Program Yourself Thin Live 8-13-26

Sorry, my face. Hey everyone, welcome to today's Program Yourself Thin podcast. Today we're talking about the Skill of losing weight. It is a skill. There's the punchline because most people think weight loss is really not a skill. If anything, it's a skill of how much you can exude willpower over your own behaviors. But very few people think of managing your weight as a process of developing skills and improving yourself. Then we follow the goal weight pyramid, which. Let me flip this around so you can see it. But you'll see that it has mindset, lifestyle, and eating, and there's subcategories in there. And what that— another way to look at that is that those are the skills you're developing. Those are the skills you develop in order to manage your weight and live at the weight you want to live at. So instead of thinking that your weight loss is really dependent on your willpower's ability to say no, no, no, no, no against the current skills you have, because right now you have skills in order to be overweight. I know that's a weird way to think about it. But the way you're overweight is automatic and natural, right? You do it automatically. As a matter of fact, you're doing everything you can to fight against it. But what's doing it? Well, what's doing it is your programming. What's doing it is that you've developed the skills of eating fast, of, um, you know, pulling into fast food restaurants, of overeating, of ignoring your hunger signals, all this stuff here. So you unknowingly have developed a lot of skills that keep you overweight now. And so in order to manage your weight at a different level, You need to develop new skills. The skill of eating slower, the skill of managing your hunger better, the skill of being more in touch with kind of your your physical sensations so you can manage them better. It goes on and on. But when you start to look at it this way, and you start to develop the skills that allow you to think, live, and eat like a thin, healthy person, then you start to develop and experience the results of those skills. And this is a way I think you should look at it because if we just look at it as a fight against ourselves. What we're doing is we're signing up for a forever fight, and that's not what we want, obviously. And it doesn't work, right? We can't fight against ourselves forever and win that fight. We have got to be able to just rely on our natural automatic instincts to kind of bring us in the right direction. And the only way to do that is to develop the skills that bring us in that direction. And it's no different than developing skills in any other context. You want to learn how to draw? Well, you practice the skills of drawing until you can do it automatically. You want to practice an instrument? You practice the skills of the instrument until you can do it automatically. And as you develop the skills, then it kind of frees you to go to the next level, right? Once you— with art, once you know how to draw, you know, a face, then you can start thinking about more subtleties of what you want to draw, because now you can rely on your skill that knows how to draw a face. And so very few people approach their weight this way. They don't think of it as developing skills. They think of it as fighting against themselves. And when you make this shift, it clarifies it. And I think it starts to— it allows you to see the situation, the process, much more clearly and accurately than this idea that you just need to fight against yourself in order to succeed, because that's not true, right? You need more than that. So I hope this helps you out. If you want to go deeper into this way of thinking, click the link in my Bio or go to program yourself then and go get the free hypnosis session that I made for you. I got a bunch of free stuff that I give you actually, but that's one of them. I was gonna put the link in the in the chat window, but I can't. I don't know why I can't. Did that thing close? My app must have closed. Whatever. I will type it in. Oh, looks like something's wrong anyways. I guess I'm not getting. I'm not getting comments from Facebook and YouTube. Maybe looks like it's. Acting weird. Anyways, I saw someone asked. Yeah, and if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. I see someone asked thoughts on Ozempic. Yeah, I mean, my thoughts on Ozempic are: I'm not. This is an Ozempic welcoming zone, right? And program yourself. Then we have a lot of people that are on Ozempic or some GLP one that are actively also working on their mindset, lifestyle, and eating strategies as well, in anticipation that one day they'll be able to come off of those medicines, right? And I think that's the main thing though, is that ultimately people can say they're fine being on these medicines forever, but forever is a very long time. And I think that once the weight loss stops, which it typically does with GLP-1s after about 16 months, once the weight loss stops, even if you're at your goal weight, living with that medicine forever, I don't think a lot of people have truly considered that. So I don't think it's a great long-term strategy, is what I think. I think, you know, again, I think people are excited because it is very effective for a lot of people. Yeah. In reducing their hunger. Um, but what I know that a lot of people don't know is that there's— there's other ways to deal with food noise. There's other ways to deal with your weight. And, um, I think the best example, literally— was it yesterday? No, it was 2 days ago. I had a conversation with a client, and, um, she put it best 'cause she went out with a friend of hers who's on a GLP-1. They both went out. Um, they both ordered fried sandwiches, fried fish sandwiches, and they both ate half of it. Wow. And so, again, I just wanna make clear. I know you're never gonna hear this, right? Diets don't work. We know that. Um, but there's another way to manage your weight that is not a diet, that is not an injection, and that is not surgery. And that is what I'm here every day sharing with you, that I think there's a much better way to manage your weight. Um, yeah, it takes a little bit more work. I would absolutely agree. Then Program Yourself Thin, we take our weight and wrap it in personal development. So in a lot of ways, Program Yourself Thin is really a personal development program. That helps you manage your weight. But I think that's an important piece because it's not just about the weight; it's really about becoming the best version of you possible, and and allowing you to live at your weight. But it's bigger than just the number on the scale; it's really how you're thinking, how you're living, how you're eating, who you are as a person. And that's why we use a much more kind of robust system and approach than than you usually find, right? Most places, most diets really only focus on eating, and I always say it's about that much of the eating that they focus on. So you know. That that's your your keto plan. Just don't eat carbs. You know, that's your intermittent fasting. Just don't eat for sixteen hours. That's your Weight Watchers. Just don't go over your points. You see? And so, yeah, I mean, like if you're a robot, that stuff can work. But you're not a robot. And so your mindset and your lifestyle and your eating are always you know the main factors in your weight. And what I'll say to most of you is that. As much as you think about your weight and as many times as you try to lose it, I bet you have never approached your weight with that more comprehensive holistic approach. And hopefully once you see it, it kind of puts a light bulb on because how can you possibly think that your mindset doesn't have a huge impact on your weight? I mean, shit, I had someone on here the other day that said I was talking about motivation. They said motivation doesn't matter with obesity. What? It's just what is it then? What do you think? It's just some disease that completely. I mean, don't get me wrong. I know it's more complex than I was making it sound that day, but but of course motivation matters because and. And I reference motivation because that's the first thing we deal with with the mindset section, right? First thing we deal with is motivation. You know, but then we get to self-image, habits, emotions, thinking, and maintenance. So again, we cover all the areas. But, um, if you don't know how to motivate yourself, how could you possibly get the results that you want? You know, how would that be possible? So again, if you don't have the proper mindset, uh, I don't really see how you're ever gonna get the results you want. I think most people never Learn how to get the proper mindset. You know, it's the opposite. They're always being conditioned to have the wrong mindset. Science is fun for everyone says found your advice about imagining myself eating helpful. Yeah, I'm glad. Again, imagining yourself. Excuse me. I got I got a weird. I got a weird cold going on. I do not what's going on. As I was saying, my my wife has been sick for a week, and it is the dreaded. I I do not want what she's got. I don't know, but I got something going on, so I am not 100%. So my voice is a little funky, but yeah, I appreciate that because imagination, you know, program yourself then is all built around imagination. And the imagination piece, you know, is something I've been studying for over 30 years. I am a hypnotist, you know, a master hypnotist and NLP trainer. So imagination means a lot to me. It should mean a lot to you because imagination is a huge factor in what you do and how you think and all the rest of it. So Um, I think we live in a culture that kind of minimizes the importance of imagination, but I think imagination is really, really helpful and powerful and important for helping you behave the way that you want to so you can get the results you want. And so in Program Yourself Then, the whole program's built around the Program Yourself Then technique, which in essence is a mental rehearsal technique where you're using your imagination in a very specific way. And there is plenty of science and proof that using your imagination Um, in the right way can absolutely benefit results. I mean, there's not— I can't— there's very few like really high-performing athletes that are not using some form of mental rehearsal, uh, in their practice. And when you start to get to higher and higher levels of most crafts, you're going to notice that there's a lot of mental rehearsal intentionally used to operate at those highest levels. So it's a well-founded, well-supported idea. It's just one that's very rarely shared with people. And so Um, that's a lot of what Program Yourself Thin is, is really using your imagination to connect to the person you want to be, um, and imagine yourself, rehearse, practice, redo, um, being the person you want to be. And that becomes a way to practice being the person you want to be before you become it. Because most dieters just expect they're going to force themselves to be the person they want to be. And how's that working out? You know, it doesn't work out well. So, again, there— there's better ways to go about it, and that's one of them. Alright. And so Science Is Fun says, so when I crave something not great for my weight, I see myself eating it at the weight I am. I resign myself to it being lifelong. Yeah, it's lifelong. Yeah, you know. And that idea of resigning yourself to it, um, is something everyone has to go through, you know. 'Cause again, the diets, low-key, are kind of promising that you'll— you'll do the diet, you'll get to your goal weight, and then you're done. Go back to your life. And that, I think, is— is a psychological core reason why most people that lose weight put it back on. Estimated that 85 to 95% of dieters that lose the weight put it back on. So we need to get beyond just the weight loss piece and really focus on how to live at your goal weight. And that is so much what Program Yourself Thin is. I mean, shit, I think about it so much I wrote a book on it, right? How to Live at Your Goal Weight. But notice the difference. Notice the difference in focus when I say live at your goal weight versus lose weight, right? To just focus on losing weight is to just focus on the first phase of what you want. Because you don't just want to lose weight, you want to stay at that weight. But you never focus on that part because you always think of it as a 2-phase process. You think of it as first losing it, and then I'm going to figure out how to maintain it. But where are you going to learn how to maintain it from? I know what you think. You think, well, I'll just keep kind of doing what I was doing. But you don't want to keep doing what you don't even want to do that shit forever. It's hard. Every time you try to lose weight, it's difficult and hard. That's what dieting has taught you. So, yeah, I mean, at some point you gotta resign yourself to the fact that if you really— if you wanna live at your goal weight, you're gonna have to manage your weight for the rest of your life. I manage my weight for the rest of my life. I've been managing it for 30 years. I'll manage it for the rest of my life. But I don't mind that because it makes me better. It's like brushing my teeth. I gotta brush my teeth for the rest of my life too if I want my teeth to be the way that I want them to be. I gotta take showers for the rest of my life if I don't wanna smell. You know, so— so I've resigned myself to do lots of things for the rest of my life because they make my life a lot better. That's not necessarily a bad thing. But the big difference is that the way I manage my weight is very comfortable and enjoyable for me. That's the big difference. You all hate your diets. So the idea of doing a diet forever seems like, you know, hell. It's like torture. Right? For me, it's the greatest gift ever. I love it. I love how I think, live, and eat every day. I— I just love it. And I have a plan and it's my personal plan customized around me. I love all these things. So, um— The idea of doing it forever is inspiring to me. It's exciting to me. I keep growing and evolving and hitting new levels, you know. So so it's very exciting for me to to do this forever and to imagine doing it forever. And if you don't feel that way, that's a big red flag that you got to address because you're never going to force yourself to do something you don't enjoy doing for long, you know. Certainly not forever. What's up, Delia? Delia says I had cancer surgery a month ago and have gained weight. My son's wedding is in October and I need to lose, so I. Try to curb my cravings by imagining how I would feel after I eat the craving. Well, I'm sorry about your cancer surgery. I hope it went well. Yeah, it's not easy. No, no, sure. Well, you know, and again, that's a tough combo, right? Because again, what you should be focusing 100% on in an ideal world is just your recovery. And, you know, but then you got this big pressure coming in October. You feel that you have to lose a bunch of weight for the wedding. I get it. I get it. So that's tough. That's a tough situation. Yes, it's not easy. It's hard. You're in a hard situation. Definitely. Yeah. Oh, it did go well. Good, good, good. I'm glad. So, you know, you know, I don't know. There's different ways to approach it. I know, like, like wedding pictures, really, it's at the top of the list of motivators. I would say I truly believe that. I've been doing this for over 30 years personally and over 20 years professionally. I've done over 6,000 private weight loss sessions. Um, most of those sessions have been with women over, you know, 45, 50 years old. There's been a lot of weddings in those sessions. Okay. So I understand that wedding pictures are probably one of the number one sources of motivation and stress and anxiety for, for, uh, people in this culture. Um, so yeah, to have to deal with that and then have the October wedding coming up at the same time is extra hard, you know? So I get it. I get it because you're depleted. I just want to make that clear, right? That right now, you know, once you understand that, yeah, I'm okay now to eat to lose. Yeah, and I get that. I get that you're okay to eat in a way to lose weight. I get all that. But what I'm trying to say is that if you just had cancer surgery a month ago, that takes so much more out of us than we think. You know, again, you have to understand, I work with high-performing, perfectionist, overthinking people. And they really hold themselves to very high standards. Okay, and so sometimes what that creates is the the lack of awareness of how tired they actually are. And when you have cancer surgery, it's not just the physical surgery and recovering from that; it's the worry, it's the the stress. Is it going to go right? I mean, there's a lot that goes into that whole experience, and it takes a lot out of you, right? And if you think about, I mean, willpower is a finite resource, and you have been spending a lot of it on managing the cancer surgery. Right? So you're depleted. You're depleted physically, mentally, emotionally from that. And now you go into, okay, now I gotta, you know, follow a, you know, strict high-protein diet, or what you're gonna follow a strict diet, which takes even more willpower, more cognitive load on an already depleted, you know, resource. And so that's what makes it so extra challenging now. And I wish you the best with it, and I, and I hope you do well with it. But I don't want you to take too much away from this because it's a really hard situation. You're depleted. You know what I mean? Like, it is what it is too. Yeah, but that being said, you know, I don't know how much weight you want to lose by October, but I hope you set a rational, realistic goal for yourself because I— And again, I know I've had these conversations enough because, you know, I could sit here and say, you know, your health should be the number one thing, you know, considering you just had that cancer surgery. Um, but I know wanting to look good in those pictures is a big one too. So I guess I'll say I wish you the best with it right now, right? Yeah, Delilah says, yeah, it does. It's exhausting mentally. Yes. And I just want you to hear that if I can offer you nothing else today, I want you to know that I, I'm giving you permission, right? Who am I to give you permission? But, but I find that people need this, myself included. Give yourself permission to appreciate How challenging the cancer thing has been, even if it went well. Okay, because a lot of times, again, my clients—it's like they get through the cancer surgery, goes well. It's okay. Everything went great. Okay, and and then the next month you're exhausted and tired. You say, "What the hell? What's wrong with me? Everything went great. I should be fine. I should be happy." Well, yeah, but no, you know what I mean? Because you had to go through all that and you're depleted, you know. And I think that I always—I work on this so much with my clients. It's like just appreciate the reality, you know. Again, it's hard. It's difficult. You know, and I think you can appreciate that and move forward. But I want you to know, someone I know, I know what you're going through. I've worked with a lot of clients through cancer, you know what I mean? Through challenging times, and then have yeah, okay. And so the last yeah, it was a war. It was war, exactly. And well, let me share this with you because I'm going to share some things with you just real quick. And I know it's a little off topic of what we're talking about because I want to shift just from away from the weight for a second. And I want you to appreciate that probably. And again, I don't know your situation. I'm going to make a couple assumptions here, which is always dangerous. But Um, before the surgery, there was probably a lot of uncertainty about how effective it was all going to be and how you're going to come out the other side. It sounds, from what I can tell, that you came out the other side in a good way, so I'm really happy for you. But I want you to appreciate all the stress and strain that went into that situation. And just because you come out the other side and now it's fine, you're still gonna be tired. Let me give you a metaphor. If you run a marathon but you win it Right? So you win the marathon, and the next week you're really tired and, you know, kind of, you know, just exhausted. You say, what the hell's wrong with me? I won the— I won the race. Why don't I— why do I not have more? Why do I feel not great? Well, because you just ran a marathon. You're depleted. You're exhausted, you know. So I just know a lot of my clients kind of overlook that because my clients are overthinkers and perfectionists, and they just jump from one challenge to the next. And, um, I think there's a way to kind of internalize and appreciate what you're going through And bring that into your strategy to succeed on the next level. Again, I would say probably in an ideal world, you know, like you'd be able to focus more on your rest and replenishment and recovery than, you know, losing weight in your diet. But again, I understand the pressures of wanting to look a certain way for a wedding as well, so I won't try and dissuade you of that. So I just wish you the best with it. But I do know it's hard, and it's extra hard because of your context and situation. Yeah. Science for Fun says, hating how I look in pictures is what pushed me to do something. Yeah. Okay. That's good. That's— hating how you look is fine as an initial push. It's never enough as enough motivation. And I say this all the time to people, and I hope you really hear this, because most dieters really make the kind of cardinal mistake, I would say, of thinking that wanting to look better is enough motivation. And it rarely is, rarely, rarely is, you know. And so it's fine. Again, you can want to look better. You always can want to look better and use that as motivation. I'm not saying getting rid of that. I'm saying add to it. And so what I would add to it is, you know, especially how you feel, how you think, you know. So again, when you start thinking about not just the weight in terms of what you're going to look like, but also in terms of how you feel and how you think about yourself and just day to day. Um, I think it's important to kind of see the big picture, you know, and utilize all that. And Elias says, I am an overthinker. Yeah, I assume that pretty much anyone that stays here more than a minute is an overthinker. I've kind of come to realize, uh, the way I speak, I think, just kind of filters out non-overthinkers. I talk kind of fast. I'm all over the place, you know. And I've just kind of noticed that pattern that literally everyone I ever work with is an overthinker, and pretty much anyone that kind of you know, that this approach is appealing to is usually an overthinker, perfectionist type of person. Um, and that's really who it's made for, honestly. I mean, this was because I'm that type of person. And so I really created this whole process specifically for someone who's an overthinker. Because, you know, if you're an overthinker, that is not the problem. You know, being an overthinker is a real gift. The problem is you've never learned how to use your overthinking. And so a lot of times you use it against yourself. You know, I guarantee you, Delilah, I don't know you, but I guarantee you're an overthinker and you're constantly Minimizing the cancer thing now that you're kind of on the other side of it, and you're minimizing it, and you're saying, "So what? That was the past. I gotta now it's protein. Now it's getting the calories down. Now it's the wedding in October," and you're not really, you know, appreciating just what you just went through. Most likely, because that's an overthinker pattern. What's up, Jane? Jane says, "Yeah, you're so glad to see you up in here. Did I miss you yesterday?" I did not show up yesterday. Had kind of a Kind of a. I'm gonna do a training actually, and I oh boy! I got some big news, big news coming for the program, but I'm not ready to share quite yet. But I believe it ought to be ready to go next week. I cannot wait. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. But anyways, yeah, I was thinking about doing a training on bombs that go off in life, and I think that there's all kinds of bombs that go off: vacation bombs, you know, sick bombs, you know. Relationship bombs, finance bombs, financial bombs, obviously job bombs. There's all kind of bombs that go off in our lives, and how do we manage those? And so anyways, I had to go bomb bomb go off in my life yesterday, and I had to deal with that. And that's why I was not here yesterday. I almost didn't get on today. My throat is I'm not feeling right, but I'm also not feeling terrible. I'm just hoping I can just skirt this because like I said, my wife is just. Oh my goodness, she's about as sick as you can get without needing to go to the hospital, it feels like. So I'm like, oh man, and she's out of like a week too. So I'm like, oh my God, I can't handle that for a week. Nothing worse to me than for a week I can't, I can't talk right. But, uh, anyways, yeah, so I was not here yesterday. Um, decided to get on here today for a little bit, and, uh, glad I did, glad I did. But I am gonna get out of here now, actually. So glad I was able to kind of connect with you all real quick. I got some more work to do, some things to take care of, and I'll be back tomorrow. Hopefully, hopefully everything Everything will kind of hold. That's what we're waiting for. And, um, yeah, we'll see you tomorrow. So if you're not in my world, click the link in my bio, go get the free hypnosis session that I give you. I also give you a, uh, a training called Reprogrammed I just did. I think it's really good. Go check it out. It's completely free. Uh, and, uh, yeah, go check that out. I'm here every, every Monday through Friday at noon Eastern except for Tuesdays at 1. Uh, so pop on here if you like this. I'm happy to talk to you and help you out. Um, and if you like this and you can't make the lives, it's also a podcast. So you can go to any podcast platform, search Program Yourself Then, and it'll pop up. You can listen anytime you want. All right. And, uh, yeah, well, there is this book too. So if you're looking for an awesome book to read about how to live at your goal weight, go check this out. It's on Amazon, uh, ready to go. So thanks a lot, everyone. Have a super day and we'll talk soon. Bye. Bye.