From the movie, “Cool Hand Luke” you “gotta get your mind right”. When I quit smoking many of my friends said, “You’re going to put on a lot of weight now.” I listened to them. Without realizing it, I accepted that fate and put on a lot of weight. If you have ever read any of my articles, you know that I am a strong proponent of the Nike trademark phrase “Do it!” and I believe in mind over matter. I once heard Doc Sevrinsen say, when asked how he stayed thin all his life, “I never though about getting fat.”

I apparently agreed to get fat, so I had no choice. I thought about getting fat and I achieved it. I got fat. Once I became aware that I had created the fat, I made up my mind to change what I was thinking. It took a lot of concentration but eventually the weight began to melt off.

Will that work for you? Not likely! You probably are so used to having a weight problem that you won’t be able to clear it from your thinking. It will always be like an elephant in the room. For instance, do you ever visualize yourself in a petite? Do you see yourself shopping for clothes that are half the size you are wearing today? Do you have a picture in your mind of the person inside you that you want to let out? Can you make 15 minutes available for exercise? Every day? Can you change what you eat? Can you change what you drink?

If these things don’t matter, then I can promise you that you won’t be able to lose weight and keep it off. It just won’t work for you. Know that your thoughts become your reality, and as long as you see yourself at your current weight, your mind will direct your body to make it so. Look in your mirror. If you can find a slim person in there anywhere, you can let that visualization become who you truly are. If you can’t, you will always become what you see.

Many people have tried to lose weight unsuccessfully. Some couldn’t stick to their plan, some didn’t have a plan at all. To most, it was not the losing weight but the self-image they forgot to change. They still, after taking off pound after pound, thought of themselves as the mirror image that they looked at before the weight came off. If you see yourself as fat, all the nutrition and diet, all the exercise, all the metabolism work will not matter. You “gotta get your mind right”.

It is a known fact that 3500 calories is a pound of body weight and to lose one pound, you must reduce your intake of calories (or burn off) by 3,500. Given that information, if you want to lose five pounds in one week, you must reduce your calories by 17,500!

But the thing is, the average person only takes in about 2000 calories a day, or 14,000 per week, and that is pretty much what it takes to sustain your health. In other words, to diet away five pounds in one week you can’t eat anything, ANYTHING, for the whole entire week, PLUS one day before AND one day after the week. An average daily food intake of 2000 calories would need nine days of zero, zip, nada, none, no food whatsoever to lose 5 pounds. The problem should be obvious at this point: You can’t just diet fat off. It takes more than diet.

When you cut out food, your body will throw all of it’s protein under the bus trying to protect itself. Without food, your body makes a bunch of decisions. (This is your body, not you. It’s a physiology thing.) After it takes all of the protein out of your muscle, (I’ll come back to body builders in a minute) your body will start to live on carbohydrates and when that happens you will gain weight! Your body will go into hibernation mode. You have to change the way your body works to make fat go away. It’s called METABOLISM. Your metabolism slows down and you won’t lose any weight, you’ll gain more.

If you wish to lose fat you’ll be better off if you work at increasing your metabolism rather than switching from one diet to another. Most diets work by creating a way for you to take in fewer calories than you need, and you’ll lose weight in the beginning. Then there will be a time when more weight loss will NOT happen because your body has adapted to that new level of calorie intake. You are in hibernation mode, your metabolism has recognized that the food supply is diminished, so it slows the burn rate. Think about bears that sleep through the entire winter, with their body living off the fat. No food comes in, and they survive for months. However, when they start eating again, their body immediately starts storing FAT all over again, getting ready for the next winter.

You have to control the burn rate, not the caloric intake. I mentioned body builders a minute ago. They eat like they will never have another meal. For all the food they take in, they should weight 400 pounds, but they don’t. They have learned to speed up their metabolism, so what they eat is going into muscle building, not fat storing.

One thing is for sure: Body Builders don’t eat a lot of Big Macs and Whoppers. They have a totally different diet, and couple with some simple exercises, they control their metabolisms. If you like that sort of look, they are usually pretty hot, too.

The real deal is, you can’t just diet and make fat go away, so you have to make a choice, a complete lifestyle choice. You want to lose weight? Start with a little exercise. Get your metabolism kicked up. Once it starts to take off a little weight, THEN start your diet. After that, up your exercise. If you wait to start until you have increased your metabolism, all your work will be more effective. The pounds will come off faster and more easily. The weight loss is more likely to be permanent.

See, I’m not here trying to sell you a product. I want to talk about what will be good for you. You need to wrap your head around the fact that you put your weight on because you don’t burn everything that you eat. You store some of it, and over time, that weight becomes your weight. Problem is, storage is driven by consumption, and consumption is mostly about water. Protein is 75% water, and body builders have protein drinks, bars, and so on. When you go on a diet, after you clear out the water you burn protein from your storehouse.

You can’t just diet fat off because your body will give away all of it’s protein to protect itself, so you start to live on carbohydrates- and gain weight. When you lower your food intake, you lose protein, and this loss lowers your burn rate.