some
green and fibrous vegetables- not just pizza, beer, and cake. But that is neither here nor there. The point of this section is to understand that you (and the rest of Western
society) are normalizing unhealthy actions on a personal, cultural, and societal level in order to justify those unhealthy actions and ignore all of our internal dialogue that
tells us that eating fast food 5 days per week is probably not a good idea. We are obsessed with giving into the cravings that distract us from the reality of modern human
life, and it is literally killing us in record numbers.
Societal normalizations and acceptance of unhealthy life has gotten so abundant that it is now incredibly rare and abnormal to not be overweight. Almost 50% of us are
obese and around 70% of us are at least overweight. Those numbers should be making your head spin. If I told you that 50% of us had type 1 diabetes and 70% of us had type
2 diabetes your head would explode.
The said part of that line is that a 70% type 2 diabetes rate isn’t unrealistic in the next 50 years.
This issue of societal normalization of unhealthy living is mostly due to the main barriers I mention in the beginning of the book- but it is supported, encouraged, and
perpetuated by a society that normalizes fast food, sugary drinks, heavy social drinking, low activity lifestyles, escalators, couches, Netflix, social surfing, and the myriad
activities that constitute what it means to be a modern human being. This conundrum makes it very easy for us to convince ourselves that everyone needs to let loose with
a 12 pack and a large pizza on Friday night or that it is more appropriate to get a burger at the drive-thru than it is to just be hungry for a while. What a thought: skipping a
fast food meal when you had your last meal just 2-3 hours ago. Unheard of. We act as if starvation is a common western issue that we all need to stay on top of even though
it is literally impossible to die of starvation in the U.S. and Canada.
It is easy to let yourself fall back into old habits when the most unhealthy of us are the majority, and less than 1 in 3 of us will get through adulthood without suffering from
some sort of preventable lifestyle malady. Being unhealthy isn’t (and shouldn’t be considered) ‘normal’. But due to the accumulation of all the issues mentioned thus far in
this book being unhealthy is shockingly common.
To summarize this section- it is one thing to be inspired to change and it is quite another to be ready to change, and if you aren’t truly ready for change your chances of
success are slim. I don’t have any clear data to support the following claim but I am willing to bet that any person who attempts to take control of their health without
honestly facing the considerations we have covered in this chapter is going to have a roughly 0% chance of succeeding. That doesn’t mean that you need to be perfect to
begin your transformation. It just means that you need to be aware of your unhelpful defenses, your common signs of denial, false realities, enabler seeking, and the
normalization that helps you sweep your reality underneath the rug. You will hit bumps in the road along the way. You will make mistakes that you feel badly about making.
You will slip up. You will gain weight. You will do all the things you know you aren’t supposed to do to varying degrees along your journey. This is all part of what it means
to be a success story. The difference between the person who succeeds and the person who fails is that the person who succeeds faces their choices with an honest
perspective and without judgment while implementing improvement strategies, while the person who fails is so closed, dishonest, and fragile that the slightest hiccup in the
journey will feel so much like failure that they will immediately abort the entire process. The more you understand the traps and escape routes you set for yourself via your
own natural defenses the better chance you have to deal with them in a increasingly positive way when these barriers inevitably show up in your life. Be prepared, be
ready. Be successful.
Reflection #1
On a scale of 1-10 rate your current vulnerability to failure. For example ‘If I were to try the MetFlex-Rx diet at the end of this book and give it everything I have for 1 year,
and still not reach my goal, I would feel:
1= Awful. I would be shattered, frustrated, and at an all-time low.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
10= Great! I gave it everything I had and probably learned some healthy values along the way!
Reflection #2
Make a list of the superficial and deep lies that you tell yourself (and others) about your health and your efforts to lose weight.
Superficial Lie #1-
Superficial Lie #2-
Superficial Lie #3-
Deep Lie #1-
Deep Lie #2-
Deep Lie #3-
Reflection #3
Give an example of each of the 5 stages of denial that you’ve used in your own life to protect yourself from the reality of your unhealthy choices.
How I’ve Rationalized
How I’ve Justified
How I’ve Minimized
How I’ve Make Excuses
How I’ve Refused
Reflection #4
Who are the biggest enablers in your life? Do you find yourself going to them when you are struggling so they can help ease you into failure?
Reflection #5
Give three ways in which you ‘normalize’ your big unhealthy behaviours
Example #1-
Example #2-
Example #3-
Chapter 6
Health Without Strings Attached
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is the acclaimed author of the ‘Flow’ book series and a man who has been kind enough to get on Skype with me on occasion and review some of my
methods (which his studies have been integrated into). Mihaly has spent his life trying to understand the roots of happiness and success in life and he is the world leader in
this area of study. ‘Flow’ is the term he coined for the feeling of seemingly automated productivity and the ‘loss of time’ that a person experiences while they are ‘lost’
inside an activity that they are doing- operating on ‘autopilot’. Think of the musician whose instrument seems to be an extension of their body playing a 10-minute long solo
while their mind is being transported into another dimension. Or the gymnast or dancer who is so connected to the movement of their body that they become one with their
natural landscape as they beautifully move throughout it. These people are experiencing ‘flow’ moments. A detachment from time and reality while they are taking part in
the most stimulating activity they could provide their mind and/or body. In his book Mihaly also discusses how these people have become so successful in their area of
practice, and in his analysis he focuses on the concept of being ‘autotelic’. Being autotelic is just a way of saying ‘doing something for pure joy or sake of doing it without
any motivation being attached on the outcome. For example Bill Gates succeeded in the world of computers because he was obsessed with the emerging technology. Yes, he
put in many hard nights, had a lot of luck, and got into the industry at just about the perfect time- but if Bill Gates didn’t become a multi-billionaire through his efforts in
the world of technology he would likely still be in a basement somewhere messing around with computers because the technology fascinates him. It was the reward and
satisfaction of the day-to-day experience and experimentation that drove him- not being the richest man on the planet. We also see musicians like Adele performing moving
songs in front of massive crowds and forget that she has spent the majority of her musical career in a small room somewhere not being paid to play the piano for hours on
end. We see the product of her ultimate success and forget that success didn’t drive her to superstardom. The love of music that kept her glued to the piano when she
wasn’t making a dime, did. She first sharpened her craft because she loved making music. The fame and the money came as an afterthought.
So what the heck do Bill Gates, Adele, and Mihaly Csi… whatever his name is have to do with my ability (or inability) to lose weight and be healthy? I’ll follow up that
question with a question of my own.
When you are starting your weight loss journey (after some recent motivation or inspiration to do so), how do you really feel about the tactics and strategies that you apply
to your goal via diet and exercise techniques. Do you thrive at the gym? Do you love every second of the movements you are performing? Do you yearn for the feeling of a
racing heartbeat, burning lungs and muscles, and sweat pouring out of your body? What about your diet? Is the highlight of your day your trip to the grocery store, the hours
put into carefully preparing and cooking all of your meals, and the specifically portioning and controlling the quantities of food you eat on any given day? I am going to guess
that the answer to my question is an obvious ‘no’, for if you could honestly answer ‘yes’ to this short list of health lifestyle questions you would already be wildly successful
(and thus not require this book). What usually happens when we begin the attempt to take control of our health is we ‘grin our teeth and bear it’. We do exercises we hate
(because we were told that they are the best ‘fat loss’ exercises) and we eat foods we don’t like (because we were told that they are the best weight loss foods) and we do
a four hour-long Sunday meal prep (because if you aren’t prepared you are preparing for failure)! To summarize we take on a bunch of strategies we dislike because we’ve
been told that they are ‘best practices’ for weight loss, and we aim to grind them out every day in order to succeed. Does this seem like a sustainable approach to you?
This is a good time to make a few important points. Point number one is that anyone can grind it out for 30 days, and this is why all of these extreme weight loss programs
that are advertised to us can indeed show 30-day success stories. The ability to produce long-term success stories is what they can’t do, but I digress. If you tell someone he
or she can lose 30 lbs in 30 days by only eating food a few days per week while drinking low calorie shakes most of the time, thus creating a massive energy deficit over the
month (much like the Isagenix ‘cleanse’ model), most people will be able to grind it out for 30 days and lose quite a bit of weight. It is well known in the world of
psychology that human beings (and most other animals) can psychologically handle most scenarios that they know are temporary, and this is why most people can handle
extreme short term dietary interventions. For instance, if you tell a man he needs to live in a jail cell for 14 days, he can deal with that reality fairly well from a
psychological perspective. If, however, you stick a man in a jail cell and tell him that he will remain in there anywhere from 24 hours to 24 years, and he will never know
his duration of detainment until the day he is released, he will go insane. My point being that 30 day challenges, 7-14 day cleanses, and everything in between are so
popular and sell so well because A- people want to get more results for less work and B- most people can follow extreme methods that deliver extreme changes for known,
short term periods of time.
This brings be to my second important point. Any progress you make using a certain strategy or method will not remain if you stop the attached strategy or method. That is
to say that the weight you lose on a 30 day ‘cleanse’ will only remain (or continue) if you live the rest of your life on low calorie shakes and a few small meals, or whatever
extreme protocol got you the initial weight loss. In other words, if you want to keep results for life or continue improving for life, you must be able to sustain the daily
actions it took to achieve the progress. ‘Fitness hygiene’ as I like to call it is just like dental hygiene. You can’t brush and floss your teeth one month out of every year and
expect that the dental health you achieved during the month of actual brushing and flossing will remain for the 11 months that you stop your routine or brush and floss
sporadically. The same goes for your health. Whatever actions you take each day to improve your health must remain as part of your regular lifestyle if you aim to retain
the benefits of those regular health actions.
So what do these two points (anyone can grind it out for 30 days, and progress you make can only be retained by continuing with the actions that got you there) have to do
with Bill Gates, Adele, and Mihaly’s concept of ‘being autotelic’? More importantly, what does any of this have to do with your waistline? If you haven’t put this together
already I will begin with a simple statement and then break that statement down for you. If you want to succeed in your health and fitness goals you must take an autotelic
approach. That means you must find ways to better your health that you would continue to work on and apply to your life regardless of if the action made the scale change
or made your clothes fit better. Remember that Bill Gates and Adele each reached massive success not because they could see fame and riches in their future, but because
they integrated their eventual realms of success into daily actions that they practiced (like playing the piano or fiddling with hard drives) for the sake of the satisfaction
those practices brought to them. You too will reach your ultimate success not by obsessing over a certain waistline size or reading on the scale, but by integrating healthy
actions that you value and actually ENJOY doing into your everyday life- building a fitness discipline based off of what drives you, not off of the actions that you can grind
out for 30 days due to the promise to bring you all of your superficial heath goals. Let me be clear here; I am not suggesting that you shouldn’t have any ‘superficial’ health
goals. We all have our important personal vanity, and weight loss does mean increased health- so losing weight is not all that superficial a goal. What I am saying is that if
you try to force yourself to achieve those goals through daily actions that are so painful for you that performing them each day is equivalent to a child plugging their nose
and stomping their feet in order to swallow medicine, you will never succeed in the long run. We have this habit of making extreme initial sacrifices in order to lose weight
quickly instead of simply focusing on finding the joy in taking care of ourselves that builds fitness discipline over time. And that lack of joy makes it very hard for habits to
stick. So if you want to implement a healthy daily routine that will lead to long-term success in your health like Bill Gates and Adele have in their respective crafts, you
must become ‘autotelic’. In other words, you must take on small, simple day-to-day actions that you see value in that goes beyond the superficial endgame of a body that
looks like ‘x’ or a scale the reads ‘y’.
I will use the rest of this chapter to teach you some strategies to make this happen in your own life.
Do What You Love

Seems like an obvious suggestion, right? But we rarely think about doing the things that we love to do when we start our transformation journey. In fact, I would argue that
many of us believe that if the process of transformation is not painful and a little sadistic than it must not be doing the thing we want it to do for us. I would have to
disagree. We are usually more concerned about doing what seemed to work for our neighbor (who can’t seem to shut the hell up about her most recent 45lb weight loss.
Take it easy, Betty. You’ve lost 45 lbs and gained it back 14 times since we’ve been living beside each other. Let’s see how this pans out before you continue your annoying
gloat fest) or looking for the magic diet and exercise combination that has been touted by some obscure research statistics or worse a celebrity guru shill who has no
concept of how science actually relates itself to fitness. We lose touch with our own health instincts because we aren’t confident in our own intuitions (likely due to the
fact that we have failed so many times in the past) and that leaves us open to falling into the traps of what other people think we need to do to be healthy- and that lack of
intuition and personal filtering (and the resulting vulnerability to others’ suggestions) is hurting us. What we forget is that we did not fail in the past because we had poor
intuition or a lack of an ‘effective’ technique. Rather, we have previously failed because we never really understood what the root of our weight problems were or how to
be prepared to succeed in the face of those underlying issues. Because of this most of us have lost touch with ourselves, and getting that sense of ‘self’ back (from a health
perspective) is going to be essential for the recovery of our health and success in the future. This is what I am asking you to do when I suggest becoming autotelic and doing
what you love to do or can find value, joy and satisfaction in rather than trying to fit yourself awkwardly into the weight loss success ‘box’ that someone else is trying to
stuff you inside of.
The following is an example of what happens when we take on certain actions and strategies because someone else has touted their own success in using those methods,
rather than using our intuition and ‘joy’ meter to determine what actions are reasonable for us to integrate into our lives in the long term. Let’s use a story to dig into the
issue with doing what someone says you should do rather than doing what is intuitively fulfilling.
The story of Janice and the issue with ‘doing what Suzy did’
Janice is (I assume) like most of you who are reading this book. She is getting to the age where she is recognizing the effects of her lifelong accumulation of poor decision-
making and she desperately wants to be healthy and fit again. She has wanted to achieve this feat for decades but like most of us has failed in all of her previous attempts
at taking permanent control of her waistline. Janice goes back and forth through periods of being ‘inspired’ to change (usually through fleeting fear of disease or her own
personal moments of self loathing) only to end up becoming defeated in the face of her short term efforts, ending in the temporary acceptance of her health ‘situation’
until the next negative source of inspiration pops up. Then she begins this cycle of short-term inspiration for change, defeat, and acceptance all over again. Each time
Janice gets a ‘push’ to take control of her health she does what most of us do- she sees what method is out there that seems to be working for other people. She might pick
up a fitness magazine off of the rack at the grocery store (or worse, a gossip magazine) to see what the Hollywood ‘elite’ is up to or make the critical error of buying a
celebrity health book directly from the rich and famous charlatan (like from Gwyneth Paltrow). Or perhaps Janice will hop on one of her frequented social media outlets
and find the latest Instagram star, YouTube sensation, or even a friend who seems to have gone through their own transformation recently- then begin to mimic what that
person appears to be doing in their own personal health plan. Without any real thought Janice just picks someone to follow and she begins to do exactly (for the most part,
anyway) what that person claims to be their ‘key(s) to success’.
So now Janice begins her recently inspired transformation process by following the advice of let’s say, Suzy. Let’s also say that Suzy is a social media fitness enthusiast
who’s constant flaunting of physical ‘assets’ somehow gives the impression of health and fitness expertise. Janice eats what Suzy eats, she does the exercises Suzy does,
and if ‘Suzy’ was actually Gwyneth Paltrow she might even be shoving things inside of her vagina for god knows what purpose.
If you don’t know what I am referencing here just Google search ‘Gwyneth Paltrow, jade eggs, vaginal steaming’ and enjoy.
Everything is going well for the first few weeks of following Suzy’s advice and Janice is down a few pounds. Success! But after the first few weeks Janice’s daily actions
become more difficult to perform. Janice is eating spinach and kale 4 times per day (per the mimicking of Suzy’s Instagram breakfast, lunch, and dinner posts)) but Janice
hates strong tasting greens. In fact, eating them raw (which is critical for success in Suzy’s view) makes Janice’s stomach sore. Regardless of the pain and suffering, if it is
what Suzy does, Janice must do it too. The 15 miles Janice runs each week (again, non-negotiable in Suzy’s plan) is making Janice’s knees hurt so badly that she is taking
anti-inflammatories just to keep up with Suzy’s suggested running schedule. Even with taking the expensive collagen supplement that Suzy has been pushing in order to
support and rebuild cartilage (which is not physiologically correct- i.e. eating collagen doesn’t make collagen) Janice is in almost unbearable pain after her runs. After a
month of debilitatingly sore knees and extreme gut dysfunction Janice quits Suzy’s social success guide and goes back to accepting her previously unacceptable health
reality. The cycle begins again.
Do you see the problem here? Doing what (appears) to have worked for another person is rarely going to produce the same results in us. Even if we assume that A- these
people actually look like the airbrushed versions of themselves you see on the internet or in the magazine in real life or B- the method they are claiming to have brought
them success is actually what they did to achieve the airbrushed image you see, the reality is that they are not you, and you are not them- and if you try to force yourself to
be like them in order to take control of your health you will most likely fail for myriad reasons. The people we follow and mimic in order to create our own path to success
are rarely experts, and almost always completely full of shit. You are not helping yourself by trying to do the things they are pretending to do in order to get in shape. The
pre-internet equivalent of this is when I was a 14 year old, scrawny, insecure boy. I’d buy every bodybuilding magazine I could afford and follow the plans used by some of
the world’s great bodybuilders. I’d take the creatine and protein stacks they’d suggest and do every exercise down to the set and rep in the hopes that I could look like
them. Needless to say that didn’t happen. At the time I didn’t realize that the ‘supplementation’ routine of these role models consisted of thousands of dollars per month in
steroids and other strong anabolic drugs. They didn’t get where they were from their posted exercise routines and creatine intake. That’s just the story they wanted to tell
me, and I bought it hook, line, and sinker.
‘Well, what about the success stories that online gurus post of their clients each month’ you ask? Let’s put it this way. If you have 100 people following your weight loss
‘method’ and 5-10 of those people find (temporary) success, you have enough success stories to last you a year even though that is only a 5%-10% success rate. It doesn’t
take a lot of success to pretend to have a successful method. Not to mention most of these fitness personalities and weight loss companies establish client’s success rates in
the short term, and the success stories you see probably weren’t even maintained for a year. There are always going to be a few people who succeed in doing what someone
else has done to achieve success, but this is the tiny minority. The problem is that this tiny minority will be so happy with their own personal success that they will be
obnoxiously ‘loud’ in expressing their chosen method’s value. This is exactly how things like the Paleo Diet, the Vegan Diet, the Ketogenic Diet and all other diets manage to
explode in popularity. Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that these diets can’t be helpful or don’t have value in fact I would say that they each have a lot to offer the
average person, but they are rigid and do not account for the fact that as much as human beings are alike, we are different- and if individuality is not accounted for (like in
the case of Janice and Suzy) we decrease our chances of success.
So lesson #1 in this section is not to do what someone else did and assume that you will achieve the same success as them. You need to be even more aware of this as
people who have seen success while following a particular weight loss trend or method will preach about it religiously and be quite convincing- often not realizing that their
success had little to do with the rigid structure and more to do with the successful person being in a particularly good place for success at the time of entering into the
‘method’ they used. It is correlation, not causation.
In other words the weight loss method used by the few successful people is more of a coincidence than it is the reason for their success.
When you implement a method of healthy actions in your life via diet and exercise approaches you must understand how it is going to work for you, specifically, and you
can’t try to fit yourself into a emerging trend or ‘doing what Suzy did’. This is much like forcing a square peg into a round hole. Lots of effort, even some pain, but the
shape is just not designed to fit the hole.
*Note: Upon re-reading this section (for the fourth time) I believe it is an opportunity to make an important point that I should’ve expanded on in the body of this
section. Success is not about the details of the weight loss structure. Success is about the place that the person who is implementing the weight loss structure is
in. Someone who has followed the principles in this book and applied them to their own life in a successful way can succeed on any diet and exercise program.
Paleo, vegan, high carb, low carb, high protein, high fat (ketogenic) etc. That isn’t to say that one diet wouldn’t be easier to follow or more beneficial for you,
but when you are in a place where success is inevitable the dietary structure you choose to follow is more about your own personal philosophy than it is about
what is going to lead you to success. This is the point I was making when saying that success stories that are attached to weight loss methods are nothing more
than a coincidence. That goes for my companies as well. Our success stories (of which there are many) were successful due to the psychological changes we were
able to provide them. The fact that our success stories were following our particular diet and exercise guidance at the time of their success is the least important
factor in that success. Become a person who has the proper success mindset and then the details of your diet and exercise program (assuming that you are
following some sort of control structure) will not matter.
Evidence based is good. Evidence obsessed is bad. False evidence is worst.
In the last section we talked about the unprofessional and uneducated fitness gurus who make ridiculous, glorified claims about the effectiveness of their weight loss
tactics. At the opposite end of the spectrum we have the scientism crowd, and worse, the less scientific professionals who incorrectly believe they understand science.
Worse still we have the totally unscientific professionals (and companies) who are posing as science-backed authorities. The first example is the emerging group of
‘evidence based’ fitness professionals who believe that research and statistics are what is going to lead to the best health outcomes in the real world, and that any strategy
that has not been examined under a microscope is not worth taking part in. This is the community of people who believe that a petri dish is close enough to your human
body that what happens inside of a lab can dictate what is going to happen in your complex biological system(s). Let me be clear that I am not stating science, research,
and testing are not important (if not essential) for progress- they absolutely are- but science (or more accurately the exaggeration, abuse, and general ‘butchering’ of its
results) can also prevent progress as well. Especially when the suggestions that come from a ‘microscope’ are taken and used literally when being explained to the general
public in irresponsible online blogs and articles.
When scientism prevents progress (or worse, causes harm)
Most scientists and researchers in the world of health and fitness conduct studies in order to gain some evidence to then direct them toward uncovering more evidence on
the subject. This process is repeated until some sort of conclusion can be made on the topic they are studying. Most researchers in this world do not conduct these
experiments to make definitive and rigid claims about their conclusions- but some are out to make headlines. Headlines that the average person reads and believes to be
literal and applicable to their life. Here is an example of such ‘crocks of shit’ from my very own Hometown University.
The following excerpt was taken from Global News
Egg Yolks Almost as Harmful as Cigarettes!
Researchers at Western University in Ontario say excessive consumption of egg yolks – especially in people with cardiovascular disease – can be almost as bad for
your arteries as smoking, leading to atherosclerosis.
Atherosclerosis develops when your arteries harden due to the accumulation of fat, cholesterol and other substances, making it difficult for blood to flow
through. This forms plaque, which can eventually form blockages inside the arteries, triggering other complications, such as a stroke or heart attack.
Artery hardening and plaque development are common with aging, but the National Center for Biotechnology Information says the condition is accelerated in
younger people with high cholesterol levels.
The study followed more than 1,200 men and women, with a mean age of 61.5, and discovered the effect from eating three or more egg yolks a week was about
two-thirds as harmful as smoking.
Study author Dr. David Spence tells Global News, “When you get older, you’re going to have a higher and higher risk of heart attacks. So why would you want to
make your arteries get worse faster by piling cholesterol on you?”
Dr. Spence follows this up with a stern warning that “In the long haul, egg yolks are not OK for most Canadians”.
You can imagine the fear that claims like these put in the minds of the average reader who now believed that their morning routine of two eggs and a slice of toast was
leading them to the destruction of their circulatory system. What they didn’t explain in this study was that the connection between cholesterol and heart disease is
increasingly becoming connected to systemic inflammation of the arteries. The cholesterol is just the innocent bystander. The study’s researchers also fail to mention that
the effect that dietary cholesterol has on blood levels of cholesterol is minimal, and most cholesterol production is moderated by genetic inheritance, not diet.
This is just one of many examples of glorified misrepresentations of science that are created in a simple, controlled study and expected to be relatable to the complex
biology and life of the average human being. The studies researchers have since been on the defensive claiming that pieces of the study have been taken out of context, but
they are the ones who chose the headline connecting eggs to cigarettes. They knew full well what they were trying to accomplish, which was international notoriety for an
undeserving ‘scientismic’ piece of garbage. What was found in a totally isolated, controlled, and obviously biased study was put out to the public and preached as evidence
to remove one of the most nutritious whole foods on the planet from one’s diet. Scientism at it’s finest.
When good science is misrepresented by fitness turds
Here is a totally hypothetical example for the sake of clarification in this concept. Let’s say I have 40 clients that I am working with at any given time, and I have all of
those clients focus on getting 8 hours of sleep per night. Over the course of 3 months the vast majority of these clients lose a significant amount of weight and find it easier
to make healthy decisions on a day-to-day basis. I can conclude that focusing on sleep quality lends itself to better results in a totally anecdotal (untested) setting. Now
let’s say a university professor and researcher wants to see if people can still lose weight on 6 hours of sleep per night (after which time they are woken up by an alarm
clock, let’s say), and while following a certain controlled diet and exercise program. At the end of the study 12 of his 16 participants lost a significant amount of weight,
and therefore it can be scientifically concluded that you can be ‘under slept’ and still successfully lose weight under the right conditions. Now some jackass in the business
world gets ahold of this study and uses it as an ‘evidence based’ foundation for his latest blog post (or worse, New York Times bestseller) about how alpha male business
professionals should sleep less, work more, and can still have the health they want to achieve on significantly less than 8 hours of sleep per night.
The study’s researchers in this case did not intend for their work to be preached as literal gospel that sleeping less is somehow better for weight loss, but when someone in
fitness (or elsewhere) gets evidence to support their bogus claims, they will use it and abuse it as if it is factual and applicable to all people. To use a real example I will
use the multi level marketing giant, Isagenix and their 30-day cleanse. Isagenix self funded a 4 week long study to show the effectiveness of their 30-day cleanse program.
After 4 weeks, the Isagenix group lost an average of 4
kilograms. Not bad! Those results were then used to justify the effectiveness of their fat burning, body cleansing products. But there were (of course) a few key findings
that the company conveniently didn’t mention. The first was that the Isagenix group consumed about 500 calories less per day during the study, so the lesser caloric intake
alone would result in significant weight loss over time. If it was their products that were responsible for the weight loss shouldn’t they have had the Isagenix group consume
the same amount of calories as they usually would during a regular month? Or at least the study should’ve concluded ‘when people eat less calories, they lose weight’.
Shocking. The other part of the study that wasn’t mentioned was that the control group (who consumed more calories than the Isagenix group) only lost 1 kilogram less than
the Isagenix group. So both groups lost weight, but the Isagenix group lost 1 kilogram more but also consumed fewer calories than the control group. So the actual
conclusion of the study should have been ‘when you eat less, you lose weight, and if you follow the Isagenix 30 day cleanse, you will eat less, therefore you will lose
weight’. The same thing could be accomplished without spending over $400 dollars and while eating food you can actually chew. It should also be noted that there was
never a follow up portion of the study to see if anyone actually kept the weight off after going back to eating food. Scientific abuse at its finest!
More superficial company ‘science’

If you want to see the most long-standing weight loss example of how science can be abused, look no further than the most superficial scientific claims made by supplement
manufacturers. I know that most ‘real’ scientists would not consider these companies ‘scientific’ in nature, but to the average person the distinction between what
someone in a lab coat says on a supplement ad and what someone in a lab coat says inside of an actual legitimate laboratory can not be made. Claims like ‘this protein
powder has been shown to increase protein synthesis by 83%’ or ‘our patented combination of natural herbs has been shown to increase fat burning by 300%’ are not
uncommon advertisements to see in magazines or on supplement labels. And now with the explosion of detox and cleansing products… my god, look out. Here is another
example of the popular weight loss and cleansing product from multi level marketing giant, Isagenix. “This cleansing and fat burning “starter pak” is ideal for individuals
who want to lose weight using a long-term, flexible programme. The system is a groundbreaking path to healthy weight loss and is also designed to help support the body’s
natural detoxification systems”. This is the product description taken right from the company website. Keep in mind that this is a 30-day, low calorie, meal replacement
focused product. In other words this is a product that is said to bring you results in 30 days, and all you need to do is eat way less food, consume way less calories, and
spend over $400 on their ‘scientifically backed’ shake system. There doesn’t seem to be anything ‘long-term’ about a system like that. And as we know from the previous
section it isn’t even proven to be particularly effective. A great example of using abused ‘science’ to prey on the desperate that most of us have to lose weight rapidly and
easily.
Valid research that doesn’t account for real life

Or what about the more legitimate research that tells you sprinting is more effective than walking, squats are more effective than pushups, and free weights are more
effective than machines when it comes to the effect of something like exercise selection? Are these the details that make the difference in our fitness? Have we just been
missing the magic supplement or performing ineffective exercises for fat burning and muscle building all this time? This time let’s explore this problem with a story about
my buddy Jack.
Jack wants to get ‘jacked’

Jack is a growing boy in his mid twenties who is looking to become a ‘man’. He is not particularly athletic but he isn’t a total gym ‘noob’ either. Jack shows up to the gym 3
days per week and does pretty much whatever he feels like on that particular day based on what we is enthusiastic about doing. He supports his gym activities with some
jogging a few days per week and a few casual walks when he has the time. He is active, and he enjoys the time he spends exercising both inside and outside of the gym. It
has been a few months and Jack is feeling pretty good. He’s lost a few pounds of fat and can see some new muscles that weren’t there before. He is beginning to feel quite
inspired to take his fitness to the next level. While this inspiration to take his fitness to the next level is fresh, Jack does what most of us would do. He begins to read about
how to make is workouts more effective for fat loss and muscle gain. After many hours of going back and forth from article to article and research paper to research paper
Jack begins to question everything he has been doing so far in and out of the gym. It turns out that running isn’t that great for you. According to the latest article running
catabolizes (burns) muscle and is bad for your knees. Walking (which Jack does a few days per week) doesn’t burn a lot of calories and is seemingly a waste of time
according to an online guru that jack follows. What’s worse is the isolated exercises that Jack has been doing for the last few months don’t produce nearly the same amount
of muscle contractions as ‘compound movements’ do according to the performance journal article Jack’s friend sent him the other day. Jack has been doing everything all
wrong!
After hours upon hours of Internet investigation Jack changes everything he has been doing for the last few months. He doesn’t jog in the woods or in the streets anymore.
That is a one-way ticket to skinny, not muscular arms and legs. Now he only performs sprint intervals on the treadmill at a precise incline that has been shown to better
activate the ‘teardrop’ muscle in his quadriceps. He has traded his walking lunges and dumbbell presses for barbell back squats and deadlifts. His walks are nothing more
than a waste of time, so why would he waste a few hours each week on this low intensity style of exercise?. Now instead of his weekly walks Jack follows an at home 20
minute fat burning circuit in his basement that is based off of the most recent evidence of energy systems training. Jack is a new man. An evidence obsessed man.
A few months go by and jack looks great. He has put on a few lbs of muscle and people are beginning to take notice. It seems as though his plan to follow the path of the
most effective exercise methods is working for him. Success! Not so fast. While Jack is looking better than he did a month ago he feels terrible both psychologically and
physiologically. His lower back is getting so sore and dysfunctional from all the squatting and deadlifting that he needs to take a few weeks to recover enough to get
another workout in. Now that he doesn’t jog he spends most of his cardio time in the stuffy old gym and he misses getting out into the woods and clearing his head. Walking
was once something that allowed Jack to relax and reconnect with himself after a long, stressful day but he doesn’t have time for long, casual walking anymore since he
implemented his more effective fat burning basement workouts. Jack is looking ‘better’ but he is physically and mentally deteriorating. Now Jack gets so psychologically
burnt out and physically beat up by trying to keep up with his ‘effective approach’ to fitness that he has to take 3 months off from the gym. He loses all the muscle he built,
his back has not been the same as it was before all the heavy compound lifting, and he is worse off than he was before he ever even started exercising casually. If Jack had
just stuck to doing what he enjoyed doing from the start imagine where it would’ve taken him a year from now or even five years from now. Instead, Jack may never step
foot in the gym again.
Now before a bunch of amped up and offended fitness people jump down my throat I am being intentionally hyperbolic here in order to make a clear point. I am aware that
deadlifting and squatting do not inherently cause back problems (YouTube me, bud). I am also not suggesting that working scientists would say that clever labeling of fat
burning and muscle building products is real science. I am merely emphasizing these examples to make an important point. The point is that when we give up the activities
we love doing for what is touted to be the more effective methods of training (or dieting, or supplementation) we often lose ourselves in exchange for taking on the
lifestyle that is deemed to be most ‘effective’ by the evidence based, by the scientism crowd, by the uneducated fitness turds, and by the big companies and their
representatives who use abused, biased science to sell you ineffective supplements and solutions.
We see this all the time in the fitness industry from both legitimate evidence based practitioners and their ‘hack’ followers. How many times have you heard conversations
like these: Person 1- ‘I run 5 days per week’. Professional or bro-scientist 1- ‘Oh, that’s your problem. Steady state cardio has a high demand and gives little return. It is
highly catabolic and will eat away at your muscle’. Or Person 1- ‘I’ve started eating a lot more fruits, vegetables, and whole grains’. Paleo nutritionist 1- ‘Oh, that’s your
problem. You’re probably spiking your insulin with all of those carbohydrates, especially the fruit and the insulin response is preventing you from burning fat’. These
statements are scientifically true(ish), but in reality quite unhelpful when it comes to individual, real life applications of the ‘science’. Would a more appropriate response
not be ‘hey, that’s awesome that you are running 5 days per week and adding in a lot of whole foods to your diet, keep that up and try doing this (up your protein intake,
add in some mobility, increase your healthy fat intake) as well’!
You get the point, so don’t be egotistically argumentative just to push your own professional self-importance. If you sacrifice what you feel inspired to do or if you throw
the healthy actions that actually bring joy to your life into the trash for things that are deemed to be ‘more effective’ at the advice of someone who is not you and does not
know anything about you, you will eventually suffer. If not now, next month. If not next month, next year. What is ‘most effective’ will never get you as far as what you can
fit into your life in the most balanced way.
The answer: perpetual sustainability

Since we are on the topic of ‘balance’ and ‘what fits into your life’ we should move into the importance of perpetual sustainability. Perpetual sustainability is the concept
that any act (in health) that you cannot perform and maintain for the rest of your life is pretty much worthless. We talked about this casually in a few parts of this chapter,
but not with any great depth. Perhaps a better way to put state this idea is to say that ‘anything you do that brings you a certain result must be kept up if you want to
maintain that result’. This concept is as simple as it is accurate. This is why I often speak out against ‘detoxes’, ‘resets’, and all the like that force unnatural and
unsustainable weight loss results in a concentrated period of time by masking forms of heavy caloric restriction as ‘detoxification’. Users lose a significant amount of weight
in a short period of time due to this unsustainable restriction (as well as the loss of water and digestive weight during the ‘cleansing’ period) and this leaves them to believe
that the product is effective, when it is in fact incredibly ineffective in the long-term. Weight loss consumers perform these ‘cleansing’ acts in order to lose weight, so let’s
not pretend these products are about achieving anything other than that.
Let’s say you go on a 2 week long ‘shake’ diet that includes a limited amount of whole foods. After 2 weeks you are down 7 lbs and highly enthusiastic about the result. All
of that ‘cleansing’ and ‘detoxifying’ must’ve removed all of the sludge and fat that was caked to the walls of your digestive system. I hope you can sense (or assume) my
sarcasm against bogus claims like your weight problem being due to ‘mucoid plaque’ build up. If only it was as simple as taking a single, giant, horrific bowel movement in
order to change your body weight. But we are getting off track here. Where were we? Oh yes, you’re down 7 lbs and feeling great. But what is going to happen when you go
back to your previous routine of regular food consumption and a reasonable caloric intake? You’re going to gain that same 7lbs back every time. You lost the 7 lbs because
you restricted calories (so you are going to temporarily burn a bit more fat), lowered your whole food intake (so you are currently carrying less digestive weight), and you
have also likely done some other stuff like increased your water intake and lowered your salt intake (which will lead to less water weight in your body). So you’ve lost 7 lbs
(5 of which is just a weight loss illusion) by a method of dieting which is totally unsustainable and you have no plans to continue with for the rest of your life. What is the
goal here? Because you best be prepared to say ‘hello’ to the return of that 7 lbs in about 1 week. This is where they ‘get ya’ as they say. Your only solution to this issue of
detox relapse is to buy another expensive detox while under the impression that the detox was effective at doing the job you wanted it to do. You do a 14-30 day cleanse.
You lose some weight. The cleanse ends. You gain the weight back. You buy another cleanse. You repeat the cycle, never getting anywhere except into a hyper yo-yo
dieting cycle that never establishes any long-term results. Welcome to the product based weight loss solution market!
When I do speaking engagements I often ask the question ‘by show of hands, how many of you have tried a dietary approach that worked for you’ (in reference to weight
loss results)? 30 people will put their hand up. Then I will follow up with the question ‘keeping in mind that when I say ‘worked for you’ I mean you have kept those results
all the way up until today’. Every single time, zero hands remain in the air. Anything that you cannot do for the rest of your life will not produce long-term results because
results come from daily actions, not from isolated, temporary, unsustainable actions. Healthy actions are unfortunately not ‘scalable’- they must be performed on a regular
basis in order for you to maintain your success. It’s like saying that you can give up brushing your teeth by getting fluoride treatment from your dentist once a year. Sure,
the fluoride treatment might be helpful, but the daily brushing and flossing of your teeth is what keeps up dental hygiene. The rest of your body operates the same way.
Anyone can grind it out for 30 days

This brings us to an important point that I touched on earlier in this chapter, and it is the basis for so many fallacies in the health and fitness world. It is the source of so
many ‘snapshot’ success stories that are used for years to promote the effectiveness of a product or method even though the person in the success story has not maintained
even a small percentage of the success that they attained when the success story was documented. This sort of fleeting ‘social proof’ is one of the reasons why resets,
detoxes, cleanses, and ‘30 day challenges’ are so appealing to people. Anyone can do anything for 30 days, regardless of how torturous the process might be. And within
those 30 days you can see some dramatic results. But those results almost never remain in the long term.
As I mentioned in the beginning of the chapter, but it is worth repeating here, there is an unlimited amount of evidence showing that people (and animals) can tolerate an
extreme amount of discomfort as long as they know what the timeline of that discomfort is, especially when that timeline is a short one. When the timeline is uncertain (or
certainly long) we don’t do so well. Recall the jail analogy I used earlier.
This mentality is why so many of us gravitate toward torturing ourselves for extreme results for a short duration instead of making small commitments each day for an
undetermined period of time before we see results and why those who push the short term solutions make so much money off of the general public without giving any long-
term results in return. Our psychological biases are being taken advantage of (which is a very common and effective industry wide tactic).
This is when the idea of ‘less is more’ comes in. If you want to succeed you need to understand that partaking in extreme and seemingly torturous processes in the hopes of
getting incredible results that will last long after the torture is over is not realistic or physiologically possible. You would be much better served by focusing on a few small
actions that you can take each day that will (over time) accumulate and bring you long term results instead. This is why sometimes it is better to walk than it is to run, it is
better to use machines instead of free weights, and why it is better to implement the small, enjoyable changes into your life and see what they can do for you a year from
now than it is to implement the extreme or ‘most effective’ actions that you enjoy less in the hopes of obtaining quicker results. I attempt to frame this idea in the mind of
my clients by pushing them past their present biases. Being ‘present biased’ is when we give up positive long-term results in exchange for short term gambles (or more
typically, short term stimulation). When you eat 9 cookies even though cookie consumption is not helping your 6-month weight loss goal, you are acting on your present
bias. When you give up on small, effective, routine exercise and dietary interventions for the lemon and cayenne water cleanse, you are acting on a ‘cousin’ of your present
bias as well. When a client of mine is about to quit their attempt to take back control of their health (which is the easy, present bias thing to do) I say to them ‘think about
yourself a year from now looking back at this moment. Next year you can either look back at this moment and say ‘I shouldn’t have quit. I can only imagine where I would
be right now if I kept up my small, daily healthy habits’ or you can look back and say ‘I’m so glad I kept this up. I’m down 40 lbs and I couldn’t be happier’. I do this in
attempt to frame their mind in a way that allows them to get past their present bias and bring future feelings to the ‘here and now’. We must bypass our yearning for
immediate results and realize that if, let’s say, 3 years ago we decided to commit to small actions each day regardless of the immediate outcome, we would be completely
different versions of ourselves right now. If 3 years ago you said to yourself ‘I am going to do what I can, when I can, and aim to take 1 to 2 daily actions that I can happily
perform in order to better my life, regardless of what the scale says’. Today, you would be so successful that you would not even be reading this book. So who are you going
to be 3 years after reading this book? That all depends on which mindset you choose.
Do what you love

There is a lot going on in this chapter, but what I am hoping you take away from it is the encouragement to do what you love instead of doing what someone convinces you
is more effective than what you love to do. I want you to do the small, seemingly insignificant daily actions you value instead of getting sucked into the quick fix products
and methods that promise results that never actually stick in the long term. You must beat your present bias and your desire to see health as something that can be
achieved in a rapid time frame. It can’t. And your desire to be the person you want to be in 30 days doesn’t change the reality that it is impossible to achieve sustainable
health outcomes in the short term, so you might as well look at the long term and fill your days with small healthy actions that bring joy and satisfaction to your life. That is
what being autotelic is really about. You find the actions that can contribute to your goals that also contribute to your overall wellbeing, both physically and
psychologically. As you build on these daily autotelic habits over time, you become successful without even realizing that it has been happening before your eyes. In other
words if you implement the daily healthy actions that you would be happy to keep up even if they never lead to single pound lost on the scale, that is when the scale begins
to move. Permanently. Much like Mr. Gates and Ms. Adele would be fiddling with computers and belting out ballads even if it never earned them a penny, you must learn to
take care of your body through ways that bring you joy, not just results (although both would be ideal).
In an industry of confusion and information overload (the worst kind of ‘dynamic’) it is easy to second guess ourselves, but if you want to be healthy until you’re old and
gray you must get in touch with yourself, and the only way to do that is to practice joyful, valuable routine actions while working on your intuition. When wondering what is
better for you- Yoga or CrossFit- the answer should not be outsourced. It should be internal. The question should be ‘what do I enjoy more, yoga, or CrossFit’? If the answer
is ‘yoga’, yoga is more effective. If the answer is ‘CrossFit’, CrossFit is more effective. You need to use this system of internal questioning for every health decision you
make, from diet, to exercise, to lifestyle.
If you fill your days with healthy choices that you would continue making regardless of the result you will attain a result that you would never have otherwise accomplished.
Reflection #1
Can you think of an activity you take part in that you do just for the joy of ‘doing’? An activity where hours seem to pass without you having a concept of how much time
has actually gone by?
Reflection #2
Are there any health related activities that can make you feel this way? Perhaps jogging with your headphones in, going for long nature walks, or playing a recreational
activity with your friends? Doing more of these activities is the key to better health outcomes and adherence.
Reflection #3
What healthy actions are you taking each day that are a struggle for you? What actions are you taking while ‘grinding your teeth and getting through it’ while not getting
any joy or satisfaction out of the action? You need to remove these actions from your life or find a way to get satisfaction out of them or they will never ‘stick’.
Chapter 7
The Role of Lifestyle
In the beginning of this book I emphasized how being diet and exercise focused without first establishing (and dealing with) your underlying psychological drivers was
‘putting the cart before the horse’. That is to say that if you make an attempt to thrive in your diet and exercise plan without first setting the groundwork to address the
parts of your evolutionary biology and trauma inspired defense systems you will never actually stick to your diet and exercise efforts in the long-term. Success becomes
impossible, not inevitable. Now that you understand the underlying psychological matters that push you into your most damaging unhealthy coping behaviours you can begin
to allow your diet and exercise efforts to work for you. But even though you will begin to see a level of success that you never would have achieved had you not addressed
your underlying barriers, there is still a lot you can do outside of diet and exercise that will help make it easier for you to make good decisions, stick to the changes you
make, and maximize your results. This is where the role of lifestyle comes in.
In this book we are going to consider ‘lifestyle’ to be how we sleep, how we manage stress, and how we become ‘truly active’ individuals. Don’t worry if these three areas
of your life are a bit unfamiliar to you (in terms of how they connect to your weight loss success). Each of these lifestyle aspects will be well defined and explained as we go
through this chapter. It is typical for us to obsess over our diet and exercise techniques without considering the impact that lifestyle management has (both directly and
indirectly) on our waistlines. I can tell you that without a full lifestyle overhaul you won’t get the results from your diet and exercise efforts that you otherwise could have.
Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that your results cannot be maximized and they will be more difficult to sustain without a good lifestyle management. Coincidentally,
creating a stronger and more beneficial lifestyle will also support your ability to breakdown the main barriers that were the focus of the first portion of this book. There’s
that synergy again! It is also worth pointing out that when your lifestyle is on point, life is just easier to deal with. Life is just plain more enjoyable. When stress is managed
well, when sleep quality and duration is high, and when you are more likely to go for a walk than melt into the couch, your entire day to day improves.
Most of us know that we should get more sleep, stress less, and not be so lazy, but that doesn’t inspire us to take action. At least not in the same way we are inspired to
take action in diet and exercise when we can’t do up the button of our pants anymore. I believe this is for a few understandable reasons. The first is that most of us don’t
actually understand the impact that high stress, poor sleep, and a lack of casual activity on our health. We know that it’s not great to get 5 hours of broken sleep at night,
but we can’t directly connect lack of sleep to being overweight, so sleep interventions take a ‘back seat’ to diet and exercise centricity. The second reason why we don’t
connect with our lifestyle is because we aren’t sure how to correct our lifestyle based problems. Diet and exercise (while sometimes confusing and ineffective) are very
simple concepts for us to apply. ‘If I want to change my diet, I eat these foods and avoid these foods. If I want to improve my exercise efforts I do these exercises this many
days per week’. We ‘get it’ when it comes to diet and exercise. We don’t ‘get it’ when it comes to lifestyle. Our disconnection between the importance of lifestyle factors
and how they play a key role in our waistline combined with a lack of knowledge in how to actually better these areas of our life makes lifestyle an easy contributor to
sweep under the rug and forget about.
It is my goal in this chapter for you to see lifestyle efforts in the same light of impact and importance that you see your diet and exercise efforts, and to learn how to make
equal contributions to your sleep, stress, and causal activity routine(s) as you do to your diet and exercise routine. Working on all of these areas synergistically will increase
your chances of success fivefold, and this section is just as important to apply as any of the others in this book.
*Note: the negative effects of not getting enough sleep and facing too much unmanaged stress can be very similar and there is lots of crossover between the two.
Meaning that sleep and stress can contribute to many of the same psychological and physiological issues we will outline here. I have separated the effects of these
two factors for the sake of simplification and better categorization, but the negative effects of one can also be created or worsened by the other. Sleep and stress
work more like a team rather than in isolation. I have categorized the negative effects of each based off of which malady makes the effect you experience more
prominent.
The Effects of Poor Sleep Quality

Before we begin talking about how poor sleeping patterns can derail our progress it is important to talk about how most of us sleep. It’s hard to believe but you may not
even know that you have a sleep problem, or worse, you might believe your sleep issues are ‘normal’ due to the normalization of poor sleep in our toxic culture. The 3 main
sleep problems I regularly see in my clients are the following. (Keep in mind you could suffer one or all of these sleep issues)
We stay up too late: Most of us have the habit of staying up too late, and we stay up late for no good reason. Believe it or not this has a lot to do with a lack of life
satisfaction and day-to-day purposelessness. When we don’t feel like we are generally accomplished or have not accomplished very much in our day we tend to extend our
waking hours in order to feel like we’ve gotten more out of our day. We are extending our waking time because to go to bed would be to end your day without a certain
feeling of satisfaction. The problem is that we don’t fill our ‘accomplishment’ void with productivity. We fill it with unhealthy stimulation instead that keeps us up to all
hours of the night. When you have a job that doesn’t bring your purposeful happiness or you’re lacking ‘hobbies’ outside of work that can make your day to day life highly
fulfilling you tend to avoid sleeping as to sleep is to end your day without the much yearned for feeling of joy and/or accomplishment. You know when you have had the
perfect day? Like when you’re on vacation and you pack your entire day with exploring, walking, seeing sites, and experiencing new things in a new city or country? Under
these circumstances you can easily go to bed at 8:30pm and not think twice. But when you’re back at home after a long day at work and you haven’t done too much of
anything that day, you end up pushing your bedtime into the A.M. hours, struggling to go to bed at a reasonable hour. This is a simple example of the factors and mindset
that allow us to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, as well as the factors and mindset that make it impossible to go to bed nice and early.
We stress at night: The second reason we stay up too late is because we spend the evening thinking about all of life’s worries. When our brains are not occupied by our
daytime tasks we are left with nothing but the sound of our own minds, and that noise can be difficult to listen to sometimes. This is typically why worry comes in the
evening. When our mind is occupied by the stimulation of daily tasks (like work, school, being at home with the kids etc) our mind doesn’t have room for worry. When it is
the end of the day, however, and our mind is idle our occupied only by mindless technological crutches and couch cushions, it is easy to leave our minds to their own
turmoil. A productively idle but negatively active brain (activated only by things like T.V., social media, and general worry) is the enemy of a reasonable bedtime.
We have an overall lack of sleep: The first sleep pattern discussed (staying up too late) can play a role in an overall lack of sleep. In fact, it almost always does, but for
some of you an early bedtime might not immediately qualify you for getting enough sleep. Regardless of your bedtime you might still not be sleeping long enough. For this
reason I have separated the two issues just in case you think going to bed early automatically results in an adequate amount of sleep. It helps, no doubt, but you may still
be suffering even with a reasonable bedtime. Most people require a minimum of 7 hours of sleep and others up to 10 hours per night. Most of us need an amount of sleep
that falls somewhere in between and I believe that if you are falling in between 8-9 hours per night, you’re likely doing fine. Sadly, however, most of us are statistically
sleeping between 5-6 hours per night, which is definitely not enough. For most of us, anyhow. Whether you go to bed too late, wake up too early, or just ‘burn the candle at
both ends’ because you feel that is what works for your personality and lifestyle, you are suffering. Every night that you do not get enough sleep to optimally recover (in
both psychological and physiological measures and drains from your day) you are preventing your body from thriving the next day.
*for the sake of clarity staying up too late is it’s own issue. You can stay up too late, still get 8 hours of sleep, and suffer because of your late, unnatural bedtime.
Not getting enough sleep can still happen even with an earlier bedtime. This is why each sleep factor gets its own category.
We have broken sleep patterns: Then there are those of us who fall asleep as soon as our heads hit the pillow, but then spend most of the night waking and dozing off. I
was one of these poor bastards for countless years in early adulthood. We might be in bed for 10 hours but we only end of sleeping for half of that time. This is common in
people with unresolved personal issues and unresolved daily concerns as well as people with metabolic and hormonal imbalances that leave them ‘fired up’ when they are
supposed to be calm and asleep. Sometimes the inability to stay asleep can be due to something as simple as a vitamin and mineral deficiency (like a calcium and/or
magnesium deficiency, for instance) that prevents the muscular tissues in our body from properly relaxing at night, thus keeping us awake. If we only measure the time
difference between when we go to bed and when we wake up, we might think we are doing ok. ‘I got to bed at 11pm, and I wake at 7am. Thus I get 8 hours of sleep per
night’. But if we were to measure the amount of time we are actually sleeping over that 8 hours, we would see that we are well short of our basic sleep and regeneration
needs.
There might be other causes and factors that are playing a role in your overall lack of sleep quality, but the factors I have mentioned thus far are the main ones I see, the
factors that are most likely to be affecting you, and they are also the easiest issues to correct, so we will keep our focus on those listed thus far. The solution(s) to your
sleep issues is on its way, but for now we need to talk about the impact that lack of sleep is having on us at a base physiological level in order to hammer home the
importance of a sleep intervention. So what is the impact of poor sleep quality that comes via the factors we have mentioned so far? The direct physiological effects might
surprise you.
What low sleep quality is doing to your biology
*just a few of the direct negative effects of poor sleep and stress management
The effects of Leptin and Ghrelin: Leptin and ghrelin seem to be the key to regulating appetite, which consequently influences the amount of body fat we store (or burn).
Both leptin and ghrelin are peripheral in mechanism, but are centralized in our brain. I.e. we secrete them throughout various parts of the body but the main effects
happen in our brain. Leptin is secreted primarily in fat cells, as well as the stomach, heart and skeletal muscle, and leptin plays a key role in decreasing our hunger signals.
Ghrelin is secreted primarily in the lining of the stomach and in turn, increases hunger. Leptin and ghrelin go back and forth throughout the day, telling us when it is time to
eat, when it is time to stop eating, and they control how ravenous our hunger and cravings might be. Both hormones respond to how much we are (or are not) eating. Leptin
usually also correlates to fat mass in the sense that the more body fat you have, the more leptin you produce, and the less ravenous your hunger is.
Leptin in sleep: When we aren’t getting enough quality sleep we have a reduction in the signaling of the hormone, leptin. Since leptin is responsible for the signaling of
satiety, this is an important interaction. This means that Leptin tells your brain that you don’t need to eat and your body fat stores are adequate. It is also partially
responsible (in a more ‘roundabout way’) for fat loss via the same signaling. So if you are sleeping poorly and your leptin signaling is affected, you are more likely to
overeat, and thus, gain weight.
Ghrelin in sleep: When you get a rumbling in your stomach and your desire to eat increases, that is coming from your hormone, ghrelin. When you are under slept your
ghrelin increases, which in turn increases your desire to eat more food. There’s a good chance you’ve noticed that the less you are sleeping, and the more exhausted you
are, the more likely you are to turn to food. Leptin and ghrelin both have their role in that process
Lowered Glucose Tolerance: Lack of sleep also leads to lowered glucose tolerance. This means when sugars (carbohydrates) break down into glucose, glucose enters the
bloodstream but has a difficult time getting shuttled into the tissues where it is supposed to end up. This causes a rise in our insulin levels through a process or affliction
called insulin resistance. A healthy, well-slept individual will use a small amount of insulin to shuttle glucose (sugar) out of the blood stream and into places like muscle
tissue, the liver, and sometimes for storage. When glucose tolerance is low, and thus insulin resistance is high, you produce far more insulin in order to do the same job that
a small amount of insulin would do in a healthier individual. Chronically high insulin levels can be responsible for a lot of nasty stuff, but for the sake of your weight loss
interests let’s just say that when insulin is in circulation fat burning capability is turned off, so too much insulin hinders your ability to use stored fat for energy. This is
known as the insulin switch. When insulin is on, fat burning is off. When insulin is off, fat burning capabilities are back on. In healthy person insulin secretion is very helpful
for performance, muscle growth, recovery, and not dying from glucose toxicity. But in an unhealthy, under slept individual the overproduction of insulin becomes
maladaptive and often harmful. There are many more negative effects that come from being under slept, but the three direct physiological effects I listed above are the
ones that would likely be most concerning to you and your goal of a slimmer waist and lower body fat composition.
There are also many indirect effects from poor sleep that contribute to negative health outcomes and a larger waistline, and we will cover those in a little bit. For now we
are going to take a deeper look at stress and the direct effects of stress. After we have covered that section I will conclude with the indirect effects of both sleep and stress
as well- for as the indirect effects of the two lifestyle factors can be just as harmful (if not more so) than the direct physiological ones we are currently discussing.
The Effects of Poor Stress Management

At this point in the book you should be well aware of how unnatural amounts of modern stress (which we are individually sensitive to due to our own personal adverse life
events) are hurting our health. Throughout the book we have discussed how stress leads to the drive to cope and self medicate, and how this coping need leads to our most
unhealthy and self-harming behaviours- but we haven’t really discussed how stress affects us on a more biological level. That is what we will do in this section. First, let’s
recall how stress accumulates in our lives with an example of what most of our day-to-day reality might look like.
You begin your day by waking up a little late, perhaps after a few snooze button pushes because of the terrible sleep you had the night before. You had a late night of
mindless T.V. watching in order to distract your brain from the perils of the day, and now you are paying for it with dark bags under your eyes and a groggy, lethargic haze.
The speed at which you jump to your alarm clock is already giving you a rush of cortisol to prepare your mind and body for what is sure to be a rushed morning. You are
pressed for time and stressing about being late for work, and this is only five minutes into your day. You cram a bagel into your mouth as you run out the door and hope that
traffic is smooth and clear while you begin your commute to the office. Along your drive you encounter many inconsiderate commuters who seem like they exist only to
prevent you from getting to work on time. Since they are stressed and rushed in their own lives they feel compelled to cut you off, drive to the front of closed construction
lanes to get ahead of you, and perform a variety of other questionable maneuvers around you that lead to you picturing yourself in a monster truck and crushing their
vehicles like light bulbs. You can dream, can’t you? You get to work only to find out that the proposal you worked on for 6 months got rejected and your nemesis, Rhonda
down the hall (who is notoriously lazy and inept) got the ‘nod’ instead. You can’t understand how someone so obviously incompetent could create a better marketing plan
than you. You spend the rest of the long day at work sitting at a desk and staring at a computer with few breaks before making your way back home through rush hour
traffic- all while suffering the same mental anguish that you did during the morning drive. By the time you get home you are drained, defeated, and left with an energy
level that allows you to do nothing more then sit on the couch and contemplate your lack of finances, dying friendships, and the fact that you’ve been alone for a year with
no real romantic prospects on the horizon. Who even has the energy to date the days?
Stressed? That is an understatement.
Feel free to replace this grim scenario with that of the stay at home parent covered in vomit, chasing around a toddler who pulls every book off of the shelf and every pan
out of the cupboard while you scurry behind him trying to keep your disastrous house clean enough to prevent you from spiraling into a deep depression. Or the student who
is feeling so much financial, parental, and scholastic pressure to succeed that they need to go speak to a counselor 2 days per week just to prevent him or her from jumping
off of a rooftop. It sounds very ‘doom and gloom’ but this is the reality of modern life for most people. The ‘rat race’ if you will. The point I am making is that stress is
everywhere and we don’t tend to manage it very well. In fact (as noted earlier in the book) we are not designed to have the necessary equipment to deal with modern
stress. So when we look at the purely biological impacts of this accumulated stress you can understand how critical it is that you exercise stress management just like you
exercise your biceps. Chances are, however, that you are not managing stress well or even focusing on stress management because you likely don’t understand the true
impact of stress on your mind and body. So what are the effects of stress?
Stress and rising Cortisol: When we face stress we increase our production of cortisol. This was (and in some cases still is) part of a helpful process to get us ready for
danger. If someone was chasing you with a knife or if a bear was on your tail you’d want your cortisol to spike ASAP in order to aid in your fight or flight mechanism. But in
today’s life when we face stress it is rarely due to physical danger and almost always due to psychological mismatch based dangers that are non threatening but make us
feel as if we are being threatened. Examples would be common stuff like public speaking, having a verbal disagreement, or seeing an almost empty bank account. Without
getting too technical let’s just say that chronically elevated levels of cortisol is connected to many diseases and is also tightly related to other hormonal expressions (like
insulin for instance) that can result in a bigger waistline.
Increased blood sugar and insulin production: When we are stressed we release blood sugar into the bloodstream (which cortisol is in part responsible for). This happens in
order to give us adequate energy to fight or flee in the face of acute danger. But when we aren’t actually fighting anything or fleeing from anyone we end up with a
needless, maladaptive increase in circulating blood sugar. As you also now know when blood sugar rises we need to produce insulin in order to get that sugar out of the
blood, and when insulin is circulating our fat burning capabilities shut down. If this process happened once or twice a day for 5 minutes it wouldn’t be a big deal, but since
most of us are chronically stressed out this process of rising blood sugar (and the resulting insulin production) becomes a more significant health problem.
Digestive upset and lowered immunity: stress also has significant negative effects on our gut health and immune function. This is mostly due to the previously mentioned
hormonal cascades that come when we are stressed, and as a result these peripheral functions (digestion and immunity) suffer. When you are stressed and activating the
fight or flight system, digestion shuts down. Who has time to digest an apple while being chased by a dinosaur? We need that digestive blood to escape! When we are
constantly diverting blood from our gut to prepare us for pretend threats, our digestive system cannot adequately perform its tasks. This means that we will struggle to
assimilate nutrients from our food and properly digest what we have eaten. The overproduction in hormones like cortisol will also eventually suppress our normal
inflammatory and immune responses leading to dysfunction in these areas, which can reach a complexity that we don’t need to cover in this book. Let’s just say that when
you are more likely to be sick and tired and less likely to be recovered and rested, you are also far less likely to be thriving in your diet and exercise habits.
So those are the most important direct effects of poor sleep and stress management, and hopefully the listed physiological ailments are enough to inspire you to take sleep
and stress management more seriously. But just in case they weren’t, let’s look at the indirect effects as well.
The Indirect Effects of Poor Sleep and Stress Management

First let me define what I mean by indirect effects. Direct effects happen without and ‘middle man’. I.e. when you face stress or when your sleep quality is suffering there
is stuff that just automatically happens. Those are the direct effects of poor lifestyle management. Then there is the stuff that poor lifestyle management makes us more
likely to do to ourselves. These are the indirect effects of poor lifestyle management and they are listed below.
Poor decision making
When you are overstressed and under slept you have very little room for healthy decision-making. This is a big problem because for most of us making changes to our health
requires significant behavioural change, and behavioural change takes a lot of mental strength and discipline. Without having the mental capacity to make good decisions
you end up eating at the drive thru and skipping the gym much more often than you otherwise would have if you were well slept and not so stressed out. When we are
happy, full of energy, and ready to take on the world we can make good decisions in the face of the harmful, tempting ones. But when we are stressed, tired, and barely
have enough energy to sit upright, good decision making takes a back seat to our unhealthy autopilot setting.
Zero energy
When you are stressed and tired it goes without saying that your energy levels will be very low. When your energy levels are low you are more likely to be unproductive in
your downtime, and when you’re unproductive in your downtime you are more likely to succumb to cravings and late night eating. When 3-4 hours of your night is spent
lounging around and distracting yourself with technology, food is going to play a supporting role. When you are not stimulated, productive, or active, you are likely to be
stuck within the cycle of your most unhealthy behaviours. And when you only have enough energy to press the T.V. clicker, craving and snacking habits will come on strong.
High calorie cravings
Lastly, when you are struggling with sleep and stress lifestyle factors your brain is more likely to crave things like glucose, fat, and salt- and you are more likely to be
comforted by and driven toward high energy foods. Your brain uses up about 25% of the glucose in your body on any given day for smooth operation, and when you are
particularly overwhelmed with life your brain will ask you to max out that volume. This turns into increased cravings for sweet, salty, fatty, high-energy foods. So you are
not only more likely to make poor decisions and lack the energy to do the stimulating activities that can keep you away from the cookie jar, but your brain is also begging
you for high energy foods in order to soothe its own issues of operation. What chance do you really have?
The Sleep and Stress Cycle

In case my examples of the direct and indirect effects of poor sleep and stress management weren’t enough to convince you of their importance, I should also touch on how
the relationship between sleep and stress is often an intimate one that can create an increasingly negative feedback loop. When we are suffering in one area of sleep or
stress management we are more likely to suffer in the other. This creates a perpetual cycle of worsening symptoms in both areas of sleep and stress (assuming you aren’t
actively doing something to increase the effectiveness of your sleep and stress management). Think about it: when you have a bad sleep you are more susceptible
(sensitive) to the stress you face that day. You’re tired, you’re irritable, and you don’t have the energy or attitude required to face even some of the most basic adversities
that you are sure to run into throughout your day. As your day brings you stressful moments you become increasingly sensitive to them with each of the following stresses
that accumulate. Since you began your day tired and cranky, smaller stresses can affect you just as much as a large stressor would on a day when you are well slept, and
large stressors become insurmountable on days when you are tired and low on mental energy. When you finally get home and have the opportunity to decompress, these
mounting stresses prevent you from proper decompression. This leads to a late night due to a mind plagued by anxiety, frustration, and anger- and the accumulated stresses
can even cause hormonal disruptions that break up your sleep cycles. These stress induced late nights and broken sleep patterns lead to lower sleep quality, and lower sleep
quality leads to increased sensitivity to stress the next day. When the morning comes you are starting off with a greater sensitivity to stress than even the day before, and
by the end of the day you won’t be in a position to properly decompress and recover with proper sleep quality and duration. Each day you are running a race with only one
leg and trying to catch up to the pack. It can be a vicious reality to deal with.
When Good Stress Becomes Bad Stress
The last thing I want to note before moving into the last factor of the lifestyle management trio is how ‘good stress’ can become ‘bad stress’ when our lifestyle is not well
managed. We have all come to know things like exercise to be ‘good stresses’. We overload the body with some sort of physical stimulus (lifting a weight for example) that
our body has to struggle to lift. The stress of lifting forces the body to respond by increasing the amount of muscle fibers that move the weight, and in the process these
fibers get ‘damaged’. In order to make us more efficient at moving these weights in the future our body adapts to that stress by increasing the size (or recruitment) of our
muscle fibers when repairing the ‘damage’ and this is how we build strength and new muscle. In a healthy individual this is a very positive process and what we know as
‘good stress’. But is this idea of ‘good stress’ still true when we are under slept and overstressed? While there is definitely ‘good stress’ that we can place on the body, it is
still seen as a contributor to our overall accumulation of stress. When our system is overwhelmed with bad stress more stress, even the ‘good stress’ just equals more
overall stress load on the mind and body. This can make activities like intense exercise become a negative stimulus on the body. Think of your capacity to deal with stress
as a bucket, and the overflowing of that bucket as being a negative health outcome due to stress overload. If your bucket is ¼ full of bad stress you have lots of room for
good stresses that give you a positive health response without needing to worry about an overflow of total stress. But, if you have a bucket that is ¾ full of bad stress even a
few drops of good stress is eventually going to cause the bucket to overflow- at which point the good to bad stress ratio doesn’t matter. You are facing too much overall
stress. So the last negative effect of the poor sleep and stress management complex is that the cycle and accumulation of bad stress prevents us from benefiting from the
good stress in our lives and can make something as useful as exercise maladaptive. This is why those who try to out exercise and under eat a weight problem often suffer
dramatic rebounds and even serious health consequences. Eating too little is a stress on the body. Over-exercising is also a stress on the body. Add in your poorly managed
life stress and your increased sensitivity to stress due to poor sleep quality and your body will revolt or shut down.
Sleep and stress are key lifestyle factors that must be addressed in order to create long-term sustainable results in your health, and daily sleep and stress exercises should
be added into your long-term weight loss plan just like your diet and exercise interventions. Approaching all of these health factors in a synergistic way will increase your
rate of success and duration of success exponentially beyond what a single factor could accomplish on its own. Now that we have looked at the complex lifestyle
management factors in great depth, let’s move onto the final and more simplified lifestyle management factor: becoming a truly active human being.
Being a Truly Active Person

Many of us believe that we are ‘active’ because we go to the gym 3-4 days per week. We call ourselves active individuals because for 3-4 out of the 168 hours of our week
we bust our butts with intense activity. I’m not trying to minimize your efforts and I think it is great that you are getting to the gym. Intense exercise has many benefits
that should not be understated or undermined. 3- 4 hours of intense, formal exercise each week is no doubt affecting your body in a positive way. But, going to the gym a
few hours per week (out of almost 170) does not make you ‘active’ any more than eating 1-2 healthy meals per week (out of 20-30) makes you a healthy eater. If your
cousin Barbara ate fast food 20 times per week but had 5- 10 home cooked meals as well, would you say that she was a ‘healthy eater’? Not likely. We tend to remember
the few times we make it to the gym to get a sweat on while forgetting about the 40+ hours we spent sitting at a desk or on the couch doing not much of anything- except
perhaps stuffing our faces. If you want to succeed in your transformation process you must begin filling your day with meaningful activity in place of your typical
unproductive and sedentary habits. I am not saying you need to be extreme about it and performing 12 intense gym workouts each week or that downtime needs to be
absent from your life, but there are little things you can start doing right now that will give you high returns with little intensity or effort. There are many activities you can
do that are simple, easy, and free that will contribute just as much or more to your daily energy expenditure and overall health then formal exercise alone. I will break
down these active contributors below.
The Power of N.E.A.T
N.E.A.T. (or non exercise activity thermogenesis) is the activities you do that you wouldn’t consider traditional or formally planned exercise. Examples of NEAT are fidgeting
(like bouncing your leg while sitting at the desk), frequently getting up from your seated position to stretch or move around, and taking the stairs instead of the escalator.
Most of us ‘scoff’ at these forms of energy expenditure because we see them as insignificant, but those of us who have high daily NEAT scores will actually burn more
calories through NEAT than through our formal exercise at the gym (see chart above). The effects of NEAT are significant. Not to mention the fact that NEAT opportunities
come up all day, every day, without the need for rest, recovery, planning, or slotting time for them into our schedule. This is in contrast to activities like going to the gym
or taking part in more formal types of exercise that require specific time dedication and periods of recovery. If you begin to be aware of these NEAT opportunities (like not
fighting for the closest parking spot when you go to the grocery store) you could accumulate 300-500 extra calories expended per day- so don’t turn your back on NEAT.
These considerations are (or should be) a key part of your total daily health plan.
Active Rest
Active rest is a form of planned exercise that you do more for pure joy or recovery than you do for burning muscles and lungs (like formal gym exercise). Going for a long
walk, doing some light Yoga or mobility in your basement or in the backyard, or even more abstract forms of light exercise like Tai Chi would all be considered forms of
active rest. Much like NEAT, active rest does not require a specific appointment, place, or period of recovery in order for you to perform it- so you can do it anywhere,
anytime, and not need to worry about how it affects your more official exercise sessions. Think about it, if you are at home and about to turn on the T.V., you could always
go outside for a 30-minute walk instead. This is what active rest is all about. Much like NEAT active rest has a significant impact on your overall caloric expenditure. For
instance a 200 lb 40 year old female can burn around 300 calories just from an hour of walking. That doesn’t even take into account the psychological benefits of fresh air,
nature, and time to think! It doesn’t really matter what you do, just as long as you aim to do some form of active rest each day, or as often as you can be inspired to do it.
Active rest and the ‘downtime dilemma’
The ‘downtime dilemma’ is a place where many of us struggle and end up ‘undoing’ most of the results we gain from healthy decision making and healthy activities. A
common example of the downtime dilemma is when you get home from work or school, dinner is over, and all you want to do is sit down and relax. For most of us this time
takes place between the hours of 6pm-12am (give or take a few hours). During this time of day we watch TV, scroll through our smartphones, or cruise social networking on
our laptop. If we’re being honest (present company included), most of us are doing at least two of the three at once in a very mindless, ‘zombie like’ way. The ‘downtime
dilemma’ happens during this part of our day and the result is that we are most likely to give into unconscious cravings during this window of time. Late night snacking,
overeating, laziness, and many of our other big unhealthy behaviours are typically driven by the uncomfortable boredom mechanism or the anxious emotions that arise
while our mind is idling during these unstimulating activities. The hours we spend mindlessly ‘relaxing’ leaves our mind to dictate what we need should do to become
stimulated, and when looking for stimulation our brain asks for food, sloth, and technological distraction- as you already know. Most of us would probably agree that this is
the time of day where we spend the most time taking part in uncontrolled and unhealthy actions.
Active rest can be a great fix for this issue. While getting up off the couch can sometimes feel like more effort than it is worth, going for a short walk, doing some light
stretching, getting in our meditation and breathing exercises, or shifting to any other lightly stimulating activity will get us away from our worst habits and save us from
ourselves, so to speak. Not only that but light, productive stimulation energizes us more than melting into the couch does, and considering we use the need to ‘decompress
and reenergize’ as our excuse to watching Netflix all night long, it is helpful to understand that T.V. watching is actually energy sucking while active rest is energy creating.
Plus, when we further contribute to our health (rather than hurt it with uncontrollable snacking) we feel better about ourselves and our mood improves. This improvement
in mood makes it easier to sleep at night and reduces our feelings of stress and anxiety before bedtime, and you know how valuable that can be after reading the earlier
sections of this chapter. It is all connected. The point I am making here is that active rest isn’t just a contributor to caloric expenditure, it is also an indirect contributor to
snacking control, stress reduction, and improved sleep quality. Becoming a truly active person can change your health and body more than all the time you spend torturing
yourself in the gym.
I hope I have successfully convinced you that sleep, stress, and being a truly active individual contribute to your overall success as much as (if not more than) our often
obsessive diet and exercise efforts. Putting work into this area of your health plan will give you returns beyond what you would ever picture in your mind. I also hope I have
convinced you that synergy in all of the factors mentioned (diet, exercise, sleep, stress, activity, preparedness, habits, behaviours, and root issues) is the key to your
health- and every aspect of your well-being that has been mentioned in this book is intimately interconnected. Remember that sleep affects stress, stress affects sleep,
sleep and stress affect your sensitivity and coping needs, all of these affect your ability to make good food decisions and so on. You are much better off putting a little bit
of effort into every area mentioned in this book over time than you are obsessing over any single aspect (like diet and/or exercise) in extreme ways like we usually do.
Synergy is the key to maximal success in health, and if you approach each factor in this chapter like you would in your diet and exercise efforts you will begin to see where
real long-term results come from.
Reflection #1
Rate the quality of your sleep on a scale of 1-10
1= Sleep? What’s that?
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
10= I am like a baby when it comes to my ability to fall and to stay asleep
Reflection #2
Rate your level of stress on a scale of 1-10
1= my life is an overwhelming perpetuation of stress that is ruining my life
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
10= I rarely experience a stressful moment, and when I do it just rolls off of my back
Reflection #3
How active are you outside of your scheduled gym activity? Do you take walk breaks while sitting at your desk? Do you do any forms of active rest at night? If you had to
guess, how many hours do you spend moving each week not including formal exercise?
Out of your 112 waking hours each week (hours of your week not including 8 hours of daily sleep):
Hours I spend ‘moving’ each week ___________________
Hours I spend being immobile each week ______________
Reflection #4
Can you think of unhealthy choices you seem to make when you are stressed out and/or under slept? Where do you find yourself slipping up when you just don’t have your
lifestyle together? An example would be picking up a pizza on the way home instead of making a meal when you are exhausted after a long day at work, or skipping the gym
at lunchtime because you only got 4 hours of sleep the night before and can’t even think about doing anything active. Write them into your notepad.
Chapter 8
Self Analysis and Brain Training
At this point in the book it is safe to assume that you understand the value of your mindset as it pertains to your health and how mindset relates to direct physiological
improvements, including your ability to lose weight. If you don’t understand that, please go back and read the book over again, and this time, pay more attention. In this
chapter I am going to teach you the most effective techniques that you can use to train your brain just like you would train your body. The aim of this brain training is to
increase the strength and resilience of your mind in order to ensure that you are setting yourself up for long-term success. The strategies discussed in this chapter can be
used to help manage your stress, control cravings, commit to going to the gym and increase the strength of any other action based activity that is required for your ultimate
success. The techniques in this chapter will also help you to make specific improvements to your health plan in areas that you have struggled in the past. The strategies in
this chapter will improve your ability to make meaningful behavioural changes- and behavioural change (as we know) is the key to accumulating the necessary daily positive
choices that lead to substantial long-term results- so get out your notepad!
The importance of objectification

Whether we are dealing with a stressful situation, bogged down in an overwhelming and paralyzing emotion, or mindlessly eating sweet and salty snacks in front of the
television there is a common (and harmful) trend that is happening across all of these various forms of suffering and self harm. We are internalizing and ignoring the reality
of our surroundings. We are letting the stress, the emotion, or the unhealthy coping take hold and ‘live within us’. Take a stressful situation, for instance. You are driving
home after a long day at work and out of nowhere a car comes flying up your tail in an attempt to encourage you to ‘move it along’ a bit more quickly. You don’t succumb
to such intimidation tactics and continue to drive at the speed of your choosing. So the driver peels around you as quickly as she can, rolls down her window, and screams
‘FUCK YOU’ in your general direction as she blows by and flies down the road. How are you most likely to react to this situation? Chances are your face will get red and hot.
Your pulse will increase and you will begin to picture a scenario in which this person skids out of control and ends up in a ditch at which time you can slowly drive by and
casually wave. What about 2 hours after the incident? There’s a pretty good chance that this displeasing interaction will continue to replay in your mind over and over
again- so much so that you might even be thinking about this horrible human being the next day. At this point the giving of the finger and the yelling of ‘fuck you’ in the
most abusive way is the least that this person has done to you. Since the acute incident she has now taken up real estate in your mind, following you everywhere you go.
Taunting you. Spiking your cortisol and increasing your chronic stress long after the incident concluded. This is what would be classified as letting the stress ‘live within
you’.
How about a food-based example of this problem? It’s Saturday night and you decide to stay in and relax for a movie. You turn on a ‘flick’ that you’ve been waiting to watch
since its recent release and grab a few small indulgences to take with you to snack on during the movie. The snacks don’t last quite as long and as you anticipated, and you
find yourself popping out to your own personal concession (the fridge and pantry) for a small bag of chips. Then again for a bag of popcorn. Then some cookies. Then some
crackers. Before the movie has even got to its apex you are set on total autopilot, to the point that you can’t even remember what the last thing you ate tasted like. Bites
blend together and snacks merge into a blur of gorging until the 2 hour long snacking session is a lucid dream that you can barely recall. The only way you piece together
the amount of food you consumed is by the gnawing, sore feeling you have in your stomach. You lost all sense of ‘presence’ while eating in front of the T.V. screen and
mindlessly devoured every snack in your cupboard. You can barely even remember where it all started. Your craving took hold and dictated your actions. The craving was
living within you.
These would be examples of the opposite of objectification. That is internalization. This is the state we are in when we internalize and/or ignore unhealthy thoughts,
stresses, emotions, and unhealthy actions on the surface while letting them do damage to us in a semi-unconscious way. We let the emotion or action dictate the level of
damage it will produce and the outcome we are going to suffer almost as if it was a parasite that had taken over control of our living body. This process of internalizing and
ignoring is a big reason why we fall into harmful behaviours even though we understand that they don’t serve our health and lead to both physical and mental anguish. So if
internalizing and ignoring our stresses, emotions, and unhealthy actions is the problem, what is the solution?
Externalize and investigate

The worst thing we can do when falling into unhealthy patterns is internalize and/or ignore them like the examples used in the last paragraphs. This results in the mindless
suffering that happens just under the radar of our conscious thoughts. What we need to do instead of acting and emoting unconsciously from these parasitic thoughts is find
ways to externalize and investigate these unhealthy patterns. This is what is known as objectifying the behaviour, and objectifying your behaviours (or emotions, or
stresses) is the key to taking control of your worst self-harming thoughts and actions. By pushing the behaviour, action, or thought outside of ourselves so we can look at it
objectively and ask questions about it we are far less likely to ‘host it’ and lose our power to change it. We have three very distinct opportunities to take advantage of this
process of objectification before the behaviour takes hold unconsciously, and while this is an unnatural skill that takes lots of practice and targeted thinking to get good at
applying successfully, if you understand when and how you can use it, you will (over time) get better at applying the technique and vastly increase your chances of success.
The three different scenarios under which we can objectify an unhealthy thought or behavioural pattern are in the moment, after the moment has passed, and in
anticipation for future moments. This is what is known as past, present, and future self-questioning.
Get something out of it

Before we get into the powerful technique of present, past, and future self-questioning we should touch on the ultimate purpose of this method. Humans (that means you)
are perpetually fallible, and even when we are at our best we are going to make mistakes. The harm is not in the mistakes we make, however, but rather in the failure to
get something out of the mistake when it happens or is happening. When we find ourselves on the bad end of an unhealthy behaviour we usually get emotional and beat
ourselves up over it. When we go down the rabbit hole of uncontrolled unhealthy snacking we feel guilty, ashamed, and disappointed in ourselves. We think stuff like ‘god
you’re weak. This is why you’re overweight and this is why you’re always going to be alone. Who would want to be with a pig like you’? Nasty stuff to say to the person
you’re supposed to care about more than anyone else in the world, but it’s the sad reality of our post behavioural self talk. The first question you need to ask yourself
before you try to change your patterning is what has this sort of negative reflection ever accomplished for you? When has becoming an emotional wreck and increasing your
self-hatred ever improved your future decision-making or made your life any better? If anything this sort of self assault makes your future decision making markedly worse
because you end up respecting yourself less and less and falling into unhealthy coping more and more. If you’re going to spend the night vegging out on the couch instead of
going to the gym, or if you’re going to drink 3 bottles of wine and wake up with a hangover, or if you’re going to eat a large pizza and feel fat, bloated, and powerless, why
not get something out of the mistake? Why not use moments of weakness and a lack of control as an opportunity to grow? Present, past, and future self-questioning is all
about this idea of ‘getting something out of it’.
Step 1: In the Moment

When we are in the midst of an unhealthy behaviour we always have an opportunity to catch ourselves in the act. This isn’t easy to do as our programming for unhealthy
behaviour is already very strong, but with practice, we can get better at nipping the behaviour in the bud. Typically we are conscious of what is happening when we are
elbow deep in the ice cream tub, but we avoid facing the reality of our current choice of action and prefer to mindlessly live within it rather than bring the reality of our
unhealthy action to the surface for critical investigation. For instance, when you go to the cupboard to grab a few squares of chocolate you will tell yourself that it is ‘just
going to be a small, well-controlled indulgence’. I’m sure you actually believe this when you say it to yourself. But what is your mentality when you go back for a second
time, or a third time. When the small indulgence begins to snowball into an entirely different snack monster you stop talking to yourself about the action, and you let the
action unconsciously take control of your decision-making. You succumb to the idea that this is now out of your control and it would be less painful to let your craving take
hold of the decision making process and deal with the consequences of your actions at some other time. This is a little of the present bias that we discussed earlier in the
book. Your brain is designed to give up long-term positive outcomes for short-term rewards, even though those short-term rewards don’t serve the future of your health or
your waistline. The thing to realize is that in this moment you have to consciously decide to ignore what is happening. You need to understand that this is a deliberate
choice you are making. It may seem like the act of letting something like a craving take hold is an unconscious one, but that is only because your unhealthy programming is
so strong that the decision to continue the act of self-harm seems automatic. This is a good thing because it means there is an opportunity to make another or a different
deliberate choice to ask yourself what is really going on and why you are allowing yourself to go full on into an unhealthy behaviour. By using the technique of present
questioning you force yourself to investigate the roots of your behaviour and potential consequences of your current decision-making. Here are some examples of questions
you can begin to ask yourself at any time once you are inside of the unhealthy behaviour.
Why am I about to eat this? What is my motivation?
Asking this question forces you to think about what is actually going on and why you are putting cookies into your mouth in a completely uncontrolled way. Are you even
hungry? Do you need to eat this snack for some legitimate reason? Did you starve yourself all day long and that has lead you to crash eating? Is there a healthier option you
can switch to instead? You can no longer successfully lie to yourself about the reality of what is happening once this question has been posed.
How did I feel last time I did something like this?
This line of questioning forces you to remember the negative consequences of the action in a way that lets you relate specific feelings and incidences to it from past
memory (or implicit memory), which can be very powerful. If you bring the negative feelings that usually come from this action to the surface before you have suffered the
maximum amount of physical consequences, there is a good chance the reminder of the emotional and physical will push you toward a healthy alternative.
How are you rationalizing or justifying this action?
Just in case you are trying to bullshit yourself about what is currently happening by using justifications like ‘you worked hard this week, you earned this entire large pizza’
it’s a good idea to label your thoughts for what they are. It is one thing to deny what is happening, it is another to continue denying the reality after you’ve pointed out the
obvious denial to yourself. Think about the 5 stages of denial and where you might be using them to support your current unhealthy state. Quite often a reality check is all
we need in order to stop the behaviour we find ourselves in.
How will you feel about this in 20 mins or tomorrow?
Is the juice going to be worth the squeeze? These kinds of questions attack our present biases- the tendency to give up future well-being for current stimulation. It is helpful
to think about the immediate negative effects of the action you are taking then trying to place the consequences far off into the future. For instance if you think about the
upset stomach and internal shame you are going to feel 10 minutes after the pizza is gone rather than trying to frame the consequences into what they will do to you 6
months from now, you are more likely to take them seriously. If you think about how the action will affect you in the very near future you can quite often stop it in its
tracks.
Is the cost worth this action?
The goal of this question is similar to the prior one. Make yourself admit that the action you are taking is harmful and not worth the pending consequence. What are you
trying to get out of this (stimulation, distraction, numbness) and is that reward worth the physical and mental cost that is going to come once the action has ended?
Are you trying to cope with something?
What’s really going on here from an emotional standpoint? You’re not hungry. You don’t need this food. So why are you eating it? Are you sad? Stressed? Bored? What is the
motivation here? Is there something you need to surface and deal with? Is there someone you need to call and apologize to? Is there some sort of productive action that can
be taken to heal the roots of your need to cope? Putting energy toward the source of the underlying ‘pain’ is going to make you feel much better than the ‘ignore and self
medicate’ route you are taking right now.
Is there a better alternative?
Once you have established that you are aiming to cope with something, can you cope in a healthier way? Do you just need to get out of the house? Could you go for a walk?
Is there a friend you can meet? If you don’t feel as though you have control over the resolution of the underlying pain, can you at least find a healthier way to self
medicate?
How will I feel if I don’t do this?
This is perhaps the most important present question you could ask yourself. How much better will your life be if you don’t do what you’re doing right now? Will you feel
physically better? Will you feel proud of yourself? Will you feel accomplished and in control? Picture what life would be like both with and without the unhealthy action. Do
you still want to go forward with your current choice after painting a picture of your two potential outcomes?
Summing up present questioning
Present questioning can be very powerful, and this strategy is a clear example of what I mean by ‘objectifying’ the behaviour. When we become aware of the behaviour,
put it on the spot, and force ourselves to look at it through the lense of reality rather than ignore the reality of what it is doing to us, it makes it much more difficult to
continue with the behaviour. Present questioning is your first line of defense in taking control of your unhealthy thoughts and actions, but don’t worry, it is only the first
line of defense. You have a few others you can default to.
Step 2: In the Past

As you can see present questioning can be a very powerful tool. It is ideal for us to be able to cut unhealthy behaviours off at the knees when possible, which is what
present questioning can accomplish, but as you and I both know, stopping the behaviour before it is in full swing isn’t always going to be an easy task. Sometimes our first
indication of the unhealthy behaviour comes in the form of a bellyache or the regretful and shameful self-reflection that surface once the action has stopped. Don’t fret.
There is a specific line of questioning for this moment as well (the moment of deep shame), and while the unhealthy action may not have been prevented in this case, that
doesn’t mean you can’t improve your life and get something positive out of the experience. Once the unhealthy action has already taken place and we are moving into the
‘shame phase’ it is the perfect time to use past questioning.
In my opinion past questioning is the most abundant opportunity for improvement. Much like we have pivotal opportunities for change in the present, once the action has
already happened the only thing you have left is the opportunity for reflection. Usually we unconsciously choose to reflect with self-hatred and other defeating attitudes,
but if you practice, you can look at each ‘slip up’ as an opportunity to increase your discipline and improve your decision-making ability. Here are some example questions
that you can use once the ‘damage has been done’ using past questioning.
What done is done. ALWAYS get something out of it.
This first question isn’t a question. Before you investigate your actions you need to set the landscape for a positive mindset, because without a positive mindset the rest of
the process cannot be effective. What’s done is done. So what is the benefit of beating yourself up over it? We can quickly and easily get sucked into the negative mind
frame that comes after unhealthy behaviours have taken place but you must remember to put things into perspective. The ‘damage’ has already been done, and in a single
bad behaviour the damage is going to be minimal. It is what the minimal damage does to your mind and attitude that can be truly harmful, so remember that this is an
opportunity to grow and improve if you allow yourself to take advantage of a positive outlook. Don’t let the real damage set in. GET SOMETHING OUT OF IT!
What triggered this event? Can you trace it to a root?
When we find ourselves in the wake of an uncontrollable, unhealthy coping behaviour, it rarely just ‘happened’ out of the blue. There is usually a chain of events that lead
you into the action. Can you trace back where this all began? Have you had an emotional day? Did you have a conflict that usually ends in this type of unhealthy coping?
Look back and see if you can find the root of this process. Here’s an example:
Behaviour: uncontrolled emotional eating
Supporting habit 1: T.V., social media, and technological distraction were taking place right before the eating started
Supporting habit 2: right before that I was sitting on the couch because I felt like I was going to crash
Supporting habit 3: I was incredibly exhausted after dinner because I had a long, stressful day at work
Supporting habit 4: My day started off terribly because I woke up late, rushed out the door, and started my day with the stress of rushing to work and being totally
disorganized
Supporting habit 5: the night before I was up late stressing out about a work assignment that I am behind on due to months of procrastination. This lead to me hitting the
snooze button 3 times and rushing the next morning
Root identification: the root of my uncontrolled eating stems from my procrastination issue that led to the stress that keeps me from sleeping properly. If I can employ some
techniques (perhaps a new daily scheduling system) in order to overcome my procrastination issue, I will ‘cut the head off of the dragon’ and curb my late night eating
issue.
This technique may sound complex, but you could do it in your own life in 5 minutes or less. The more you do it, the more efficient and accurate you become.
What did the action actually do for you?
It can be helpful to not only look at the negative aspects of coping but also what the reward was as well. This allows you to connect the coping to the pain you are trying to
numb. Did the coping relieve boredom? Did it allow you to forget about a stressful situation or a racing mind? What did the action actually do for you? Instead of focusing
solely on the negative outcomes of your actions figure out what the positive effects of the action are, even if they are only positive for a fleeting moment. Once you
identify something like ‘the late night eating took my mind off of the fight I had with my parents and the emotional anger I was living within because of it’ you can begin to
look at healthier means of distraction that you can employ when these emotions come up again in the future- like say, hitting the new punching bag hanging in your
basement for 20 minutes or spending 10 minutes writing down what your parents point of view might be and understanding that their perspective(s) come from a place of
love- but they just don’t express themselves effectively.
Was there a point when you realized you were losing control?
Like we mentioned in the present there is usually a few opportunities that come up during the behaviour that you could have investigated before everything spun out of
control. Can you now look back and recall one of these moments? Was there a point where you realized that you were losing control and could’ve asked present questions
but chose to ignore the opportunity? ‘As soon as I told myself that I’d only have 1 or 2 small cookies, I knew I was lying to myself and saw a brief flash of my future and the
uncontrolled eating that was going to follow. That was my opportunity to get out of the house or get off of the couch and remove myself from the destructive environment’.
It isn’t important that you create a strategy out of this thinking (although you very well could). What’s most important in this line of questioning is that you practice
becoming more aware of how the behaviour comes into existence and how you allow it to exist.
Was the action worth the outcome?
In a reflective way make sure you always note the consequences of your actions. You don’t need to do this by beating yourself up. You merely need to note how the
behaviour made you feel at your lowest point. Chances are you will be inside of your lowest point when you do this sort of reflection, so just note the emotions you are
feeling and whether they are positive, negative, or neutral. What was the cost? Was it worth how it has affected you in the present? Again, you don’t need to plan in this
moment. You are just training your mind to be more aware so in the future you begin to self regulate in a healthier way.
What could you have done differently to give yourself similar relief?
Was the unhealthy option the only one? Could you have found an alternative relief for the pain you were attempting to dull? I touched on this as a part of an earlier self-
question, but this one deserves its own paragraph. It is important to take the time to note what healthy alternatives could be used in place of your current harmful
behaviours when similar situations arise. Could you cope with a less consequential type of food? Could you find relief in physical activity or by performing some breathing
exercises or mindfulness techniques. Is there a friend you could’ve called or met up with to ‘vent’ on? Was this a situation that you could’ve resolved but chose to ignore?
Would it have just been better to face it head on and overcome the acute emotions? There is usually a better solution and form of healthy coping you can replace yourself
harming behaviours with. Experiment and find what works for you.
Summing up past questioning
When it comes to past questioning the most important factor is mindset. If you are negative, defeated, and self-deprecating it is very unlikely that you will create the
necessary space needed for proper healing. If you can remember that the damage is already done and you now have a choice between creating more damage or healing and
improving (getting something out of it) you are more likely to reflect in a positive, helpful way. Just make sure that you put things into perspective and look at every poor
choice as an opportunity to make less poor choices in the future.
Speaking of the future is there a line of questioning we can follow that might allow us to make better decisions well in advance of the unhealthy behaviour? This is when
future questioning comes in. Future questioning is the line of questioning we use to create a framework for success as me move forward along our transformation path.
Future questioning is usually best done at scheduled times once the emotional repercussions of our most recent negative event have calmed down and we are left in a good
place for self-reflecting. Here are some examples of future questioning.
Note: Some of the questions in the future line of questioning can be similar to the questions we want to ask in both present and past lines as well. The difference
is that future questioning is performed when we are not in the throes or the aftermath of an unhealthy behaviour-, which makes our perspective quite different
even though the line of questioning can be similar to past and present lines. Future questioning is more like routine maintenance that we perform to improve our
outcomes of the present and past questioning lines we use when we are living in the unhealthy behaviour in ‘real time’.
Step 3: Future questioning

What can I do next time to ensure a more positive outcome?
When we plan for the next personal crisis and paint a picture of how we could better deal with it in the future we are more likely to ask the right questions and create an
advantageous mental framework when it comes time to use present and past questioning again. The more time you spend thinking about how you can better handle
unhealthy behaviours when you are not currently experiencing them (or the aftermath of them) the more likely you will be to stop them in their tracks. As soon as you are
through suffering the emotional baggage of your most recent behavioural relapse, look back on the incident and begin generalizing what you could’ve done at various stages
of the behaviour in order to minimize the consequences.
What do I want for my life, and what actions must I take to accomplish that?
This is a sort of future reflection that allows you to picture what life would be like if you took better care of yourself and had better routine decision making skills. When
you ask yourself what actions you need to take in order to create that life, you are more likely to be reminded of the value of those actions in the future. Ask yourself ‘what
would my life be like if I started taking control of my health and employing effective brain training strategies right now. What will my life be like in 5 years if I don’t take
this seriously and begin to change my habits and behaviours’? Frame a general sense of what you want for yourself in order to increase your chances of utilizing effective
questioning next time you are stuck with a tough health choice.
What triggers and emotions make me susceptible to unhealthy behaviours?
This is a preparatory questioning set that allows you to ‘note’ what frame of mind your are usually in when succumbing to your worst behaviours. Doing so will allow you to
catch yourself when you are in that headspace
again and you will more easily identify what is happening in the moment. If you know that when you fight with your mother and become angry and resentful you usually end
up binge drinking you’ll know to avoid that situation in the future or work on using mental resilience practices immediately after this sort of interpersonal experience. Doing
so will allow you to mitigate much of the potential damage. Perhaps next time your mom ‘sets you off‘ with one of her well meaning but totally degrading comments you
will ask present and past questions in order to put the exchange into perspective. ‘Mom only says those things because she worries about me and doesn’t know how to
better communicate her feelings. I don’t need to let this be a negative experience’. Get yourself in the right headspace for this sort of forgiving conversation by taking 10-
20 minutes to do some breathing exercises and ‘reset’ before re-assessing the situation.
Was there a ‘beginning’? Could I have seen this coming?
The last question you can ask when trying to prepare for future self-harming events is finding the root of the unhealthy behaviour. We discussed this at length in the last
section, but sometimes it can be more effective to implement this process when you are more emotionally settled. If you know the root of the problem you can look for it
next time and even find ways to rid of it or change it thus preventing the whole self-harming behaviour from coming into existence. For instance if you know late night
snacking begins with sitting on the couch while feeling exhausted after a long day at work, you need to find a strategy to keep you off the couch. Perhaps you can do some
Yoga in the basement instead, or go into the den and read that book you’ve been wanting to dive into. When it comes to attacking the roots of your worst behaviours the
method is less important than the change in routine that gets you away from going down the same unhealthy path. Make it work for you.
Summarizing self questioning
Present, past, and future self-questioning takes time to get good at using effectively. But like most things if you make an effort to utilize these techniques when you can,
you will get better and better at it over time and see greater rewards from the process. Eventually you will get to the point where the right questions come to mind
automatically and become your default line of thinking (in place of the common negative down-spiral) which is what we ultimately want. Essentially you are turning off your
system 1 thinking and replacing it with system 2 thinking or simply allowing your system 2 operating system to stand up to his older brother (system 1) more effectively. This
sort of brain evolution is what makes you a good decision maker.
It is best to not have specific expectations about the speed of results that come from this process as that will only lead you to frustration (if you don’t live up to your time
based expectations). It is much better to just keep these questions written down somewhere so you can be reminded of them and be aware of them. List the ones you want
to try and place them on your fridge or cupboard, and whenever you can do so effectively, implement them. If you are diligent and positive throughout this process
(regardless of the immediate outcomes of the questioning process) you will be astonished to see, over time, just how powerful this objectification of life’s worst thoughts,
feelings, and actions can be.
Journaling: A helpful tool

For those who struggle with present, past, and future lines of self questioning it can sometimes be easier to log a nightly journal instead of or alongside your questioning.
Journaling can be effectively performed in 5 minutes or less, and journaling that follows this specific structure is very effective in the lives of those who choose to use it.
Each night before going to sleep you can pull out a pen and pad of paper and do the following.
1. Write what you want for yourself tomorrow- the first thing you need to write down in the journaling process is what your perfect, healthy day would look like
tomorrow. You could write something like ‘the perfect day for me would be to wake up feeling refreshed, have a nice, calm breakfast, have a productive stress free
day at work, have enough energy after work to hit the gym, then spend the evening with a good book and a single glass of wine before going to bed without feeling
anxious or overwhelmed’. Whatever your version of the ‘perfect’ day is, that’s what you want to jot down. It literally only needs to be a single descriptive paragraph
and you shouldn’t spend 20 minutes over thinking the process or re-writing your thoughts in an attempt to perfect them.
2. Write down what it would take to achieve that perfect day- you have your perfect day mapped out, so now what do you need to do in order to have the best chance
of achieving that perfect day? Well (in the example I used), you’d need to get to bed early enough to get a good sleep. You’d have to have enough time in the
morning to relax and have a good breakfast which also means you need to get to sleep earlier than usual the night before. Maybe you need to consciously lock up
your phone and laptop and make a point to get to sleep right after your journaling is done and set a strict time. At work that day you’ll have to be in control of your
emotions and use present questioning to put daily work interactions into perspective and reduce their negative emotional effects. When work is finished you’ll need
to stay motivated enough to go to the gym, so perhaps you should write a post-it reminder on your steering wheel stating ‘you may not feel like going to the gym
right after work, but once you leave the gym after a great workout you’ll be happy you made the effort and got a sweat in’. When you get home and have eaten
dinner you’ll be tempted to jump on the couch and turn on the T.V. Perhaps you can remind yourself that you wanted to read a book with a glass of wine (just one)
and that T.V. watching only leads you to less energy and more unhealthy behaviours. So commit to just 10 pages of the book, and if you want to read more after
that, that’s up to you. You’ll need to pour your single glass of wine and then write a post-it reminder on the bottle that says ‘more than one glass is not joy, it is
excess’. If you do all of these things to the best of your ability you shouldn’t have any anxiety when you go to sleep (since you have actively contributed so much to
your well-being today). This is what it would take to achieve the perfect day.
This of course is just an example and may not directly apply to your life, but you get the idea. Saying what you want for yourself ‘out loud’ and then writing down
what you must do (from an action perspective) to achieve that result will make you more likely to take those positive actions going into the next day. You aren’t
likely to do all of the tasks you set out to do- so don’t set the expectation of consistently achieving a perfect day- at least not at first. As long as you make more
positive decisions than you would have otherwise you are winning the day and the exercise is doing its job.
Alternative Exercise (steps 3 and 4)
3. Write down what your worst day would look like- some people thrive in action while focusing on the positive consequences of their actions. People like this will thrive
in the previous exercise. Some people, however, require consequential (or negative) motivation in order to implement behavioural change- so for some- this
consequence-based approach can be more helpful. Just like the ‘perfect day’ scenario you are going to map out what the worst scenario for you day would or could
look like tomorrow. Perhaps you wake up late and this makes you irritable and anxious, resulting in missing breakfast and having to rush out the door in a
disorganized mess. You get stuck in traffic (as per usual) on the way into work and you’re rapidly becoming stressed out of your mind. And it isn’t even 9AM yet. You
stop at a drive-thru and stuff your face with a greasy mcmuffin because it’s all you had time for. When you get to work your boss is all over you about 1.being late
and 2.being a general screw up lately. You are already stressed out to the max and her unhelpful commentary about your tardiness is not helping matters. At the end
of the day you get home and eat 4 servings of comfort food (insert pizza, ice cream, chips, cookies etc) to begin taking the day’s pain away. After that you waddle
over to the couch where you spend the next 4 hours going back and forth between the T.V., laptop, wine cabinet, and chip bag until it’s midnight and you can’t keep
your eyes open any longer. You go to bed feeling sick, ashamed, stressed, and disappointed in yourself. Yeah, that’s a tough day if I’ve ever pictured one.
4. What actions would you have to take in order to have the worst day- just like in the positive scenario you will follow up your creation of ‘the worst day’ with what
actions you would need to take in order to make the worst day ever a reality. For example you’d have to go to bed late in order to wake up exhausted and rushed.
You’d have to be unprepared by night making a lunch or organizing your breakfast the night before the worst day.
You’d have to take a specific driving route and go out of your way in order to hit the fast food joint and get a greasy ‘to go’ breakfast. We don’t need to redundantly
go through the entire process again. You are going to follow the exact same process as the ‘perfect day’ scenario only with consequential inserts. The point of the
reverse engineering scenario is to show you the potential consequences of negative actions (or positive actions not taken) to motivate you to implement a more
positive plan, or to bring your potential negative pitfalls to the surface so you will know what you need to avoid doing in order to have a great day. Again, most
people will thrive by writing out their perfect day, but there is a small segment of people who will find greater success with consequential mental pictures and
motivations.
5. Write down how it went- regardless of whether you chose to go with the perfect day, the worst day, or a version of both in your journaling, the following night you
need to write down how it all went for you. That is to say that once you attempted to live the day you journaled about the night before (perfect day) or avoid living
the day you journaled about the night before (the worst day), you must assess how that day actually went in a reflective way. What went well and what strategies
from your journaling process were you able to implement successfully? What didn’t go so well and what could you have done differently in order to prevent those
negative pieces of your day from coming to life? Don’t judge your actions during the process, just investigate them and make sure that you note the positive steps
you took that you may not have taken otherwise had you not journaled and pictured how your day could go. This step in the process is just your way of getting the
facts. You prepared your mind (journaling). You acted out what you manifested (the actual result of the day). Now you must assess the effectiveness of your
journaling and mental planning process in order to affirm your success and improve in the places you struggled in.
6. Start over- Once you recap how your day actually went you must start all over again by picturing the perfect (or worst) day you could have tomorrow and what it
would take you to get there. You need to repeat this entire process day after day after day until making good decisions becomes second nature to you.
This process of journaling, acting, and reflecting may seem time consuming but it will literally take you 5-10 minutes to complete the work, and it will be one of the
biggest daily contributions you can make to your life. I would suggest that you perform this process every day for a minimum of 30 days, then after that you decide if you
want to keep it up. I personally journal when I feel my progress start to slip and feel myself regressing into old habits and negative patterns. At that point I will spend 7- 14
days journaling, acting, and assessing until I get back on track. Then I might not need to do it again for another 3-6 months. Once you gain a reasonable amount of self-
control and discipline you can do this work as maintenance, ‘as needed’, rather than journaling every single day of your life for the rest of your life.
Strategies like the ones discussed in this chapter are by far the most helpful for rebuilding your brain’s operating system and improving your behaviour and decision making
ability. Unfortunately these are also the strategies that people tend to focus on the least because (in my estimation) the value of the exercise is not as ‘tangible’ or familiar
as strategies that relate to diet and exercise. It is easy for us to understand how controlling the amount of food we eat equals less calories which equals less weight, and
how the more we exercise equals more calories burned which equals less weight. When it comes to quantifying how journaling for 10 minutes each night equals weight loss
there are often too many ‘middle men’ that prevent the average person from seeing the connection and importance of this process in weight loss. I encourage you to put
more effort into this ‘brain training’ than you do into your ‘body training’ (although adequate effort in both would be ideal). Even just for 60 to 90 days and see the true
power that brain training offers your physical body. In just a few months you will see how effective these brain training strategies can be for your body and mind and how
connected your mental resilience and decision making patterns are to your waistline.
Reflection #1
Where do you often find yourself internalizing and/or suppressing the negative things that are happening around you or the unhealthy habits that you find yourself taking
part in? For example, ‘I will eat an entire bag of chips while sitting in front of the T.V. before I’ve even registered the first bite’. Or, ‘When someone cuts me off in traffic
on my way to work I will be thinking about that jerk even at dinner that night without realizing that nothing bad actually happened to me’. Write them in your notepad.
Reflection #2
What questions could you ask yourself in these situations in order to ‘objectify the issue’?
Question#1
__________________________________________________
Question#2
__________________________________________________
Question#3
__________________________________________________
Reflection #3
Write down 3 past, present, and future questions you are going to begin asking yourself when you get caught up in your worst health behaviours.
Present Question #1
______________________________________________
Present Question #2
______________________________________________
Present Question #3
______________________________________________
Past Question #1
_________________________________________________
Past Question #2
_________________________________________________
Past Question #3
_________________________________________________
Future Question #1
_______________________________________________
Future Question #2
_______________________________________________
Future Question #3
_______________________________________________
Chapter 9
In the event of a relapse…
First of all I would like to congratulate you on getting to the end of this book. While much of the material is introductory-and I could give you another 500 pages on theories
and related strategies that will help you improve your weight loss potential- I believe that what you have read thus far in the book are the basics that you need to
understand and apply in order to see long term success in your health. If you apply the principles covered in the pages you have read, you will succeed.
A big fallacy I see when it comes to succeeding in weight loss is the belief that those who are successful don’t make any mistakes. To the contrary, those who are successful
likely make just as many mistakes as the rest of us, but the mistakes the successful person makes are isolated, they are dealt with positively, and small mistakes don’t
prevent successful people from getting right back into their good decision making routine. For example when an ‘unhealthy’ person makes a poor choice (like, stopping at
the drive thru for a cheeseburger because it was the only option on the highway) it can lead to an entire weekend of binge eating and drinking followed by a week of
depression that includes a ‘fuck it’ attitude. The mindset becomes ‘I already ruined the weekend so I might as well just do whatever the hell I want this week’- and that
attitude leads the unsuccessful person into quitting altogether. The failure mindset is supported by self-thoughts like ‘you’re just not cut out to be healthy. You should’ve
known all along that this wasn’t going to work’. The ‘healthy’ person on the other hand might slip up at dinner and overeat the mashed potatoes, have a few too many
beverages, and get sucked into having a dessert that he or she really didn’t need. But the successful person chalks it up to a momentary lapse in judgment that he or she
got some stimulation out of, and in the grand scheme of things it isn’t going to affect their health as long as it doesn’t snowball into the justification of further unhealthy
behaviours. There’s no need for restriction or self-punishment tomorrow to ‘make up for’ the mistakes of today. Just get back on track and continue on with life. There’s no
need to think about it anymore than that.
That is the difference between the healthy vs. the unhealthy mind and body. It’s not about the mistakes you make, it is about how those mistakes dictate future behaviour.
As I like to say to my coaching clients ‘mistakes don’t lead to failure. Two mistakes in a row, do.
This is important to understand because you are human, and as a human you are fallible. And no matter how badly you want to be perfect you will always have lots of
opportunities to make poor choices, and you will continue to take many of those opportunities to feel instant gratification at the cost of long-term health outcomes. For
that reason it is important to have a plan for what to do in the event of a relapse, especially a relapse that has taken hold of your mind and sucked the positivity and hope
out of your psyche. That is the purpose of this chapter.
Know when you’re ‘falling off’

The most important aspect of preparing for (and recovering from) an eventual relapse knows the common signs and signals that can tell you the relapse is coming. These
signs and signals are easy to spot with a well trained eye and when we are intentionally conscious of them, but as with most of our psyche we are more likely to suppress
and ignore these signals than we are to surface them and investigate them. This reality is quite similar to all of the other suppressions that we have discussed in this book,
like how we ignore our emotions, feelings of fullness (as it pertains to food), and the signs that we are about to fall into an unhealthy behaviour. This is because when there
are clear signs of falling ‘off track’ we become afraid. We become afraid of being exactly whom the negative voice in our head has always said we were. We become afraid
of not being powerful enough to take control as we see our progress and hard work slipping away. We are afraid of seeing the relapse coming, doing our best to act and
prevent it from taking hold, and failing anyways. We are protecting our fragile ego that has been cracked and chipped from years of adverse life events. It is natural, but it
is critical that we nip it in the bud and turn things around before it is too late. So the first thing we need to do is understand that everyone slips up. It isn’t just ‘us’.
Everyone has a relapse that challenges their resilience and threatens the progress they have made. This reality is similar to the concept of ‘resistance’ that Steven
Pressfield discusses in his wonderfully powerful book ‘Do the Work’. He describes resistance as the voice in our head that is constantly asking us to give up and take the easy
route rather than stick with it and achieve our ultimate potential. Resistance is the unrelenting noise that seems to want us to remain lifelong failures. This voice never
disappears and the threat of relapse will always exist- therefore we require specific tools and strategies to deal with this unrelenting resistance. So understand that when
you see the threat of a relapse on the horizon (or if you find yourself stuck in the midst of one) the first thing you need to do is relax, take a deep breath, and remember
that you are in control. The second thing you need to do is understand that no matter how far into the relapse you are, the damage is not yet done. The only real damage to
your progress and waistline can be done if you let the relapse take full hold of your life and give yourself up to it. In other words, you must allow a ‘slip up’ or series of poor
choices turn into a lifestyle in order to have significant damages. Just like all scenarios discussed in this book you need to approach a potential relapse with positivity,
forgiveness, and most importantly, a realistic view. You are not a failure. Your situation is not unique. None of this is not even about you or who you are as a person. This
about being a human and struggling against all of the barriers discussed in the beginning of this book. You are designed to fail, but you are powerful enough to overcome
that handicap and change your life forever if you allow the power into your mind. If you can put things into perspective and take that approach to your thinking, you will be
unstoppable in the face of the most unrelenting relapse. Now I will teach you how to recognize and be aware of your personal signs and signals of potential relapse and
failure.
*keep in mind that in this section I am using the most common examples I see in my coaching program. There may be signs specific to you that are not covered
here so it is critical that you not only aim to understand the signs discussed in this chapter but also put time into understand signs and signals that are unique to
you as well.
Missed Tracking/Logging: If you have implemented diet, exercise, and lifestyle strategies into your life there is going to be some daily work that goes into tracking your
information and progress in the areas you are trying to build self-control in. Some people find it helpful to track their food using a small book or one of the many tracking
applications available today. Some people do daily or weekly weigh ins for the sake of accountability or information collection. Some people track their meditation sessions,
their active rest, and hopefully journaling and self-questioning techniques as well. Whatever it is you are tracking you are most definitely tracking something- or at least
you should be in order to ‘get the facts’ and see what you are doing to contribute to your health in an objective way. When we start to have a snowball of unhealthy
behaviours that leads to the beginnings of a relapse we usually begin to ‘slip’ in our documentation of our daily healthy actions. We stop tracking our food, we stop tracking
gym visits, and all of the daily work we put into maintaining our transformation plan starts to fall by the wayside. We get this attitude of ‘if things aren’t going well, what’s
the point in writing it down’. The point is that tracking prevents you from escaping the reality of your trending unhealthy actions, and if you let each day pass without
objectively documenting the actions you are (or are not) taking to better your health, it is probably because a part of you has already given up. This can be one of the first
and most obvious signs of a relapse.
Missed Activities: Let’s say for the past few months you've been going to the gym 3 days per week, doing Yoga once per week, and meditating for 10 mins per day every
morning (or at least as often as possible). In the past few weeks, however, you’ve been at the gym once, haven’t been to Yoga at all, and did one meditation session that
you stopped early because you just weren’t into it. You will probably tell yourself this is just a ‘rut’ or attribute the lack of action to some other factor in your life that is
‘only temporary’ (like being busy with work), but it is far more likely that you are opening the back door for your eventual escape from your weight loss efforts. When we go
from consistent committed daily actions to more sporadic, casual actions it is a clear sign that we are mentally checking out, but hanging on to a few small health actions so
that our failure is less obvious to us. There is a good chance we are letting our discipline slip away and letting ‘resistance’ take hold and get the best of us. When you begin
to miss regular activities for more than a single week, regardless of how you justify it to yourself, you need to be honest with yourself and ask if there is something else at
play, because chances are that there is. Just like we know a budding relationship is losing steam as the communication between us and the other person becomes less and
less frequent, when the contributing activities that you used to enthusiastically perform each day begin to look sparse, you are on your way to a relapse.
Lack of direction/enthusiasm: remember how inspired you were at the gym for the first 3 months of January? How you were showing up every day and giving it your all?
Maybe you even got excited about the thought of your workouts on occasion. You enjoyed preparing your shopping list and looking up new foods and ingredients at the
grocery store that you could go home and try out in the kitchen. You bought a bunch of new clothes, exercise equipment, and other stuff to aid you in your transformation.
Your enthusiasm was bubbling. Well, those days are beginning to feel like they are far behind you. You are now looking for excuses to miss the gym and when you actually
drag your ass there you are more focused on leaving than you are on sweating. You might even secretly hope that there is a gym closing due to broken plumbing so you have
to stay home. When you go to the grocery store you are buying more readymade foods and spending less time enthusiastically investigating international ingredients that
you can try out in your homemade dinner that night. You are clearly starting to slip back into your old ways. When you began your plan had structure, direction, and
enthusiasm, but over time it has all started to fade. This is a clear sign that you are mentally checking out and slipping into a full-blown relapse.
Increased excuse making: The way we frame our poor choices can tell us a lot about where our head is. Let’s say you had a pizza last night and ate 9 slices, but hey, it’s
your birthday in 2 weeks, so what’s the big deal? Right? Perhaps you missed the gym every day this week, but hey, you had a busy workweek. You can’t be a gym rat every
week. Or maybe you had a little too much social fun last night and woke up hung-over this morning because you went out for dinner with the girls and drank 3 bottles of
wine to yourself, but hey, a friend was in town so why not? That’s what you’re supposed to do when you haven’t seen someone in a while! As we slip into a relapse we
rarely want to admit to the harmful nature of our unhealthy behaviours. Where we were once honest and investigative we have now become ignorant and suppressive.
Increased excuse making usually acts as a buffer between our ego and the pending relapse that we are trying to ignore, so when excuse making increases it is a clear sign
that we are trying to protect our ego and prevent the surfacing of our relapse reality.
Increased doubt and negativity: when we begin to partake in an increasing amount of negative self-talk we are usually preparing ourselves for failure. We do this because
telling ourselves ‘you can’t do this, you aren’t cut out for this, you’re screwing up just like you always do’ makes the blow less crushing when we quit and go back into our
old ways. If failure is what is expected of us, who cares if we fail? When you sense an increase in doubt and negative self talk it is critical that you recognize it is a defensive
mechanism that is preventing you from being brave enough to see that you are slipping up and acting on the slip up. You are creating negative framing in order to prevent a
critical ego blow when you give up on yourself. You see this sort of thinking all the time in life. When we want something to happen we usually voice the lack of potential
for that positive result. That way if the positive result doesn’t come, it was expected. If it does come, it’s a bonus! It’s like you meet a man or woman at a friend’s party,
exchange numbers and then say to yourself ‘there’s no way he or she is going to call’ while desperately wanting the call to come through but being too afraid to admit the
‘want’ as it leaves you vulnerable to an ego shatter. This ‘reverse psychology-esque’ fear is not your friend and you must bypass it in order to see clearly and remind
yourself of how much you value the goal of taking control of your health. Failure to do so will manifest into your ultimate failure.
As mentioned in the side note that preempted this section, these are just examples of common signs of relapse that I see every day. You likely have a few others that are
unique to you that are not listed here, so don’t limit yourself to the awareness of only this list. The most important takeaway of this section is that there are many obvious
signs of a coming relapse that we can ‘pick up on’ if we choose to be honest with what our actions are dictating instead of normalizing these red flags in order to protect
our egos and fail more gently. The thing that all relapse red flags have in common is that they exist as an unhelpful defensive mechanism used to protect our ego that has
become fragile from years of adverse life experiences and our self produced negative self-images that have come from those adverse events. The more expected it is that
we will fail, the less vulnerable we become to the hurt when we do. What you need to consider, however, is that if you allowed yourself to be vulnerable enough to dismiss
failure as a danger to your ego and life (regardless of how hard a failure could hurt your ego) you would never actually get to the point of failure. You would be resilient,
you would prevail in the face of many barriers, and you would continue on until ultimate success is reached. There is only one way to fail, and that is to quit. All other
results are just learning experiences that you can use to better your future strategy and become better at moving toward the goal of your choosing. Now the question
becomes ‘how do we prevent the process of a relapse once we recognize the sign(s) that it is on the horizon’? This is what we will discuss in the next section.
Normalize the ‘dips’

The first thing you need to focus on when trying to prevent (or recover from) an inevitable relapse is to normalize the scenario in your mind. Like I have mentioned
throughout this chapter, to slip up is human and slip-ups do not equal failure. You’re not (uniquely) weak or a ‘screw up’, and slip-ups have nothing to do with who you are
as an individual. It is just all part of the process. The real question is ‘how are you going to deal with it’? Are you going to ignore the signs that failure is on the horizon and
increase your self-doubt and negative talk? Are you going to succumb to your old ways of thinking and comfortably take the backdoor exit out of your efforts instead of
facing the reality that you are veering off of your path? Believing that the creeping relapse is A- because of something you did or did not do because failure is built into your
personality or B- a hurdle that you cannot get over are the only two thoughts that will turn a short term ‘falling off’ into a full on relapse. The ball is in your court. The
decision is always yours. The power lies in you, not any sort of external circumstance that you can place blame on.
Think about using the skills you have developed in your present, past, and future self-questioning to objectify the slip up and get yourself back to reality. Are you the only
person in the world who has fallen off of their diet before? Does a few weeks of increasingly poor choices undo all of the effort you put in beforehand? Is it outside of your
personal power to take back control and go back to your healthy routine starting right now? The answer to all of these questions is of course ‘no’, but if you don’t pose them
to yourself in an objective way you will allow your negative, defensive thinking to cannibalize your mind, and that is the critical error we make that leads us to destruction.
When you see the signs of a relapse you need to gather yourself, put things into perspective, normalize the scenario (rather than making it all about your weaknesses), and
get back on track one step at a time. There isn’t any rush to add 100 healthy habits back into your life in that second, but you do need to get your mind right ASAP and put
one foot in front of the other as you begin to shift back into your healthy routine. Just remember that recovery begins with the realization that this sort of thing happens, it
is not a one way street to failure, and success is as simple as getting back into a routine of healthy choices once choice at a time.
Find Positivity in the Failure

Positivity is directly connected to the last paragraph, but now we are expanding on getting into a positive mindset in order to implement a plan of recovery. The easiest way
to do this is by finding positivity in your perceived failure. This can be difficult to do, but if you’ve spent some time using self questioning to ‘get something out of’ the
minor behavioral slip ups that you encounter day to day you will be well prepared to utilize this model of thinking when you really need it. Like right now. If you haven’t
used the method of self questioning to build this skill of resiliency and objectification, now’s a great time to start! The first thing you should remind yourself of when
recognizing a relapse is the value of feeling low. You don’t feel great about yourself right now and the unhealthy choices you’ve allowed to pile up over the last few weeks
that you fell into for short term stimulation or out of fear of failure did not deliver on their subconscious promises. By that I mean when you decided to stop exercising, give
up on your healthy eating, and bypass your lifestyle maintenance routine (sleep and stress management) for T.V., chips, and your Smartphone, it didn’t work out. Sure, at
the time you might’ve received some much welcomed numbing and distraction through food and sloth based acts, but how is that working out now? It can helpful to remind
yourself ‘oh yeah...I feel terrible about myself and it is because I’ve stopped doing all the daily stuff that made me feel great about my health and life. The slip-ups haven’t
delivered. If I want to feel good about myself again and improve my life I just need to go back to taking those healthy actions again’. You can also look at your slip up as
nothing more than a temporary psychological break from dieting. When you make significant changes to your diet and exercise routine which will usually include consuming
less palatable and stimulating foods, eating less food overall, and burning more calories with increased exercise you get a rate of diminishing returns both physiologically
and psychologically. For example once you lose around 10% of your starting body weight your body begins to slow your metabolism and bring down your enthusiasm for
exercise in order to increase your energy (caloric) surplus. Your body does this because it does not want you to lose weight (for many of the evolutionary energy
conservation mechanisms we discussed in the first part of this book). Your body can also bring down your mental energy and increase your psychological cravings for the
very same reason. Because of this it is sometimes beneficial to step away from your diet and exercise interventions and let yourself ‘reset’. Of course this isn’t exactly what
you did. You fell off the wagon and went on a weeklong food and drink binge. This same ‘reset’ mentality would be preferably executed with well-controlled food choices
and a decrease in exercise intensity, not an absence of exercise altogether, but ‘po-tay-toe, po-ta-toe. You’re here now so look on the bright side. You slipped up for a bit,
and perhaps your mind and body needed it, but now the actions aren’t serving you anymore and you feel awful about yourself both physically and mentally, so it’s time to gather
yourself and move back into health mode. There is always something you can get out of a temporary slip up if you choose to guide your mind in the direction of positivity,
and at the end of the day you’ll only be stronger for overcoming a barrier that would’ve completely destroyed you in the past. Look at your slip up as an opportunity to rise
to an occasion that you would’ve quickly succumbed to without much of a fight in the past. You can be stronger after a relapse if you want to- so choose the positive
mindset and receive the positive outcome.
Go back to the basics

Once you have your ‘mind right’ and have gotten over the idea that your transformation has to end just because of a few ‘bad days’, it is time to go into recovery mode.
The worst thing you can do right now is try to make up for your series of unhealthy behaviours through extreme counteractions. If you come back to your weight loss routine
with more restriction in your diet and more intense activity in your exercise, and more obsessive about your day-to-day routine you might be ‘shooting yourself in the foot’
as they say. The reason(s) why this is a problem are because there is A- a good chance that you tried to do too much too fast in the first place which is partially responsible
for what has lead you into a relapse and there’s an even better chance that throwing too much change into the mix when you’re still a little ‘fragile’ from the collapse is
going to end up overwhelming you and increasing your emotional frustrations. Not to mention the fact that if you are already a little emotionally ‘down’, heavy caloric
restriction and increased exercise intensity can only add to your potentially overflowing stress bucket. If you have a flat tire it is best not to push the gas pedal to the floor
in order to resolve your being stuck. It’s better to take your time, patch the hole, and slow down on the highway until you can get a new tire on the car. The same principle
applies here. For this reason you want to go back to the very basics of lifestyle change and think about the 2- 3 actions you can focus on putting back into your daily routine
that are going to make the biggest impact on your health with the least amount of effort. For instance if you have slipped back into the habit of going to bed very late,
snacking all night long, and then eating at the drive-thru in the morning because you are tired and rushing out the door the next day there isn’t much point in planning to go
to the gym 7 days per week and going back to counting calories. The first thing you need to do is set yourself up to get into bed before 10PM, add in a short evening habit
(stretching, walking, reading) to get you away from the couch and the T.V., and ensuring you have enough time and energy in the morning to prepare breakfast and enjoy
your drive into work. These sorts of minor, doable changes are going to be much more effective and impactful than running on the treadmill for two hours each day on an
empty stomach in an attempt to burn away calories and your own guilt. Don’t rush your way back to making ‘progress’ especially through the actions that you know are not
the source of your setbacks (i.e. calories and exercise aren’t the real issue in a relapse, the inability to maintain basic daily habits is). Get back to the most basic self-care
routines that will allow you to recover from a psychological perspective before you worry about the physiological outcome.
Here are a few ideas of habits you can try to integrate back into your lifestyle instead of punishing yourself back to ‘health’ with restriction and exercise obsession.
Go back to late night journaling
Spend 10-20 mins each morning or evening working on stretching and breathing exercises
Make your own breakfast and dinner every day (or when you can)
Don’t eat out for the entire week
Do something active (but not intense or long in duration) each day
Limit your T.V. time to one show per night Get to bed by 10PM each weekday
You get the idea. Focus on the long-term habits and routines that set you up to succeed in your diet and exercise efforts before going back to diet and exercise centricity.
Small habits support diet and exercise actions. It doesn’t work in reverse. So if you want to get back to seeing results from your diet and exercise efforts you must first
create habit and behavioural patterns that are sticking. Aim to re-introduce one new habit per week or every 2 weeks and track your daily adherence to that action. You
can simply do this with a notepad, a smartphone app, or an excel spreadsheet. Just write down the habit you are currently trying to mix back into your routine with a 7-day
box, and at the end of each day tick the box if you completed the habit. If you don’t hit 90% adherence, don’t add another habit. To simplify this concept- in a 2 week
period if you can’t implement the chosen action for at least 12 of the 14 days, do not go on to adding a new habit back in. If you can adhere to the action for 12+ days, try
adding another one back in.
Keep doing this until you are back on your routine. Making a comeback will leave you stronger and more confident! If you can recover once, you can do it every time it
happens in the future and that is the key to sustainable, long-term, effective change. The ability to make a comeback is a powerful psychological weapon.
Don’t rush complexity and intensity

As you go through the schedule of slowly adding back high impact habits that you can adhere to, don’t increase the complexity too quickly. For instance if your first habit
reintroduction is to go for a 30 minute walk each evening when you would normally be sit on the couch, don’t try to turn that 30 minute walk into a 2 hour walk just
because you felt good doing the 30 minute interval the first few days. Stick to maintaining the small, doable goal for at least a few weeks. To use another example if you
commit to getting back to the gym 3 days per week, don’t decide one day that you are going to do 3 classes back to back while you’re there just because you believe you
have the energy to do so. Just like implementing too many habits back into your routine at once can do more harm than good, so can the act of increasing complexity and
intensity within those scheduled reintroductions. It is great that you are inspired and motivated again, but over exercising and under eating based resolutions usually stem
from the most negative and ineffective sources of motivation and are best to be avoided. You want to conserve enough energy to continue implementing a new habit every
1-2 weeks, and if you try to increase the frequency, intensity, or complexity of the reintroduced habits too quickly you will overload yourself and fall back into another
possible relapse. The most difficult thing for a person to be is patient, but lack of patience has never gotten you anywhere in the past so aim to keep that reality in mind
while trying to pull back the reins on your habit reintroductions. Slow and steady wins the race. That isn’t just a time-tested fable because of its cuteness. It is true to life.
As time passes, focus on synergy

A few months have gone by and you’ve successfully made 3-4 new habit introductions and things are going great. Your weight is down, your self-talk is positive, and you feel
amazing. Now it is time to focus on the synergy of the habits you are reintroducing. As you continue to add habits into your routine you will want to start integrating new
habits from different areas of lifestyle in order to create the necessary synergy for success. By that I mean you don’t want to begin adding back only dietary habits, or only
exercise habits, or only sleep and stress management habits. Once you have added back your 2-3 high impact, doable habits with success it is advised to start spreading
them around. You will want to reintroduce a food habit, then an exercise habit, then a sleep habit, then a stress management habit, then an active rest and recovery habit-
adding in a different category of habit each week that can integrate with the habits that were introduced before it. The order does not matter nearly as much as the
variance within the category of the reintroduction. Below is an example to show you exactly what I mean.
Week 1-2: Make my own dinner from scratch every day
Week 2-4: Go for a walk for 30-60 minutes after dinner each night
Week 4-6: Journal my ‘perfect day’ before bed
Week 6-8: Do 10 minutes of meditation before my journaling
Week 8-10: Write down my past and future thinking for the day before dinner
Week 10-12: Start preparing my lunch at night for the next day
Week 12-14: Swim at the aquatic centre every Sunday
And so on. When you get back into the ‘groove’ of reintroducing your healthy habits make sure the approach becomes a well-rounded one. This is essential because each
different contribution improves your likelihood of adherence to all of the others. Stress management is going to improve your sleep and reduce your coping and self harm
(like snacking or overeating). Improved sleeping patterns are going to allow you to be more prepared in the morning and have more daily energy. More energy is going to
lead to more exercise. More exercise is going to reduce the likelihood of spending all night on the couch. Staying off the couch is going to reduce your harmful eating
patterns. You see what I’m getting at here. As you reintroduce new habits week after week to regain traction in your transformation, make sure to mix it up to get the best
results.
Summary
When you start to slip and fall back into habits that speak to a pending relapse you must
1. Recognize the common signs and bring the reality of the relapse to the surface
2. Relax, be rational, and approach the relapse with positivity. This can be an opportunity.
3. Once you have mentally recovered, go back to basics
4. Introduce new habits every 7-14 days and don’t move on until 90% adherence is hit
5. Once the ball is rolling be sure to increase the synergy of your reintroductions by adding in habits from a variety of different areas of health contribution
And lastly as I mentioned earlier this is an opportunity. That isn’t just some cheesy mindset strategy. If you move toward a negative path that has resulted in failure many
times in the past, this is your chance to break the cycle. This is your opportunity to test yourself and prove that the work you have put in is paying off. It is the pivotal event
in your journey where you can look back and say ‘that was the moment that it all changed. That was the moment that I changed’. You have it within you to achieve this
outcome even under the direst circumstances. You just need to put yourself in the proper frame of mind to see failure for what it is- a bump in the road that we allow to
swell into the great wall of China out of ego driven fear. Whether it remains a bump that you gently drive over or grows into a wall that you could never scale is really up to
you. I know the thought of having that kind of power is scary, but it’s only scary because you’ve never had the mindset to exercise it. Make this moment different than all
the others and you will never be the same person afterward.
Reflection #1
What are some common signs that have come before relapses you have had in the past that you could’ve seen coming but chose to ignore? Is there a trend of mindset or
negative actions that begin to accumulate in your life when things aren’t going well? Write some examples in your notepad.
Reflection #2
What can you do to normalize your relapse, find positivity in your relapse, and get back to basics? Write a short paragraph for each.
I can normalize my relapse by
I can find positivity by
I can get back to basics by
Reflection #3
What are some ways that you can introduce synergy back into your recovery using techniques and exercises that you are familiar with. Create 2 examples of this pattern
using the following format:
Set 1
Active rest I can do

____________________________________________________
Food habit I can restore

____________________________________________________
Stress management tool

____________________________________________________
Sleep habit tool

____________________________________________________
Formal exercise session

____________________________________________________
Brain training tool

____________________________________________________
Set 2
Active rest I can do

____________________________________________________
Food habit I can restore

____________________________________________________
Stress management tool

____________________________________________________
Sleep habit tool

____________________________________________________
Formal exercise session

____________________________________________________
Brain training tool

____________________________________________________
Final Thoughts
As I have done at several ‘checkpoints’ in the book, I would like to congratulate you on making it this far into the book. This time, all the way to the end. If you had the
determination to make it all the way here without a hint of ‘diet and exercise’ magic offered by me, you are very likely to begin a process of long term, sustainable health
change. In fact, you’re already well on your way.
In the final pages of the best representation of my life’s work (up until this point) I would like to tell you what my hopes are for you moving forward. First I hope that you
understand that the underlying issues and barriers that got you to a poor state of health have very little to do with your personality and much to do with evolutionary
factors that you didn’t have any control over. Your insatiable cravings, your uncontrolled snacking, your tendency to overeat, your default toward laziness, and even your
highly efficient ability to turn stored energy into body fat are all by design- not ‘by personality’. So I hope you stop blaming your worst health behaviours on whom you are
as a person and assuming weight gain comes from internal weakness.
My next hope for you is that you’ll understand that while the existence of your health issues is not ‘your fault’, turning them around is your responsibility. Now that you
have an understanding of where these issues stem from and what you can begin doing to take control of them, the ball is in your court. The excuses are no more and from
this point forward you have nobody else to blame for your state of health. Nobody is coming to save you. I hope that thought is empowering as it puts the control back into
your hands.
My third hope for you is that you come to terms with the fact that taking control of your health is not a short-term game. If you aren’t in this thing for the long haul and
willing to commit at least 1 year of your life to this process before throwing in the towel, your chances of success are next to none. If, however you understand that failure
only exists in your life if you quit, and all other ‘temporary relapses’ are actually an opportunity to learn and grow stronger, you will be just fine.
My fourth hope for you is that you move away from diet and exercise centric thinking and put more focus into the process of addressing the underlying causes of your worst
unhealthy habits and behaviours. I want you to learn more about yourself and the root causes that drive you to self-medication and self-harming acts. Along with this I want
to see you put as much (if not more) effort into lifestyle factors like sleep quality, stress management, and becoming a truly active person as you have put into your diet
and exercise efforts in the past as these factors will determine your ability to adhere to your diet and exercise efforts in the long term. As we know this is the key to success
in our health.
My final hope for you is that you never look for another quick fix ever again. If I have done my job you will no longer be tempted by the trends, tools, cleanses, detoxes, 30
day resets, fad exercise programs, celebrity nonsense, or industry guru magic that leaves your wallet a bit lighter but your body with the same amount of weight it started
with. I wrote this book with the intention of it being the only book you will ever need in order to internally create your own success, rather than always looking for external
sources to rescue you from your worst habits and outcomes. You are strong and you are powerful. You are all you need, and I sincerely hope you can begin to believe that
truth.
So as we say goodbye to one another we would like to thank you for reading our book and putting your faith in us. I know that is a difficult thing to do after so many others
in the past have failed you. It has been a sincere pleasure putting everything we have learned thus far in our professional careers onto a stack of papers and then letting go
of it so others can have open access to our best thoughts and advice. We sincerely thank you for seeing the value of this book. It says a lot about where you are in your
journey and how ready you are to take control.
Good luck, and you can do it
Tommy and Laura

Confidence Rating (After)
At the beginning of the book I asked you to fill out a 10-question confidence rating system that you would later compare to a second rating of the same questions once you
had finished the book. Here is the second set of the same questions. Without looking at your first rating system answers, answer the 10 questions here and then compare the
strength and confidence of your success ability that you documented before and after reading the book. Add up your total score (out of a possible 50) before and after, and
then compare your results.
1= Not true at all
2= Somewhat true
3= True
4= Very true
5= 100% confidence
I am confident that I can take my health back

12345
I feel good about my body

12345
I am excited for the future of my health
12345
I am in control of my health
12345
I have the tools I need to succeed

12345
This time, things will be different

12345
I do not fear failure

12345
I understand why I have failed in the past

12345
I understand what I need to do to succeed

12345
A year from now I won’t recognize the ‘old me’

12345
About the Authors
Tommy Caldwell is the founder of Hybrid Fitness, Hybrid 360, and the creator of the MetFlex-Rx diet. Tommy has many designations in nutrition, fitness, and sports
psychology and has been educated in cognitive behavioural therapy with the Beck Institute as well as Psychology based coaching with Dr. Gabor Mate’s ‘Compassionate
Inquiry’ program. Tommy also holds his M.B.A.
Dr. Laura Caria is a family physician specializing in progressive medicine and lifestyle based health care. Laura completed her B.Sc. with honours in biology, her master’s
degree in pathology, as well as her designation as a medical doctor in Ontario, Canada. Laura values her own personal fitness as well as the health and fitness of the
patients she works with and has made it a priority in her practice.

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TOMMY CALDWELL & DR. LAURA CARIA

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

I wrote this book for that person.

I am confident that I can take my health back

I feel good about my body

I am excited for the future of my health

I have the tools I need to succeed

This time, things will be different

I do not fear failure

I understand why I have failed in the past

I understand what I need to do to succeed

A year from now I won’t recognize the ‘old me’

That is why I wrote this book.

Part 1: The Four Barriers to Success (and how to overcome them)

Part 3: Taking Your Mind (and Body) Back

By the end of the book

Chapter 1: The Lies We Tell Ourselves (and others)

Chapter 2: The Four Barriers to Success

Chapter 3: Trauma, Stress, and a Toxicity

Chapter 4: The Unhealthy Reward Cycle

Chapter 5: Readiness for Change

Chapter 6: Health Without Strings Attached

Chapter 7: The Critical Role of Lifestyle

Chapter 8: Self Analysis and Brain Training

Chapter 9: In the Event of a Relapse

I know you’ve heard this before, but please, trust me.

What We Believe About Weight Loss

Let’s get to the stories.

Brenda and Eric

Susan and John

Ryan and Maggie

‘There is hope’, they thought.

The 3 Weight Loss Myths

1. Diet and exercise are the key to weight loss

It. Is. Not. Working

The Four Barriers

Barrier #1 -The Primal Conflict (Lower Brain Problems)

The Story of Doug

This is what it takes to survive as a caveperson.

Evolutionary mismatch at its finest.

The Story of Jessica

The Story of Rick

The Story of Annie

The Story of Jenny

Sensitivity x Pain = Coping Frequency and Severity

Barrier #4- System 1 vs. System 2

Trauma, Culture, and Dopamine

The Story of Kelly

Being Clear about Trauma

The Unhealthy Reward Cycle (Barriers in Action)

Being late and in a rush after sleeping in

Being cut off in traffic

Being stuck in a traffic jam

Reading an email from a coworker or boss with a negative undertone

Locking yourself out of your car or house

Missing the bus

Spilling coffee all over yourself while driving to work

The 7 Steps of Manifestation

The story of Jim

Behaviours, Root, and Reinforcements

The Story of Nancy

So what is really going on here?