The Secret Weapon in Creating The Body You Want

Most people let their thinking absolutely destroy them and their chances of ever creating the body they really want.  To make that even worse very few people are even aware of what the process of thinking actually is, so they have no place to go to make effective changes.

The good news is that the solution is actually quite simple:

Thinking is nothing more than the process of asking and answering questions.  Think about it, you just asked yourself a question about that statement I made… “is that true?”

With questions you can find any answer that you are looking for, or as the Bible says, “seek and ye shall find.”  The problem is that most of the time we are unconscious about the questions we ask – we simply ask them out of habit or despair.

So, if you ask yourself a question like, “why am I so fat?” or “why can’t I lose weight?” you WILL get an answer.  The problem is that there really aren’t any USEFUL answers to
those questions.

It doesn’t matter if the presupposition in your question is accurate or not, your brain will find an answer.  In the above you presupposed that:

#1.  You are a fat person (different than being a person with extra body-fat on them.  No, that is not just semantics – one is a temporary condition, the other is the identity that you have for yourself.  One of THE most powerful forces in the human personality IS the need to stay consistent with your identity.)

#2.  You can’t lose weight

By the way, your presuppositions are WRONG.

These are poor questions, but your brain will absolutely give you an answer anyway.  Unfortunately, the only answers to that question are self-defeating like:

• “because I have bad genetics”
• ”because I don’t have the time”
• ”because my parents treated me with junk food so now I love it”
• ”because I’m a big, fat slob who doesn’t have any self-discipline”
• “I don’t know, but there’s no point in working out”

Or something to that effect.

It turns out that what you REALLY wanted to know was:

“How can I drop a lot of body fat really fast, do that without being hungry, while increasing my energy levels and do it in a way that actually fits my schedule and while eating food that tastes good?”

That’s a question that has a VERY useful answer.

The same thing goes for life and fitness overall.  Asking yourself
questions like:

• Why can’t I eat French fries, everyone else is [in a whiny voice, of course]?
• Why do I keep screwing up?
• Why does _______ suck?

These questions can only yield answers that will make you feel hopeless and put-upon.

Better questions would be:

• ”What CAN I eat right now that would taste good AND help me get the body I want?” [this one COMPLETELY shifts your focus from what you’re missing out on to what you want, and thus completely changes how you feel and experience that situation.]
• What do I love about working out?
• How can I get back on track and be really happy doing it?
• Why do I love being fit?

YES, those questions actually have REAL answers.  Your brain may reply to the first one with, “Nothing!” initially.  But, you’re the boss  and you can always ask again, and ask with the expectation that you will get an answer – which you’ll get in no more than 60sec.  (By the way, when it comes to people’s brains and their kids they always seem to forget that they are the boss and that they call the shots…)

The questions you ask will determine what you focus on, and thus how you feel and what kind of action you do or don’t take.  Be conscious of the questions you are asking.  If you’re feeling bad its usually being compounded by a negative question, and you can turn things around very quickly with a positive question.

A positive question will get your focused on what you want, what you like and how to get there while having a good time and will completely change how you feel.

Let me leave you with these questions.  By the way if you take 10sec per question to really answer specifically, and to FEEL the answers you will feel like a million bucks!

#1.  What are you happy about in my body/fitness/lifestyle right now?  Why
does that make me happy?  How does that make me feel?

#2.  What am I proud of in my body/fitness/lifestyle?  Why am I proud of
that?  How does that make me feel?

#3.  What am I looking forward to in my body/fitness/lifestyle?  Why am I
looking forward to that?  How does that make me feel?

#4.  On a general note:  What am I grateful for in my life?  Why?  How
does that make me feel?

#5.  Who do I love?  Why?  How does that make me feel?

Really take the 10sec to specifically answer and feel those answers.

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and an award winning Washington DC personal trainer that was nominated several times for 2009 Personal Trainer of the Year from Personal Fitness Professional Magazine.  Oh, and check out his new web-site washingtondcpersonaltrainer.com

The Client Success Manual: The Body You Want In A Box

I am completely overhauling the Client Success Manual that I give to all of my coaching clients and I was thinking, “since I can’t work with everyone, there are probably a lot of other people who want want my complete system  in a binder.”  Actually I was going to turn it into a complete kit with everything on CD (in case you don’t have the time to read) + the manual + my best exercise programs + maybe some DVD’s.

You may be wondering what the difference is between my manual and what I put on my blog or in my Primer Magazine article.  A lot!  While I give away some pretty great stuff (in my humble opinion), the stuff I give to paying clients is a lot better.

I haven’t finished it yet, but was wondering how many people who read my blog would be interested in it.  If you are send an email to my assistant at thebodyyouwant@yahoo.com with your name and email address.  Of course people who let me know now will be on my “pre-order” list and will get extra goodies and discounts on it when it comes out + first access to the first printing (it could run out fast).

Look for it on June 1st!

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and an award winning personal trainer in Washington DC that was nominated several times for 2009 Personal Trainer of the Year from Personal Fitness Professional Magazine.  Oh, and check out his new web-site washingtondcpersonaltrainer.com

What Do Hitler and Dieticians Have In Common? Lose a lot of fat fast without being hungry.

You’ve heard it said over and over again by well-meaning dieticians, “ a calorie is a calorie is a calorie.  To lose weight you just need to eat fewer of them.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a fat, carb or protein.”

Adolph Hitler said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”  That all calories are created equal is one of those lies.  It turns out that there really isn’t much research to support that theory.

WILL YOU STARVE SO THAT THEY WILL BE BETTER FED?

Near the end of WWII Ancel Keys started a starvation study to see how best to help the people in the decimated parts of Europe after the war was over.  For the first 12 weeks the 36 young men were really well fed – about 3,200 kcal/day, 3 huge meals per day with multiple courses, lots of protein and definitely dessert.

Things changed completely for the second 12 weeks.  At this point his volunteers were fed a diet based on what people in war ravaged Easter Europe would be eating – cabbage, bread, peas, and extremely small quantities of meat (so small that most of the participants were unaware that there was any meat at all in their diet).  This worked out to be just under 1,600 kcal/day.

The men (all participants were men) were NOT happy.  They were always hungry, had no energy, miserable, developed numerous health and psychological problems, and thought about food constantly.  (Does that sound like you on your last diet?) (1)

The Monkey Wrench

In the late 1960’s John Yudkin at the University of London was having remarkable success using low-carb diets for weight loss.  To silence his critics he decided to do a formal study of his clinic’s clients.

These are the instructions he gave them:

“The subjects were asked to take between 10 and 20 oz milk daily (about 300-600 ml), and as much meat, fish, eggs, cheese, butter, margarine, cream and leafy vegetables as they wished. The amount of carbohydrate in other food was listed in “units” with each unit consisting of 5 g carbohydrate; the subjects were told to limit these foods to not more than 10 units (or 50 g) carbohydrate daily.”

It turns out that these people VOLUNTARILY ended up eating LESS than Ancel Key’s folks in terms of calories, but had NONE of the emotional or physiological problems.  In fact they all had MORE energy, and were NEVER hungry.

Ancel Key’s people had to be held against their will in locked bunkers to comply with the 1,570 kcal/day diet.  Yudkin’s people WILLINGLY and AUTOMATICALLY ate 1,560 kcal/day and felt BETTER. (2)

What’s The Difference?

Key’s Semi-Starvation         Yudkin’s Low Carb
100g protein                         83g protein
30g fat                                105g fat
225g carb                            67g carb
1570 kcal                              1560 kcal

One was a low fat diet, and one was a low carb diet.

How many ways can I say it?  I’m not even touching on the studies where the low carb groups ate MORE – a lots more – than their low fat counter parts and dropped 75-100% more fat.

I’m about to graduate from one of the top Dietetic program in the US – UMD.  Yes, I’m 6 years “late”;-).  Every semester is exactly the same.  They repeat over and over again the dogma: “for weight loss eat as little fat as possible, and a high carb diet.  All that matters is eating fewer calories and nothing else.”

But they repeat this without EVER offering up a single reference, and never actually investigating the so-called science that supports this idea.

Lucky for me (and you) I’ve stayed busy getting my real education outside of school – at least 4 seminars per year, 50 books, and I’m always in touch with experts in the real world who are getting results that people will actually pay money for, not parroting inane theories just because that’s what everyone else thinks.

Josef Brandenburg is also the author of The Body You Want, and an award winning personal trainer in Washington DC that was nominated several times for 2009 Personal Trainer of the Year from Personal Fitness Professional Magazine.  Oh, and check out his new web-site washingtondcpersonaltrainer.com

References

1.  Tucker, Todd. The Great Starvation Experiment: Ancel Keys and the Men Who Starved for Science.  University of Minn. Press. 2008

2.  Yudkin, John.  The Low Carbohydrate Diet in the Treatment of Obesity.  Postgraduate Medical Journal. May; 51(5):151-54

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