The Most Practical Nutrition & Weight Loss Approach For a Healthy, Happy Life

“As I explained in my email, I am not sure what prompted me to buy yet another product on weight loss but I am so thoroughly confused about everything I do not know what to believe anymore.”

The amount of emails I get that share this theme is mind blowing.

It makes me angry to see that people have become so confused.

It makes me even angrier when I realize that the source of this confusion is really nothing more than marketing and sensationalism.

The sad truth is that in the weight loss industry, making money doesn’t require you to tell the truth.

In fact, what you say doesn’t have to be accurate at all, it just has to be sensational.

However, to truly make a difference and actually help people lose weight, what you say HAS TO BE CORRECT.

So I understand your confusion.

After all, every website you visit has someone peddling their book or program talking about how THEIR book is based on ‘science’ and how every one else is LYING right to your face.

And now I’m telling you that my book is based on science… So who the heck do you trust?

You look for the truth, and you find sensationalism.

Now, be warned, if you like sensationalism…if you want complexity, then Eat Stop Eat isn’t for you.

If you want SUPER complicated scientific sounding diet programs from people who are brilliant marketers that could sell you your own house then Eat Stop Eat is NOT for you.

If you are looking to be entertained with fancy stories about how ‘spot reduction is actually possible’ or how ‘you can eat as much as you want and still lose weight’ then this book is also not for you.

BUT if you want to truth about weight loss then PLEASE, let me share a story with you.

One of my favorite books has to be “The Tao of Physics” by Fritjof Capra. About halfway into this book, you can find the following quote:

“Before you study Zen, mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers; while you are studying Zen, mountains are no longer mountains and rivers are no longer rivers; but once you have had enlightenment, mountains are once again mountains and rivers again rivers.”

This quote stops me dead in my tracks every time I read it.

It was unbelievably eye opening the first time I read it because it perfectly parallels my experience with nutrition.

With a couple small changes I could sum up my entire journey in health and nutrition with one (rather long) sentence.

“Before you study Nutrition, food is food and drink is drink; while you are studying nutrition, food is no longer food and drink is no longer drink; but once you have had enlightenment, food is once again food and drink is again drink.”

Back when I was a child, food was food and drink was drink.

Then as I started studying Nutrition for a living, food and drink became these complex chemical compositions that had these wondrous effects in the human body.

Food and Drink were now macro-nutrients and micro-nutrients and di- peptides polyphenols and volatile fatty acids, carbs, fats, essential fats, and on and on…

The more I learned the less the words food and drink meant to me, to the point where they were virtually meaningless. There was no such thing as food or drink. It was only protein, fat and carbs.

Now, after years of studying nutrition and learning I’ve realized that most of that ’stuff’ …that ‘knowledge’…is virtually useless.

It’s Health and Fitness Mind-Clutter...

And, it completely destroyed my relationship with food. So now, food is food once again and drink is drink.

It does not have magical properties. It is simply there to

A) fuel my body when I need it

And

B) to be enjoyed

This realization has helped me break free of Obsessive Compulsive Eating and has made losing weight and maintaining a body I am proud of to be easier than I ever thought possible.

So this is what I hope you learn when you read Eat Stop Eat. Food is Food and Drink is Drink.
If you want to lose weight then Eat Less.

If you want a stress free life then learn to enjoy food again. It can be this easy if you let it be.

It’s amazing where you can find inspiration (I mean really…a book on Physics?)

I’ll leave you with what I believe to be the best long lasting health advice I can give.

It has nothing to do with carbs, protein, fats, calorie cycling, hormones or anything of that nature.

It is simply:

Eat when you are hungry. Sleep when you are tired.

I shared this story once on my blog, and the feedback was phenomenal. After reading through the comments I see that a lot of people felt the same as I did.

We’ve had ENOUGH.

Enough Sensationalism, Enough marketing, and Enough confusion. (Why do we try to make it so hard?)
It’s time to de-clutter our minds and simplify our approach.

There is ZERO relationship between how many fitness guru emails we receive each day, how many fitness books we read, how many health forums we visit, and how much weight we lose or how healthy we feel.

Or as Terri put it:

“I own about 200 diet/nutrition books, and seriously, for what? What has worked for me and always has worked for me, is cutting down on calories.”

And Todd hit the nail on the head when he said:

“Over complicating is a major source of waste, anxiety, and confusion.”

Stressing over what we eat, how we workout, what to do to lose weight…all the confusion and frustration, it has to go away.

and “Chains” has the perfect solution….We all need to De-clutter.

“You know what I did immediately after reading this quote… I started unsubscribing from all the people I used to grab some nutrition and fitness information from.”

After reading Chains comment, I immediately did the same.

I “Unsubscribed” from 11 different health and fitness newsletters.

I also ‘unfriended’ the people on face book who do nothing but update their statuses with links to nutrition clutter. I even ‘unfollowed’ people who do nothing more than spam me with nutrition nonsense on twitter.

Why?

Because I Don’t Need Them to Lose Weight...

And if they are full of nutrition and fitness rhetoric and ‘eat this, not that’ lists and rules I need to follow, then all they are doing is contributing to my mind-clutter.

(And besides. If I want their advice, I’ll go visit their blogs.)

At least this way I have a choice of when and where I read there information, instead of reading 11 different and conflicting messages EVERY SINGLE MORNING!

With that said I have kept a couple newsletter subscriptions. One because he emails about his workouts, and well… I find this interesting. And another because I find him entertaining and witty, and some mornings I NEED entertaining and witty.

I encourage you to keep the newsletters, friends and twitter buddies who amuse you, entertain you or provide you with some original value.

But the rest of them, they’re gone. As Pilbara commented:
“As a wise man said to me `you are not responsible for the thoughts that come into your mind – but you are responsible for those you chose to act upon’”

Well, It’s time to start taking control of the thoughts that come into your head. And really, I’m not cutting back on true nutrition info, I’m just cutting back on my daily dose of health and fitness sales-pitches.

Look at the emails you receive every week (INCLUDING The ones from me). Keep the ones that are positive, encouraging and entertaining. Get rid of the rest.

Now, this may seem a little harsh, but consider this: While the health marketers that push these info tid-bits may or may not mean well, convincing you to focus on the minor and mostly irrelevant tasks can not only prevent you from losing weight, it can also affect your health.

Successfully losing weight seems to be one of the most difficult life- problems to solve. Yet…

 It Can be Solved with One of the Easiest Solutions…

Eating less…Spending too much of your time concentrating on the insignificant parts in an attempt to control the inner workings of your body will cause you to lose sight of the big picture – In this case the big picture is that your body is perfectly capable of burning fat and losing weight without you needing to obsess and stress over learning how this happens.

The exact details are out of your control. Obsessing about them does not change them.

But if you continually try to control the things that are out of your control with the small insignificant parts of your life, you end up spending almost all of your time obsessing about health, nutrition and fitness.

Recording your meals in a spread sheet, twittering about how ‘healthy’ your breakfast was, spending an extra 5 dollars to have a 90 cent chicken breast added to your salad at lunch and fretting over the timing of your next meal…these are all examples of obsessive compulsive eating behaviors.

Too much of this and you can end up in a very bad place:  Spending every single waking moment of your life thinking, talking and stressing over your health.

This is NOT healthy.

It’s nothing more than a mind full of insignificant health and fitness clutter.

By thinking that we can dictate how our bodies function by controlling insignificant day-to-day things we end up sacrificing the enjoyment of our lives.

And remember, we can’t control the inner workings of our bodies, so we end up hopelessly grasping for control with more and more of the insignificant things, the ‘fluff’ and clutter.

And herein lies the big picture that we end up missing:

Health is a Lifestyle. It is a Process. It is not a Reward…

You should enjoy the process. It should be easy and sustainable. And in the best of situations, it should be mindless.

Enjoying the process means finding a simple and manageable way to enjoy eating less, and then eliminating the mind-clutter and the obsessive attachment to the insignificant little things. By doing this you eliminate the need to control the future, because you are enjoying the process.

The bottom line is that if you can’t sit down with a close friend for twenty minutes and have a good conversation WITHOUT talking about nutrition or your workouts, you need to take a step back and breathe and think about where your priorities are.

Concentrate on getting the best results in the most comfortable and enjoyable way without worrying about the insignificant fluff.

Enjoy the process.

This is what I want you take from Eat Stop Eat. I want you to be able to enjoy the process again.

I want you to forget all the confusion and clutter.

I want you to enjoy your food, and lose weight the way you want to.

Food is Food and Drink is Drink.

If you want to lose weight then Eat Less.

If you want a stress free life then learn to enjoy food again. It can be this easy if you let it be.