The Secret

• To lose weight, you have to burn more calories than you consume.
• To maintain your target weight, you have to burn as many calories
  as you consume.
• You have to do number two forever, one day at a time.

1. Stop reading that.

In the fall of 1971, I was living in Atlanta and was depressed. My friend, Arch, was earning a doctorate at the University of Massachusetts. I called her and moaned about how down I was. She asked, "What are you reading?" I responded, "The Stranger" by Camus." Her immediate response was "Stop reading that!" Camus was an existentialist who had a terrible time finding meaning in life. Consequently, he was very depressed. I "quit reading that" and felt much, much better. How does that apply to you? If you're always reading books and websites that say you can lose weight easily without exercising and keep eating anything you want, stop reading that! It won't work and you'll keep the fat.

There are a billion books and a trillion magazine articles out there on how to lose weight. Many are written by doctors and scientists who’ve devoted a whole lot of time studying how to do it. Problem is, a lot of them have agendas aside from providing advice for weight loss. Some latch on a theory and won't let go. When that happens, it's not hard to find studies to support your view. Some want to make money. I haven’t done any studies on how to lose weight and get in shape. I'm not here to make money. When I started, I had no agendas except to get healthy. The best I can tell you is that I’ve done it. I’m going to share my experience with you and you can do what you want with it. For me, this isn’t theory.

2. See your bottom before you get there.

It is extremely hard to change anything until we've hit some kind of bottom that causes us to be willing to do the hard thing that's required to get better. When the doctor says, "Lose weight now or you'll be dead in a year," that's often provides the bottom we need. It could be that's what it will take for you to be motivated. But, it is possible to peer into the future and see the bottom well before we get there. Give it a try. You can start by reading The Importance of Bottoms.

3. Wanting to lose weight doesn't help a bit. Willingness is the key.

Surveys indicate that six out of ten Americans want to lose weight at some time. Very few do. That's because "wanting to" is no help at all. Instead, you need the willingness to take the hard steps necessary to change. You can start by reading about willingness.

4. You have to change one thing - Everything.

I'm a lucky guy. I"m a recovering alcoholic. Most of the people I'm around who talk a lot about losing weight aren't alcoholics. They haven't figured out yet that if all they do is try to quit eating as much, they'll never lose weight. It just won't work. Let's talk about why. (I'll be talking about alcoholics here, but the principles apply to everyone.)

In treatment centers, alcoholics are told they have to change one thing. "What's that?" the alcoholic asks. "Everything," responds the counselor.

Alcoholics drink to change the way they feel. Overeaters do the same thing with food. I'm bored, so I grab a pack of chips. I'm depressed, so I eat a pint of ice cream. I see lots of food on the buffet table and it is just so scary to think about letting it go to waste so I load up my plate. And so on.

When an alcoholic just quits drinking and doesn't do anything else to figure out how to live diffently, most experience a "dry drunk." They're not drinking, but they are miserable and most people around them aren't very happy either. Dry drunks don't stay dry long. When an overeater just quits eating and doesn't do anything else to figure out how to live differently, their efforts to lose weight won't last either. Don't think you're different. You're not.

Another alcoholic said this once about how long it takes to begin feeling better after the last drink of alcohol: "If it takes years to walk into the woods, you're not coming out in a day." Time takes time. You'll be spending the rest of your life doing what it takes to maintain a healthy weight. Don't be dicouraged about that. If you do it right, life will be glorious.

So, if we want to lose weight and keep it off, it is required that we change the way we approach life. If we don't, all of our efforts will go up in fat. You'll find enough suggestions to do that in the tools to get you on the road being healthy forever.

5. If you're dieting, your doomed.

Richards Simmons says "Don't diet, live it." You've heard it said over and over. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you have to make life long changes. You have to adopt a whole new attitude about the amount and type of foods you eat that's permanent. You will do some minor tweaking, but the essentials will remain the same forever, one day at a time. Most people who want to lose weight understand this rule. Problem is, they don't follow it. Here are some reasons why:

• A lack of fundamental honesty: Underneath the desire to lose weight is a greater desire to be able to return to eating whatever we want at some point. To be successful, you've got to own up to that desire and defeat it. It's hard to constantly live a lie. Don't do that. If you unwillinging to come to a full and absolute acceptance that your life long food experience will change, you'll be much happier to admit that and accept the status quo.
• A lack of patience: You see it all the time in weight loss forums. Somebody says their high school reunion is in three months. They want to be 40 pounds lighter by then. Those folks are doomed before they hit the "post" button. Time takes time and to lose weight and keep it off, you can't be in a hurry. Two pounds a week average is a good weight loss goal. I emphasize "average" because some weeks will be four pounds and in other weeks, you'll gain one. All sorts of things cause weight fluctuations from week to week. If you go several weeks with no weight loss, look at calories taken in and exercise and adjust them.
• Too many "buts": " I know this has to be lifelong, but . . . " and fill in the reason. All those "buts" will butt away any chance for success. There are no legitimate "buts." This is not a diet your beginning. It's a whole new way of life, period.

6. Eliminate decisions.

Your thinking and decision making led you to being overweight. If you keep trying to outthink your obsession with food, you will fail. Guaranteed. Particularly in the beginning, you must severely limit having to make decisions about food. I did that by establishing an eating pattern. I have breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus for each day of the week. If it’s Thursday my dinner is grilled salmon, spinach salad with tomatoes, and baked sweet potato sprayed with butter substitute. Monday morning? It’s ½ cup Kashi cereal and ½ cup Cheerios followed by a banana I have an orange at 10 in the morning and my single low fat devils food cookie (fifty calories) after lunch. At three in the afternoon, I have an apple.

Are you a mom cooking for a family? Don’t use that excuse to stay fat. Cook the dinner for the family and prepare your regular dinner at the same time. It’s not hard to do that. Preparation for low calorie dinners doesn’t take long. Most days, you won’t be eating cream sauces that require twenty minutes of stirring.

Once I met my weight goal, I added calories to my menus until I stopped losing weight. Do that slowly. It’s a lot harder to stop eating something than it is to add to your menus. I added an avocado to my Wednesday salad and a couple of weeks later added a small bowl of grits to my Saturday breakfast. Keep adding calories until your weight is stabilized. This isn’t hard.

A friend asked, “How can you stand eating the same thing all the time?” I asked back, “How can you stand eating all those sub sandwiches?” She ate Jimmy John’s sub sandwiches at least two days a week.

“They’re good,” she exclaimed.

“My dinners are good, too.” I replied. Low calorie doesn’t have to mean bad taste. Experiment until you find what’s good for you. And if eating the same dinner every Monday is so tiresome you’d rather stay fat, create thirty meals instead. Then you’re eating the same meal only once a month. The key, especially in the beginning, is to avoid decisions making.
The other factor in enjoying my regular meals is that by the time I eat, I’m hungry. Used to be I ate from a sense of obligation, whether I was hungry or not and most times I wasn’t terribly hungry at meal time. Now, as dinnertime approaches, I’m hungry. Not miserable hungry. Far from it. But I am looking forward to the meals. When I’m hungry, I enjoy the food even if it’s the same thing I had a week ago.

It works. It just does. Much of what you read about losing weight is less about the biology of it and more about the psychology of it. Eat this food and you won’t feel hungry as fast. Eat slowly so you’ll feel like you’re eating more. I suggest you add the concept of “One day at a time” to your stable of psychological strategies. It’s easy to live in the future and think, “This is awful. I’ve got to eat salmon every Thursday for the rest of my life.” If you think that, you will be miserable. Instead think, “I don’t have to eat salmon for the rest of my life. I just need to eat salmon today.” Do that enough and soon you’ll quit worrying about the rest of your life. Once your patterns are well established and you are losing weight or maintaining the weight loss, you can change the pattern if you do it carefully.

Listen to this: To lose weight, you must concentrate on calories first. It’s easy to get caught up in the psychology of it and keep on consuming too many calories. Don’t do that.

7. Build in well planned breaks.

Take a meal off. Sunday lunch is my off meal. I prepare a big, traditional Sunday dinner and have seconds. I eat a piece of pie or a slice of cake for dessert. Now, notice I wrote “a piece of pie.” I didn’t say I eat a whole pie. Watch out for that. One piece – eat slowly and enjoy it. Once the dessert is over, the off meal is done until next Sunday.

When I see the brownies in the mailroom at work and want one, I walk past and think, ‘Maybe I’ll have brownies for my Sunday dessert.” I’m not deprived. I’m just doing some rearranging.

8. Exceptions aren't allowed.

Make no exceptions. Eventually, you can make carefully thought out substitutions. Don’t even think about substitutions for a while, though. You won’t be ready until you’ve seen success that you don’t want to lose.

Sometimes life interferes with my pattern. Thanksgiving’s on Thursday and I don’t want salmon for Thanksgiving. No problem. For that week, I swap my day off Sunday meal with Thursday. Easy. If I find myself eating in a restaurant and that causes me to consume a hundred more calories than my usual lunch, I’ll skip my two o’clock apple. Apples are good for me and whatever I had at lunch may not equal an apple nutritionally. As long as it’s only on occasion, calories trump nutrition.

Be careful, though. There are some exceptions and substitutions you shouldn’t make. Never, ever, ever eat that brownie in the mailroom and substitute it for the next three apples. If you make that exception, you are doomed. If you eat one brownie, you will set the phenomenon of craving in motion. You will crave another brownie. That’s because the sugar and saturated fat in the brownie does that to your body. You cannot fight that. You will eat another brownie. You may not eat another one the first time you make an exception, just like an alcoholic may not get drunk the first time he drinks again, but eventually he will be getting drunk again, sooner rather than later. The same phenomenon happens with eating. Don’t deny that. It’s just true. If you make exceptions for brownies, eventually you’ll eat three and four. That’s guaranteed. You cannot eat even one of those brownies forever and ever, one day at a time, except on your day off. Even then, you can eat only one. That one on your day off will trigger craving, but your chance of remaining in control is much higher while you’re in the controlled time frame of your carefully established pattern.

9. Just don't go there.

Deliver yourself from temptation. Recovering alcoholics stay away from bars, especially during the first few years of sobriety. A saying I’ve heard often from them is “If you hang around a barbershop long enough, you’re bound to get a haircut.” If you want to lose weight and keep it off, stay away from buffets. Just don’t go. On teacher workdays when students are gone, we occasionally have faculty lunch buffets at school. I don’t go. I don’t want to suffer. My socialization takes place elsewhere. Don’t go into the hospitality room at the conference. Stay away from the workroom with the birthday goodies in it. Just don’t go.

10. No guessing allowed.

Don’t guess about calories. Instead, know with certitude how many calories are in what you are about to eat and measure it carefully. If you don’t know the calorie count, don’t eat it. People have trouble with this one. I hear that it’s too much trouble to count calories. It’s not. We don’t eat thousands of different foods. If you take the time in the beginning to read labels or do some research on the Internet, you’ll soon have the calorie count for virtually everything you eat memorized. The Internet is a fabulous resource. Just search using these words: “How many calories are in a banana?” You’ll be directed to several wonderful websites that will provide the full nutritional value of a banana, or anything else you need. You can find that information for a Big Mac or a Whopper doing the same thing.

A word of warning: read those labels carefully. Manufacturers play games with them. You’ll buy a package of two muffins and read that the calorie count is 100. Oh, boy! Read more carefully and a portion is defined as one fourth of a muffin. Eat both muffins and instead of a hundred calories, you’re eating 800. Fat city.

You must measure your portions carefully. A ton of research proves we underestimate portions. If we guess at that cup of cereal, we’ll pour two cups. Measuring cups and measuring spoons are our friends. Use them. One half cup of Grapenuts cereal is 200 calories. Pour a cup of Grapenuts in the bowl instead of a half cup and you have four hundred calories. That’s huge!

You may not believe this, but ice cream eaten directly from the carton has just as many calories as ice cream eaten from a bowl. If you eat directly from the carton, you will eat twice as much as you would if you used a bowl.

Measure, measure, measure!

I make my lunches easy by eating frozen dinners like Lean Cuisine and Smart Source. The calorie count is always between 200 and 300. One night I measured two tablespoons of peanut butter and put them on a plate. A tablespoon of peanut butter contains 195 calories. I showed Pat the tiny piles and commented that those two blobs of peanut butter contained nearly twice the amount of calories as one of my lunches. She said, “Yeah but peanut butter oil is good for you. Those are good calories.”

Don’t fall into the “good for you” trap. If I consume more calories than I burn, I’ll grow fat and it doesn’t matter how “good” the calories are. Eating healthy oils is important, but I have to do that within my calorie regime or I will not lose weight and I’ll regain anything I’ve lost. That’s why I have to know the calorie count of what I eat. I cannot think, “This is good for me,” and eat as much as I want. That just won’t work.

11. Sweat is essential.

Exercise is a requirement for a weight loss program. It's not an option. Limiting calories alone will not help you lose weight long term. If you don't eat enough (fast), your body thinks you are starving and will convert most of the calories you do eat into fat so you will survive the famine it thinks you are experiencing. If you do eat enough to avoid that, the weight loss without an exercise component will be so slow you will become discouraged and quit. Don't doubt that. You will. You must exercise effectively.