1. FOCUS

Winning this battle is completely doable and not so hard after gaining momentum and acquiring some basic knowledge in two areas:

1) How your emotions work, observing and better understanding your personal patterns

and

2) How you can effectively move the calorie equation in your favor in a sustainable way that fits within your life demands

Nevertheless, it’s a formidable challenge you’re embarking on; so respect it. You’ll likely need to lower some other priorities in your life for a few months while building some new healthy habits. Don’t expect that you can handle this issue “when you get time.” You won’t have to put the rest of your life on hold… but you’ll have to make this top of mind, stubbornly pursuing this goal no matter who it pisses off. Yes it offends some people when health becomes a top priority in your life.

2. Neglecting The Inner Game

If you’ve persisted in eating beyond your calorie needs long enough to hang a big boiler from your waist, it’s not just from being inactive or not knowing what to eat. You’ve neglected to respect the internal aspect of “getting lean” and have not given enough attention to it’s development. For some, venturing into the “self-help” category of the bookstore is a source of shame. But get over that. You don’t need to get absorbed in it, but there is a reason some authors sell so well. They teach you effective and practical strategies for managing your thoughts and emotions: the genesis of your external results.

Depending on your personality, there are a couple of books I HIGHLY recommend. If you’re interested in a thorough uncovering of your inner workings and strategies to achieve mastery in any area of life pickup “Awaken the Giant Within,” by Tony Robbins. However, if you’d like something a little more focused on the task of winning the battle of the bulge, get Tom Venuto’s “The Body Fat Solution.” Tom does an OUTSTANDING job of taking strategies from the world of NLP and turning them into specific pieces of practical advice that apply to the game of fat loss for the non-bodybuilder.

3. Food Is A PRIMARY Source Of Pleasure For You

This is obviously a part of the inner game, but it is such a fundamental and widespread problem that it deserves being singled out. You’re abusing food for same reasons that guy on the corner is nursing a 40 oz of malt liquor at 10AM. I don’t say that to put you down but to help you get leverage on yourself. As a Dad, you’ve achieved a lot in life, done a lot of good. It’s simply incompatible with who you are to be abusing food like it is crack and not appreciating it for what it really is: construction material for your cells, building blocks.

Just as in your career, you put together a series of actions, a series of deliverables to construct a body of work that adds value to your employer or customers, similarly, each bite you eat is constructing your physical body, feeding every single cell, and ultimately impacting your emotions and spiritual capacity as well.

No question that food is one of life’s pleasures and bounties to be enjoyed and appreciated. But your insistence on seeking pleasure from every meal and every bite has gotten you way off track. Ironically, it’s also robbed you of the true joy of food. Your occasional splurges will be so much more satisfying when you’ve taken control of this area and started to consume 80-90% of your calories from the viewpoint of them being “fuel.” Shift where you seek your pleasure to the way that healthy food will make you feel, how much more you’ll get out of life by eating that healthy meal, NOT in the instant gratification, pursuit of a quick fix from the rush of sugar, salt, or fat, and then suffering the chronic bad feelings that come from being unhealthy and overweight (Not to mention the physical problems.)

Both of the books mentioned in number two can help you rewire your programming to make this happen.

4. You Don’t Understand How To Sustainably Run A Calorie Deficit

If you just live a “normal” life without paying attention, you’ll be way over your calorie needs. Sophisticated marketing weapons have been aimed squarely at us. They’re unavoidable and relentless. What chance do you have if you don’t take a vigilant stance, get a little bit of moxie, and push back?

We’ve been led to believe that we can happily live off of these foods that come in nice packages or are served hot through the drive-thru window. However, the calorie trade off and loss of nutrients is just too severe to be fit for consumption. You think you can “snack” on these foods and that cutting them out is “extreme.” But it is nearly impossible to have these foods as a daily part of your diet, stay below your calorie expenditure, and get enough nutrients to feel good. To win this war, you don’t have to be perfect 100% of the time but you do have to be informed.

Any food with low nutrients and high calories must be avoided unless it is one of your planned times to go off course.

This means getting an estimate of how many calories you expend each day and knowing the general calorie density and nutrient density of the foods you eat. You’re hunger cravings have betrayed you and your appetite trigger has been corrupted from over eating. You’re going to have to resist some passing hunger signals while your appestat gets recalibrated. Knowing your energy needs will help you know when you’re truly hungry.

5. You’re Unclear About “Carbs”

Refined Carbs Bad. Natural Carbs Good. While I am not in the super high protein camp, I recognize there are a minority of doctors in the field of nutrition who are. Whether you support a starch centered diet or a lean protein centered diet, everyone agrees that refined carbs make you fat. They are high calorie with low nutrient value, the perfect storm for building blubber. If you’re serious about trimming down, white rice, white pastas, and breads need to be removed from your daily intake and eaten only on special occasions.

Examples of natural carbs that you can incorporate are fruits (although you can go to an extreme with fruit but rare), starchy vegetables like potatoes, yams, squash, peas, and corn, and whole grains: brown rice, quinoa and many others. Don’t mistake “wheat bread” or “whole grain bread” for being truly whole grain. The bread that is truly whole grain is in the refrigerated section in the whole food store. This is one area that I compromise in. I sparingly use regular wheat bread to make tasty vegetable sandwiches. You can make trade offs like that when your overall nutrient-to-calorie ratio for your meal is still very favorable. When you see the term “Enriched” RUN. It sounds nice but it means the natural nutrients have been stripped and put back in after refinement. The net result is still a high calorie/low nutrient food.

6. You “Don’t Like” Green Vegetables

Come on. Stop the trend your parents set and start incorporating handsome amounts of green veggies into your meals as an individual and as a family. Greens are not only a welcome food by your cells but they are your ace in the hole for getting lean. These amazing foods win the triple crown: Low Calorie, High Nutrient, High Satiety (make you full). Don’t kid yourself and think you’ll get lean without expanding your appreciation of these wonder foods. You may not love them at first, but force them down like medicine with the desire to increase your liking of these foods, keeping in mind the larger benefits you’re after. You don’t need to fall in love with every one but find a few that work for you and go for it. Here are mine: Broccoli, Cabbage, Celery, Asparagus, Spinach, and Green Beans. I try to include handsome portions of one or two of these foods with each lunch and dinner.

My palette adjusted once I made the decision that these foods must be a regular part of my food intake. Once you tell your body that you are the boss, it will start to adjust to your desires over time to where these foods start to taste pretty good. Find some good recipes too.

7. You Drink Calories

Unless you are Brock Lesnar, a Sumo wrestler, or an opera singer, we’re all on a budget when it comes to calories. And there are not a whole lot to go around if you want to maintain a decent calorie deficit. Knowing that, do you really want to spend half of your energy intake at Starbucks? You’ll have to go the rest of the day on only broccoli and water to finish the day on target. How you spend your calories is your choice but for most people, drinking calories is a highly unsatisfying way to spend calories. It’s like being on a tight budget in the house and choosing to blow some cash on DVDs and CD’s. They’re luxury items that don’t really enhance the quality of your life all that much. Fruit juices, sodas, and fancy coffee drinks are examples of very high calorie, low nutrient, and low satiety foods — the exact opposite of our triple crown winning green foods.

Don’t drink your calories. Opt for water and mineral water. Add some lemon or lime if you want some extra variety. You’ll not only cut a ton of calories but start to enjoy the incredible healing properties of water.

Flip these 7 reasons in your favor today and start enjoying the quality of life you deserve!

We’ll do anything to make ourselves feel consistent, to reconcile between our outward reality and inward reality. Most people dabble with an exciting new thought of who they think they can be or should be, try a few scattered actions, don’t achieve enough positive results, and sink back down to low expectations because it is less painful than having a mismatch between their expectations and outward reality.

This is a great tragedy and squandering of emotional resources. It is that pain where your power lies. Pain, frustration, and even a little confusion are precursors to breaking through, shifting your paradigm, raising your game to a whole new echelon. Don’t waste those powerful emotions by sinking back into mediocrity. Those are calls to action.  Most people experience that pain and go, “oh crap, get me out of here,” and hurry back down to where it is comfortable.

You do want to move out of pain; it is an acute state that is not meant to last. Move out of pain in the other direction though. Don’t let yourself sink your expectations to match your crappy results. That is a cheap trick to play on yourself and you deserve better than that. Onward and upward. Keep your standards high and manage your pain to drive you toward new actions, new solutions, and new results. This what you have done for every accomplishment you’ve achieved in your life that you are most proud of.

Why doesn’t everyone do this or why don’t we do this in every area of our lives? Certainty. When you’ve been outstanding in the past you believed whole-heatedly you would get there. You were deeply connected to that end result and never wavered about it. Were you given a crystal ball look into the future? No. But something made you feel your goal was absolutely in your reach and that you would achieve it and you did. To others it was something daunting, something huge. To you, it was something big but not out of reach.

Why could you get yourself to know you would succeed while others doubted?

And that is the crux of what I want to get across here in terms of the other major success factor in my body transformation. If certainty is the difference in how committed we’ll be in our pursuits, how do we get certainty? References.

I grew certain I would be an athlete and be a respectable fighter when I gained those references. The gym where my son trains, had men in their fifties who would run circles around me, were fit, tough, and good fighters. These weren’t full time fighters. They were family men, corporate guys with day jobs. Suddenly I had living and breathing references right in front of me, facing the same life circumstances in terms of family and stress from work, yet they were making it happen and I wasn’t. This pissed me off because I now knew it was absolutely doable and my reasons for not succeeding were false.

We need references that could claim our same excuses or have even more reasons not to succeed but triumph nevertheless.

A few weeks ago I met a gentleman who has achieved tremendous financial success, bought his dream car in his early 30’s, a Ferrari, built a huge house on a hill with tons of acreage, owns a boat, and everything his family ever wanted. Not long after his financial success, his uncle then proceeded to grow his business from an average operation that just pays the bills into a multi-million dollar corporation.

The unlce thanked the nephew for inspiring him. The nephew was puzzled and couldn’t think of any inspiring conversation they had ever had and wondered what his uncle meant. His uncle replied, “When you bought your Ferrari, I knew that I could acheive much more than what I had been. I watched you grow up and if a little snot nose punk like you can do it. I can do it.”

This happens all of the time in every area of life. It is most obvious in sports. An athlete comes along and breaks barriers no one thought was possible, does things no one had ever done. Soon thereafter, a new athlete comes along who plays at the same level. This shocks people. A freak of nature, “the best ever” retires and all of the sudden within a few years we’re talking about another potential “best-ever?” How can this be? How could it take the entire documented history to see someone achieve such dominance and all of the sudden a near equal pops up almost immediately?

I remember thinking that Michael Jordan would always be in a class of his own. But immediately players cropped up that approach that level and may end up with Jordan-like careers like Kobe Bryant for example. Kobe was on track to be a pro athlete so using Jordan as a reference wasn’t a stretch for him. Kobe respected what Michael had done but did not deify him as someone whose talent was unapproachable or super-human. You and I need references that empower us.

Have you ever had a very close friend achieve success in a new area of life and then you followed suit shortly after? Why wait for your very close friend to get fit — how about building new friendships with people who are already fit?

That is a major reason I am passionate about what I do. I know you need references of guys “like you.”

I AM YOU. Read my about story.

I want you to take this into action now and make your reference base so freaking rock solid, that the thought of you not being able to grow vital and fit will seem ridiculous.

Exercise:

1. Recall all of the strong success stories in your life and solidify that part of your memory bank. Take any and all major accomplishments in any area of life you have ever had and get associated with those memories. Turn up full color, touch ‘em, feel ‘em, hear them. Know that is the real you. That is who you are and if you figured those things out, solved them, your going to solve this too. Write down a key word or phrase that will remind you of these memories in your journal.

2. Seek out fit Dads in your area that used to share your excuses, or “challenges” as you like to affectionately refer to them, who share your same life circumstances but have gotten fit nonetheless. These should be men that you respect. Become affiliated with them. Maybe it is a tennis club. Maybe it is a hiking group. Maybe it is a martial arts gym. Sign up for an athletic event that links your successful completion to charity. Or my favorite, a Kettlebell class.

The point is that if you want to be successful long term in your quest, you need absolute certainty this will happen. And you do that with references. References can be from your memory bank, they can come from stories, social media connections (me), but the best are the ones in the flesh. You need those to counteract the other living negative references that you can’t escape: relatives or Co-workers that you’re going to have be around who have more excuses than you do. Be with them as needed but don’t let their reality penetrate yours.

It is your new affiliation that will automatically raise your standards and open up new possibilities. When you get out of your shell, embrace a little discomfort for a greater more enduring benefit, magic happens. This quest really isn’t about weight-loss my friend. It is a metaphor for achieving everything you want in life. So make sure you enjoy the journey.

Lifestyle change for me brings visions of the stud whose been put out to pasture. Or, the old gunslinger who hangs up his guns. Not because he wants to, but because he feels pressure from his family to stop his dangerous ways of laying down bad guys and constantly testing his metal. Inside he still burns with the desire to enter another duel. He remains unfulfilled the rest of his life ever since his “lifestyle change.” You might say this is just word play, semantics. But that is your intellectual brain getting in the way. Don’t discount the power of the words you choose, the raw material of your thoughts.

To be successful, you’re going to need to recruit your emotions, understand what triggers them, and direct them in your fight to be fit. Part of directing your emotions is paying attention to the language and phrases you use, ( inside your head, or which roll of your tongue, and in the sources you choose to learn from), observing how they move you one way or another. Personally, I’ll leave the phrase “lifestyle change” for the weight loss clinics. What made all of the difference for me was embracing a quest to become an athlete, upgrading my identity. Eben Pagan describes it as moving to the “next evolution of you.” I didn’t want to become just any athlete. I wanted to become a fighter. This set in motion a whole slew of behavior changes because the pain of being fat was now just too much to take.

Being lean became more than a cosmetic fantasy but an essential tool in expressing who I believe I truly am. I couldn’t reconcile my new identity with the rolls of extra skin on my body which not only looked bad but stood in the way of me learning how to fight. Something had to give. The enjoyment of my nightly treat and any other calorie dense food was now dwarfed by the pain it gave me to eat them. I linked up nutrient dense foods with the pleasure of the vision of my future self. Broccoli was no longer something I thought I should eat once in a while; rather it was now a means to my goal. It was a vehicle to upgrading the quality of my life.

Technically, I have under gone a lifestyle change. But I didn’t choose to look at it like that. The excitement of a “lifestyle change” just doesn’t compete with the lure of a greasy combination pizza, boasting three types of meat. But upgrading to my next evolution? Dramatically upgrading the quality of my life? Living everyday with more bounce in my step? More courage to stand up to injustice and impose my mark on the world? Yeah. Those are cool. Those work for me. Ready to veg out as I write this.

What works for you?

What are the consequences of your fat that make this a dire circumstance for you to get a hold of right now? That make this something irreconcilable with your deepest held values of who you are? Or what new identity is it time to upgrade to in order to make your flubber seem as an encroaching enemy that must be vanquished? Get to know yourself. Not the stories that your analytical brain tells you about you, but the real you. Don’t worry. I know you’ll like what you uncover. That fat hanging off of you is not the real you nor are the false thoughts and stories in your head that led you to this.

Ready to DO THIS?

Take out a blank piece of paper and brain storm the following to get you some momentum. Don’t lose the power of NOW.

1. What is your body fat costing you in your life?

Think about the most important, most crucial areas. Not areas you “should” care about because society says you should but the areas that really matter to you at your core, at a gut level. Don’t judge yourself morally or rationally here. It is important to work with the guy we have now. Just take note of all the enticing things in your life you are missing out on by carrying a spare tire. Take note of everything it is getting in the way of, problems it is starting to cause and problems you know will inevitably grow worse without trimming up.

2. What benefits has it given you to this point?

Again: Emotionally. Sure the benefits you come up with here might not make a ton of sense. But know for sure that the only reason you’ve continued to act in a way that betrays your stated goal is that you’re fulfilling some perceived needs and gaining some benefits from your continued calorie surplus.

3. Compare the lists. How strong are each?

If both lists have good reasons and neither jumps out at you then either think harder or move on to another goal that you can actually be successful at; because this one ain’t happening buddy. However, if you’ve really thought hard and taken each to their extension, most likely you’ve found that the benefits in number one are enduring and truly valuable while the benefits in number two are serving your desire for instant gratification.

If that is the case then really mull those over and figure out if you still want to pay this price and tread the fatty path. DECIDE now that every bite counts. Every workout counts. You are in control and you’ll no longer settle for a calorie surplus. You can absolutely do this. You deserve it and your kid deserves it. Enjoy the transition into the real you and keep me posted. Part 2 of this post is an equally essential component as consciously selecting empowering language.

Stay tuned…