LOSING WEIGHT IS NOT THE POINT...
(correcting anything begins with correcting your mind)
“When health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot manifest, strength cannot fight, wealth becomes useless, and intelligence cannot be applied.”
~ Herophilus 335BC-280BC
~ Herophilus 335BC-280BC
In 2008, when my wife (Kiala) and I were packing to move from Jacksonville, FL to Oakland, CA, I was going through a stack of pictures that seemed to be of her memories only. I came across one picture and thought "Who is this guy in Kiala’s stash of old Polaroids, and why is she holding on to this picture? Is this some past boyfriend she had, who was special to her, that she doesn't want to let go of?"
Instead of being consumed with paranoia and assuming all the possible negative reasons why she still had his picture, I decided to just ask. I called Kiala into the room and asked, "Hey, who is THIS guy?" She smiled and said, "Stop playing, you know who that is." I said, "No, I don't know who he is. WHO - IS - HE?" To which she said, "You really don't know do you? It's you silly." After looking at it carefully for a few more seconds and noticing the context clues, I remember thinking to myself, "Wow! That IS me! What the hell...?" |
The picture above is from about 2001-2002 (some time shortly after the Dunn's River Pic further down). I can tell the time period by the context clues in the picture. That was when I shaved my head for the first time, I was wearing hoop earrings, and that was the only time since I've grown a mustache that I ever shaved it off [so much for the idea that being clean shaven makes you look slimmer!]. I didn't know at the time of the pic, but looking back it’s pretty clear that I WAS FAT! In retrospect, I can remember thinking I was the man at that time in my life - cool and sexy. I don't have memories of ever being self-conscious or ashamed of my body or weight, but my fashion sense around that time, which was to wear big, baggy, loose-fitting clothes, might've been hinting at some underlying insecurities. Even though my wardrobe was so-called “in style,” how I dressed might've been my ego’s clever way of “dressing up” in order to conceal some subconscious body-shame I couldn't recognize. Or, maybe not; but the ego is sneaky like that.
This is what I do remember… I remember sweating profusely and being hot all the time. I remember feeling winded after walks and after climbing short flights of stairs. I remember hearing my knees pop when I would stand after sitting for long periods. I remember the challenge of bending over to put my shoes on (not to mention the lower back problems I used to experience with a plump gut and being inflexible). While the idea that I was FAT may not have consciously registered for me during my heftier days, I do remember being acutely aware that I was not in the same shape I was during my mid twenties, able to run up and down the basketball court for hours. My health and fitness seemed to have somehow gotten away from me in several short years. This didn't make much sense to me, and I just could not buy into the popular idea that as we get older we naturally put on more weight and experience declining health, even though it might appear that way! |
Age: 44
|
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”
-- Jiddu Krishnamurti
-- Jiddu Krishnamurti
So, you may be wondering what I did to get from the first picture (my early 30’s) back to my highschool weight (now, at the time of this writing, in my mid 40’s), and you may be wondering how I went from overweight and out of breath to slim, fit, and feeling totally alive. Well, I have to be honest, unlike many people who intentionally go on some program or diet, with the express intent and objective of “losing weight,” that was not my motivation or intention at all, nor was it an expectation. Losing weight never crossed my mind. Weight loss was never a goal (because like I said, at the time I didn’t know I was fat). I just wanted to feel physically good again like I remembered during my more athletic days just several short years earlier. I’m not suggesting that I was even aware of how great I physically felt in my earlier days -- no doubt I took my health for granted then -- but in my early 30’s I became extremely aware of how good I was NOT feeling compared to my younger days. It really bothered me that I would get out of breath so easily. And I especially didn’t like when my back would “go out” from time to time. That was an excruciating experience every time it happened, and anyone with back troubles knows what I’m talking about. My physical conditions drove me to a point where I got fed up; fed up with running out of breath so easily and fed up with my back problems, along with a host of other issues I became fed up with. I’d never been “diagnosed” with anything by a doctor, nor was I faced with a terminal disease or debilitating illness, I just wanted to feel good again. And to my delight, I found out how to feel GREAT!.
People who are REALLY thirsty are sure to find water!
Getting fed up was the best thing that ever happened to me in terms of my health. That is what prompted me to make some serious lifestyle adjustments. To name a few...
|
Dunn's River Falls, Jamaica (2001)
Age: 30 (60 lbs heavier than now) |
Those were just a few of the things I did early in my journey that made a noticeable and tremendous difference. Since then, I have learned so much more about other things that matter in terms of achieving and maintaining excellent health, but the things I listed above made such a big difference in the beginning that I haven’t looked back.
The better I felt, the more motivated I became to keep learning as I continued on this journey. I wanted to see just how deep the rabbit hole was/is. I found out that it goes way deeper than most can imagine, even many of today’s popular and trusted so-called health gurus. This is why people who sincerely want to lose weight and be healthy have struggled to do so, even though they’ve done everything their health coach or doctor (allopathic, homeopathic, or naturopathic) has told them to do. One of the challenges with taking advice from licensed and certified health care practitioners (a misnomer, a better expression would be dis-ease management agents) is that too many of them are not “experts” nor do they “practice” what they recommend (ok, SOME are experts, but they are an extreme minority). To be a true and bona fide expert a person actually has to have “experience” doing the thing they claim to be an expert in; and to be a practitioner one would have to actually practice what they are preaching.
Think about it, if you want to be a millionaire, whose guidance would you prefer? A) a high school dropout who has actually worked their way from scratch to legitimately earn and accumulate millions of dollars without selling their soul, OR B) a person who earned a graduate degree from a prestigious business college but is still working to pay back the loans they took out to go to school...? I think I know your answer. Then why would you blindly follow the advice of a person who only has a license or certificate in some academic area of health, even though they have the body of a panda, splotchy looking skin, or are thin with a protruding gut or bulgy mid-section? Call me crazy, but I’m going with the actual expert over the licensed or certified health care practitioner any day. I want real results not prescriptions!
The better I felt, the more motivated I became to keep learning as I continued on this journey. I wanted to see just how deep the rabbit hole was/is. I found out that it goes way deeper than most can imagine, even many of today’s popular and trusted so-called health gurus. This is why people who sincerely want to lose weight and be healthy have struggled to do so, even though they’ve done everything their health coach or doctor (allopathic, homeopathic, or naturopathic) has told them to do. One of the challenges with taking advice from licensed and certified health care practitioners (a misnomer, a better expression would be dis-ease management agents) is that too many of them are not “experts” nor do they “practice” what they recommend (ok, SOME are experts, but they are an extreme minority). To be a true and bona fide expert a person actually has to have “experience” doing the thing they claim to be an expert in; and to be a practitioner one would have to actually practice what they are preaching.
Think about it, if you want to be a millionaire, whose guidance would you prefer? A) a high school dropout who has actually worked their way from scratch to legitimately earn and accumulate millions of dollars without selling their soul, OR B) a person who earned a graduate degree from a prestigious business college but is still working to pay back the loans they took out to go to school...? I think I know your answer. Then why would you blindly follow the advice of a person who only has a license or certificate in some academic area of health, even though they have the body of a panda, splotchy looking skin, or are thin with a protruding gut or bulgy mid-section? Call me crazy, but I’m going with the actual expert over the licensed or certified health care practitioner any day. I want real results not prescriptions!
Anywho, those are some things I stopped doing which allowed me to experience considerable, beneficial results, which fueled my desire to learn as much as I could about how to have the best health possible. Another thing that became abundantly clear to me was that while the things I did in the beginning were right, they would only yield beneficial results up to a point. As good as I was feeling, and as delighted as I was about the results I was getting, I would find out later that I could feel even better and get even better results with some other tweaks and refinements to my lifestyle.
I could literally write a few books about what I started doing that accelerated my progress and took my health to new levels, even after I’d already gotten results most people would be overjoyed with, but I won’t go into much detail about that on this page -- I’ll reserve that conversation for another time (and the books are coming). I will, however, share that I started eating lots of raw, organic, plant-based foods and I started practicing yoga (āsana), among other things, but these two were crucial and are staples of my daily living today. |
BIGGEST CHALLENGES PEOPLE FACE WHEN IT COMES TO HEALTH AND LOSING WEIGHT
(I know because this was me)
(I know because this was me)
1. They have wrong knowledge and false beliefs.
People mistakenly and innocently believe in things that just aren’t true or accurate. There is so much misinformation and disinformation out there, that knowing what to do for your health can be utterly confusing. The truth is that most of the information out there is put out there by profit-driven entities whose primary aim is to influence your behavior so that you spend money on their product or service -- an inherent conflict of interest. They will never put out information that might interfere with their profits, and they will do anything and everything they can to prevent others from putting out information that might interfere with their sales. Anyone concerned with their health is responsible for doing their own homework and thinking for themselves. You have to correct your thinking so that you can know how to sift through the misinformation to find the gold nuggets of good information. You have to replace false beliefs with right knowledge based on your ability to think correctly. You have to learn to rely on your direct experience, your positive faith (which is NOT blind), and your intuition. When you are thinking correctly and you’ve contemplated something carefully, trust your gut, you have a deep wisdom in you already!
2. They don’t replace wrong habits with right habits.
Once you know better and you've gotten your beliefs in check, there is still the struggle of changing your habits, especially your “eating habits.” One mistake people make when they are trying to live healthier is that they attempt to quit old bad habits without replacing them with new good habits. This is another primary reason (along with #1 above) why people who lose weight often gain it back and struggle with their weight and health for the rest of their lives.
You might stop a negative habit for a while using sheer will power, but are you filling the void where that habit used to be with a new habit that reverses the effects of the previous negative habit? All too often, people neglect to fill that void with a new and supportive pattern of action that achieves the same satisfaction, so when the urge to scratch that old itch comes back, it eventually wears them down, and they go back to scratching that itch the easiest way they know how -- by putting the old habit back in play.
Think about the cigarette smoker… why does this person smoke? Is it to relax? Is it to rebel? Is it to give their buzz a boost? Is it to look cool? Whatever that person’s reason is for smoking, if they quit they should find a healthy alternative that achieves the same sensation or gratification. They can play some soothing music to relax, they can stop eating meat to rebel, they can go on a fruit fast to achieve a natural high, or they can get fit to look cool. If you are giving up ice cream, and it’s the cool, creamy texture you love, learn how to make healthy shakes or delicious, green smoothies with the same texture. Once you quit the negative habit and replace it with a positive alternative, you have to consistently and repeatedly do this until the positive alternative becomes a new habit (usually “at least” a few committed weeks).
3. They don’t UNLEARN to like certain unhealthy foods and beverages they’ve learned to love the “taste” of
When you learn to like the flavor of something, it is very difficult to unlearn that. Think of the emotional experience that has accompanied your “liking how something tastes” and the feelings associated with words like delicious and scrumptious. And think of how many years you’ve already spent liking a particular restaurant, dish, or dessert. Then think of how often and for how long you’ve partaken. It’s a hard pill to swallow when you learn that in order to be healthy or lose weight, you will have to give up some of your favorite foods and drinks because they are really causing you lots of damage and needless suffering. It’s just that the damage occurs so gradually that people fail to see what the culprit is and mistakenly blame the organ that is the first to give out. Ever wonder where the expression “this is to die for” came from. Perhaps it’s a cultural Freudian slip…? I'm not dying for a slice of chocolate cheesecake!
4. ETCETERA...
There are other BIG CHALLENGES people face when it comes to health and losing weight (like social eating, culture, tradition, etc…), but 1, 2, and 3 are three jalopies that go to the ROOT CAUSE of the problem. Numbers 1 and 2 from above are key in learning how to unlike foods that are wreaking havoc on your body and health. YOU have to become rooted in right knowledge and empowering beliefs. YOU must gain conscious control of your decisions so you can take new and healthy actions that harmonize with your new and healthy knowledge, that will lead to a new and healthy you. YOU must faithfully commit to these new and healthy ways of being and behaving long enough to develop and firmly establish habits that will serve, support, and promote your healthiest and highest self.
It’s that simple, but don’t confuse simple with easy!!
People mistakenly and innocently believe in things that just aren’t true or accurate. There is so much misinformation and disinformation out there, that knowing what to do for your health can be utterly confusing. The truth is that most of the information out there is put out there by profit-driven entities whose primary aim is to influence your behavior so that you spend money on their product or service -- an inherent conflict of interest. They will never put out information that might interfere with their profits, and they will do anything and everything they can to prevent others from putting out information that might interfere with their sales. Anyone concerned with their health is responsible for doing their own homework and thinking for themselves. You have to correct your thinking so that you can know how to sift through the misinformation to find the gold nuggets of good information. You have to replace false beliefs with right knowledge based on your ability to think correctly. You have to learn to rely on your direct experience, your positive faith (which is NOT blind), and your intuition. When you are thinking correctly and you’ve contemplated something carefully, trust your gut, you have a deep wisdom in you already!
2. They don’t replace wrong habits with right habits.
Once you know better and you've gotten your beliefs in check, there is still the struggle of changing your habits, especially your “eating habits.” One mistake people make when they are trying to live healthier is that they attempt to quit old bad habits without replacing them with new good habits. This is another primary reason (along with #1 above) why people who lose weight often gain it back and struggle with their weight and health for the rest of their lives.
You might stop a negative habit for a while using sheer will power, but are you filling the void where that habit used to be with a new habit that reverses the effects of the previous negative habit? All too often, people neglect to fill that void with a new and supportive pattern of action that achieves the same satisfaction, so when the urge to scratch that old itch comes back, it eventually wears them down, and they go back to scratching that itch the easiest way they know how -- by putting the old habit back in play.
Think about the cigarette smoker… why does this person smoke? Is it to relax? Is it to rebel? Is it to give their buzz a boost? Is it to look cool? Whatever that person’s reason is for smoking, if they quit they should find a healthy alternative that achieves the same sensation or gratification. They can play some soothing music to relax, they can stop eating meat to rebel, they can go on a fruit fast to achieve a natural high, or they can get fit to look cool. If you are giving up ice cream, and it’s the cool, creamy texture you love, learn how to make healthy shakes or delicious, green smoothies with the same texture. Once you quit the negative habit and replace it with a positive alternative, you have to consistently and repeatedly do this until the positive alternative becomes a new habit (usually “at least” a few committed weeks).
3. They don’t UNLEARN to like certain unhealthy foods and beverages they’ve learned to love the “taste” of
When you learn to like the flavor of something, it is very difficult to unlearn that. Think of the emotional experience that has accompanied your “liking how something tastes” and the feelings associated with words like delicious and scrumptious. And think of how many years you’ve already spent liking a particular restaurant, dish, or dessert. Then think of how often and for how long you’ve partaken. It’s a hard pill to swallow when you learn that in order to be healthy or lose weight, you will have to give up some of your favorite foods and drinks because they are really causing you lots of damage and needless suffering. It’s just that the damage occurs so gradually that people fail to see what the culprit is and mistakenly blame the organ that is the first to give out. Ever wonder where the expression “this is to die for” came from. Perhaps it’s a cultural Freudian slip…? I'm not dying for a slice of chocolate cheesecake!
4. ETCETERA...
There are other BIG CHALLENGES people face when it comes to health and losing weight (like social eating, culture, tradition, etc…), but 1, 2, and 3 are three jalopies that go to the ROOT CAUSE of the problem. Numbers 1 and 2 from above are key in learning how to unlike foods that are wreaking havoc on your body and health. YOU have to become rooted in right knowledge and empowering beliefs. YOU must gain conscious control of your decisions so you can take new and healthy actions that harmonize with your new and healthy knowledge, that will lead to a new and healthy you. YOU must faithfully commit to these new and healthy ways of being and behaving long enough to develop and firmly establish habits that will serve, support, and promote your healthiest and highest self.
It’s that simple, but don’t confuse simple with easy!!
THE 3 BIGGEST FACTORS IN MY CURRENT PHYSICAL HEALTH & SHAPE
1. MINDSET
I had to shift my mindset toward health, and we already talked about what a challenge that can be with all the conflicting and confusing information out there. I’ve read lots of self-help books and studied the works of greats like Patañjali, Napoleon Hill, James Allen, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jim Rohn, and more than a hundred others whose life work was to figure out the secrets of living the highest quality life and to share that knowledge with others. It's in that spirit that I've written OPTIMUM HEALTH MINDSET (OHM): How to Think to Undo Fat, Maximize Your Vitality, and Never Get Sick Again (what I share in this book is what I always suggest to those closest to me when they ask).
I had to shift my mindset toward health, and we already talked about what a challenge that can be with all the conflicting and confusing information out there. I’ve read lots of self-help books and studied the works of greats like Patañjali, Napoleon Hill, James Allen, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Jim Rohn, and more than a hundred others whose life work was to figure out the secrets of living the highest quality life and to share that knowledge with others. It's in that spirit that I've written OPTIMUM HEALTH MINDSET (OHM): How to Think to Undo Fat, Maximize Your Vitality, and Never Get Sick Again (what I share in this book is what I always suggest to those closest to me when they ask).
2. EATING RIGHT
I stick to eating what’s meant to be eaten - raw plant based meals (I especially love green smoothies), bone and veggie broth, fruits, cultured veggies, fresh juices, herbal teas, etc. The human system is a perfect creation designed to heal itself, all we have to do is supply the body with what it needs (even if this means supplying the body with a break from eating, i.e. “a fast” from time to time) to cleanse and nourish itself and NOT allow things into our bodies that are out of harmony with the body’s natural “ease.” The challenge with the world we live in today is that many so-called foods are processed to “taste good” so that it sells more, without regard to human health. The problem is that the flavor enhancers companies use are often toxic to the body, and these toxic substances neither cleanse nor nourish (and rather pollute the blood and body while interrupting natural processes, like digestion), and because our cells are fed what we eat, they too are intoxicated thus impairing their ability to carry out their functions efficiently and effectively (and when a cell goes completely rogue, the medical establishment calls that cancer or some other autoimmune dis-ease). |
Age: 47
|
3. MOVEMENT
My āsana practice (āsana is one of the eight limbs of ashtanga yoga, and is the limb most people in the west call yoga). The body needs to move in order for the lymphatic system (which helps to remove waste from the tissues of the body) to function optimally. Āsana is efficient, as it strengthens muscle while lengthening it (for increased flexibility), it incorporates breathing making your practice meditative, and it works on both hemispheres of your brain, plus much much more.
My āsana practice (āsana is one of the eight limbs of ashtanga yoga, and is the limb most people in the west call yoga). The body needs to move in order for the lymphatic system (which helps to remove waste from the tissues of the body) to function optimally. Āsana is efficient, as it strengthens muscle while lengthening it (for increased flexibility), it incorporates breathing making your practice meditative, and it works on both hemispheres of your brain, plus much much more.
All of these are important parts of my daily living.
Me at 45, feeling better than ever!
|
Interested in elevating your physical health? Know that the challenge is mental more so than physical, as can be seen in the 3 BIGGEST CHALLENGES from further up this page.
When your knowledge and beliefs are wrong, your actions will be wrong. When we repeat wrong actions over and over they become habits, and habits formed from wrong actions produce undesired results (like dis-ease and obesity). The good news is that whatever condition you are currently in, you’ve gotten into gradually during your lifetime; AND any condition you’ve gotten into you can get out of. The body rebounds relatively quickly once you get out of its way. By reversing your thinking, decisions, and actions you can reverse dis-ease and excessive weight-gain, period point blank. IT'S NOT ABOUT WEIGHT LOSS, AND IT'S NOT ABOUT GOING TO THE GYM, IT'S ABOUT EATING FOR HEALTH, THEN WEIGHT MELTS AWAY. And to do the right things, you must think the right way. So, the name of the game is really all about MINDSET. |
You can’t trust the popular knowledge out there because the popular crowd follows the trends and is not committed to critical thinking and taking control of their lives. Next time you find yourself thinking like the general public, ask yourself why public statistics show that we are sicker and fatter than ever before as a society, despite all the fancy technology and so-called advances in medicine. And remember the conflicts of interest in the information game. You have to take charge of your own health these days, which means taking charge of your knowledge which comes first and foremost from your own direct experience. Your health is nobody’s responsibility but yours, so start giving yourself the new experiences your body deserves, so you can KNOW the Truth about HEALTH. Your mind and body will thank you for it.