Fat Is Not Acceptable: Chapter Four - One Simple Formula

This is going to be the shortest chapter in the book.  It is called ONE SIMPLE FORMULA, so a real long explanation would just be a lie right?  Here it is.

[Calories In (CI)] – [Calories Burned (CB)] 
Pounds Lost or Gained

                               =3500 (Calories per pound)

Your life is a zero sum game according to that formula.  If you are happy with your present condition and want to maintain it, your goal is to make the CI and the CB equal.  You want to use all the calories you put into your body.

If you want to lose weight, you need to make sure that you expend more calories every day than you eat.  CB must always be greater than CI.  This will result in a negative number and, when divided by 3500, indicates the number of pounds you have lost.  3500 calories roughly equals a pound of body weight.

You should make sure that the timing of the formula is a match.  I presume you have figured this out but I will state it anyway.  The Calories In and the Calories Burned must be over the same time period.  It is not the number of calories you ate today and the number of calories you burned in a week.  The easiest way to do this is to record your CI and CB daily and put it on your calendar.  At the end of the week, subtract CB from CI and divide that by 3500.  How many pounds should you have lost this week?  Now look at the pure weight according to your scale?  Is it close?  Your weight does fluctuate daily based on sex, hormones, and water retention.  Over a two week period, these numbers should begin to match.  If they don’t, you need to reexamine what you are eating, how you are exercising and how you are estimating your numbers.  And be honest.

Calculate these numbers daily. 

Fat Is Not Acceptable: Chapter Three - Living By The Numbers

      How do you change the quality of your life?  First, we have to define the term “Quality of Life.”  University of Toronto researchers have chosen a good definition.  They define it as, “the degree to which a person enjoys the important possibilities of his/her life.”  I like that.  It is simple and to the point.  We should also agree that the degree to which you can enjoy these possibilities will be determined by your physical and mental condition.  Nothing will more negatively impact your quality of life than poor physical and mental condition.  Beyond showing you some examples of how to throw the mental switch that helps you better your own physical condition, I am not qualified to write a book on mental health.  I am, however, qualified to show you how you can improve your physical health.

       The improvement of your physical health starts with “the numbers.”  I told you in the previous chapter that the recipe for good physical shape was simple.  It is.  That said, your journey to improved physical health will not be measured by some qualitative descriptions like, “I feel fine” or “I feel so much better than I did two months ago!”  This journey is going to be measured with numbers.  How much do I weigh now?  What is my BMI (I will tell you shortly)?  What is my blood pressure?  What is my cholesterol level?  How far am I walking?  How many calories am I burning?  How many calories did I eat yesterday? 

      Are you getting the picture?  The solution to improving your physical condition starts with these questions and the answers to them, which quite simply are, the “numbers.”  I know…we hate numbers.  Numbers don’t lie.  You can’t hide behind them.  They are objective.  They are unforgiving.  They are accountable.  They will also become your best friends.  You can depend on them.  They are honest.  They are the yardstick by which your journey will be measured.  We now agree on something, the numbers will guide you.

The Journey Begins Here..

      Your new physical condition and the transformation that will accompany it will be the journey to your new life.  So, like any other journey we take these days, we shall begin by using a familiar process.  We will go to a good Map website like Google Maps or Mapquest.  Go to your computer and go to your preferred Map website and click on “Directions.”  What are the first two things you need to know?  Correct!  Your journey requires two things, a starting point and a destination.  You can’t even begin to know HOW you will take a journey without those two things.  Like any decent computer application, your Map website only deals in facts.  Nothing but data.  Tell me where you are.  Is it Boston, MA?  San Francisco, CA?  How about the street name?  Using data, they can pin this down to an accuracy level of feet/meters.  If you answer “in a city” or “a lovely neighborhood,” your map website will not respond.  “Just give me data, just the facts.”  It wants to know latitude and longitude.

      Your physical condition is exactly like this website.  We start with your ‘begin’ point.  You cannot get where you want to go without knowing where you are at all times.  In choosing this starting point, we can estimate, but we should try to refine the information as much as possible.  You must try to define your starting point as well as you can. Let’s look at some potential candidates for your “numbers” together.  The obvious statistic is height and weight.  Your height will not change but, hopefully, your weight will.  Weight is the most common statistic for measuring a person’s physical condition.  It is the base metric for any physical conditioning program.  Your height, when combined with your weight, also gives you a commonly known measurement of your physical state called BMI or Body Mass Index.  You can take some of the more medically related measurements too.  There may be many reasons you have decided to change the direction of your personal health, some of which may be medical. Measurements such as blood pressure and cholesterol are a few of the big ones. 

      There are also performance statistics that you can add in to your “numbers.”  How long does it take you to walk a mile?  How many pushups and situps am I doing?  How much weight am I lifting and how many repetitions does that take?  You can measure in distance, time, strength, etc.  The last two metrics are the big ones because, like weight, they will be thought of every day on this journey.  They are also the two most critical components of the ONE SIMPLE FORMULA you need to keep in your head every day for the rest of your life.  Stick with me on this chapter and at the end, I will reveal those two metrics and the SIMPLE FORMULA.  Our first step in this journey will be capturing and recording your current numbers.  Let’s figure out what your starting point is on this journey.

      The first number will be the most obvious one.  What is your weight?  You don’t need anything more than a good scale to answer this.  If you don’t have one, go get one.  A digital scale would be best.  Most people think a piece of exercise equipment should be the most used item in a journey to better health.  Not so.  The scale should be.  If you heed my words, you will use this daily for the rest of your life.  You will hear many diet professionals tell you that you shouldn’t weigh yourself every day.  I will tell you that that is crap.  Sorry, I don’t have a better or more accurate word than that.  So long as you understand that you are looking for a number that is intended to give your journey direction, you will be fine.  Your body weight does fluctuate daily and during the course of your day.  You can adjust for this by using a few rules.  Weigh yourself at the same time every day.  I weigh myself first thing in the morning.  I get out of bed, go into the bathroom and do my business, and weigh myself.  Weigh yourself in the same condition.  Don’t weigh yourself fully clothed and then, the next day, weigh in while you are naked.  Don’t weigh yourself after breakfast on day one and then, on day two, before breakfast.  Use the same condition every day.  Next, record that weight daily.  Put a cheap calendar on your bathroom door and write the weight down right after you weigh yourself.  Sorry.  I know there is nothing worse than putting it down on paper.  That is called accountability baby…deal with it.  For some of you, weighing yourself may not be as easy as I make it out to be.  I have weighed as much as 285 lbs and most house scales max out at 300.  Some of the new digital ones go as high as 400.  The reality is, for some of you, you may need to see your doctor or find other less regular ways to weigh yourself until you bring yourself to the point where you can use the household items.  This is not an excuse to skip weighing yourself.  This is an invitation to be creative.  Weigh yourself daily, or as frequently as humanly possible, and record it.

      The next number is actually a formula combination of both your height and weight.  It requires a bit of explanation because it is frequently misused and misinterpreted.  It is your BMI.  For this, you need to know your height, which you will combine with your weight and get the calculation for your BMI.  BMI is your Body Mass Index.  You can go online and search for an online calculation using the terms ‘free online BMI calculation’ and simply plug in your height and weight.  It will give you the result.  This metric is supposed to calculate your percentage of body fat based purely on your height and weight.  It is the most common calculation used in most government and institution charts that determine your physical status.  It typically has 5 levels.  The first level is underweight.  This means that based on your height (H) and weight (W), you have very little fat and probably not enough body fat to be considered healthy.  There are broomsticks that outweigh you.  The second level is ‘on weight.’  If you are here, the government says you are fine and meeting their standard.  You are perfectly fine and dandy.  The third level is overweight.  This means that based on H and W, you are between 25% and 30% body fat.  The tables say that you are carrying too much body fat at this point and that maybe you should re-examine your relationship with fast food restaurants and desserts.  The fourth level is called ‘obese.’  This means you are between 30% and 40% body fat.  If you are here, you are approaching the top limit of most standard house scales and home exercise machines.  When living your life requires industrial strength equipment, you need to take a hard look at yourself.  ‘Obese’ used to be the last and worst category and was classified as greater than 30%.  In the past years, due to the ever increasing size of our population in the United States, they added a new category called ‘morbidly obese.’  This is what you classify as if you are greater than 40% body fat.  It’s a pretty sad state of affairs when people become so big that doctors need to coin a term worse than ‘obese.’  When your doctor refers to you in this category, he/she should be wearing a black hooded robe and be carrying a sickle.  I am sorry to say this, and don’t mean this line to be funny, you are killing yourself. 

      BMI is an important number because it is used in many government health assessments and, maybe more importantly to you, tied to things like life insurance tables.  If you are overweight or obese, and you want life insurance, it will cost you dearly.  Moving your BMI to a better place can help your wallet as well as your health.

      I do need to state one thing for the record.  I don’t personally like the BMI calculation.  BMI, as a metric, has one major drawback.  It does not account for people who are well muscled or just have a solid body frame (big bones).  I have both.  I can hear you laughing as I write this.  “The unforgiving diet guy has his own set of rules!”  I actually come from a family that is, stop laughing, big boned.  My ancestors were a combination of French trappers and Native American Indians.  I have had doctors tell me that the bone density of men in my family is higher than the average.  I also have a very muscular frame as I have been very athletic my whole life.  When you calculate my BMI, for a standard 6 foot tall male weighing 205 lbs, it says I am at 27% body fat, which puts me in the category of overweight.  At issue here is the fact that muscle weighs more than fat and if you have a lot of muscle weight, the charts refer to it as all fat.  Every height and weight chart I have ever seen says that I should weigh less than 187 lbs to be considered NOT overweight.  I run about 15-20 miles per week and am in peak condition for a 48 year old male.  I currently weigh between 200 and 205.  At 187, I would be emaciated.  As I said earlier, government charts use this metric.  When I was in the Army, I did not fit any of their charts.  The U.S. Military actually recognizes the deficiency in this metric and then sends the soldiers who are muscular for a body fat composition test.  Based on that measurement, they reset your minimum.  My acceptable weight was reset to 210 lbs.  That was 23 lbs more that the chart’s 187.  I recently had another body fat composition test done and I was at 16% body fat, versus 27% on the chart.  That kind of supports my stance on BMI and will, perhaps, make you stop laughing at me.  Let’s be clear though, if your BMI is 35% and you have a skinny neck and skinny wrists and have never been athletic, your BMI is not ‘muscle.’  So I personally can use the BMI, so long as I discount the government’s interpretation.  You can use it too.  You just have to look at these numbers as directional indicators.  If you are 40% body fat right now, you should try for something lower, like 30% to begin with.  Only a qualified health professional with additional metrics can tell you what your BMI means to you personally.  No one else should interpret that number for you, but you should be aware of the role that number will play in your life.

      The next set of numbers should come directly from your doctor.  They are probably one of the major reasons you have taken a good hard look at your personal health.  You will not see these numbers daily and you should know what they are to begin with.  You should talk to your doctor about getting these numbers at least every month or two as you are changing your personal condition.  These would be your cholesterol and your blood pressure.  Get them and mark them down.  Why are these numbers critical?  Because they are the key ‘warning lights’ for a heart attack.  High cholesterol over time can cause blood channel restrictions and blockages as more and more of that sticky cholesterol clings to the inner lining of your veins and arteries.  Ever driven down a highway and have four lanes become three?  Or two?  What happens?  We see the traffic flow slow to a crawl.  If all lanes stop because of a traffic accident, you stop entirely.  This is where the analogy ends.  Traffic can stop but your blood can’t.  It has to flow to keep you living.  When your heart continues to move the blood around your body through smaller blood vessel spaces at the same rate of speed, the harder your system works and your blood pressure goes up.  When you get a blockage at this point, it spells disaster in the form of a heart attack (the pump breaks) or an artery rupture (the pipe splits).  This isn’t a pretty picture.  You want low cholesterol to keep the blood highway clear and you want to know that blood pressure as a measure of how hard your heart is working within your blood system.  There’s one other thing about blood pressure (BP) that you should know.  As your physical condition improves, your heart, a muscle, will get more efficient with exercise.  So long as you are not a risk due to some kind of heart health condition, as a measurement of your heart’s performance, your blood pressure is great to know.  You would ideally like to be able to move your body around this world with as little physical stress as possible.  Your BP metric will help you considerably here.

      The next set of numbers is what I refer to as ‘performance based.’  They are the indicators that will tell you how well you are doing with exercise in your life.  You should be able to calculate these numbers because all of you will have some form of exercise in your life from now on, right?  Just say ‘yes.’  ‘No’ is not an option.  I need to qualify that last statement with one comment. 

MAKE SURE that you consult your doctor to make sure you are physically safe enough to start an exercise program.  The larger you are, the more important this clearance becomes.  If you have ever had any medical conditions that make exercise dangerous, again, get your doctor’s opinion. 

If your exercise includes distance and time, record it.  How far did I walk/run/bike over what time?  I did 3 miles in 45 minutes walking.  I did 2 miles jogging in 20 minutes.  I swam 30 laps in 40 minutes.  Whatever your exercise was, record it.  Try to maintain a degree of consistency to your program so you can measure your improvements.  The goal you should set is to do better every day.  At first, based on how big and out of condition you are, the numbers may be shocking.  Know this, as you continue to exercise, the improvement in the first month or two will be very noticeable and personally encouraging.  Take that from my own personal experience.  Every time I lost a large amount of weight, the exercise metrics were the ones (along with weight) that I focused on the most.  It may have come from my history of athletics or my competitive edge, but that was very important to me and I believe it played a large role in my weight loss success.  When you are done exercising, write your performance numbers on the calendar in the same blocks as you wrote your weight. 

      The last set of numbers you want to know are the most necessary to achieving your weight loss and personal conditioning goals.  All of these numbers have to do with your calories.  Let me say right from the start that calculating these numbers will be very difficult because they will never be more than estimates.  You need to know how many calories you take in each day and how many calories you burn each day.  Measuring these numbers will take some diligence and will require some personal honesty on your part.  If you are not honest about these numbers, it could disillusion you about how much weight you should be losing with your new lifestyle.  Why are these numbers hard?  It is because they require estimating.  If you constantly underestimate your intake or overestimate the calories you are burning, you just will be disillusioning yourself about your goal.  Most importantly, these numbers are how you will live your life every day going forward from today.  They are the key to maintaining proper health conditioning.  The process will be hard at the beginning but, over time, will become instinctive.  At some point, you will not even calculate the numbers.  You will simply translate the food you are looking at into good/bad choices based on your “gut.”  Believe it or not, people who you look at that are in good physical health/condition have learned to do this at some point in their life.  It is so natural to them that they don’t even notice.  If you followed them around daily and marked what they ate, you would see why they are in the condition they are in.  From quantity to food quality, they make better decisions than the fatties do.  You have to learn this.  You have to internalize it.  You MUST train yourself now to prepare for the rest of your life.  Lastly, these calorie counts are the key to the ONE SIMPLE FORMULA that you need to know to maintain your physical condition for the rest of your life.

      We will cover the counting of the calories in two future chapters.  One chapter is on the food you are eating and counting what you put in the tank.  The other chapter is about the fat burning process and how you count the calories you burn.

      There are many more numbers that you can use as the barometer for your success.  My recommendation is to not overcomplicate, keep it simple.  Pick the one you can measure daily, of course…weight.  Pick a few you can measure monthly that are performance based and perhaps your BMI or blood pressure (which can be done by almost any professional for no fee).  Lastly, pick a few you can measure every 3 to 6 months like your cholesterol.

      This is where your journey begins.

The Journey Ends Here…

      Where are you going?  As we started this chapter we noted that every journey requires a starting point and a destination.  Here is where we pick the destination.  This part is not difficult.  This is the part where you set the goal you want to attain.  You will need goal numbers that compliment the numbers you chose as your standard personal lifestyle metrics.

      I have only one suggestion.  Make the goals modest by making them short term goals.  If you want to lose 100 pounds, make the first goal 20 lbs.  Once you get there, you can make a new goal of 20 lbs.  If you set out on a boat to find an island, it is easier to do five 20 mile journeys to a set of islands you can see than it is to set out on a 100 mile journey to an island nowhere in sight.  Keep the milestones visible.

      How much do I weigh today?  What is reasonable here?  I would like to lose 10 (or 15 or 20) pounds in the next month.  Here is where you pick the number.

      I can walk 3 miles in 45 minutes.  In four weeks, I want that to be 40 minutes.  I also want to begin to jog a little, in spurts, while I walk.  I swam 30 laps in the pool at the gym in 45 minutes.  I want to increase that to 45 laps, it doesn’t matter how much time it takes.  So long as your numbers take a reasonable approach to improvement, and so long as you work on them, whatever you pick is fine.  Again, if you put a time limit on achieving the goal, and if you hit it early, reset and keep getting stronger.

      What is my cholesterol?  My bad cholesterol is 230.  I want it to be 200 by my next screening.  Better yet, for this one, ask your doctor.  What do they recommend?  Whatever they say, that is the goal.

      How many calories (estimated) did I consume today?  How many did I burn?  We will do the math and apply the ONE SIMPLE FORMULA for our daily calculation of progress.

      By this time it should go without saying but, I will remind you again, record these goals.  Put it in a visible place, preferably on that calendar I asked you to keep on your daily weight as well as the other monthly, three month and six month metrics.  At the end of beginning of every day you should look hard at these goals and see yourself attaining them.  You should recommit to them every day.  At the end of every day, you should look at them again and look at yourself in the mirror.  Ask yourself this question.  “Have you worked as hard on these goals today as you could have?”  Be honest.  Now look at your numbers.  What are your numbers telling you?  They will keep you honest.  Tomorrow is a new day and the next step in your plan.  Will it be a strong step?  Only you can answer this.

      That’s it.  Your journey is now mapped out in a new game plan.  You will look at your numbers every morning and every night and make an honest assessment.

      We will get to the formula in a moment but I now have to give you the third lesson of the book.

Calculate and record your numbers daily.  Commit your goals to memory.  Dedicate your daily activity to making the choices that support moving the numbers.  At this point in your journey, it is ALL about the numbers.   

      Are you ready for the ONE SIMPLE FORMULA?

     

Click here for Chapter Four

Fat is Not Acceptable: Chapter Two - Your 'Come to Jesus' Moment

      This chapter is not about religion.  I am a Christian but this expression is not meant to isolate any of my brethren of all other religions.  Just take this ride with me for a moment as I explain.  “Come to Jesus” is an expression we used when I was in the Army.  It came from another phrase we used, “ain’t no atheists in a foxhole.”  What it means is that everybody must one day face the conflicts of their life and make a stand.  Some of us pray for divine intervention when a situation gets really out of hand but, ultimately, at some point you must look at your situation and figure out what YOU are going to do about it.  You can sit in your foxhole and be shot at and die, or you can say a prayer to your maker and start shooting back.  That is what is meant by the expression.  You picked up this book for a reason.  That was your first step.  Congratulations.  It is now time for your second step.  The second step is all about your “Come to Jesus” (or pick your own spiritual guide if you find this remotely offensive) moment.  Are you ready to understand your situation and make the decision to shoot back?  Are you ready to assume control of your life?  Are you ready to change?

      You need to face reality.  We are going to start doing that right now.  You also need to understand something else.  It won’t be pretty.  Here is what you are going to do.  You need to pick a time when you will have some private time in a bathroom or bedroom and not be disturbed.  All other residents in your house should be gone, or asleep, it doesn’t matter.  Allow yourself at least an hour.  You just need time alone.  This is a time for reflection.  You are going to get into the skimpiest bathing suit or underwear you can find.  By skimpy, I don’t mean that it doesn’t fit…just that it exposes as much of you as possible.  You are also going to need a couple things.  Find as big a mirror as you have in your home, a notepad, a scale and a camera.  If you have been thin at one time in your life, and have a picture of yourself from that time, bring it too.  I can feel your fear already.

      I am assuming now that it is just you and the mirror, accompanied by the added extras I asked you to bring along.  Step on the scale.  Look good and hard at it.  This might be the first time you have seen your weight on a scale in a long time.  You may even start to cry.  That is fine too.  Write the weight down.  Open the notebook and write this number down with a date.  If you have a calendar on your bathroom door, write the number on today’s date.  I know how this makes you feel, especially you ladies.  Let me share a grim reality with you.  You may not want to see that number or acknowledge it.  You are only fooling yourself.  The rest of the world knows you are overweight or perhaps obese.  It is time to forget them and put that number in plain sight.  It is there to help you.  Today we acknowledge reality and begin to shoot back.  If you choose to change the direction of your life, you will be looking at this scale a lot, so get used to it.

      Next, you are going to stand in front of the mirror and take a good hard long look at yourself.  I know…you look in the mirror every day.  Not like this you don’t.  I have asked you to be in your underwear or a swimsuit but, if you dare, you can be naked.  It is just you and the mirror.  That is why they call it the “naked truth.”  Take a good look at yourself.  What do you see?  Look at your face.  Can you see your cheekbones?  Are there fatty deposits around your eyelids?  Not wrinkles, fatty deposits.  Look at your neck.  How much extra is hanging in there?  Look at your upper body.  Is there fat on your shoulders?  ON your shoulders?  How about under your arms?  What is hanging below your bicep area?  Look at your chest.  Do you men have the ‘man-breasts’?  Ladies, is excess fat making your breasts sag?  Where do they begin when they leave your body?  How about the mid-section?  Do you have a beer gut?...even you ladies?  What is draped around your middle?  How about your hips?  Is fat piled on all around your hips?  Look at your thighs.  Can you tell where they attach to your torso or is it one big flowing mass (or mess)?  Are your thighs fat right above your knees?  Look below your knees.  Are your calves fat?  I am trying to make light of this a little but I know this is not easy.  At some point, you are going to have to be able to laugh at yourself.  You are going to have to not take yourself so seriously.  I want you to write down the various areas and write down what you see.  Be honest.  Be brutal.  It is just you and the notebook.

      Take a second look at yourself in the mirror.  Head to toe.  Do you see outward physical symptoms of distress?  You are looking for unnatural swelling.  Excess fluid in your body is called edema.  Is it present anywhere?  Is there so much fat in certain areas that your skin is becoming irritated and inflamed?  Are there excess red blotches and veins?  Look for these things and, yes, write it in the notebook.

      As you look in the mirror.  I want you to touch the fatty areas.  I am not being sick here, get over it.  This is important.  Rub your hands over your face.  Pinch the fat everywhere.  Circle your hands around your neck (no matter how you feel about what you are seeing…don’t squeeze!) and really understand the size you are dealing with.  You need to remember this exercise so take your time and commit it to memory.  Grab the fat around your arms, your mid-section and your waist.  You can actually hold it in your hands.  This is not muscle.  This is nothing more than excess stores of fat in your body that will never ever be used.  The longer it stays, the more it becomes a part of your body and who you are as a person.  Get a real feel for how much of it there is.  You have spent a lot of time, money and effort hiding this.  No more.  Put your hands around your thighs.  Squeeze the fat.  Pinch it.  If you have thoughts about what you are experiencing and feel like you want to never forget them, write them down.

      As you really feel the fat on your body, move it around.  How would you look if it weren’t there?  If you could see your jaw line again, how would it look?  How about if your mid-section were trimmer?  If you have the picture of the old or thinner ‘you’, now is the time to look at it.  Make a comparison.  If you have no picture because you have never been a thin person, draw one in your mind.  Be as creative as you want, you are going to create a new ‘you.’

      As you look into that mirror, I want you to think about all of your physical ailments and issues that are being caused by what you are seeing.  Some are obvious, some may not be.  Do you have high cholesterol? Is there edema around your body?  I don’t mean fat, I mean swelling from water deposits being brought on BECAUSE of the fat.  How is your blood pressure?  How about your breathing?  Can you climb stairs without breathing hard?  Acid reflux issues?  Does that gut hang over your middle so heavily that it is bending your esophagus and causing acid reflux (also known as frequent heartburn or acid indigestion)?  Write the ailments down.

      How about your quality of life?  Has the person in the mirror caused health issues that have affected you financially?  Do you have to pay three times the amount a healthy person pays just to have life insurance?  Is it hard shopping for and finding clothes that fit?  How mobile are you?  Can you enjoy the basic physical activities that we share together in groups like just throwing a football around at a picnic?  How has your level of physical fitness affected your life?  Write it down.

      How has the person in the mirror affected you professionally?  If you are a labor worker, have you had chronic back issues at an early age?  Can you not perform the physical functions that would keep you employed in a competitive workplace?  How do you look in a suit?  Do you look like someone who could effectively manage an office when you can’t even manage your personal condition?  Would you hire the person in the mirror?  I hired a temporary employee a couple years back when I was overweight.  He was obese but I didn’t consider that too much, probably because I was getting there myself.  He was much larger than me.  He spent 2 out of every 10 days sick in some form.  He could not type on a keyboard and move about the desk without breathing heavy.  I will tell you that when I was losing my weight, I thought about him often.  I also know I will never hire an obese person again for that very reason.  Before you shout “discrimination”, performance and ability to perform is a valid reason for hiring or not hiring someone.  Obesity will negatively affect performance and also cause the company unforeseen expenses for emergency and chronic health issues.  It would be a justified reason.  Has your professional life been impacted by your physical condition?  WRITE IT DOWN.

      Lastly, I want you to get that camera.  If you have been examining yourself naked, please put the swimsuit or undies back on!  Take some photos of yourself.  You can put them in your notebook or anywhere else where you can reasonably look at them and remember where you have been.  Someday, should you decide that your fight begins today, you will hold these next to the new you.  When you do that, you will smile a lot at the picture that now frightens you.  Take the picture and put it/them in your notebook.  You can bet that I have a picture from my first day, in my swimsuit.  It is even on page one of my website where I blog on my diet…for all the world to see.

      Your weight, size and physical condition is only a secret to you.  It is outwardly visible to every other person you come in contact with and they are noticing.  Everyone sees what you refuse to recognize.  No amount of black fabric in the world actually hides it.  You are not fooling anyone but yourself.  The minute you openly acknowledge your condition to yourself, you are on your way.

      Look in that mirror and say this to yourself.

      “I did this to myself.  I made every poor choice that created what I am looking at in this mirror.  I am not this way because of my parents, other people, our culture or corporate America.  I am this way because of me.  But, I can fix this.  I know I can fix this.  Nothing is irreversible when it comes to my physical condition.  I am strong enough to make better choices, improve my condition and change the direction of my life.”

      Say this over and over again until it becomes who you are.  I am a big proponent of taking responsibility for any condition of my own doing and being the one who has to fix it.  That said, many of you will feel like you need some extra help.  If you need to pray, please do, remember though, God (whichever deity you acknowledge as yours) helps those who help themselves.  He will be your wind, but you need to get the boat in the water, chart your direction and put up your sails.  This is your “Come to Jesus” moment.  Are you going to sit in your foxhole, or are you ready to fight?

      The second lesson of this book may now be obvious:

You are the captain of your destiny.  You are responsible for everything that got you here and only you can change the course of your life.

  

      Good luck and I hope you move on to the next chapter with me.

Click here for Chapter Three