Program Yourself Thin Live 7-8-26
Jim Katsoulis argues most diets fail because people treat weight loss as a sprint instead of a decade-long goal. His maintenance-first approach cuts calories by 10-20% at a time until you reach your target, skipping the typical phase-two restart. Small, automatic habit changes beat drastic diets.
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Everyone, welcome to today's Program Yourself Thin podcast. Today we're talking about why thin people think in decades, not days. This is really important. Time frame matters so much to your weight. In your weight loss initially, because the diet industry has conditioned us to think about weight loss in this tiny little time frame where we start looking at making drastic changes because we want to see results this week, ideally tomorrow. Right. And this short-term time frame really works against the process that we're looking to achieve. And, you know, one parallel I would draw is if you think about college, right? College is laid out, you know, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 years to get the degree that you want. So right on the— right off the bat, it's about how much time it's going to take to do it. You're not trying to rush it, right? No one goes into college really is, oh, I'm going to do it, I'll get my degree in a year and a half, you know. So we take out of college this rush to try and get it done as quick as possible, which is really important because then we free up that energy to focus on the task at hand. And in our mind, we have a longer-term timeframe that's going to take to achieve the result we want. Well, it's the same thing with your weight. To get the results you want, you know, unless you're, you're less than 10, 15 pounds away from your goal, to get the real results you're looking for, it's going to take longer than you're thinking. And so on top of that, it's not just about getting to the goal weight, it's about living there. You don't want to just get to your goal weight. You want to live the rest of your life there. This is where thinking in decades starts to matter. This is not a short-term process. And if you approach it as such, you're going to run into a wall, which most dieters do, because even the successful dieters that lose the weight to their goal weight, still 85 to 95% of them put the weight back on. And I think that's a direct consequence to thinking short term. To focusing on doing drastic things that you can do for a little while to get instant short-term results. And that is how you've been trained to think about weight your entire life. So the alternative is to start lengthening your timeframe. And again, we start with the magical question: how long do you want to live at your goal weight for? A month? A year? A decade? For the rest of your life? Right. So as soon as we ask that question, you naturally start extending the time frame to forever. I want to live at my goal weight for the rest of my life. That's what I want. Okay, great. So let's make that happen. You're not going to make it happen by doing crazy extreme diets, though. Crazy extreme diets only work as an option when you think in a time frame this big. As soon as you consider doing keto for the rest of your life, doing intermittent fasting or counting calories or counting points or, um, restricting food for the rest of your life, you instantly lose all your motivation, and rightfully so. It's a miserable way to live. It's not sustainable. It's not built for the long term. That's the secret of dieting. It's not built for the long term. It's built for the short term. It's built to give you the most dramatic results as quick as possible that you can get. And that's a big problem because your goal really is to live at your goal weight, not just visit it for a minute. And so once you recognize this, it's very freeing because we can get rid of the rush, get rid of the impatience to some degree, and recognize that if you do this right, you lose weight one more time. You lose weight one more time, then you live at your goal weight for the rest of your life. That's the goal. That's the plan. But it requires a long-term timeframe. And once you start thinking with a long-term timeframe, the best part of that is that now you can start doing more sustainable, comfortable things to achieve it. We don't need to make drastic shifts and changes in our behavior anymore. We can make small sustainable changes that we keep building on top of. So we start to build the mindset, the lifestyle, the eating patterns. Of a naturally thin and healthy person, and we allow ourselves the time it takes to install those ideas, to live them, to make them routine and automatic so that not only are we able to get to our goal weight, but we're able to live there for the rest of our life and not only able to live there the rest of our lives, but to live there the rest of our lives on near autopilot so that it feels comfortable. But it all starts with a time frame shift to stop focusing on how fast you can lose weight, and start looking at how long you can keep the weight off for. How long can you live at your goal weight? That's the real goal. And once you zoom in and focus on that goal, your strategy for making it happen changes from the diets that you've been trying to use up until now. And if you want to go deeper into this mindset, this way of thinking, click the link in my bio or go to programyourselfthin.com and go get the free hypnosis session that I made for you. Uh, it is there waiting for you, and it is a great way to kickstart your weight loss in a brand new way because you'll find that it's very relaxing and calming and that you tend to naturally make better food choices when you feel that way and think that way, the way that the session is going to help you do it. So again, go to Program Yourself Dinner, click the link in my bio and go get that. Uh, if you're in TikTok, you can click my picture up in the top left. If you're in YouTube or Facebook, you can click the link I just put in the text window. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. I am here to help you out as best I can. What's up, Jane? You got here on time. All right, nice. Jane got around time and it's not fuzzy. Yeah, that was real weird. I don't know what was going on with that. Haven't, haven't gotten that, uh, figured out yet, but, um, I think it was an internet issue. That's what I'm gonna guess is that the internet issue caused the, the picture to be kind of fuzzy. But yeah, here we are, crystal clear today, um, on time, 12 noon. I told you, that's, that's the new, that's the new way we're doing it. And we're back on the straight shot. We're testing that out because one of the things I want to do, I want to see if this helps. I don't want to start this off by getting mad, but I want to test this out. I started going straight because apparently that had something to do with how fast this can zoom in and focus. All right. Yeah, I guess that's true. It's working. I made some tweaks because, uh, every time I show this book and I hold it up, it was starting to be blurry and it wouldn't focus. So anyways, looks like that, that's fixed that, at least for now. So we got that going, and, uh, that's good. So yes, any questions, feel free to ask them. I know a lot of people, um, I know I've been saying that this week, but it is, it's so drastic for me, it's funny. How the week of July 4th, um, affects people's focus on their weight. Because again, you know, it's literally— it's the mirror image of, uh, between Christmas and New Year's is another one where people just kind of zone out with the weight thing, you know. But this seems to be another one of those times where, um, you know, people aren't really thinking about it. So I, I applaud you all who are thinking about it now. Again, you can think about it all year round here because we're not talking about giving up all your favorite foods and having a miserable vacation or summer or Fourth of July week, because in Program Yourself Then, we're always looking for the most enjoyable, comfortable way to make this happen. And so we don't have to give things up. We can be on track even during the summer. Um, might be a little bit of, you know, wobbliness. I feel like, I don't know, I guess I had a good time Fourth of July. Um, but, uh, I don't know, it's summertime mode, you know what I mean? Like, like, it can be, it can be a thing, you know, for sure. But it doesn't have to be a whole thing. And that's what a big message of Program Yourself Thin is, the all-or-something mindset as opposed to the all-or-nothing one. And so in Program Yourself Thin, we really work on the ability to stay in the game even when we're not 100% in it. And I think that is really, really crucial because, yeah, I think you'll find— I certainly, for me anyways, I find most of the time I'm, I'm in the gray area. I'm not doing perfect and I'm not doing nothing. I'm somewhere in the in-between. And I think that's the goal, is to kind of consistently edge yourself up towards doing more and more and more and more and more comfortably, you know, as you move forward. But a lot of people don't ever consider that because dieting never really gives you that as an option. Dieting is really there, um, to just get you all fired up and do crazy stuff. Uh, what's up, Gene? And I see Kevin from Lakeland. Gene says, I asked this a while ago and I can't find where I wrote them down. Are there any books you recommend? I learn by reading. Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, there's so many books, um, I gotta say, I gotta get back on my reading grind. I have not, not been on my reading grind like I normally am. Fix this camera, let me drop it just a hair. Is it gonna work? I'm gonna drop it too much, I know it. All right, does that work? There we go, that feels better. I feel like a little kid, I'm sitting down here. I don't wanna pop this up, I don't know. So, uh, yeah, okay, we have books, books to read. Oh my goodness, um, let me think. I'll give you some of the books that I've read more recently that I really, really enjoy. The Dorito Effect, I really liked. The End of Overeating, I think, is very good. Salt, Sugar, Fat, I think, is really good. How Not to Die, one of my favorite books. Not necessarily a weight loss book, but a, but a health book that was very, very impactful for me. Ultra-Processed People, I think, is a real nice one to read if you haven't read that one. Um, and I'm just sticking to the weight books. I've read so many of them, I gotta be honest, the books kind of go in one ear and out the other. That's why I always write notes and I put everything in my digital brain, because, um, I, I don't know, I kind of lost— I mean, I don't know if I've lost the capacity. I don't really engage with trying to remember any of these things. I read— I, I have not been reading a lot of books, I'm not gonna lie. It's been probably about 6 months here, I haven't really read a lot. Um, which is kind of unusual for me because usually I'll read, you know, book a week. Um, and I've just kind of got off that. This happens, you know what I mean? And, uh, it's okay. But I am looking forward to get back on track with my reading. Um, but yeah, I read so many books that they kind of all blur together, uh, to be honest. Um, but there you go. There's a couple, um, to get started with that I think are really good. Yeah. Trying to say what book I've got. I've got a list of books too. I— and that's another thing, I'm not gonna say I haven't been reading. I actually have been working to get myself to read some fiction. That was kind of my goal this summer is to read some fiction books. I'm a big non-fiction— I love reading non-fiction books. Um, I like fiction books enough, but I, I love non-fiction books, and that's usually what I read 95% of. So I've been kind of challenging myself to read, uh, some, some fiction And, uh, I've been enjoying that, you know. But honestly, another piece too is I, I've been, uh, working on a training, and that's what I've been doing with my reading time is I've sacrificed it for this training and some other business things I had to get done. But yeah, any questions, feel free to ask them. Uh, Jane says, I think when the weather is good and we get outside sitting on patios and drinking beer and eating ice cream, it is more difficult to focus on eating well. But maybe that is just an excuse, as I think each season has its challenges. Um, yeah, but I mean, I always, I always kind of challenge that idea, like, just an excuse. That, that, that phrase bugs me because just an excuse is kind of dismissive in a sense. And I think that there's excuses and reasons. And I think that, you know, yeah, every season brings its challenges. I think that's a legitimate statement. I think that's accurate. Um, but I don't think they're just excuses either. I, I think they're legit reasons. I think, yeah, you know, um, and everyone's different, but yeah, all of a sudden it's summertime and now, you know, maybe going out with people, you know, your family and getting ice cream, you know, starts to come into play, right? And so that can become a legitimate challenge, right? But it's not an excuse. I, I don't think— I think it's just, it's a real reason why now you want to eat more ice cream. And it just— we deal with it just like anything else, you know. But I think you're on to something more important than, you know, just being an excuse and you should just do the right thing. That's why I don't like just an excuse, by the way, is that it's just the idea, oh, just an excuse, as if you should just— so what if it's summer? Come on, Jane, so what if it's summer? Just make the right choices. You're just— that's just an excuse. That's just an excuse that you want to eat ice cream, drink beers now outside. I would never ever say that. I, I think there's always so much more to things. I was talking about this last week that for me, I mean, every season brings its challenges and there's a number of them, but one of them for me specifically, uh, was when I went to college. I went down in Virginia and I grew up in New England, and so when I went down to Virginia, spring comes in like the end of February, 2 months earlier than it does in New England. And I remember that first year being there, we got a sofa and we sat outside and we're drinking beers And so now it's like I always associate springtime with drinking beers, you know? And, um, so I have more urge to drink beers in the spring than I do other parts of the year. So is that just an excuse? No, it was a reason. Um, and I recognized it and I worked on dealing with it and I've changed it. So, you know, again, for you, yeah, sitting on patios, drinking beer and eating ice cream. I would never get rid of those behaviors. I would never get rid of drinking beer and eating ice cream. That, that is not what I think the solution is. I think the solution— and I've literally gone through both of these. I've gone through both of these. I love drinking beer. I should say I loved it. I, I really have gotten it under control, and I drink it, but I'm very moderate. But I used to have a real issue, you know. And so for me, uh, dealing with the beer, I still drink beer, but I, I way have dialed it down. I've got moderation strategies I use now. And so, um, same with ice cream. I still eat ice cream, but I have strategies. I used to, on average, when every time I'd go to get ice cream, I would eat literally 3 times as much as I eat now. And so I have slowly dialed down the amount of ice cream I eat when I go to get ice cream to almost a third of what I used to eat. So that's a huge improvement. So I can still go get ice cream. I just eat it differently. Didn't all happen at once. I kept working on it, but here I am now. And I just eat less ice cream every time I go, and I probably go 20% less than I used to. Cool, I'm good with that. Next, you know, and then there's the beer. So I'll still hang out on the patio and drink beers with my friends, but I'll drink way less of them, you know. And so again, it was a process I worked on. Whoops, Jesus, hit the wrong button there. Um, Jane says, I am now playing pickleball. Playing a lot of pickleball and get really thirsty and hot and go to the GQ drive-through and get a chocolate dip cone every single day. Okay, but so what I would do is— that's really interesting how you describe that. I find that very interesting, Jane, to get really thirsty, right? So do some physical activity, get really thirsty, and then go eat an ice cream cone. That almost makes me want to gag. Who the hell quenches their thirst with an ice cream cone? So there's the first issue, right? Is that first of all, regardless of the ice cream cone, let's just talk about being thirsty and then eating an ice cream cone instead. That might be the perfect opportunity to wedge in water, right? So after pickleball, make sure you got your bottle of water with you and drink a lot of water after pickleball so that you can replenish your thirst, you know, quench your thirst and replenish your hydration. That'd be my first thing.. And if you do that, there's a good chance that you would have more influence over your ice cream, um, you know, factor. All right, but right now it's a— right now it's a, a Pavlovian associated response. Now, okay, Jay says, I do, Jim, I do drink water also. Very good, very good. So you drink water. So maybe I would drink a little bit more water, and then my goal because you said every single day, my goal would be to see what it's like to go play pickleball, drink water, and then not get an ice cream cone. One day, that would be my goal. And I would say, what is a way that I can make that happen as easy and comfortably as possible? I don't know what the answer is, but that's the question I'd be asking. And my goal would be to have one day where I went and played pickleball and then didn't go to DQ. That would be my goal. And once I did that, then I would build on that. You know, but again, Jane, be careful, be careful getting stuck in the problem. And this is a common problem for people is that they've got some issue or challenge they're working on and they define everything through that. You know, just because you, um, have been doing that. Oh, this is never going to work well. I just— I'm fixing this camera. I can't take it. I feel like a little kid. Um, if there's anything wrong with being a little kid, but I feel like a little kid sitting here. Okay, there we go. Thank God. It's driving me nuts. I just seen a little, little Jim. Not doing that. Okay, so yeah, um, yeah, so be careful getting caught in the problems, right? Okay, yeah, maybe you have a problem. I'm not gonna— every, every time I go to pickleball, I get ice cream. Okay, great. It doesn't have to be that way, you know. Don't, don't, don't fortify yourself in this behavior, right? Again, I mean, I always do this, but it's just to break the point. But if I say I'll give you $1,000 if you don't go to DQ after pickleball today, would you give up the $1,000 because you can't not go to DQ? Or would you— oh great, give me the $1,000, that would be no problem, right? Now I use that as an example just to prove that you can do it. You know, it's just your motivation's a little off. It's that simple. I mean, it's that easy, easy, simple but not easy sort of thing, right? But again, I mean, the motivation's just off mostly, Jane. That's the biggest thing. There's neuroassociations of Pavlovian responses going on as well, but at the end of the day, the motivation is the biggest piece, you know. Again, if I said I'll give you $1,000, you don't go to DQ, how much of a struggle would it be? What if I give you $5,000? Yeah, I'll take the money, no problem. Exactly right. So, so it's not that you can't do it, it's that you're not doing it because you're not motivated enough. You won't do it because you'd prefer the ice cream over whatever you think the other benefit would be. And there's the problem. There's the problem in a nutshell for all of you, right? I give you a million bucks not to eat the ice cream, instantly you don't give a shit about the ice cream. I say, okay, don't eat the ice cream so you can feel better, Ice cream makes me feel better. And there, therein lies the core problem for most, uh, most people that want to lose weight. Connie says, here in Alabama, the bumper stickers say, my car brakes for DQ. I get it. I went through my DQ phase. I remember that. I used to get, um, the blizzards, and I, I love, uh, the peanut butter cup one. And oh my God, I can still remember now, 30 years ago, I remember it because I'd never really grew up with DQ a lot. For whatever reason, we just never went there a lot, and I kind of found it when I was like 18, 19. I could not believe a Blizzard. I could not believe it was like the most delicious thing I ever tasted. I don't know if I'd still feel that way. My taste buds have changed a little bit, but, um, really liked it. And so I get it. I get what it was like to deal with that. But, um, again, it's addictive substance, you know, that's what we're talking about here. And, um, so whatever. But again, the question, Jane, becomes not how come How come I keep screwing up? How come I keep going to DQ? Oh yeah, then, then how come I get a DQ every single day? Well, I don't know. I'm not going to argue that. I'm not going to try and figure out why you get a DQ every day. I don't give a shit. I'm way more interested in the question, how can I go play pickleball and then come home comfortably, easily, in a motivated and enjoyable way? That's a question I'm really interested in, because if you come up with an answer things are going to change, you know. What's up, Carolyn? Carolyn says, so is it really all about the strategies? One-third, not as often, etc., even when losing? Um, uh, is it all— I think, I think, I don't think it's just the strategies because I always think your weight, managing your weight, is really a combo of your strategies and your mindset. I think pretty much everything boils down to mindset or strategies. That's how I look at things, and I find it very effective in helping to kind of define the problem and then, you know, create the solution. But yeah, I think, yeah, it's mindset and strategies, and I think it's kind of 50/50, you know. So that's how I usually break things up. But, and usually it's some of both, right? It's usually both, right? So if you talk about Jane and getting DQ after pickleball, it's absolutely in my mind mindset and strategy. There's two things I'd want to work on. Um, when I say if I gave you, you know, $5,000 if you didn't go there, that's mindset, right? Because if you were really, really motivated, white-hot motivated, that wouldn't even be an issue for you. Now, I ask that as a thought experiment, folks. Please, I'm not just going to use that for— that's not like the full answer. Do you understand? That's just the mindset piece of it, right? Then if, if I was, if I was working with Jane individually, then we would work on the strategy for how you can go to pickleball and then go directly home, or, or some alternative behavior, whatever you wanted be. But not going to DQ is the worst thing you can say to yourself because your subconscious mind does not understand negatives. So if I ask you all to not think about a banana, what you thinking about? So if I ask you to not think about DQ and not get DQ when you go home tonight— don't get DQ after pickleball, don't get DQ after pickleball, don't get DQ after pickleball— what are you thinking about? What are you obsessively thinking about? You know, so again, the way we ask the questions is so important. If we ask, oh my God, I hope I don't get an ice cream cone tonight when I go home, you're literally programming that exact behavior into your mind and body. It's a completely different process when you, uh, ask, how can I get from the gym to the house in the most comfortable way possible, directly, for example. You know, and if you focus on that question, you'll, you know, you'll, you'll make it. Um, Jane says it's not as hot today, so maybe I can do that today. Um, yeah, but again, we don't— you don't want to have to be relying on the weather, Jane. You want to be empowered to be able to be in charge of your decisions most of the time. I think not 100% of the time. I'm not in control of my behaviors 100% of the time. Not really. Could I technically be? I don't think so anyways, but, but again, it— you don't have to be perfect. It's about doing it more. But I think, you know, you want to empower yourself that regardless of what the temperature is, that you can behave the way that you want to, you know. And if you state it that way, you send a different message to your subconscious mind. Your subconscious mind is a servo mechanism. It does what you ask it to do. But most people are unknowingly asking their subconscious mind to do the wrong things, right? Hey, okay, Jane. See, see, Jane, you never lead with the successes that you have. Jane follows it up and says, I've changed my order from a large DQ Blizzard to a small dip cone. Better. Yes, yes, yes, Jane. Better. That's what we're looking for. And I know for most dieters, that's the hardest part because we're not looking for better. We're looking for best and instant right away. And the reality is that, again, your goal is not to lose weight. Your goal is to live at your goal weight. So there's no rush because this is a lifetime process. I equate it to your teeth. You can't— you know, there's no tooth cleaning process. When you go to the dentist and get your teeth professionally cleaned, you still got to take care of them. You still got to brush them and go back again in the future to get them cleaned like that again. There's— it's not no finish line where, oh, now I have to think about my teeth anymore. And your weight's the same way. And dieting sells you this bunch of shit that you get to some finish line and then you don't have to think about it anymore. You don't have to manage anymore. You lost the weight. Hey, congrats. Well, what do you think happens? What do you think happens once you get to your goal weight? You got to manage it. Oh my God. I mean, I know you know that like on some level, but I don't know if you've really internalized that. I think it's a core problem. Kimberly says we need to find the nasty oils in their ice cream to decrease the desire. Who wants to eat oil? Oh, true, true. You know, again, and that's another, um, again, that, that's a mindset in my opinion. I guess it's a blurry one, but, but researching what's in Dairy Queen ice cream, that would be a very interesting strategy to change your mindset most likely. And that's just a good statement in general. You know, so often the foods that we struggle with are because we're literally in a trance. We're in a marketing trance. You know, there's two ways to look at a DQ Blizzard. There's through the marketing and our experience of eating it and that pleasure and the marketing of the bright colors and the excitement of getting it. There's that version of it. And there's the version where you go look up the ingredients online and read what's actually in what you're eating. Look up the nutritional information. He's, ah, that's a buzzkill, buzzkill. Well, You know, if you're serious about your weight and DQ is a real issue for you, then it may be worth, you know, investigating what you're actually consuming. Because when you look at that ingredient list, you're not going to feel the same way as when you look at the container that's being handed to you. You're going to feel different. And that is part of managing your mindset as well. So agreed. Agreed, Kimberly. Oh, good question, Carolyn. Yeah, is she making a decision on her own or with someone else? Again, huge factor. We want to understand our patterns, you know. That's why, um, you know, I was talking about this yesterday. It's, it's, uh, every behavior you have— that's why I don't want to say it's just an excuse. That, that's so— that shit rubs me so wrong, right? So, so like, people say it's just an excuse so much, and they're just minimizing so much information. You know, when you look at your behaviors, there's a lot to them. And when you start to dive into the behaviors, see, people minimize them. Oh, just make the right decision. Well, what do I do about the ice cream cone? Just make the right decision. Well, what do I do about the muffin in the morning? Just make the right decision. What do you do here? Just make the right decision. That's the same thing as it's just an excuse. Oh, just make the right decision. Can anyone possibly think it's just that easy? At this point. I know people do because I get them sometimes on here. I've not got them in a long time though. I really— I've noticed I really don't get a lot of trolls on here anymore. I kind of miss them a little bit. Watch what I wish for though. Yeah, I mean, we got any questions, feel free to ask them. What's up, Harry? Harry says, my biggest struggle right now with trying to lose fat is patience and consistency. Any tips? Yeah, I get it, Harry. That's the biggest struggle I think most people have. And I think the answer to that is really to transform your mindset a bit, you know, from realizing this is not a temporary process. See, dieting has conditioned you to think about weight loss like it's a sprint, but it's not. Because once you get the weight loss, once you get to your goal weight, how long do you want to stay there for? So it's not a sprint, it's a never-ending marathon if you want to live at your goal weight. So I think that's the first step to dealing with the impatience is to realize this is a forever process. Forever. It's a forever marathon. And I know at first when I tell people that they get all deflated, oh my God, I'm going to diet forever. No, that's the best part. Because listen, when you're at your goal weight, you don't need to fucking diet. Dieting is a response to being overweight. Dieting is dieting the verb, right? There's dieting the noun of like how you eat, but there's dieting the verb of this drastic shift in your eating so that you can lose weight fast. Right, but dieters far and wide are overweight. So I'm trying to take you out of a diet mindset and put you into the mindset of someone who is thin, healthy, and happy and living that way. They're not doing this drastic shit to diet. They have developed skills that they can rely on. That's what Program Yourself Thin is all about. Specifically, again, we in Program Yourself Thin follow the Goal Weight Pyramid. Mindset, lifestyle, eating. Mindset, how to think like a thin, healthy, happy person. Lifestyle, how to live like a thin, healthy, happy person. Then eating, how to eat like a thin, healthy, happy person in the best way that works for you. And I show you that to point out that you've never done any of that. You know, you've never done any of that. You've been giving drastic eating shifts to try and change it. Now I know you say, well, I just want to lose weight quick. I don't give a shit about this, you know. But that's the trap. That's the trap. I mean, you see with money, I always talk about this with money. If, um, all you care about is making money instantly, you're going to start veering towards sketchy propositions, illegal things probably, right? The way to make money, it just, it takes a little while. You got to work, you got to earn, you got to develop some skill or value and then be compensated for it. There's a certain time frame with it, right? There is no instant, there is none of that. Now, get-rich-quick schemes prey on that, but we all know the get-rich-quick schemes are bullshit, right? But when it comes to weight loss, the problem is that dietings are a get-rich-quick scheme, but you've never been given a legitimate, realistic, reliable strategy to manage your weight long-term. You haven't. You've been given diets, injections, and surgery. That is it. In the modern world, that's the only way people are going to think about losing weight, managing their weight. So this is why I get on here every single day to just reveal that there's a better way to go about it, you know. And so instead of trying to do it all at once, just do it once. That's kind of the mantra. Stop rushing, relax, calm down. The rushing is literally stressing you out, making it harder to lose weight and keep it off. Relax, calm down. You've got plenty of time, most likely. I don't know what your goal is, but regardless of what your goal is, you got plenty of time. Do it once, do it the right way so you never have to deal with this again. What's the right way? A way that's sustainable, comfortable, enjoyable. It's not that hard really. It's just, it's the deprogramming is the hard part. That's why I get on every day for free to help you deprogram you from a dieting mindset. So that's your biggest thing, Harry. So what I would say specifically though, Harry, is go— you're on TikTok, so click the little picture of me right up there. Click that, go to the link in my bio, and go get the free hypnosis session I made. You get on my email list, I got a bunch of free stuff I give you. And, um, I already have a training queued up for you, so if you sign up today, you'll see it immediately. But I have a new training coming, um, it'll be done when it's done, but it's called Reprogrammed: How to Live at Your Goal Weight Without the Fight. I'm really excited about it. Um, recording it now, working on it now, but that'll be sent to you as well, you know. So again, I would suggest that you go, go interact with that stuff, see if it, you know, lights some, some light bulbs up, you know, and, uh, helps you out. All right, that's a good question, and it's an important one too. What's up, Kent? Kent says, I reduced wine with dinner from 5 to 6 times a week to 1 to 2. I now eat like I'm wine tasting and eating slowly. Yeah, Ken's a superstar, you know, he's killing it with the program. And, um, you know, I always, always laugh to myself because a lot of the times Ken says stuff, it's exactly what I've done as well. I've done the exact same thing. I used to drink alcohol every day. Now I wasn't abusing it. I was drinking one or two at most, um, during most days. Some days I drink a little bit more, but, um, yeah, dialed that right down. So now, you know, most of the time I'm drinking maybe 2, 3 days a week and then not the other days, you know. So again, it's about the small incremental improvements over time is really what you're looking for. You know, when you imagine what you actually want, it's really built on top of small incremental improvements over time, not, not some drastic, you know, change in behavior. Yeah, that's super. Yeah, he's slowly thinking about flavors too. Yeah, that's great, Ken. Yeah, so you're eating like you're tasting wine. That's, that's beautiful. That's a great one. Um, Al says, can you give any information or tips about binge eating? Uh, yeah, I mean, my biggest thing about binge eating is that don't just focus on the binge eating, okay? The binge eating to me is kind of like the flower of the plant, meaning that where the binge eating shows up is not where it was created. So what I'm interested when I'm dealing and they're helping with someone with binge eating is I want to know what happened the previous 10 hours, 12 hours. Because if you're over-restricting all day, then you are literally setting yourself up to binge. And so a lot of people come to me, so how do I deal with the binging? Expecting me to give them some willpower secret that's going to allow them to show up at 7 o'clock in a day where they hardly eat anything and still be able to say no to food. I, I don't know how to do that. I don't— I have no idea how that would work. I think a much better strategy is to nourish yourself effectively throughout the day and minimize your hunger so that when those binge eating times come up, you're satisfied, you're grounded, you're calm. And then I think that's going to go a far way towards helping you with the bingeing. So one other way to kind of say what I'm saying is to focus more on the upstream factors than just the downstream ones. You know, don't just focus on the binge because I know that's what most people do. They want more willpower when the binge shows up so they can say no to it. When the real answer is to act differently ahead of time and avoid the whole binge situation. That's a way more effective strategy to deal with it. And there's obviously a lot more, but I'll just start kind of there with that one. Uh, what's up, Sharon? Sharon says, I don't track my food, but since the 1st of July, I've been journaling 2 things after daily weigh-in, which I use purely as a tool. What I did great, list a couple things, and what could I have done better. Sharon, that's wonderful. I think that's a wonderful strategy. I love that. I love the daily weigh-in. I love the focusing on what you did great first, right? And I love what I could have done better. I love it. I think that's wonderful. I'm curious to see how that goes on. You're only 8 days into it. Imagine another month, 2 months, 3 months of doing that. I think that's wonderful. Thanks for sharing that. Uh, what's up, Mary? Mary says, over the weekend we went to a family barbecue where there were a lot of unhealthy snacks, which I anticipated But I brought a homemade fruit salad because I only have control over what I bring. I did not have even one unhealthy snack and thoroughly enjoyed the fruit salad. Well, there you go, Mary. Congrats. That, that's, that's elegant. I think that's beautiful. Again, thanks for sharing that because that's a wonderful strategy. And even if you ate some of the unhealthy snacks, you probably would have eaten percentage-wise a lot less of them had you not brought the fruit salad. So, so I think that's wonderful. And I, I say that— don't get lost in the fact that she didn't eat any unhealthy snacks. Even if she ate some, she almost guaranteed would have eaten less of them, and that would have been a net improvement over previous barbecues she'd probably been to. So I think that's wonderful, Mary. Great, good job. And I bet you feel so happy and proud of that, and good. So good job, good job. Um, Jane says, I make the decision on my own as I'd be embarrassed to go with someone else. I just pick one up on the way home. Yeah, I get it, Jane. Um, you know, one way to reframe that a bit though is that, you know, you feel embarrassed yourself, you know? So if you think about the feelings that come from your decisions, you know, most of the time we're looking at the pleasure of the ice cream cone or the deprivation if we don't get it. But I like to look beyond the eating of it, beyond the consumption, to the consequence phase and what's right in the consequence phase every time you get that ice cream cone. Now I want to be clear. When you're eating ice cream cones moderately in a way that works for you, you don't feel this emotion. But when you're overdoing the ice cream cones and getting them every single time, then you do feel these emotions— the emotions of embarrassment, frustration, out of control, guilt, shame, anger, pissed off, hopelessness, depression, on and on, right? So it would be helpful, Jane, to realize that every time you get that cone in an— I'm using the word inappropriate in a relative way, right? Because we all have our own definitions. But when you're getting that cone too much, I want you to realize that yes, you're getting a little bit of pleasure in the beginning, but then you're also signing yourself up to feel all those negative emotions right in the other end of it. Just another way to kind of mindset it. Uh, Kimberly says, I'm at base camp. I find 2 weeks bouncing, then down climbing Everest. Yeah, yeah, for sure. And that's kind of a metaphor we use, right? That Weight loss, really, I think of it very much like climbing Mount Everest, that there's base camps along the way, meaning that, you know, people don't just start at Mount Everest at the bottom and just climb up to the top. You climb up to a certain spot and then you have to acclimate to it, and then you climb up a little more, acclimate, climb up, acclimate. And I think weight's very similar to this because it's such a drastic— there's so much going on, you know, when you're losing weight. Psychologically, physically, mentally, emotionally, that I think most people are going to need some time to just kind of adjust to things, you know, before they can climb up higher. And I think, uh, I think that's a great way to think about it. And I think it's good for you, Kimberly, to also have a good— in what you wrote there, that, um, the weight kind of bouncing and then it goes down, that's another pattern I see a lot of my clients having. That a lot of dieters don't think in. Dieters think you're gonna start your weight loss up here and it's gonna be this consistent straight line down to your goal weight. I almost never see that. Back in the day, I used to track weight with a lot of my clients. And what you always saw virtually all the time is you saw like this. They'd start up here, but there was this kind of jiggity-jaggity line. Now it would trend down over time, okay? But the— it wasn't this straight smooth line of just down to the goal weight. It was this jiggity-jaggity line. Something like, wait, go up a little bit, then it goes down, then we plateau, we're stuck, stuck, stuck, then it's down, then it's down, then it's up, then it's up, it's up, down, down. That's more accurately what weight tends to do. Just one more reason why I suggest weighing every day so you can get a more clear-eyed understanding of how your weight actually works in your body. Because if you've never done that, you don't really know how your weight works. And, um, it's that's not a good thing. It's not helping you. Um, so what's up, Jackie? Jackie says, thanks for your— to your talks this weekend. I ordered my favorite drink and my favorite appetizer and had a small salad instead of my favorite pad thai noodle entree I always get at the restaurant when I went out with my husband and friends. So I got to have 2 of the 3 favorite dishes I always get, and it felt great and not like I was missing out. Jackie, super proud of you. Okay. That's what we're talking about. I love that you just shared that because that's the perfect example of what I'm talking about. We're looking for the easiest path forward. The easiest path forward is built on improvement, not perfection. And so here's Jackie, who, and again, it's bigger than this, but let's say 2 out of 3 of her favorite dishes, that's a 33% improvement in knowing how pad thai is. It was probably close to a 50, 60% improvement calorie-wise. That's it. But you felt really good. It was just, it was a little bit of a kind of inconvenience for you to do it, but you got an outsized benefit from it. That's what we're looking for. I don't, I don't want to, I don't know if people know about investing and stuff, but, um, if you look at your weight as kind of through an investment lens, it's very, very insightful and enlightening. And so we're looking for the biggest returns on investment. Okay. And that is a strategy that's beautiful because it was relatively— compare that to the typical diet thing where you walk into your favorite Thai restaurant with your husband and your friends and you order the fucking steamed food. I know you've done it. I know you've all done it. And compare that to what Jackie did. And one is a level 10 hard and one's a level 3 hard. You know, and, and so I think that's beautiful, Jackie. Good job, keep it up, right? You can do that all the time in so many different situations. It's that way of thinking though, the, the comfortable improvement, that's what we're looking to build on. Comfortable improvement. Dieting is the drastic difficulty, and we're just expecting to keep that up. We're just dieting. It's like we're looking for the highest degree of difficulty and seeing how long we can stick with it. It's It's not a good strategy for long term. Carolyn says, from the obese standpoint right now, is eating as a dieter a lot different from eating at goal weight, if the question makes sense? Um, well, it makes— I know what you're asking, by the way, um, because most dieters approach their weight right. So I think all of us could agree that your weight is a reflection of your average calorie consumption. Right. That's kind of the starting point we're going to start with, that, that your weight is a reflection of how many calories you consume on average. Okay. And so if you want to lose weight, you've got to reduce the calories. But what most dieters do is they drastically reduce the calories by 50%, 60%, 70%. And they say, I'm going to cut the calories 60%, 70% until I get to my goal weight, and then I'm going to bring those calories up to maintenance. Now it's estimated that most dieters, 85 to 95% of dieters that get to their goal weight, put all the weight back on. So this fairy tale that we tell ourselves that we're going to drastically cut the calories out and then slowly bring them up to maintenance does not seem to be supported by the numbers. People seem to have extremely difficult time coming up to this maintenance thing, and I find that not only is that ineffective and doesn't work well, it's also extremely hard. It is really hard to go from here and cut 70% of your— 50% of your calories out day one, stick with it until you get to your goal weight. That is a very difficult path to walk. So in Program Yourself Thin, we have a one-phase plan, right? Because this is a two-phase plan. I bring my calories down here until I lose the weight, and then I'm going to bring them up to some maintenance level, whatever that might be. 2 phases. Okay, Program Yourself Thin's a 1-phase plan. We're gonna start same spot, average calorie consumption, weight, but we're gonna bring the calories down, cut 10-20% out, then let the weight come down, then cut another 10-20% down, let the weight come down. And we do this until you get to your goal weight. And so once you're at your goal weight, you're eating at your goal weight. Does that make sense? And I think this approach makes a lot more sense because it's one phase and you're working with your body. You have to figure out this magical maintenance thing that no one I know seems to figure out. I've never seen a good strategy that helps people lose the weight and then figure out their maintenance and stay there. If there was, we'd all know about it. There isn't. Dieting is focused on the first phase. Drastically cutting calories down so you lose weight quickly, and then it's up to you to figure out this other bullshit about— and they're two totally different processes. So in Program Yourself Then, really, we're starting day one focused on maintenance. The real question is, how can I think, live, and eat at my goal weight? That's it. That's all we're focused on like a laser. How do I think, live, and eat at my goal weight in the most comfortable, enjoyable way possible? That's the question that everything's organized around. And from the very second we— from the first second you start the program, that's our focus. So that when you get to your goal weight, you don't have to kick in some phase 2. Okay, well, how do I live here now? How do I maintain this? You've been working on that the entire time, so you're good at it now. We start maintenance right off the bat. Right? Maintenance. It's right in the beginning because, by the way, just maintenance-wise, maintenance isn't just about me— how do I maintain from— that's something for people, importance, right? Because you just assume you're just gonna get your goal weight, you know? So you got to have the ability to maintain, and that's a whole thing in and of itself. Yeah, cool. All right, I think we got everyone, everyone taken care of today, so I'm gonna get out of here. Thank you so much, everyone. I really appreciate you all. I really appreciate a lot of the comments, a lot of good stuff you guys are sharing. So I really appreciate that because it helps other people learn and also realize that there's a better way. It doesn't have to be this white-knuckle miserable process. It can be very enjoyable, and it can be the thing that really, you know, elevates your life to the highest level possible. That's what I think. So, uh, again, if you, um, like this, I'm here every Monday through Friday at noon, uh, Eastern, Tuesdays at 1. And if you can't make the live, it's also a podcast, so you can search any podcast, uh, program and then, um, search Program Yourself Thin. It'll pop up. You can listen whenever you want. And, uh, if you're not in my world, click the link in my bio or go to programyourselfthin.com and go get the free hypnosis session I made for you., and I'll put in the comments section over here in YouTube and Facebook as well. And if you're on TikTok, just click my picture. And then if you're looking for a book about how to live at your goal weight, check this one out. As far as I know, it's the only book about living at your goal weight. It can't be, right? I got to research that. But one of the best ones, that one's for sure. So this is my book. Go check it out for sale on Amazon. Go get it. It's less than $10 and you could have it by tomorrow. So, all right everyone, have a super duper day and we'll talk soon. Bye!
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