Being More Resilient So You Can Lose Weight
Jim Katsoulis argues that resilience is trainable and essential for weight loss. Instead of drastic diet overhauls, start tiny: eat an apple daily, cut dinner portions 15-20%, then gradually increase. True weight mastery means living at your goal weight, not just reaching it.
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Everyone, welcome to today's Program Yourself Thin podcast. Today we're talking about being more resilient so that you can lose weight. If you're going to lose weight and keep it off, you're going to have to become more resilient. And if you start to look at resilience as a skill that you develop, you'll be better off than just hoping that you become more resilient, hoping that someday magically you'll just have more willpower to stick to something. And instead, start to think about resilience almost like a muscle that, that's in your body. And if you had a muscle in your body that you wanted to make stronger, you wouldn't just hope that it got stronger someday or just expect that one day magically it'll be stronger. You would have a plan to actually make it bigger. And how would you do that? Well, you would start lifting weight that kind of overworked it, right? You wouldn't do 1,000 sets of 150,000 pounds. I'm obviously ridiculous here, but you wouldn't overwhelm yourself by doing huge things that you couldn't keep up very long, right? So if you did that, the next day, the next week, you probably injure yourself. You'd be really sore. The recovery would take too long. So that wouldn't be a good strategy. What you would do is you would go a bit past your exhaustion point a little bit, but you'd be aware of that. You'd recognize where you were. So you wouldn't lift weights like someone who had been lifting weights for 100 years. You would lift weights like you where you're at. And this is the first step. And you may say, what's this have to do with resilience? What you've been doing up until now, most likely, is you just think resilience is just a quality that you have or don't have, or you have a certain amount of it, and let's just hope it shows up. But really what's going on is it's a muscle in your body, metaphorically, and it's as strong as it is. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter whether someone else's muscle is strong and yours is weak. That is irrelevant. You you have the muscle you have. And so how do you figure out how strong you are? Well, start doing something new. Start eating different. Start making better choices. And then see how long you can keep it up. But here's the secret. What most dieters do is they go into their diet and they're lifting weights like someone who's been lifting weights for 20 years. They go right to the, the advanced plan and jump right into it and expect that that muscle is going to sustain them as if they had the muscles of the person who's been working out for 20 years, when in reality you have the muscles of someone who may never have worked out. And so you're going to need to start with a lower weight. Well, the lower weight is not jumping into a whole diet plan where you completely change your eating all at once. The lighter weight is, I'm going to get myself to eat an apple in the afternoon. I'm going to get myself to, you know, I'm going to eat less dessert after dinner. I'm going to get myself to, you know, cut my dinner portions down by 15%. That's the lower weight. Instead of jumping in and grabbing the 500-pound dumbbells, you know, which is what you've been doing metaphorically with your diet. And in this way, what happens is you start to lift the appropriate amount of weight and you start to work your resilience muscles out. So that instead of trying to change 100% of your eating all of a sudden on Monday for the rest of your life, that being the expectation, which would literally be the expectation of walking in and working out just like the person who's been doing for 20 years. Instead, we start where we're at and we do something that pushes us a little bit, right? We want to test that resilience. Help me see where I'm at. If I can't get myself to eat an apple every day in the afternoon, how the hell am I going to change all of my eating? If I can't get myself to dial my dinner portions down by 15-20%, how am I going to change all of my eating? And most likely you've never even thought of it this way because the diet industry has trained you to think an all-or-nothing mentality. Either do it all 100%, get fast results, or you don't do anything. And there's this whole middle ground, which is where all the magic happens, that you've really never had shown to you. You've never focused on that part. And when you do, it just feels like a, like a, a relief, you know, like a deep breath. Like, you know, it doesn't— it doesn't have to be so overwhelming. It doesn't have to be so hard. And if I make it easier, that's the strategy. That's the real plan. Again, if you could magically lift like the person who's been working out for 20 years, yeah, I guess that's how you'd build muscle the fastest. But it's not realistic. You can't do that because you don't have those muscles. And you don't have the resilience muscles to follow a plan to change all of your eating all at once. No, you don't. And that's been one of your biggest issues. But the problem has been that you blame yourself. You go into the gym and start working out like the person who's been doing it for 20 years, and then you get mad at yourself that you can't do it. Instead of saying, geez, maybe the strategy I was following is completely wrong. Maybe working out like that person is, is where the problem is, not with me. And it's the same thing with your weight. If you can start to approach it without changing everything, you change a little bit and you start to genuinely build up your resilience. Because once you can eat an apple every weekday afternoon, you get that down. Guess what? You start to feel proud of yourself. You start to have a habit. You start to feel like you can do this. Then you add something else to it. Then you start to work on that and you get that locked in. Then you add something else to it. The next thing you know, your resilience is way higher. And I'll let you know something else. Turns out it's really not about resilience even. It's really more about habit. But the resilience piece is a layer of that. And most likely you have never given yourself a real opportunity to develop resilience because what you try to do is so overwhelming that, A, you can't get yourself to do it long. And then, B, once you fall off that wagon, it's really hard to get yourself back on it because it's so intense. And so when we start focusing on smaller changes first, it's easier to do them and keep them up. And then even when we get off track with those, it's easier to get right back on track working with it because it's not overwhelming. And that is how you develop resilience. And resilience, in my opinion, one of the most important aspects of managing your weight, because you're always going to make mistakes sometimes. All right, so that's the other piece, that you're never going to be perfect. You're always going to make mistakes. So resilience is crucial, but the question is, how are you developing it? So give this some thought. And if you want some more support in actually doing it this way, uh, click the link in my bio. If you're at Facebook or wherever else, I put the link in the chat and you can go get this. This is a free, uh, hypnosis session. And I'm excited to say not only get this hypnosis— I've been giving this hypnosis session away for years. It's so good. I love it. It's called The New Thin Me. It's a kickstart session. But today, starting today, you're going to get something if you choose to. You'll have the opportunity to opt in for it, but it's called PYT Daily. And so every day you will get updates that link to different short-form videos I made, YouTube videos, podcast replays. Podcasts, things like that. So, um, that'll be there as something just to kind of keep in the loop, completely free. Um, just my way to kind of give you one more layer of support. And I'm so excited about this, I can't wait. So, um, you know, if you're on my email list, you'll, you'll start— you'll find out about it. But if you're not on my email list, it's just one more reason why I am so excited about this. Because talking about resilience, I think the most important piece of resilience ultimately is the consistency aspect. And I think when it comes to dieting, you know, you're always by yourself and it's this all-or-nothing thing, and you're either all in it or you're not in it at all. And one of the ways to train yourself to be in it consistently is just have a little bite-sized piece coming through at the very minimum. And that's what I'll be offering you all for free. So, um, can't wait. Uh, what's up, Jody? Yes, early, early today. Early, I know. And I always say I'm always here at noon. I'm gonna be here at noon though. But trust me, folks, I'm getting It's a new day, and I'm telling you, I am going to be here starting these. I always start these between noon and 12:30 typically, but I'm going to— it's really, they are going to start starting around noon. So anyways, yes, it is early, early on time. I'm getting better and better. What's up, Joyce? Joyce says, love tuning in to hear you. Well, thank you, thank you, I appreciate that. Karen seconds that. Well, thank you, I appreciate that. I'm happy to be here. I love, love being here. This is one of my favorite things in the world. This is a mission for me. I love doing it. Um, that's why I'm so excited about PYT Daily. I cannot wait. Um, that's really one of the things I've wanted to do for so long. So again, that'll be coming out, just an email, you know, again, real, real light touch, um, opportunity to engage, um, with the content just on a deeper level. It's completely free. So I can't wait. Oh yeah, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. I'm here every, uh, I am here every Monday through Friday, and I do this to, to help people out. I, I, you know, again, for me, my mission in life is to help as many people as possible live at their goal weight. So I— this is one of the coolest ways that I do it. I've been doing this for almost for over 3 years. That's what I was reflecting on today. Now I'll share something with you, because I talk a lot of times that I think the path of personal development, one aspect of it is that that path, the milestones on it are typically— well, I'm going to give— I'm going to share my own experience, but a lot of times the big leaps I have along my personal development path, and I'm using personal development as a catch-all for personal, business, all of it. Okay. But I've noticed consistently that what leads me kind of to the next level is me realizing what a fucking clown I've been. And I say that with love for myself. I say, I genuinely, I find it funny, but at the same time, I can't tell you the number of times in my life in every single area, business, personal, every area of my life. When I've kind of gotten better at something, it's preceded or it's kicked off by the realization, something like, and I'm being completely honest here, oh, you fucking jerk. What are you doing? What are you doing? Now, the big difference is back in the day, all I had was that negative voice. And that negative voice would just grind me down and then I wouldn't take the leap forward. The big difference for me now is I have that negative voice in my head still, but I have a positive coaching voice that comes to kind of balance it out and support it. And so the big realization I had recently, and this is— I'm genuinely embarrassed about it when I say it out loud and when I realized it, genuinely embarrassed, but I'm going to share it anyways. I have been doing this live for over 3 years at this point. I've been doing social media stuff for over 3 years, like TikTok videos, you know, YouTube Shorts, Instagram, all that stuff. For over 3 years. And I have an email list of tens of thousands of people. And in that time, I don't think I've ever emailed that list my podcast, my livestream, my TikTok videos. 3 years, over 3 years. It just, it makes no sense. How could this be? You know, I know I'm a relatively smart person. I know this. I will not let this define me as a dumb person, but I will say that I am a relatively smart person who did something just so stupid that it makes my brain hurt. Anyways, but I'm correcting it now, 3 years later. But I, I joke about this because, again, the people I work with are perfectionists, um, overthinkers. And, uh, I'm telling you, the path of change you do have to be able to absorb the dumb shit you do, you know. And I always say that's a huge part of it. So anyways, I'm sharing my own, uh, just a, just a recent realization I had. Um, but you know, I realized it literally like a day or two ago, and now though I will have it resolved. So it once again, it also highlights that in my opinion, awareness is always the most important point because I think You know, we're aware of what we're aware of and we're unaware of what we're unaware of. And so, so often you can't fix a problem you don't see. And so for me, it's such a simple fix that I'll have it implemented in 2 days. And it took me 3, over 3 years to become aware of it though. And you know, there's also a little bit of regret with that. You know, you think, oh my God, what are you doing? What are you doing? And again, if I didn't have that balance of the negative and the positive voice coming in. I would grind myself down to a pulp and I wouldn't do anything because I'd be feeling so bad about it. I've, I know I've done this in the past, but now I would say the big difference, and I say this because this is really technically, this is the heart of programming yourself, is that I get, I realize something all of a sudden and the negative voice starts chirping away. And that's fine because you can never stop the negative voice. The negative voice is always going to be in your head. Neuroscience says there's no getting rid of old wiring. I'm never going to get rid of that negative voice, but what I can do is I can have that negative voice trigger off my positive voice. And I've spent years and decades working on my positive voice. And so now what happens is I realized all of a sudden the negative voice starts kicking off and the positive voice says, oh, this is awesome. Let's, let's fix this. Let's get this working. And, um, that, that again, I share with that with you because that's just one example of what I work with my clients every single day. Um, when it comes to weight, it's that all of a sudden you realize something that was right in front of you the whole time. You just did not see it the way you needed to. And it's the process of being able to see it is like the hardest one. Um, don't get me wrong. I mean, a lot of times fixing it is its own challenge too, for sure. But being able to see it is really, to me, the part of change that most people just never really talk about. You know, dieting just assumes that, well, here's the plan, just follow it, you're all set. And I think that's so— that, that idea makes me so mad because it's so inaccurate. It's so vague and non-real. Um, and so again, I just shared you with some, some piece of that. Uh, what's up, Barbara? Barbara says, all right, I watch and listen to you almost daily. That's awesome. That makes me so happy too. Um, that's great. Yeah. And I appreciate you all. I know, I know there's a, there's a bunch of you that listen to the podcast every day and listen to all this stuff. So I, I appreciate you all so much. What's up, Sharon? Sharon, my first time on. Thank you. All right. Well, great. Yeah, I'm glad you're here again. My goal is to just give you, at the very least, a different take on your weight, you know, so that I think most of us, when we think about weight loss, we think like a dieter. And why wouldn't we? Our entire lives, we have just been bombarded with diet marketing to the point that we literally can't think about weight loss in any other way, you know, short of injections or surgery. But, but naturally on our own, how are we going to create weight loss and ultimately live at our goal weight? We just go into diet mode. That's it. And so it's my goal to get on here every day and all the videos I make and all the stuff I give away, and certainly my program to help you realize there's a— what I believe is a much better way and to share that with you and to do it by literally coaching you. I get on here. I'm one of the highest— it's $25,000 to work with me privately. You know, so again, I do know what I'm talking about in this area. And the reason that I do get on here for free is because this literally is a mission for me. You know, and if you're first time here, you know, I'm here because I think a big part— my father died when he was 54 of a heart attack, and his weight was a huge contributing factor to that. And so for me, weight is a life and death thing. You know, it's really, really serious. And so I take it serious, and that's why I'm here every day genuinely to help you all out. So if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. What's up, Lindsay? Lindsay says, Jim, I read your book 3 times now. It calms me down. That makes me so happy. And I say this every day. This is the book that Lindsay's talking about. This is my book, The Tao of Living at Your Goal Weight. This is my first kind of official book. And I love this book because it's different than most weight loss books because it's not telling you what to do. It is written as hypnotic stories, and each story is meant to change you while you read it. And each chapter, each story is a page or two. They're short, and it's really meant to be that way. So it's extremely accessible, you know. And, um, that's my goal is for people to read it multiple times, um, and just to leave it around the house and read it even randomly. I've had people in the program, you know, they've told me they've done that where they'll just randomly open up to one chapter and just read it. And so often it just feels like the perfect chapter that they needed. So yes, this book, I really appreciate you saying that, Lindsay. I appreciate getting the book, and I'm really, really glad that it's helping you down, helping you out. And yes, it calms you down. That's the point of it. My version of hypnosis, my preferred induction method that I use with hypnosis is a relaxation induction. I find it very effective, and I find it to have I don't like this. I don't like this one bit though. I just realized the unevenness. I don't think so. Uh, yeah, so I'm a big fan of the induction, uh, the, the relaxation induction because relaxation, uh, has multiple benefits to it. And so when I write these chapters, they're specifically written to be relaxing as well, um, so that the stories and the messages and the ideas can go deeper. So that makes me so happy. I appreciate you kind of validating that for me. Barbara says awareness and honesty with oneself is an eye-opener. Yes, absolutely. And it's hard, you know, and it's not that you want to self-deceive yourself, but it's kind of the way our brain's made. Our brain is made to deceive us. Not intentionally, right? But that's the effect of how our brain is wired. Our brain is constantly generalizing, distorting, and deleting. Information. And so again, to me, so much of personal change really is rooted in seeing ourselves in a new way, seeing what we do in a new way from a new angle, um, seeing things that we just weren't seeing. And to drive the point home, I use this all the time, but I love this example of your brain deleting something, is if you close one eye and look at your nose, it's right there and you can't miss it. You close the other eye and look at your nose, it's right there, you can't miss it. but when you open both of your eyes, your brain deletes your nose typically. And that's because it's used to seeing it. So just, it makes it as if it's not there. And your brain is constantly doing this to behaviors that are right in front of you that you're doing and not doing, um, thought patterns, emotional patterns, um, habitual patterns, just so many things in your life are running kind of on autopilot that you're not aware of. And so program yourself then. Certainly a big part of what we're doing is looking to understand and see ourselves better, you know, see, see how we, you know, so in Program Yourself Thin, we follow the goal weight pyramid, right? So there's mindset, lifestyle, and eating. And so, so much of what we're doing is being able to see our mindset more clearly, our lifestyle more clear, our eating patterns more clearly, so that we can make changes to them. And again, the first step is always awareness. You know, it's not enough to say I need to stop eating carbs. I mean, that's just such a high-level thing that it's almost meaningless. You know, we need to dive down, understand the deeper things. But yeah, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. TikTok, I am live. I know I haven't got any questions over there in a minute, but I am live. And it's hard to find questions over on TikTok. They get lost in the shuffle, I would say. But if you have any over there, feel free to ask them and we'll get some. What's up, Kent? Kent says, I start my day, my daily walk at noon and listen to your podcast. When you start late, it gives me another, um, another 30-40 minutes of exercising. All right, I'll have to start at 11:30 now. That's funny. Yes, I love working. I don't worry, I'm not there yet. I'm trying to get— I think, uh, you know, I don't know, I, I'm 12 to 12:30, but, but I'm working on moving it early. Making it at 12 was— it's taken me years to make that normalized. You know, that's just another lesson that sometimes changing habits and behaviors takes longer than you think it's going to. And that's an aspect of the planning fallacy bias that we all have. And that's— that's an understanding, like cognitive biases. Just to close up the awareness conversation, I think if you study like cognitive biases and you start to understand the biases that are kind of wired into our brain, um, that affect us. That's a great way to start to become more aware, um, of you, of your life, of things you might be missing. I have found understanding cognitive biases has been, I would say, probably the most beneficial thing in terms of awareness. Yeah. Uh, Lindsay says, do you ever think about writing a second book? This book was so great, I can't imagine what would happen if you wrote another. I wonder what you would do. Yeah, I do. I appreciate you saying that. Yes, I absolutely— I was working. I actually was working on the main book I want to write, and I've got it about 70, 80% of the way done. I've got the content and I just need to— I kind of have to go through it and edit it. And out of nowhere, I was like, literally one day I was like, oh man, I should write like a, like an easy to read book. You know, listen, Program Yourself Thin is a complex, weighty program. It's not for everyone. It's not, it's not. If you're just looking for something easy, you just want to tell me what to do and I'll do it, this isn't for you. Um, this is for my overthinking perfectionist people is what Program Yourself Thin is for. But I had the idea like right in the middle of my book, I'm gonna write just an easy to read version. And then I went into this for 3 months. It took me to write this. And, um, I worked on it every day, hours and hours every day. And, um, I got it written though. But what this book is here, this book actually takes you through Lindsay. So this book takes you through the entire Program Yourself Then System just in a really easy, accessible way. So literally, like, if you look at the, if you look at the table of contents, um, we've got the inner path piece is the mindset. If you just showed you that the. The goal weight pyramid here, right where we got mindset, lifestyle, and eating. The first section here is mindset. So it goes through, and if you look here, you'll see, you see mindset. But if you look on the side there, you can see the deeper levels of it. So there's mindset, but there's 6 categories in mindset, lifestyle. There's 8 habits in lifestyle, eating. There's 3 things in there. And so the book actually literally takes you through the whole system, but it does it in a really accessible way so that even if you've never heard about Program Yourself, then you'll still get a lot of value out of this. But if you're in the program, it's just one more way to understand what we're doing in the program, just in a light, kind of easy breezy sort of way. But yes, um, the next book is coming. And then I was struck with maybe writing two books, one shorter book really about the programming piece of it, and then the main book. And I'm still kind of in between that, but I'm working on a couple other things. I probably have Probably another month and then I'll get started on that book. But I can't wait till you all get it. And then I always say it's the book after that that I cannot wait to write. That's the one I'm most excited to write. But I got to get this, this one or two other books out of the way first. Um, but it's that next book I cannot wait to write. I think that's the book I was meant to, to write in my life, but I gotta put that one off. But thank you, Lindsay. I appreciate that feedback. It keeps me going and makes me feel happy. Sharon says, I just hit my goal weight. I'm terrified of gaining it back again. I need your book, please. The title again. Yes, the book is The Tao of Living at Your Goal Weight. Tao, because it was— it's modeled after the Tao Te Ching, and that's all based on Taoism. Okay. And then living at your goal weight is the goal here. And so that's perfect for you, Sharon, because yes, there's a huge difference between losing weight and living at your goal weight, which is why I focus on living at your goal weight and not losing weight. And so your terror of gaining it back is what most people experience and is probably one of the core reasons why 85 to 95% of dieters that lose the weight and get to their goal weight put it back on ultimately. Because what most people do is they trade the pleasure and the excitement of the food for the pleasure and the excitement of the weight loss. And so everything's okay as long as you're losing weight, but as you get to your goal weight, the question becomes, where are you going to get your pleasure and excitement from now? Now, your brain, I know, is thinking, well, I'll get the pleasure and excitement from being thin and healthy. That, that's more than enough. No, because there's a thing called hedonic adaptation. And so we adapt to our reality. Um, you've all experienced this when you got your new car. It was your new car for about 3 months, and then it just becomes a car, your car. And so the same thing happens with your weight. So just getting to your goal weight typically is not enough motivation to keep it going. Where do you get your pleasure and excitement from? You're not looking at the scale going down anymore and looking forward to that. You're not looking forward to the food. So where are you going to get your pleasure and excitement from? And that's the question you got to answer. And that's why I say in Program Yourself Thin, we take the weight and we wrap it in personal development, because the personal development piece becomes the thing where you get your pleasure and excitement from. And once that starts to take root, then you start to feel much more grounded in living at your goal weight. So I hope that makes sense. Yeah, Sharon says exactly. Yes, I know, because that's what happens. It's like that's the dieter mantra, is it flips. Dieters go between two mantras if they're active dieters. Okay, so if you're a non-active dieter, your main mantra is, I just want to lose the weight. I just want to lose this weight. I just want to lose the weight. I just want to lose the weight. But if you're an active dieter who actually does stuff and actually starts losing weight, You've got a second mantra, and it's what Sharon just said. I hope I don't put the weight back on. I hope I don't put the weight back on. So dieters, again, if you're a non-active dieter, your main mantra is, I just want to lose the weight, some form of that. If you're an active dieter, you flip-flop between them, and it's so crazy, right? It's like, I just want to lose the weight. I just want to lose the weight. I just want to lose the weight. I just want to lose the weight. I hope I don't get it back. I hope I don't get it back. I hope I don't get it back, right? And, uh, if we look at it hypnotically, you know what's going on, Sharon, is when we're all our own best or worst hypnotist because we're always talking to ourselves in our own head. And so what's going on, Sharon, is that your internal dialogue is focusing you on gaining the weight back. And I know you may not understand that. Let me explain it a little deeper because I think this is crucial to understand your mind. Your subconscious mind, which is the, the main force of your brain, um, you're not a logical— let me just back it up a little more. You've got two parts to your brain: your conscious mind, your subconscious mind. The conscious part of your brain is your prefrontal cortex. It's the logical, rational part. and the subconscious part is the primary part of your brain that runs all your habitual thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. So if you're going to change your weight, you've got to understand your subconscious mind. Now, the first thing you need to understand about your subconscious mind is that it does not understand the difference between negative and— it does— it doesn't able to process negatives. And let me show you what I mean, because if I ask you, Sharon, to not think about what I'm about to say, and you can all play along, Don't think about what I'm about to say. Okay, get your willpower ready. All right. Don't think about a banana. Don't think about a banana. Stop thinking about that banana. Hey, what did I tell you? Now what are you thinking about? Okay. And so again, as soon as I say don't think about a— whatever word I say there is going to pop into your mind. Your visual cortex is going to light up and you're going to see a yellow fruit. Then you're gonna try not to think about it, whatever that means, but you're thinking about it. So when you keep saying, I'm, I'm terrified of gaining it back again, what are you imagining? You're imagining the scale going up. You're imagining your clothes getting tighter. You're imagining your face getting fuller. So every time you give yourself that suggestion, you put that image and idea in your mind. And that's a big problem because the second thing you wanna know about your subconscious mind is it can't tell the difference between vivid imagination and reality. And you know, this is true because this is why you like TV shows and movies. You know those movies aren't real, right? But does that matter? If you watch a horror movie, you know it's not real, but are you not— you're not like this. Why are you like that? You're in a theater, safe as can be. Why are you tense and not breathing? When you watch a sports, uh, game on the TV, you know you're just watching flashing lights. You're not there. You're just sitting in your living room. Why, why is there adrenaline going through your body, right? You watch a sad movie, you know it's not real. You know it's just a story. Why are you crying? Why do you feel sad? Because our subconscious mind can't tell the difference. And so we put these two things together, Sharon. You're constantly terrified of gaining the weight back. You keep flashing that image in your mind, and you keep creating an emotional state of feeling terrified, fearful, scared, programming your mind to literally put the weight back on. And this is why, Sharon, you have been focusing on losing weight, and I would suggest you very quickly start focusing on living at your goal weight. They're two totally different things. Losing weight is a short-term process, and it's not really your goal. I'm sure you've lost weight before and put it back on, so you don't— the weight loss is an incomplete goal. Living at your goal weight is really what you want. And to take it a step further, and I just want to point out how crazy this is because I bet you're a smart person, Sharon, But I also bet you've never framed your goal the way I'm about to tell you, is that your goal is not to lose weight. Your real goal is to live, to get to your goal weight and then live there for the rest of your life on near autopilot. Now, as smart as you are, and as much as you have focused on your weight and learned everything in podcasts and videos and books and trainings that you've gone through, It's kind of weird that you've never once articulated the goal that way. And once you hear it, it just, it hits that. Yeah, that's what I want. Oh shit. Yeah, that's what I want. And it starts to illuminate why you struggle, because you have been a master of losing weight and you treat maintenance as an afterthought. And in Program Yourself Thin, maintenance is the core of everything we're doing. That's why we start on day one with maintenance. Yeah. Um, Jane says, hi Jim, sad I can't stay on here today, I have an appointment this morning. That's all right, you can listen to the audio. Um, this is a podcast, and, um, you know, depending on what platform you look at— again, this is one of those things, like, it'll, it'll be one of the things coming out at you is I'll be giving you a PYT Daily if you choose to sign up for you. You would have to click it and you have to opt into it. I'm not going to send you this every day because I don't want to overwhelm you, but, uh you'll, you'll be able to get links to that as well. But this is, this is a podcast, so if you listen to podcasts, it's on all the podcast platforms. Just search Program Yourself Then. Uh, if you're a YouTube person, the live of this, the video live, is, is always up for replay of all of them. Um, if you're on Facebook, the replay's up. So whatever preferred platform you have, you could watch the replays of these whenever you choose to. All right. Uh, yeah, Sharon says, yes, I want to live at my goal weight. Yeah, it feels good, doesn't it, Sharon? Right? And it's like, it's so funny, and That's why, like, it's funny to me, like, every time I have that conversation, um, some of the dipshits that'll say like, oh, that's just semantics. I just want to smack them. Anyone that ever says that to me as a hypnotist, I just want to smack them because words have a lot of meaning. And there's a huge difference. I mean, they're two totally different worlds between saying I want to lose weight and I want to live at my goal weight. And the biggest difference between them is the timeframe we're thinking within. When we focus on I want to lose weight, we're thinking about short term. We're thinking about how fast can I lose the weight. When we think about living at our goal weight, we have a much longer term time frame, and that difference makes all the difference. Um, what's up Anita? It says, just joining in, please do an audiobook of your DAO book, uh, your voice reading, it would be awesome. Yes, thank you, and I know, um, that is on tap. Please understand and believe me, it's on tap and ready to go. Uh, this— these last Well, you know, one thing is my voice was weird for a little while there, and I had to wait for it to get normal. There's nothing worse. You cannot record unless your voice 100%. I hear myself videos where I'm like a little stuffy or something's up, and it drives me insane. So I've been waiting for my voice to be right. It's getting right to the sweet spot now. Um, everything's set to go, and this week was just bonkers. This was a, a wild week for me. There's so much stuff happening, so The audiobook though, uh, is on the short-term list. So, so yes, we will have that going quick. A lot of people have asked for that. I want to get it to you. It's going to be awesome. I'm ready to do it. I want to do it. Everything's set to go with it. I just got to do it now, and I think now is pretty much the time. Yeah, my voice is feeling good. I'm not gonna lie. Yeah, feeling good. Yeah, Jody, I, I see you. I know. I appreciate the nudges. What's up, Vicki? Vicki says, even at goal, diet mentality strikes, but you've helped me realize importance of all or something and getting back on track ASAP. Yeah, and Vicki, you all should listen to Vicki, is a, um, master, you know, of dealing with her weight. And she was literally a, uh, a Weight Watchers lifetime member, um, but yeah, joined, uh, Program Yourself then, even as a, a member of that, because, you know, Weight Watchers is great for a lot of— there's a lot of good tools there, no question. But I don't think they really have the mindset piece, you know, to the level that people need it, you know. So Vicki's a real good model of someone who is just a lifelong learner and just really about the mastery piece of it, you know. And so I think that's smart. Yeah, yeah. Because especially living at my goal weight, diet mentality is so infused in the culture enemy. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the diet mentality really is one of your biggest enemies. And it's an invisible one. So I was talking earlier about awareness, but the diet industry is not your friend, folks. The diet industry is a branch of the food processing industry, so you can't trust them. It's quite the opposite of it. You have to be extremely skeptical of them. And the whole diet industry and the whole diet philosophy is a bunch of bullshit. You know, it's literally guaranteed failure. Christ, we've had diets now for 100 years. There's not one diet that rises to the top of the list for being effective long term. That's crazy. And it's very easy to explain why, because regardless of what the specifics of the diet plan are, kind of nutritionally, whether it's low carb, low fat, no meat, all meat, it doesn't matter what the specifics are. The thing that unifies them all together and makes them all fail equally is the mindset piece of it, because the diet mindset is the core problem. And it's evidenced right in the beginning when you're going to start whatever diet you're going to do, any diet you've ever started in your life. I don't even know you, and I know this is true about you. No matter what diet you've ever started in your life, you've done it the exact same way. You've jumped in 100% on a Monday, and you can't do things 100%. And that's the big lie of the diet industry, and it's the one that trips everyone up. So again, diets are all or nothing, and Program Yourself Thin is all or something. And that's one of the biggest distinctions between it and the diet mindset. Yeah, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. What's up, dude? Dude says, I'm gonna— I've been doing OMAD, but it's not working. It's making me maintain rather than losing weight. Um, yeah, I mean, OMAD is, is, you know, again, let me just preface this by saying, in Program Yourself Thin, the golden rule is there's no right or wrong, there's only what works for you. So some people are thriving doing OMAD. OMAD's one meal a day. Some people thrive doing that. Okay. And so God bless them. Good for them. Keep doing it. Most people do not thrive doing it. Most people, I swear, it makes them very stressed. And I think that causes two problems. A, they, they probably way overeat even though they're just one meal a day. And B, I think it causes a lot of cortisol release and stress responses in you. And stress responses for most people are not really helpful for weight loss. You know, extreme stress responses can, but, but the stress response from like dieting is different. And, um, so I'm not even surprised. So what I will say to you is, is as much as it can matter that I say this, is I, I give you permission to, to— you don't have to do one meal a day. There's no, there's no magic bullet is what I'm trying to say. Um, start to figure out what would work for you, you know, and it may not be the one meal a day. You might be getting too stressed and tense when you're not eating. It might be a, a pattern and a structure of eating that's just not the right fit for you, and there's nothing wrong with that. Okay, that's another piece of the diet I hate— the piece of dieting that drives me crazy— this one-size-fits-all concept, you know, that everyone's got to lose weight by cutting carbs out, you know. And it's like every diet kind of has that vibe to it, and I would suggest that you run away from that idea and instead measure the effectiveness of the, of your weight loss plan not just on the weight loss, but by also how it feels to follow the plan. So if you're white-knuckling and stressing out every day and losing weight, I mean, I know you're happy you're losing weight, but that's not a quality of life that you're going to maintain and keep up. And so I know it might take a little bit longer, but if you integrate into your weight loss plan How can I make this as easy and enjoyable as well so that you're actually learning something along the way so that at the end you not only have lost the weight, but you have a plan that you've created for yourself that's custom-made for you that feels relatively comfortable to keep up. That's the secret to living at your goal weight. And you've never done that because you only think about the weight loss phase and you think about it as a temporary thing and you say, well, fuck it, I don't care. I'll just— I'll I'll eat one meal a day so I can lose the weight. But what's really going on is you're thinking about, I'll eat one meal a day until I get to my goal weight. You're not gonna eat one meal a day forever, most likely. You're not gonna, you know, not eat carbs ever again. You're just— in your mind, you're saying, I'm gonna do it until I lose the weight. And there, God, is that a big problem. You know, you got to get away from that. Drama News says, what happens if you run on the treadmill a little more than 5 minutes? Um, I don't know, you know, it depends. Each person's different. But, um, if you run on the treadmill, you know, if you're, if you're running on the treadmill consistently 5 minutes, I think that's wonderful because the hardest part of a habit is actually doing it habitually. So to me, it's like when I want to implement the habit, no matter— say I wanted to start using the treadmill My first goal would be I just want to get on the treadmill for 30 seconds a day, whatever days I wanted to do it. My first goal is to get on it 30 seconds a day, do it for 30 seconds, and I can get off and do whatever. Because the first thing I want to do is I just want to link getting on the treadmill and doing it. Because before I've done that, I don't even have a mental program, a nervous system program to do that. So my first thing is I just want to get on there. And let's just say I do that for 2 weeks and all of a sudden starts getting kind of integrated into my habit. Cool. Right. Because I made it so simple. I lowered the barrier. I didn't say, oh, I got to do 20 minutes on the treadmill or it's not worth it. I said my first goal is to just to kind of link it together. I'm going to do the training. I would do it at a certain time. I would make it very routine. I would say, okay, the best time for me to treadmill, you know, 7:00 in the morning. So I say, okay, 7:00 in the morning, I get on the treadmill for 30 seconds. That's it. That's all I got to do. If I want to stay on longer, go knock yourself out. But I just want to get on for at least 30 seconds. Do it. Then I can do whatever I want. I'll do that for a couple weeks, maybe a couple months. And once I start to get it as a habit and it starts to run automatically, what happens is now I free up cognitive load because at first I'm using a lot of cognitive load memory to get myself to get on the treadmill. But eventually that starts to become hardwired in where I do it naturally, where it's like, oh, 7 o'clock, time to get on the treadmill. Cool. Once I'm at that point, now I use that freed up energy to say, okay, let's, let's move it up to 2 minutes a day. Let's move up to 5 minutes a day, you know, and then I kind of nudge it up bigger. But my first goal is to have, okay, at 7 o'clock I work out, and that— now we're going the other direction. So I'm linking, actually, 7 o'clock I work out. One of my workouts is I get on the treadmill and I do this, but I might also realize, oh, once it's nice out, you know, then I go outside and go for a walk at that time. So now I've got different options. Oh yeah, if y'all got questions, feel free to ask them. TikTok sometimes— and it's so confusing too, they put these AI summaries in and they look like questions, and then it starts talking about the people that are here and that looks like questions. Um, Ezra says, Jim, I bought a treadmill 6 months ago and I've only used it once. Any tips? Well, yeah, but what I just said. So that's great, that's the That's the exact tip I'd give you, Azra. And I know your brain's going to say, well, 30 seconds, who gives a shit? That's not going to do anything. Well, no, having it for 6 months and not using it, using it once is not going to do anything because I bet that once you did it was 20, 30, 40 minutes an hour. Am I right? So again, this is what, this is what I mean. This is what I was talking about earlier. People always set themselves up for failure. They get a treadmill and they say, okay, from now on, from now on, I'm going to walk on it an hour a day. It's like, so you go from, you see the all or nothing in here, right? You go from never doing it, not having that habit, not having the physicality of walking for that long. And now you're just going to do it every day. That's such an enormous cognitive, energetic, physical load to take on, on top of everything that you're already doing, that it's almost guaranteed failure. So let's be fucking strategic and let's say, wait, the first thing is I want this to be a habit. So I don't have to think about it. You don't got to think about brushing your teeth, do you? You just pretty much just do it when you do it. Great. That's a powerful part of your mind running that. So let's just get the habit of getting on the treadmill. The first thing is just to get on the fucking thing, turn it on, see how it works. That's a whole thing too. You're probably intimidated by the treadmill. I don't even know how to really use it. And that, that's part of you not wanting to get on it either. So the first step, I just want to get on it, turn it on and walk for 30 seconds, make it work. And then go from there. Does that make sense, folks? You all don't even realize you just— you're overwhelming yourself, and it's not your fault. The diet industry, the weight loss industry, it's just trained you, um, to think that way. Yeah, there it is. Okay, caught up. Drama News says, what happens if you don't eat for a week at all? Drama News asking the big question. I don't know what happens if you don't eat for a week at all. I don't know, what do you think happens? What— I don't know what would happen in terms of weight loss. I mean, you probably lose some weight for that week, and then once you started eating the next week, you'd put the weight back on. So, you know, but you'd probably be tired, you'd probably be grumpy, you'd probably be, you know, have headaches. Yeah, if you— so that's what I think would happen if you all stopped eating for a week. I think you'd feel like shit. I think you'd feel tired, headaches, irritable, hungry, obsessed with food, annoyed, unproductive. That's what I think would happen to most of you. And then you'd lose some weight and feel good about it. And then the next week you'd have to start eating because you have to eat, right? And then you start putting the weight on, then you'd feel destroyed and discouraged and frustrated and wondering why the weight came back on. Azra said the one time was an hour and a half. Thank you, Azra. Thank you for staying. I— that's so funny. And that's what I mean, Azra. I don't know if you were here for this a few minutes ago. I was talking about, um, so much of like, like personal growth and getting better at things is kind of recognizing what a dipshit we were, you know. And I was talking about what a dipshit I was that I haven't been sending these, these lives and all my I mean, I've got tens of millions of views on my TikTok videos. I never send them out to my list to watch them. It's, it's so stupid. It hurts me. It hurts my heart. It hurts my belly. It hurts my brain when I think of myself doing that. But that's okay. So, Azra, that's so funny. I appreciate you saying that. But now you got a better plan, right? Oh, it's so funny. Happy Girl says, I take it you're against the GLP-1. Lots of my friends are losing so much weight. Um, I'm not against it, you know. I, I try to be, you know, I aim to be very supportive here because I know there's a lot of people on GLP-1s that listen. Um, I have people in GLP-1s in my program, so I really, I, I'm not about attacking things, even though I do kind of attack keto and diets and stuff like that. Um, so I, I think GLP-1s are a godsend for a lot of people, like literally life-saving for a lot of people. So that's my thoughts on that. What I don't like about GLP-1s, I don't really like the marketing that the only way you can lose weight is with GLP-1s now, because they'll say, well, no one's lost weight any other way. Well, no, because the only way you've been given is dieting our entire lives, folks. You have to understand, I don't think most people think of it this way because you tend to think, well, my grandmother didn't have to— she knew how to lose weight. No, your grandma did not lose weight. She didn't live in our environment. Your great-grandparents didn't live in our food environment. You know, we evolved over millions of years to— in a food-scarce environment. So all of our biology and our neurology is built to be in a food-scarce environment. And so when all of a sudden you completely change the environment in 50 years to be surrounded by abundant food that's hyperpalatable and addictive, and you're constantly marketed to, to be reminded and remember that food, it's a completely different environment than anyone in history has ever dealt with. And it's literally opposed to the environment we grew up in and evolved in. So what's going on, in my opinion, is that you can't change the hardware you're born with, but you can update the software. And you need to update the software to thrive in the new reality we live in. We live in an alien environment at this point. The food environment we live in is completely foreign to humans. We've never been surrounded by an abundance of hyperpalatable, hyperaddictive foods and constantly conditioned to eat them. So dieting came around the same time that did, and dieting and food— it all started 50 years ago, folks, when the cigarette companies went into the food industry and they made the food as addictive and hyperpalatable as they— the same way they did with cigarettes. They use the most aggressive marketing possible. At the same time they went in and did that with foods, they simultaneously took over the diet industry. And the cigarette companies bought a lot of the food companies and the diets. And so what they've been doing, and this is why diets are so sneaky, the diets are wolves in sheep's clothing. You think they're there to help you, but the diets are literally promoted by the big food companies, which are owned by the cigarette companies. And they have conditioned us to think about weight loss as dieters, to the point that we can't think of it any other way. And I always put this in— to put this in context, diets are get-rich-quick schemes. They don't work. They're illusion. They're built on our impatience. But you can realize a get-rich-quick scheme in context because we all know what traditional money-making is. You develop a skill or some ability to get compensated for, and we understand traditional money-making, and we can see a get-rich-quick scheme in context of that. When it comes to weight loss in the modern world, we literally have no legitimate concept of how to do it. You got diets. And so if you lived in a world where the only thing you ever thought about how to make money with was get-rich-quick schemes, you can imagine how frustrating that would be. but it would be a whole level of frustration deeper because you wouldn't have the sense that it's bullshit. You would just be like, this is how you do it. This is what everyone does. This is how you do it. But it's not. And so I'm not going to tell you this is the only way, what I'm about to show you, program yourself then. But what I want you to understand is that dieting is so limited in what it's telling you that you have almost no chance of success, which maps up with the statistics are that 85 to 95% of people fail to lose weight on a diet. Dieting has a 5 to 15% success rate long-term. And when I show you program yourself, then we follow the goal weight pyramid, in-depth mindset work, in-depth lifestyle work, in-depth eating planning. Dieting is about this much of this pyramid, that tiny little tip that I'm showing you. That's the don't eat carbs. That's the, uh, count your calories. And it's missing all of this stuff, and I believe it's missing all of it intentionally. And to drive the point home, because I know you're like, Jim, you're a paranoid nut job— Weight Watchers was owned by Heinz. Jenny Craig was owned by Nestlé. Uh, Atkins Food Products is owned by the same company that owns Onions, Pretzels, and Cinnabon. SlimFast is owned by the same company that owns Ben Jerry's ice cream. So you tell me how with all the diets that we've had for 50 years in our face, the obesity rates just keep going off the charts. How do we have all these diets for 50 years and we have 75% of the adult population in America overweight or obese? And I say this to you so that you can stop blaming yourself and start to realize that diets were the problem the whole time, not you. When something fails 85 to 95% of the time, it's not your fault that it doesn't work. It's the strategy that doesn't work. And that's validated with those numbers. It's validated in your own life. It's validated with all the people you've seen try diets and fail. And it all comes down to, simplistically, when have you ever dealt with your mindset when it comes to your weight? And how the fuck can you think that your mindset doesn't impact your weight. I always say dieting, to see it in context, is like Just Say No to drugs. Do you remember back in the '80s? Well, that's a very superficial approach to dealing with addiction, and no one uses that today. There's no Just Say No centers of recovery because it doesn't work. Because the problem's deeper than that. And I'm here to tell you that's the exact same thing with weight. Dieting is just say no, isn't it? Here's the just say no specifics. This, this one says just say no to carbs. This one here says just say no to extra calories. This one here says just say no to eating for 16 hours. And it's you using your willpower to try and fight against yourself. And that's the diet mindset in a nutshell. And it doesn't work. And the diet companies know this because they're owned by the food companies. And back to the cigarettes, just real quick, I didn't forget about that because I told you the diets were owned by the food companies. I just showed you that. But did you know Nabisco and R.J.R. Reynolds are merged together? They're the same company. Did you know the parent company of Kraft and General Foods is Philip Morris? So I hope this changes the way you think and feel about the diet industry. It's not your friend. They're miss— they're a branch of the food advertising industry. So Pamazoo says, why weren't aware before eating and regrets? Yeah, um, well, because we, we're in trances. So a lot of times we're in trance. So you've all felt that, right? The you that was overeating versus the you afterwards says, what the, what the shit did I just do? What, what, what? Well, you got— you're a multiple personality. We all are. And, uh, yeah, that, that's a, that's a factor. Um, Lisa says you're so inspiring. Well, thank you, Lisa. I appreciate you saying that. That is my goal. I am here to inspire you all and help you all get control of your weight. That is my number one mission in life. Um, professional and personally, I mean, after my family, um, the, the number one focus of my life, I guess after personal development too, personally, um, my goal is to help as many people as possible with their goal weight. And as I said, For me, this is life and death, you know. I want you all to live as long as you can, and I think as important, or if not more, is I want you to have the best quality of life while you're here. And that's why I'm here every day. Drama News says, may I recommend you to my followers? Yeah, absolutely, get the word out. Dancer says, how to deal with the food that is always around and the sweets and fast food? Yeah. How do you deal with the food that's always around? Right. That's, that's the question. That is the question. And I will let you know, willpower alone is not enough. You need a kind of bottom-up approach. And so what I say again, program yourself in how we deal with it. The goal weight pyramid. We deal strategically with creating the right mindset, lifestyle, and eating. So at the end of the day, you're able to think like a thin, healthy person, live like a thin, healthy person, and eat like a thin, healthy person. Surrounded by all this bullshit, you know. But you need a more comprehensive, holistic strategy to be able to do that, and willpower and dieting is not enough. Am I a doctor? No, I am not a doctor. Um, should people ask a doctor before trying this stuff? Um, I'm not sure which stuff you are referring to. If you're talking about GLP-1s, well, yeah, and I think you need a prescription at this point. I'm not even sure that they're They're quickly blurring that line about— I don't know even anymore. I get confused about GLP-1s you need a prescription for and ones that just seem like you don't. I'm a little confused on that. But no, I am not a doctor. And should you— should people ask a doctor before trying this stuff? If you're— I don't know what you're referring to, this stuff. Should people ask a doctor before they start working on their mindset, their lifestyle, and their eating? Sure, I guess. But, but here's the bad news. Your doctor doesn't know shit about weight loss. If your doctor knew anything valuable about weight loss, we wouldn't need GLP-1s. We wouldn't have 75% of the population overweight or obese. Unfortunately, and I love doctors for what they're good at, but they are not good at helping people with their weight. You know, if a doctor has a genuine, just like personal interest in it and they go into it. Then, then they're, you know, what they say is probably really valuable. But just a typical doctor is not trained in weight loss. You all, you all been to doctors? They've all told you to lose weight. What do they say? They say the same shit your friend says. Eat better and exercise, right? They don't know anything more than you do, you know, unless they have some personal interest in it. But it's funny because the guy who wrote Proteinaholics, he literally ran He literally ran a bariatric surgery center. So there you go. There's a doctor that knows about a lot about weight loss, right? Wrong. He knows a lot about surgery. Okay. And again, I'm not, I'm not shitting on that because the surgeries, you know, when they work for certain people, they're a godsend. Okay. But what I am saying is that I have never seen in the medical establishment any comprehensive holistic strategy to change your weight. I've seen medically supervised basically fasts when you're consuming 500 calories a day, but you're medically supervised. Fuck that. What are you going to do? Be medically supervised forever? I have seen— you know what I see with those programs? I see people lose a bunch of weight and then put a bunch of weight back on. So I don't think that's a good strategy. And again, the trick is this. I will give you the trick to see through the bullshit almost instantaneously. It's like X-ray glasses. Here's the trick. Are you focusing on losing weight or are you focusing on living at your goal weight? That's the difference. That's the clarifying question. Because if you're doing a medically supervised fast, is that focusing on losing weight or living at your goal weight? You drinking fucking shakes for the rest of your life? You go to the hospital once a week to get weighed and checked up on? Is that your plan? You say, well, I'm just gonna do that till I lose the weight. Well, what are you going to do to maintain it? Anyone want to have that conversation? I believe I am the number one person on the planet. I'm going to say I'm going to go out on a limb here. I think I'm literally the number one person on the planet when it comes to weight maintenance. I literally have never seen anyone that I think knows more than I do. I don't think there's a doctor that I've seen that knows more about how to live at your goal weight, because living at your goal weight requires you to think differently about yourself. About your life, about your habits, about food. It requires you to live a different lifestyle and to relate to your eating differently, and then obviously eat different. And what I see are acute solutions of, okay, come in every week and drink 500 calories a week, and we'll— or every day, and then we'll measure everything. Well, that's a short-term strategy, is it not? Stop eating carbs. That's a short-term strategy, is it not? I don't see people focusing on the long term, and I think that's what makes everything I'm saying so different than what you always hear, because everything I'm saying to you originated with people that had lost weight and kept it off for at least 2 years. Those are the people I've been obsessed with for over 30 years. I'm obsessed with people that drop the weight and keep it off. They're the people you want to study, not the fucking person who lost 50 pounds last month. That's the last person you want to study. That's my thoughts. But yeah, go consult a doctor anyways. I think legally you probably have to say that. I don't know, so I'll say it. Uh, Dancer says, I really like the way you talk about losing weight. Well, thank you. Yes, I talk about it differently. I am a hypnotist, so about the opposite of a doctor as you can be. I am a hypnotist. And, um, I say that proudly. I didn't always say that proudly, but I do now because I have found that that hypnotic understanding I have, I think, is the most practical. Like, I don't think hypnosis itself— I think hypnosis itself is just really, really powerful, but I honestly think the most powerful piece of hypnosis is the understanding of how it works. Because to me, understanding how hypnosis works is really how I understand how my mind works in a very practical sense. Because I think at the end of the day, all of us walk around with a core challenge, and that challenge is that we struggle to get ourselves to do things we want to do or to stop doing things that we want to stop doing. I think we all live with that. In a nutshell, that, that's our core weight problem. And I don't think any diet deals with talking about that. Why do we do shit that— when we want to lose weight, why do we go and eat a cake? Why can't we get ourselves to eat something healthy or do the right things? Now, a lot of people will say, because I don't have the willpower, and that's just not true. And I think hypnosis explains it in a much more elegant, useful way. And I think that's the, that's the foundation that all of this is built on as well. Um, Todoro says, how to eat for people with a little high cholesterol? Um, well I find that interesting. I think a lot of people— for most people, you know, if cholesterol is high, it's a reflection of your diet. But I sit before you as someone who has an extremely clean diet, and it makes no sense that I would have high cholesterol other than the fact that I have it genetically. And so, you know, you got to see what your particular situation is. But for most people, you know, reducing the saturated fats, processed foods, you know, all these other things. It's going to help you get your cholesterol down naturally, but you have to test it out. Lisa says doctors have been zero help to me. Yeah, I mean, you're not alone. And doctors, they're— listen, again, I just want to say this real clear. I love doctors. I think doctors are great at what they do. Well, um, but they're part of the medical establishment. And I mean, come on, you know, business is business. And I think it's hard for me not to believe the idea that, that the medical west— the medical western medical system is a for-profit system. And I think there's a lot more money to be made treating the symptoms than finding the cure. I don't want to sound paranoid, but that's what I think. And it's reflected, I think, in what you see doctors' training is. You know, like if you ever look into like what doctors' training is in terms of nutrition alone, it, it's jaw-dropping how little it is. And so Western medicine really isn't built around cures. It's built around treating symptoms. And, um, I, I believe that you don't have to agree with me. That's fine. But I don't think that they have a lot of good— I mean, again, you know, you can all just look at your own experience. If you struggle with your weight, I know your doctor's told you to lose weight or you should. And what advice have they given you that's been helpful? And if anyone's ever given you good advice, please share it. I would love to. I'm not trying to— I'm sure some doctor somewhere had good advice. Share it. But most of them don't have anything to say. They don't know anything more than you do. I know this. We all know this, don't we? I know this because this is what I do. I remember one time, you know, 14 years ago, I put 25 pounds on. I remember I went to the doctor. Holy shit, 25 pounds on. And I had to go back like, I don't know, 4 months. But I dropped like 15 pounds. Holy shit, how'd you do that? You know, no idea, you know. And again, I think that's representative pretty much most doctors. Doesn't make them bad people, but that's not what they do. And I think what happens in this environment is we kind of conflate, oh, a doctor know everything about that. Well, they know a lot about a lot of stuff. They don't know a lot about weight loss. No, they don't. Meow Meow Meow says, I lost weight 2 years ago, about 20 kilograms, and gained it back. I feel stuck. Um, yeah, that sucks. Um, when you gained it back, did something trigger that? You know, um, again, I don't know how long you kept the weight off. That's another important question. But when the weight started coming on, did something trigger it? Something go on in your life? What was going on? Um, Carol says, I'm losing little bits of weight, but my blood pressure is high. I'm wondering why. Um, you might need to lose more weight. Your weight may not be the main thing affecting it. Um, Tadou says, I don't like counting calories. Is there a way to lose weight without counting? Um, yeah, absolutely. And program yourself then. I don't really recommend counting calories. I find most people find it tedious and end up quitting anyways. And so in Program Yourself Thin, we kind of look at it— it's a more looser way of looking at it. We're still tracking things, but in a more— I hesitate to use the word intuitive because I don't want you to think intuitive eating. It's a lot more than that. But we basically structure our eating. So we, we, we structure it so that we don't have to think about every little thing. And in that structure is a sense of knowing. So instead of tracking every calorie, like micromanaging it, we start to kind of track it through the, the general structure and habit of our behaviors. It's probably unsatisfying to you, but, but that's, that's what we do. Um, any tips on mental blocks? Oh God, yeah, mental blocks. I mean, you're always gonna have mental blocks, okay? So you, you know, you have to think about— I think, I think of weight mastery as a path. Uh, maybe if you think of it— and so most dieters don't think of that. Most dieters think about weight loss as you get to a destination and that's that. I think of this as a never-ending path, very much like, like I play guitar. And so guitar for me is a never-ending path. I never am going to get to— there's no finish line. There's just a way of walking the path. And so that path that we walk, there's constantly mental blocks. And so I can't tell you about specific mental blocks because everyone's at a different point in the path and dealing with different ones. But I can tell you in general, the hardest part of mental blocks is becoming aware of them. And once you become aware of them, again, there's a lot of skills and strategy to put forward. But without understanding the specific ones, it's hard to explain that. Oh, hold on a second. There it is. Anita says, I'm conditioned to your voice in my head, so whenever I hear your podcast, I'm eating from a wise, knowing center. Thank you. You're welcome, Anita. Yeah, and that's very intentional. Again, I am a hypnotist, and I always share with you all that even on this podcast I'm not just talking shit. I'm not just saying words. I am saying words in a specific way to hopefully kind of sink into your subconscious mind and make some real positive changes. So again, I can't tell you the number of people that have been listening to my podcast, and just that alone, they've lost weight. So yes, that is part of what I'm very intentionally doing. I am looking to be a voice in your head, a positive, encouraging, supportive voice when it comes to your weight loss. And when you reflect on that, you'll probably realize that it doesn't even make sense because you've never even considered or thought or ever even been 1,000 yards close to a supportive, encouraging voice when it comes to your weight loss. That concept almost is so foreign to most people. But that is part of my goal here, is to literally become the voice in your head that you think in when it comes to your weight. I would love that more than anything in the world, because I know if you had my voice in your head, you would start losing weight instantly. Instantly. So thank you, Anita. Uh, Tree says, try looking for lady named Laura on FB. She is a walker and she has common sense ideas about walking. I like her. Not a fitness guru, just common sense. Yeah, that's great. Okay, there it is. Laura Walking Facebook. Um, check her out. And walking's wonderful, so I like that. Um, Anita says, you adjust your plans to the day. Things can be adapted. No more black and white. Let's support the gray area to set yourself up to lose to win. Anita, that's just— that's pearls right there. That's wisdom. Yeah, the flexibility, right? We need flexibility. And again, diets are notoriously rigid and inflexible, and your life is notoriously flexible and crazy, so it's not a good fit. You know, we need to figure out a way that we can, you know, kind of flow and ebb and with the rest of it with our life, you know, because life's not a static thing, right? Things are kind of always changing— your energy levels, your mood, your time, your happiness, your— all of it, you know, is constantly changing. Oh, there it is. Uh, Tree says Road Goes On with Laura, great common sense walking advice. So there you go. Um, if you're looking to add walking, and you know, even on YouTube in terms of, uh, treadmills, you know, one thing that's kind of cool if you have the setup for it is they have these like YouTube videos where it's someone— they must put like a GoPro on their chest or head or something, and they'll just walk paths. That's kind of cool, you know what I mean? You're walking on a treadmill, but you literally feel like you're walking, you know, down this valley or something. So that's kind of a cool thing too. Um, Judy says, I've tried every diet out there for over the last 25 years, have lost and gained it back, but what I found out is that I only lose weight if I stay under 1,000 calories, which long term this isn't enough, and that's why I gain it back. Any thoughts? Um, yeah, Judy, I mean, the thing you got to understand is that your whole history has been dieting and not dieting, all and then nothing. So this idea of I can only lose weight if I stay under 1,000 calories isn't really accurate. Because what you're deleting from that idea is the time frame. You're saying to yourself, I can only lose weight if I stand under 1,000 calories, like, in a week or a month. You're not thinking long term. Um, and so I don't know what you're— because this— people do this all the time. They're like, I, I can't lose weight unless I go under 1,000 calories, and I can't do that, so what do I do? Well, I don't know where your average calories are now. Are they at 1,100? 1,050? Where are your calories at today? Because that's not true. If you— let's just say your calories are 2,000. Let's just say, okay, because this, this is a— a lot of people do this and it's not, it's not accurate and it makes you crazy. But let's just say for the sake of argument, your calories are 2,000 a day and you say to me, I can't lose weight unless I go under 1,000 calories and I can't keep that up. That's bullshit. That makes no sense. That makes no mathematical sense. If you cut your calories down to 1,500, let's just say you're going to lose weight. I don't know when it's going to happen. It might take longer than you think. It might take longer than a week. It might take longer than a month. I don't know. Weight's a funny thing. But if you cut 25% of your calories out, your weight's going to go down. So again, you have to understand, Judy, that you're thinking about this as a dieter. And you're looking at it completely wrong in my opinion. And my first question would be is what— and you probably don't know anyways, that's a whole nother story. People don't tend to measure their calories if they're not on a diet. But, um, that can't be true, and I don't believe it that you can only lose weight if you're under 1,000 calories. And my next question is, what is your typical calorie consumption like today? Um, Anita says doctors know about pushing the drugs from pharmaceutical companies because that's how they were schooled. Not all, but most. Yeah, exactly. It's just Again, I'm not even judging it, but come on, fuck, where are we going to pretend that's not what's going on? What do we got to do, you know? Jesus, sometimes it's like we're really pushed to be ignorant, you know? Come on. I mean, listen, I don't think doctors are bad people, but at the same time, it's a, it's an industry that's funded the way it's funded, you know? You gotta follow the money a little bit, you know, make your own conclusions. I have to agree with that. Um, Julie says, I have a clean diet, 1,400 calories a day, hand weights 3 times a week, and walk 11,000 steps, but can't get my weight to move down past 155. Ugh, mind is in a good place but looking for advice. Um, okay, yeah, that's probably frustrating. My first question is, I don't, I don't know the time. You know, people kind of hit me with like, I have, I have clean diet, 1400 calories. How long? A week, a month, a year, 10 years? That's my big question. So all those things sound great, Julie, so congrats on doing that. That sounds like you're in a really good place behaviorally. and that's a wonderful place to be to get to the next step, to, to diagnose what's going on. But the first question is absolutely how long and where, what's your weight done so far and what's going on? There would need to be more context before I could ever give any way to answer that in any meaningful way. So I would need to know how long have you been eating and living that way? Um, what's your weight done? The whole overall, where'd you start? Where are you at? How long you been at 155? There's a lot of context missing there. He says, why don't doctors know more about weight, weight loss, and weight management nutrition? Why isn't there more training in those areas, especially since the US leads the world in obesity? I, I think that's a fair question. I don't have the answer to it. I'm not going to put my tinfoil hat on here and look like a nut job in front of all you. You all come up with your own answers. I don't know. I just know that that's the truth. Let's be honest, okay, that we know that our obesity rates are off the charts. Literally 75% of the population is overweight or obese. And if you ever look at a diagram between 1980 and now, the obesity and diabetes rates, it would blow your mind. It's gobsmacking. And at the same time, we've never had more medical support and intervention in our lives. So again, I'm not— I don't think I'm speaking out of school here to say that the doctors really are not helpful when it comes to weight loss. Geez, I guess. But in that case, you almost say that I'm not going to blame them. I'm not blaming doctors, but they're not helpful. And I don't know why they don't study more nutrition and more things. I don't know. I don't know why. Uh, Joyce says, I want your voice in my head. Yes, yes, having my voice in your head, it's very helpful. I say this all the time, if I could create a brain transplant, if I put my brain in your head, your body, um, you're gonna start losing weight immediately. I don't care what your situation is because I'm a master at this. A master. I mean, it says it's going to take longer than you think. We must accept this truth and carry on toward your goal. Yes, absolutely. Planning fallacy 101. Um, how long you think it's going to take is bullshit. It's going to take a lot longer. And if you can't deal with that, then that's fine. But, um, you got to just acknowledge that. And it's unfortunate, and it's extra hard with weight loss because the dieting industry has conditioned us to think of such short-term time frames. So we've got to lengthen them, we got to make them bigger if we really have any chance of getting a, you know, a chance of it. Julie says, in a great place, but in about a month. Lost 20 over 2 years, real, real slow. Again, Julie, I don't even consider that slow. I think congratulations, 10 pounds a year over 2 years is amazing. To be doing this for 2 years, I think, is incredible. So I think you're doing great. In a great place, but in about a month. I'm not sure exactly that means, but that it makes me feel like You've been doing 1,400 calories, 11,000 steps, all this wonderful stuff for about a month. And if that's what you're saying, that's just not that much time. Weight loss is inconsistent and unpredictable in the short term and very consistent and predictable in the long term, and a month's just not that long. Even though you've been doing wonderful stuff, you would need to do it at least 3, 4 more months to really get a real sense of what you're doing. And why not? I bet you feel a million times better. Meow Meow Meow says, how can I hypnotize myself? I'm not going to answer that right now. I got to get out of here. Lisa says, my doctor said you don't want to be fat when you are old. There we go. Thank you, Lisa. That sounds like a classic doctor thing, right? And again, it's the same thing your mom said to you or your friend said to you. You say to yourself, come on, you got to do this. You don't want to be— you don't be overweight. You're going to be sorry. You're going to— you don't want to— well, we all fucking know that. Thanks a lot, doc. We all know that. I knew that already. That's not— that doesn't add anything to the mix. That's not helpful. Again, I know they have good intentions there. I know your doctor wants you to lose weight and thrive. The problem is they don't have anything to help you do it. That's the problem. Um, Sarah says, I'm in my 70s and the way I kept my weight down all my life doesn't work anymore. Oh, that's very interesting. So what changed there? Did anything change? Um, yeah, there we go. Meow Meow says, I kept it off for 1 year, then slowly lost the habits that kept me off. Exactly, exactly. That's a great focus though, Meow. You didn't gain weight, you started eating more, you started changing your habits, and that led to weight gain. So So work on getting those habits back. All right. Yeah. Drama, can I recommend you to my followers? Yeah, knock yourself out. Thank you very much for getting the word out. Christina says you don't want Jim's voice in your head because your thumb will hurt. Exactly. Christina's in the program, so that's a funny one. Lily says, what about meds? Yeah, I mean, meds are there. They're an option. You know, surgery is an option. These are all options for you. Dieting is an option. You know, Program Yourself Thin is an option. They're all options. Um, one thing I will say about the meds, because you don't really get this side ever, is that I'll put Program Yourself Thin success stories against any GLP-1 success story, and I will smoke them all. Why? Because people that succeed with Program Yourself Thin transform their mindset, lifestyle, and eating, and understand how to run their minds and how they're doing this, and it's customized to them. So not only are they losing weight, but they're creating a way of being, a lifestyle, a version of themselves that's the best them. And the drugs just make you less hungry. And so I think there's a big difference there in that sense. But I'm not against the drugs. I think they're the right thing for some people, but that's everyone's decision to make. Um, user, do you have to be okay with hunger even when trying to maintain a new low weight? Um, I think so. I think hunger is a relative thing and it's a complex thing. Hunger is not just some simple thing based on the calories you ate. There's a psychological component, emotional component, a cognitive component. Biochemical component. There's a lot of stuff going on. And so I do believe that you should expect that in order to lose weight and live at your goal weight, um, at least for a period of time, you're going to have to get comfortable with a slight level of hunger. And I think that's the secret caveat. That's the most important piece, is that it's a slight level of hunger, um, not a major level of hunger. You're never going to beat that, um, but a slight level of hunger you can get familiar with and comfortable with. And I think that's a sweet spot to live. Um, I've worked on that and I actually love it now. I feel more energized. I feel lighter. I feel ready to go. Um, I love kind of living with that, that slight level of hunger. I think it's the sweet spot for being a human. Okay. But that's, that's the secret though, in my opinion. Um, Lily says, ah, that's actually so much better. Yeah, exactly, Lily. Right. So I just think that again, I'm not, I'm not— the medicine is what it is, but I almost don't even. To me, they're totally different things because Program Yourself Thin, we take the weight loss and we're absolutely— my main focus in life is to help you get your weight where you want it to go. Okay. And so that's my main focus, but I know the best way to make that happen is to put the personal development around it, is to turn you into the best version of yourself. And so to me, the weight almost becomes secondary, that I know you're going to be able to get your weight under control if you're able to tap into and create the best version of you. And that's why in Program Yourself Thin, it's an inside-out approach where we start by saying, who do you want to be? Who's the best you? And we work on developing that so that becomes the external version as well. But it's opposite dieting, you know, and opposite with the medicine too. Uh, to do says, what to eat instead of chocolate on period, and is it good to eat a little more? Um, yeah, I mean, you know, to do, here's the thing. If you want to eat a little more chocolate on your period, knock yourself out. You want to eat a little bit more on your period, do that. Women especially. And if you're still in your menstrual cycle, you've got to take that into account. You know, again, dieting says you're going to be the same person every day of the month. And I just think that's so not human. It's such an anti-human way to approach change. You're a human being. And if you're a woman going through a menstrual cycle, you got different impacts at different times of the month. And I think you should honor that. And I think you should build around it. And I think you should recognize that sometimes you're hungrier than others, and I think you should work to honor yourself and have different strategies for different times of the month. That, that's what I find works the best for, for my female clients that are dealing with that. Um, Star says, you're so right, a couple nuts usually help me cap hunger. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's not hard to get the slight hunger. That's the amazing part, you know. That's the sweet spot to me. Slight hunger is just such a sweet spot in my opinion, because I hate feeling full. I hate feeling overfull, and I hate feeling really hungry. Like, there— it's just such a funny thing. My, my, my state of being, right? How I'm thinking, how I'm feeling, how all that stuff— it's such a— it's almost like humans. Yeah, I think I forgot to talk about this, but humans are funny, right? We're really only comfortable in a really limited band of, like, temperature. An environment, right? It's like if it's, if it's anything outside of like a pretty specific range of temperature, we're kind of uncomfortable, too hot or too cold, whatever. And I think it's the same with hunger. It's like too much, I feel like shit. Too little, I feel like shit. There's a real sweet spot, and I find it slightly hungry to comfortably full, comfortably satisfied. I don't like to say full. I like to aim at those two. And if I want to lose weight, I want to be more on the slightly hungry side. And I say that very specifically. I don't think being hungry, really hungry, is smart. I don't think it's effective. And I would never aim at that. So I don't think that works. But I think slight hunger, you've got a really good chance of being able to get good at living in that place. And I think that feeling is very congruent with weighing what you want to weigh. User says, so how often should you let yourself feel hunger before eating while trying to live at your new weight? Well, okay, now let me take a step back and say, you know, the idea of feeling slight hunger really exists within this matrix. This, this goal weight pyramid of working on our mindset, lifestyle, and eating. So it is not, it's not just dealing with your hunger. Like, that's not going to be enough. You need a comprehensive holistic strategy because even your hunger, like I said, it's a big thing. So if you're stressed out, if you're stressed out in life, like, you're going to be hungrier. So hunger is a relative thing that's impacted by a lot of other factors. So we can't just have like, oh, okay, I'm just looking at my hunger. Because you've got to learn to manage your hunger and program yourself. Then, like, dieters go to, go to war with their hunger. And program yourself. Then we learn how to manage our hunger. And it's, it's a comprehensive, comprehensive process. So I wish I could answer that easier, but, but it's just not an easy answer, and I'd be doing you a disservice if I gave you one. Um, yep, Julie said just feeling stuck or plateauing. I get it, Julie, but that, that again That's more of a mindset issue that you're really impatient, and you really shouldn't be because you've been doing this for 2 years now. Which, let me reframe this for you. You're in such a sweet spot. You're in such an unusual spot for people that want to lose weight because most people would have lost that 20 pounds in 6 months and then put it back on. Um, you feel like it's been so slow, but slow things last. You now have 2 years of knowing how to live as a thin, healthier person, and you're internalizing how to live that way, how to think that way, how to eat that way. All of those things, and you still want to get to another place, but you're, you're building it so soundly, and you've changed things in a more dramatic way over the last month. But a month doesn't mean shit. You've been at this for 24 months and you changed it even more directly for one month. That, that's, that's less than 5% of when you've been at this, you know. So just keep going, and again, readjust your, your patience and realize that you're in this for the long game. So it doesn't really matter how long it takes because you're going to be there forever. All right, what's up, Paula? Paul says, Jim, it's really depressing if one really considers how the food diet industry is out to get us. I know, I get that, but it is what it is, and you're better off seeing it and feeling depressed and frustrated about than not seeing it and being at the mercy of it because you're not aware of it, you know. But true, true. Um, Bridget said look up conditioned cram. Okay, um, I will. How often is your show? I'm here every Monday through Friday, usually around noon Eastern, so pop in here. Um, but if you're not in my world, click the link in my bio. I'll put this link in the chat. Um, go get this hypnosis session. Uh, not only do I give you a hypnosis session, I made a training for you. I give you a bunch of cool stuff. Um, I'm here to help you and I'm about to help you on a higher level for free, for free. Um, I got a new thing I'm gonna work on today, this afternoon actually. Um, PYT Daily, so that you'll start getting every day. I'll send some if you want it again, I'll send you some stuff out and you can see if you like it or not. But then if you like it and you want more of it every day, I can send you stuff. And all free, okay? All stuff to help you and support you in this process. Tree says, do you have a perspective on Dr. Wayne Andersen's approach and how it is different or the same? Dr. Wayne Andersen's, I don't actually. I will look it up and get back to you on that. Anita says, thanks, Jim, always a positive light guiding us through a very complex area. You're very much appreciated. Thank you, thank you. And Julie said the same, you're wonderful. Thank you, I appreciate that. That's why I'm here to help you all out. So thank you so much, everyone. And I gotta get outta here. Thanks a million percent. You guys are so great, and I will tell you, I don't know what's going on, but lately just the comments, the questions have been so good, and it makes it even more enjoyable, uh, and I really appreciate you all. So thank you so much. If you're not in my world, please click the link in my bio. Um, if you're on TikTok, click my little picture and go to the bio link. Uh, if you're on, uh, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, you can click the chat— the link I just put in the chat. Um, get the hypnosis session, go test it out, see what you think. Uh, if you like this, I'm here every Monday through Friday, usually around noon Eastern. Um, and, uh, it's also a podcast. So if you missed the live, uh, you can listen to the replay. You can search any podcast platform. It's Program Yourself Then. Uh, and the replays are also at YouTube and Facebook. And finally is my book. So if you're looking for an amazing book to read about your weight, uh, The Tao of Living at Your Goal Weight, The Tao of Living at Your Goal Weight. This book's amazing. I can say so myself. It's been validated now. We've got over 85 5-star reviews. So this book is really something else. And so if you're looking for a different approach to manage your weight, go get this. So thanks so much, everyone. Have a super duper weekend and we'll talk soon. Bye. Fuck off.
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