In this live video Jim Katsoulis explains that weight‑loss motivation is powered by two fundamental forces: pain and pleasure. He argues that most people over‑rely on pain (e.g., scale numbers, negative comments, health scares) and neglect the pulling power of pleasure (the positive feelings that come from feeling in control, improved mood, and better health). He stresses that true motivation requires a balanced "propulsion system" where pain pushes you forward and pleasure pulls you forward in the same direction. Katsoulis critiques the common diet‑centric approach that focuses on appearance and short‑term calorie restriction. He points out that diets create high cognitive load, forcing people to monitor every bite, which is unsustainable. Instead, he promotes breaking behavior change into bite‑sized habits, using tools like the "Goal Weight Pyramid" (mindset, lifestyle, eating) and the "5 Whys" to uncover deeper, non‑appearance‑based reasons for weight loss. He introduces the "Redo" technique (rewinding mental film of a mistake and replaying it with a better response) and emphasizes the importance of emotional‑eating awareness, stress management, and building a sustainable mindset rather than an all‑or‑nothing mentality. The video also covers practical topics: the pitfalls of intermittent fasting and GLP‑1 drugs, the need to experiment with personal eating windows, the value of whole‑food nutrition over protein powders, and the distinction between losing weight and living at your goal weight. Throughout, Katsoulis invites viewers to access free hypnosis sessions, email courses, and his "Program Yourself Thin" system, which integrates personal development with weight‑management strategies. The overarching message is that lasting weight‑loss success comes from a holistic, mindset‑first approach that balances pain and pleasure, reduces cognitive load, and aligns daily habits with deeper life values.
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Weight loss motivation run-on. There's two forces that really drive all motivation, especially with weight loss, and a lot of people are not using them appropriately, and they're really over-relying on one of them. And what those two things are are pain and pleasure. These are the twin forces that drive motivation, and we can't just rely on our brain's kind of natural tendency to tap into the pain and pleasure that we think right now. We have to spend some time really getting clear. And connecting to what the pain of not making the decisions we want to make is going to bring us in our lives, and what's the pleasure we're going to get out of managing our weight the way that we want to, right? What's the pain and the pleasure? And we want to use both of these. In NLP, we call it a propulsion system, is what we're looking to create, um, that we want the pain kind of pushing us forward and we want the pleasure pulling us forward. all in the same direction. And if you look at pretty much anything in your life that you're truly motivated about, you've got these 2 forces running, okay? Like, again, work, right? There are these times you get up and you don't wanna go to work, but you reference the pain of not being able to pay your bills, and then you reference the pleasure of being able to buy the things you wanna buy, right? Now, again, you do that in more detail, but that's the basic format. And you can basically apply this to everything in your life that you are actually motivated about. And so when it comes to your weight, what we have to recognize is that what you have probably historically done is that you have tried to rely almost exclusively on the pain, and it's the pain you feel in moments. Okay. So typically the pain most people build their weight loss on is stepping on the scale and they can't believe the number, seeing a picture of themselves, catching their reflection. Someone says something rude to them. Maybe they got a doctor's appointment coming up and they're scared. Those are the typical types of things that create all this pain in us. And then we say, that's it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna lose this weight. And then we jump into some crazy diet and we do it until that pain either just subsides on its own or we start getting some results, right? We start getting some results and the pain goes down. But unfortunately, so does our motivation. You know, if that's all we're focusing on, that's all we're concentrating on. So we really want to utilize the pain. It's very powerful. And I like to say the pain's really good for helping you make a decision, but it is the pleasure that day to day is really doing a lot of the heavy lifting of bringing us towards our goal. And this is an area that I find most people do not focus enough on. And what I want to say here as well is I want to shift gears because most of the time when you're thinking pain and pleasure, your brain is naturally thinking How I'm gonna look. So a lot of the pain and pleasure you think about and have internalized when it comes to your weight is built around how you look. So again, a lot of the things I just mentioned to trigger the pain are things about how you look, right? You see a picture of yourself. Oh my God! I look like that. You get your weight. Oh my God! Look, I'm gonna look like. That's it. I want to lose weight. We imagine what we're gonna clothes we're gonna wear or how we're gonna look in pictures. So a lot of people's motivation. For weight loss really comes out of the level of how they're going to look, and this is a huge part of the problem. It's not deep enough. It's not deep enough. Again, no smoker has ever stopped smoking because their fingers were a little yellow. They already knew that. Okay, they needed more reason to do it typically, and it's the same with weight. We need to find deeper reasons why we want to do this, both pain-wise and pleasure-wise. And so we want to get off of just what we're going to look like. You've done enough focusing and concentrating on how you're going to look in terms of your weight to last 10 lifetimes. You can leave that alone for now. What's really going to start to move the needle is when you connect to the pain of living a life where you're out of control with your weight. And so those goes beyond what you look like. It certainly does go into the physical effects that are health. Okay. Blood work. Diabetes, heart concerns, cancer concerns— these types of things are definitely motivating in terms of pain. But what I find motivates people even more is when you start to look at the day-to-day mental, emotional pain of being out of control with the eating and the weight. That, I find, moves the needle a lot more for people in terms of pain, because a lot of times when we think about how we look, or even if we think about health things, Those are kind of acute things that may or may not happen at some point. But when you start to reflect on the mental and emotional consequences of being out of control with the eating, being out of control with the weight, those are chronic everyday things you're dealing with, and they affect you in so many ways. So when you start to concentrate on how the weight is affecting your self-image, your confidence, your self-esteem, Your emotional health, your cognitive health, what you can focus on, what you're able to do, all of these things. It has a huge impact on your life. Your day-to-day life is absolutely impacted in dramatic ways, mentally and emotionally and physically. And once you start to realize that, it starts to charge up that pain and you start to take this more seriously a lot of times. Now, the other side, let's shift gears a little bit. Is concentrating on the pleasures, right? Because the pleasures are amazing too. The pleasures, though, go far beyond just what you're going to look like. The pleasures go into knowing that as you start to get control of your weight, as you start to eat more moderately, as you start to eat more healthfully, as you start to live more healthy, again, we go to the mental emotional benefits. Yes, there's physical benefits. We'll slim down. We will look different. We will feel different. Our health will probably improve. But the biggest day-to-day difference that people overlook all the time is the mental, emotional benefits of living that life, of making good decisions each and every day, of feeling like you're on the right path, of being proud of yourself, of feeling like you're improving, progressing, getting better each and every day. It's very gratifying. It feels good to live in that space. So before the weight loss even happens, you can start behaving and doing things in a way that really nurture and support your greatest self. And that is a completely different place to live day to day than just thinking, I just want to look better. I just want to wear smaller clothes. You can still want those things. Please understand, but you need to add more depth to your motivation, both pleasure-wise and pain-wise. In order to really juice your motivation up. And once you've done that, it is a game changer because the motivation that you experience metaphorically is like the engine of your car. It dictates everything the car does. And so the more time you put into motivation, the more benefit you get out of it throughout the entire process. It's time well spent because you get exponential benefits out of that. So I hope you take some time and really consider this. And if you want some support in the process, click the link in my bio if you're on TikTok. If you're on Facebook, all you have to do is type mind, M-I-N-D, into the comments and you'll get sent a link to go get that free hypnosis session. I made you a training. I send you an email course. I give you a bunch of free stuff. Go check that out. And again, if you're just driving around and aren't accessed to either one of those things, you can go to programyourselfthen.com as well and go check that out. But if you have any questions, feel free to ask them. I like to get here every day and talk about weight and ideally, you know, answer some of the questions you're actually dealing with. I think a lot of times people with their weight are struggling by themselves and unnecessarily. Again, the big issue I believe with weight and trying to manage it is that you've never been taught how, that you have lived in a world of diets your entire life and dieting sets you up for failure, not success. And so if you've been dieting your whole life and it's been unsuccessful, um, actually it's been very successful because dieting is designed to make you stuck with your weight. So if you're stuck with your weight, the diets are working perfect. If you're unable to manage your weight the way you want to, then the diets are working 100% the way they were designed, because diets are not about living at your goal weight. Diets are about the process of losing weight. for a little while. And so again, the thing that I find makes the biggest difference in people's weight long term is when they're able to transform their mindset. It's all about mindset. Uh, what's up, Debbie? Yeah, all right. Debbie says Facebook takes a while to get connected. Interesting. I don't know why. I don't know why. Technology, right? Am I right? But I'm glad you're on here now. Yes. So Bella, Ella says, hey, I've been trying to go on a diet but I can't control myself. Yeah, again, I think that's a perfect reason not to go on a diet, you know. And you absolutely can control yourself. And this is a perfect example what I'm talking about, that someone defines this as saying I can't control myself because I can't stay on a diet. Well, what's a diet? Let's just take a step back and think about what a diet is in a slightly different way than you normally do. Um, let's just say it's been 2 months, 6 months, and you've been off track with your reading. What's that mean? It means you haven't been paying attention to it and forcing yourself to do it. Um, you've just been kind of doing what you do. Maybe you put some weight on, maybe you've gotten into some bad habits, and now you say, God, that is it, I've got to change, it's got to change, I'm going to start a diet. Okay, what's that mean? That means that tomorrow I'm going to wake up and I'm going to eat completely different. From now on, so I'm going to wake up tomorrow morning and I'm just going to eat completely different until I lose this weight. So we're talking months to years of eating completely different to lose the weight. So the idea is that you're just going to wake up tomorrow and completely act different. Now I guess that sounds good on the surface. Maybe doesn't to me, but okay, let's just take that. But how are you going to do that? Well, you're going to do it through willpower. You're going to force yourself to follow whatever the diet plan is. You're gonna fight against yourself. You're gonna stop yourself. You're gonna make yourself do new things. But what we fail to notice when we look at it that way is the concept of cognitive load. And this is a concept you have got to wrap your mind around because it's at the core of why you can't stay on a diet. It's because you're asking way too much of yourself and you do not have the energy to keep it up. And to put it in a slightly different context, imagine if you woke up tomorrow and you said, you know what, from now on I'm gonna use my other hand. I'm gonna brush my teeth with my other hand. I'm gonna use my phone with my other hand. I'm gonna write with my other hand. That's it. I'm gonna use my other hand. Think about that day. Think about that future. It's tiring as hell, is it not? If you don't believe me, practice it tonight. Brush your teeth with the other hand. Let me know how it goes. I'll tell you how it'll go. It goes frustrating. You jab your gums. You don't feel like you're cleaning your teeth. It takes a lot of effort and thought. You go grab your phone, you're like, no, no, I got it. I told my other hand. You use your other hand, it feels weird, it takes extra thought. You gotta write. Oh no, I gotta write. You gotta remember. Okay, now I gotta write. You gotta think out each letter, right? You can do it, but it's tedious. Tedious. Why? Because writing with your normal hand, you do on autopilot. You don't even have to think about it, you just do it. Writing and using your other hand requires a lot of mental energy. You have to think about all of it. It's not automatic. And that is the big difference between you normally and you on a diet, is that once you go on the diet, you have to consciously think of every little thing. You have to constantly monitor everything you're doing. You have to constantly fight against yourself to act differently than you normally do. Oh, dog scratching. Um, so yeah, so that cognitive load piece is That cognitive load piece is a huge piece of the puzzle. And metaphorically, it ends up feeling like you're trying to sprint a marathon. And there are capacity issues. There are capacity realities to our lives. We can't just sprint a marathon. As good as it sounds strategically, yeah, of course, I'll just sprint it. I'll run faster than everyone else. We don't take into account that at some point you hit a wall and you collapse. You just cannot sprint the whole marathon, and you cannot willpower yourself for the indefinite future. And this is what you find every time you try and lose weight, is that you're able to do it for a little while and then you can't keep it up. Maybe you get bored, maybe you get tired, maybe you get sick, maybe something, you know, blows up in your life and all of a sudden you got to focus on it. Now you don't have the energy to control every little thing you put in your mouth. And so dieting is not built for success because dieting is extremely intensive in terms of cognitive load. Very hard to keep it up. And this is one of the main reasons you don't want to start a diet. Not only do you not want to give up your favorite stuff, that's a part too, but the biggest part is that if you start a diet tomorrow, it's a lot more work. And it's a lot more work that never regulates. It's just always a lot of work. And so in Program Yourself Thin, we break down changing our weight by breaking down changing our behavior in bite-sized pieces. So instead of changing all of our eating starting tomorrow forever, or until we lose the weight, we start working on our worst habit. Maybe, maybe we start working on eating an apple in the afternoon. Maybe we start working to listen to a hypnosis session in the morning. Going for a walk at night, having one less helping at dinner. Again, we break it down into something manageable that we can work on relatively comfortably cognitively. And that's again, there's a lot more to it, but, but that's a big piece of it. And so this is why you can't control yourself. You can absolutely control yourself, but you're overwhelming yourself. All of you are overwhelming yourself when you try and lose weight, when you use a diet. Do you not think that? I mean, you want to lose weight more than anything. Why don't you start the? Why are you waiting to start the diet? I know, like it's like you know it's like there's a lot of wisdom in questions that we just think we already know the answer to, right? Why why are you not starting your diet? I haven't started yet. Why? What are you an idiot? This it sucks. I hate dieting. Why? You know what I mean? Like there's a lot of wisdom. Why do you hate dieting? And that's a very important question to ask, by the way, because it's very rare in life that we consistently do things that we hate to do. Have you noticed that in your life? You ever notice it's kind of hard to consistently do things you hate doing? So if you hate dieting, what are your chances of actually keeping it up? And if you can't keep it up, what's the point of temporarily putting all that work in to lose weight for a moment unless you're doing it for a photo shoot or a wedding or, you know, some specific moment in time? Other than that, what would be the point of temporarily losing weight so that you can put it back on? And you know, that's the big thing. You know, it's like, well, we know people can lose weight, but how do they keep it off? Well, how come no weight loss system in your life that you've ever seen in your entire life has ever focused on living at your goal weight? Don't you find that odd? Is that not odd to you? Do you not see the distinction between losing weight and living at your goal weight? They're two totally different things. If all I care about is losing weight, I'll do crazy extreme shit that's unsustainable because I just want to lose weight. Versus I'm only going to do things I can live with long term because I want to live at my goal weight. I don't want to just get there, I want to live there for the rest of my life. Which one feels more normal to you? Which one's the one you've been chasing your whole life? It's the weight loss. Why? Because you've been conditioned since you were born by the diet industry to just focus on weight loss. But weight loss is just a small phase at the beginning of your journey because your your goal is not to lose weight. Your goal is to live at your goal weight. They're two totally different things. Losing weight is the first phase, and it's this long. Living at your goal weight is your entire life, the rest of your life, and the weight loss phase was just that beginning part you went through. Your focus is completely on the wrong thing. Is it not? Am I am I crazy? Am I crazy person talking like this? Am I? I don't know. Sometimes I wonder if I'm crazy. I live in my own world, so I don't know. Maybe I'm nuts. Maybe I just don't understand how it is. But what do y'all think about that? Is dieting work? Is it a good strategy? Is this something we should do? What's up, Pamela? So Kimberly— Kimberly says you're 100%, but being around people that put looks first is hard, makes it difficult to concentrate on more important reasons. Thank you for putting it into supportive words. Um, yeah, okay, but I'm gonna push back a little bit because, you know, you're 100%, but— right, I always know what follows the but. Being around people that put looks first is hard. Agreed. That's agreed. Um, makes it difficult to concentrate on more important reasons. Disagree. Disagree. I think being around people that put looks first— if you believe that too, if you are of the same mindset that looks are first, then yeah, it's going to be hard. But if you don't believe that, if you believe looks is part of the goals for sure, but what's more important to me is how I feel, how I live, my health, my longevity, all of how I'm able to, you know, perform in life. All of these things are more important than looks to me. Well, if I believe that, then being around people that put looks first isn't that hard. It's just reinforcing every time I see them valuing looks more than what I value. It just reinforces my belief system. So I don't see any reason why, again, and it can be hard. It can be hard being around these people. I grant you that. But it should not make it difficult for you to concentrate on the deeper reasons. It should be something that triggers you to really go back home into your deeper reasons. And if you're having trouble doing that, that makes me think your deeper reasons aren't deep enough or you haven't connected to them enough. That's what I would say to that. Um, Debbie says, I hate when people say you look fine when I know I don't. Um, yeah, man, what do you want to say? I mean, I, you know, that's another thing too. It is a weird thing. Um, I think in, in this world, we really do live in a visual aesthetic world, you know, and people do looks, looks first and all the rest of it. So I'm not, I'm not gonna argue that. Um, but it is weird how we do comment on people's looks. But I wouldn't want to say, oh, you're looking shit, you're looking shit, man, what's going on? Yeah, I don't really like that, but I hear you, Debbie. All right, yes, Debbie got the book. Nice, good, glad to hear that, Debbie. Yeah, we had a little bit of a mix-up there, right? Can you detail the redo again, please? I think it's something I need to hear once more again. Um, yeah, sure, Debbie. And I just did, um, Remember, there's, there's redo training in the program. And if you're in the Circle app, you can search. If you go into the Circle app and you go to the search bar and you search redo, I've done a couple more recent lessons on the redo technique. I would definitely suggest flipping through those. But yeah, I mean, the redo technique, really simple, is just going back in time and redoing it the way that you would have liked to have done it. And I think this is one of the biggest missing Opportunities for people because we're gonna make mistakes again. Dieting tells you that you're not gonna make any mistakes, right? You're gonna start your diet and you're gonna be perfect until you lose the weight. I say that's bullshit. You're gonna make lots of mistakes because you're trying to change automated programming behaviors. Okay, so there's gonna be mistakes that you're gonna make. Not a big deal, but we want to utilize those mistakes. We want to learn from those mistakes so that we get better improve. We want to get better and improve. That's the main goal. And whether we have a good day or a bad day, we still want to be able to get better and improve, right? That's the one consistent thing we're going to hold. And whether we have a good or a bad day is not going to change our focus on the days that we want to improve. And we know we're going to have good and bad days. That's being a human. That's life. But we can always improve. We can always learn from the day, whether it was good or bad, and get better for tomorrow, right? And so that's what the redo technique is, because we're going to make mistakes. So, you know, lunchtime came. You said you're going to have a salad. Instead, you ordered a burger and fries. So instead of beating yourself up or ignoring it and saying, I'm never going to do that again, why not go back in time and kind of replay it in your mind and say, you know, what was going on there? What was going on? Where was I at emotionally, mentally? What was the situation? Was I set up for success? What were my opportunities? And we kind of go back in time knowing what we know now and replay it as the person we wanted to be. It's like, you know, every week during the football season, the team on Monday watches game film from Sunday. They look backwards and they look at how they performed and they evaluate it and they look for ways they could do better the next Sunday. So why can't we? Why can't we do that with our behavior? Because dieting has told you that no, if you're serious, you'll just do the right thing. If you're not serious, you won't do the right thing. And so it becomes this pass/fail. Dieting is this pass/fail approach. And so if you make a mistake, there's no room for you to grow. There's no room for you to improve on it. It's a statement of failure and it feels that way. And so as we start to train ourselves to go back to our mistakes and say, wait a second, if I go back in time knowing what I know now, feeling the way I wanna feel and go through it in an ideal way, and we're doing that intentionally to teach ourselves, what would I have done differently? And all of a sudden say, huh, okay, let me think. Oh, ah, you know, I could have slowed down a little bit. I could have taken a breath. I could have drank some water first. I could have, you know, had some of that and then that, whatever. It's very interesting when you go back in time, knowing what you know now is the best version you replayed in your mind. It takes, by the way, once you get good at it, it takes a few seconds. It's a very quick process. But think about the difference. We're all going to make mistakes. So you make a mistake today. What do you think is the better path forward? You make a mistake and then you say you beat yourself up about it. You shouldn't have done that. Are you even serious? How's that going? Or you just ignore it and say, that's it. I'm never going to do that again. You've done both of those. How's that worked out for you? Has the beating yourself up caused you to do less of the bad behaviors? Has the ignoring it and say I'm never going to do it again, has that been true? Well, you already know the answers to that. And so let me give you an alternative. What if you make the mistake and say, oh man, that's not how I want to eat. I don't feel that good now. I wish I didn't eat that. If I go back in time, know what I know now as the best version of me, how— what would I have done differently? How could I have handled that differently? And then you're like, oh, and you think about something that you didn't realize then. And now next time you're in that situation, your chances of doing that thing go way up because you thought about a solution. Whereas the person who's beating themselves up or ignoring it never even once considered a solution, unless you consider the solution just do the right thing. But if you knew how to do the right thing, you would have done the right thing when that first came up. I believe that a lot of times the reason you make a mistake is because you do not have the programming. You do not have the choice and option to do the right thing. Yes, always on some technical level, you could just do the right thing. But in reality, in terms of how behavior actually works, most behavior is a chain of processes linked together. And a lot of times you're going to realize that you are almost on autopilot when you are making your mistakes and you're not thinking clearly. You're not thinking as well as you could when you do that. And so taking a moment again, it's just like the football film when the team is watching their performance in the game. Well, when they're in the game, they're in uptime, they're in a certain way. Now Monday, they're more relaxed and they can see things that they couldn't see in the actual moment. Does that make sense? Doesn't that make sense? You know, and so that's what the redo technique is in general. And then obviously go watch the training though. I go into it in depth, Debbie, um, right in the members area, right? And, and go watch, it's 20 minutes or so, you know, go watch it though. Uh, all right, Lois. Yes, Lois says you're so right, PYT is the only intelligent and realistic approach. I mean, I'm not gonna say it's the only one because, you know, there's a lot of— there's a lot of stuff out there, but, but it's one of the only ones. I will say that for sure, for sure. They're just— and I don't know why. I don't know why. I— well, I have like an idea. I think the diet industry is not what you think. The diet industry is not like there to help you lose weight. The diet industry is just a branch of the food processing industry. Which is a branch of the cigarette industry. So it's a very shady industry, and the diet industry is not giving you methods to live at your goal weight. They're giving you dramatic things to lose weight quickly, and that's what they've trained you to value. And so you're always looking for what's gonna give you the fastest way. That's the only way keto exists. Keto is a goofy fucking— it's a diet that was made originally for epileptics. Paleo diet? Paleo diet's as goofy as it gets. It's based on no science. You really think paleo people just ate meat? You know, there's all different types of paleo people. Don't you think it would depend on where they lived with how they eat? Uh, it doesn't matter. But, but the point is that these diets are able to be so stupid and so ridiculous because they hook us with promises of instant weight loss. And if you reflect on your life since the day you were born, you have been bombarded with images from the diet industry Before and after pictures. How fast can I lose the weight? That's all you've been trained to value, and that is one of the big reasons why you're caught in this loop now. Or most likely, you're just apathetic at this point. You're probably at the point if you're like most dieters over the age of 45, 50, you think about weight loss all the time, but you can't get yourself to do anything to actually make it happen. You know, and so again, I'm telling you, it's because dieting is a. It's an incomplete plan at best, and it's a shitty strategy at worst. Uh, what's up, Pamela? How's it going? Oh damn, this is so true. Yeah, what's up, Hillary? Hillary said, I'm rereading the blueprint, it's amazingly different the second time around. So much has changed so slowly but so surely. Yes, Hillary. Yes, yes, yes. That's— I love reading that so much. That's the, the purpose of the blueprint. The blueprint You know, and program yourself then, right? One of the main tools of the program that we use is the Goal Weight Blueprint, right? 144 pages. This is not— you don't go through this in a weekend, right? It's not what it's meant for. This is meant to be a living, breathing document, a guide, a customized plan for you to get to your goal weight and then live there as comfortably, as easily, and as enjoyably as possible. And because it's a living, breathing document, it's something that changes and grows and evolves as we change, grow, and evolve, right? So yes, when you fill it out the first time and then you go back to it, sometimes the things you wrote have evolved and now they've transformed. Sometimes they're the same, you know, and sometimes it's got to be totally different. But it gives us a starting point to really create a comprehensive plan to manage your weight. And again, even in Program Yourself Thin, the, the main thing we follow kind of strategically, I guess, the main structure is that we really focus on these 3 areas. This is the goal weight pyramid: mindset, lifestyle, and eating. And so all 3 of them work together to get you the weight results you're looking for, right? That's the goal. Um, so that's awesome, Hillary. Yeah, nice job. Nice job taking that over. And again, another year or 2 from now, you'll read it and you'll, you'll realize the exact same thing again, but you'll just be at an even higher level. So that's awesome, Hillary. Nice job. Um, Debbie said, yeah, my day yesterday was a series of mistakes. Drove from daughter in Georgia back to Florida, took 8 and a half hours instead of 7. I ate all the snacks. Sure, some healthy, um, some popcorn. Then I got home, uh, not pretty. Yeah, okay, but I mean, it's an outlier experience. Again, we can't— this is a common pattern I noticed with dieters is they, they grade themselves the exact same way no matter what. You know, you could have a day where everything goes perfect and you're at home and everything was smooth. Um, you'll kind of measure yourself on that day the same as you measure yourself on a day where, you know, you're stuck in an hour and a half of traffic. Um, you know, there's problems here, problems there, all over the place. And you're gonna say, oh, well, I should have done better. Should you have? What does that make sense, right? So let's just say you're an athlete. Let's go back to athlete. Let's say you're a runner. Right, and everything's going great. You run your time, you do great. And you know, a week later you go to run, but now your ankle hurts, and you know, you know, you got a little bit of a cold. Should you be able to perform the same level? Yeah, yeah. If you wanted enough, yeah. Okay. Are there? Are there again? This concept of capacity I'm realizing is so crucial for me and my clients because we're all overthinkers and perfectionists. And this idea that this there absolutely our capacity. Limits. And you cannot want to believe it, but you do so at your own, um, kind of detriment. There are capacity limits. And how do you expect you're gonna eat the same, um, on a normal day at home versus a day when you have to drive 7 hours, but it actually— you get stuck and it's 20% longer, 30% longer than you thought it was going to be? And you get stuck in traffic and all the emotional stress of that. But that's what dieters do because they say, oh my God, and I was doing so good, and then, then I had to drive, and then I, then I ate bad, and then now I screwed it all up. You didn't screw shit up. You had a weird day and you ate a little more than you normally do, but you also did things that you don't normally do either. It was an outlier day. And so if you have outlier eating with it, you put them together and you take a deep breath and focus on tomorrow. You know, if something's an outlier, unusual thing, uh, thing that happens, don't make it the, oh well, and I was doing so good. That dieters do this all the time and it sets them up for failure. Because how are you gonna be— I, I have a client I'm working with and it's like her life right now, and I said this to her, I said, man, you— I've been doing this for a long time, I've done over 6,000 private weight loss sessions. I said, you right now are in a moment in time That is so uniquely stressful and scary. I'll just leave it at that and take my word for it. It's it's scary and it's stressful moment. And I said, "This is not the time to be demanding perfect eating out of yourself," because this is what I'm trying to say. And again, I put it into a physical issue. So I say, "Oh, an athlete that's injured, can they perform the same when they're injured as when they're not injured?" Right? Well, your brain says no. Of course not. They're two different situations. Da da da. Okay. But should you expect you're gonna eat the same a day when you're at home, you slept in your bed, and you got up, and you had all day, everything was normal, you had your food there, everything's laid out the way you wanted to, and you go— you're gonna compare yourself that day of eating to a day when you gotta drive 7 hours, and oh shit, now it's an hour and a half of driving, there's the stress of that, you didn't sleep in your bed last night, you've been going, you've been— you're— those two, you're gonna compare yourself the same, right? So what— what— why— why would you? Because I know you want to. I know you want to. Why? Why? Because if you were serious enough, you would do it no matter what. Is that what you're telling yourself? But then if I say to the athlete, who cares if you're hurt? So what? You still should have performed perfect. Is that okay? I think it's a good question to sit with everyone because I know— I listen, I've been working with mindsets of you all for a long time, and I'm telling you, this is one of the biggest ones, that it's so easier for you to feel like you failed Right? How can you feel like you failed if you had this weird outlier day and you ate a little more than normal? And even what you said you ate doesn't even sound that bad. Too much popcorn? Too much popcorn when you're driving 8 and a half hours? I don't know, you know what I mean? Like, again, this is the perfectionist thing. We're so critical and hard on ourselves that it's impossible to win, you know? Again, your weight— managing your weight successfully does not require perfection. It requires you to be better, and you are aiming the needle at perfection. It's the only thing that's acceptable, and you're perfect for about a week or two out of the year, and the rest of the time you're not even thinking about it. I would suggest that you move into an all-or-something mindset where, fine, you want to be perfect, be perfect, but if you're not perfect, you're still in the game. It's much more successful that way. Yeah, Debbie says, because that's what I've been taught, outlier days shouldn't throw you off learning new stuff. Yeah, exactly. That's why Debbie's in the program, right? Exactly. But again, this is an example of a cognitive reframe, and there's a lot of cognitive reframes dieters need to make in order to be set up to be able to live at their goal weight. So, you know, you learn those in the program as well. Um, but yeah, that's exactly it. Um, that's exactly it, Debbie, right? You're learning new stuff and I'm proud of you, right? But outlier days shouldn't throw you off. Um, they shouldn't throw you off, but they— the way you make them not throw you off is not by— is by not expecting that an outlier day you're going to perform the same as a normal day. Do you know what I mean? So it's like you want to grade yourself on a normal day, fine, grade yourself normal days, grade how you're doing. But if you have some weird outlier day where you get stuck in an hour and a half of traffic and you eat a little more popcorn, relatively, that's a great day. It may not be great compared to the normal day, but in terms of outlier days, how would you have eaten in the past when you got stuck in an hour and a half of traffic during an 8, 8 and a half hour ride? What would you have eaten in the past? That's what you should be comparing it to. And I bet you did a lot better yesterday than you did in the past when you got stuck in 8-hour rides. That's what you should be comparing yourself to, apples to apples, not comparing yesterday to a normal, typical ideal day, right? That's just more accurate, and I think it's certainly fair, and it sets you up for a lot more success too. Um, but yeah, if y'all got any questions, feel free to ask them. Any weight loss questions are welcome. Work with all the different diets, doesn't matter. Diets The diet is really irrelevant. The diet mindset is the problem. Um, yeah, Lois says, I like that, uh, to be better. Yeah, again, in Program Yourself Thin, our goal is to be 1% better. It's the philosophy we follow. Um, I think it's a very effective philosophy for success and improvement is to focus on getting 1% better a day. Um, again, because the math really works in your favor. 1% better a day is not 365% better at the end of the year. It's 3,650% better because each percent compounds on the previous improvement. And that is the way to comfortably, enjoyably, sustainably improve and create dramatic, amazing results is through that process. All right. That's, that's the way to do it. And I promise you. Yeah. Hillary says, I'd forgot about the current eating map. We'll have to fill that out again. Do you have a recommended amount of time between repeating the blueprint continuous? Yeah. I mean, you can do it continuous. Seriously, I— the way I look at it, right, because there's a lot in this blueprint, so it's not like you're just gonna keep going through it. I like to do it— I like to go through it like one time, kind of A to Z. And you don't even have to go through linearly, you can just jump around if you want. But my first goal is to complete the whole thing, go through all of it, get all of it in your mind, put some answers down. But then from there, you really allow your situation and your mind to kind of guide you. So, you know, if one day you're struggling with motivation, Well, then you dive into the motivation section of the blueprint. If the eating's getting a little wobbly, you're not sure what to eat, then you dive into the eating blueprint part of it. You know what I mean? So once you've kind of gone through it, I allow kind of reality to kind of guide me where I'm going to focus on. But then, yeah, maybe every 6 months, every year to kind of just go through it, skim through it, see what you wrote, update, whatever, optimize things, remind yourself. It's probably the biggest thing. There's a lot in there and it's easy to forget some of the things you wrote. Hillary, Make sure you watch yesterday's lesson, right? We talked about how to put your why to work. That was a— I love that lesson. I really, really like that lesson. So I hope those of you in the program go watch that because we're talking a lot about motivation and our whys this week. We talk about the 5 whys in the program. And yesterday was really about, okay, you figured out your why, right? Again, you've gone through the blueprint or you've gone the 5 why, whatever you Are motivated. You've got your why, but how do we take that why and make it actionable? How do we that why you have now when you sit and think about all the reasons you want to lose weight? How do we take that why and make it something that you can activate at nine o'clock at night when you think about going to the fridge, right? How do we make it actionable quickly? And that's what that lesson was all about. So I think as you're moving through the blueprint again, kind of reflecting on it. Um, make sure you watch that lesson from yesterday, even if you just scan through the notes. I think, I think it's really helpful. Yeah, Pamela says, yeah, the blueprint really makes you think. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Debbie, yeah, us perfectionists and overthinkers? Nah. Yeah, we're definitely— we could be the society of overthinkers and perfectionists here. Absolutely. If you're that way, which I know you are if you're here listening, um, yeah, you're in good company and you're in familiar company because we're all kind of dealing with that. I would say absolutely, Program Yourself Thin is made for overthinkers, um, and overthinkers tend to be perfectionists most of the time. Um, but again, your overthinking is not the problem. Your overthinking is absolutely part of the solution. Um, the problem isn't you're overthinking. The problem is what you're overthinking. You have never learned how to run your mind. You've never learned how to program yourself. So it's like you were born with a supercomputer, but you've never learned how to use it. And so that's what I believe a big part of programming yourself then is, is showing you how to use this very, very powerful brain you've got for your success rather than, you know, using it for your, uh, destruction. Uh, Jim Lover 99. All right. Hi, Jim. Yes, how's it going? How's it going? Um, yeah, Debbie says, gotcha, that makes sense. Nighttime food question. You had said something about not eating a certain amount of hours before bed. What was that timing? I read it somewhere this weekend, but it was just don't eat before bed. Um, yeah, I mean, there's no hard and fast rule. I mean, I started not eating before bed, uh, with an hour. You know, I started with an hour, and then I stretched it to 2 hours before bed, then 3 hours before bed. Where am I at now? Um, well, I go to bed earlier, but I usually stop eating— I landed— I usually am done with dinner 6, 7 o'clock at night, and then I will go to bed. Weeknights, I'm usually in bed 10:30-ish. On weekends, 12:30-ish, you know. So there's no there's no magical answer, you know what I mean? There's kind of just like whatever whatever you do. Now again, if you have a what's the minimum? I don't know. I mean, I wouldn't even say a minimum because everyone's so different. I'd say experiment with it. So if you're usually eating till an hour before bed, you know, work on two hours before bed. Stop eating. See see if you notice anything. Feels good, feels easy. Curious? Do three hours. See what happens. You know what I mean? So I would rather you approach it that way and kind of notice what's going on and keep it manageable and whatever. You know, and reinforce that there's no any numbers we're given are almost always bullshit. Like this idea of sixteen hours being some magical number that your body goes into fapping mode at the sixteenth hour—that's bullshit. It's bullshit. I'm not saying some people may not anyways, but it's just not every person's body works the same. And nothing magical happens when you hit the 16th hour of not eating. You think that, oh no, the turbojets burn out and start blowtorching the fat off your body. 15 hours to 16 hours, blowtorch the fat off your body. You go into blowtorch mode. That's the dieting thing. Listen, I, I've, I've been stuck in that too, where you just, you have to think of stupid shit to say to appeal to people real quick. You want blowtorch? The blowtorch diet. You don't eat for 17 hours because 16 to 17 hours is the magical fat blowtorch time. You know what I mean? That's the shit that sells a million copies though, and it's always based on some grain-ass truth. And then ultimately for you as the person, you're just like the last 3 hours, you're just like a stress case thinking about food. No, I can't eat, I can't eat, I can't eat. You know, then the eating window opens. Blowtorch nothing. You ain't gonna blowtorch, you know, overeating. Intermittent fasting, I'm not knocking it. It's a fine tactic. It's one piece of a thousand-piece puzzle, but whatever. I'm not saying it's good or bad necessarily. It's both depending on the person, the situation, how you're using it. What I am saying is that I have met a lot of people that have attempted to do intermittent fasting, and what it's trained them to do is binge eat. Okay, so again, I'm not— not everyone, but a lot of people, you You know, the intermittent fasting—that structure does not work for their body. It doesn't work for my body. I don't like not eating till noon. Well, I do. Great. Then don't eat till noon. I didn't like it, so I like to eat as soon as I get up. I eat within an hour getting up. That's what works best for me. But I'm not relying on some scientist or some doctor told me something. I'm relying on my own experience. I have tested it. I have. I have not eaten till noon. I know what it feels. I don't like it as much. I prefer I feel what's best for me and what's best for me. It's not just my hunger. It's also how I'm able to manage my eating all day long. If you overeat in an 8-hour window, you're still going to gain weight. It's not about the number of hours you're not eating. That's just a trick to try and reduce your calorie consumption by shrinking the eating window. Another way to lower your calorie consumption is to eat more strategically throughout the day, and that's the big reason I do it. Because when I eat in the morning first thing, that works for me as a way to manage my hunger throughout the day so that I eat moderately throughout the days comfortably. That's what works best for me. But if you follow that logic, folks, what ends up is you figure out what works best for you. But here you are. I bet you're ten, twenty, thirty, forty years into dieting. You don't know what the fuck works best for you. You're always looking for the next best thing starting from scratch. Okay, tell me what to do and I'll do it completely. I'll now do a completely different thing, you know. And a couple months from now, I'm gonna do something totally different over here. That's what dieters do. They either do the exact same thing that didn't work for them 100 times, or they're always doing something completely new and are never able to build up skill in one thing. So, you know, yes, Pamela says, I love the 5 Whys. 5 Whys is the best. The best. The 5 Whys technique. Classic. Classic for a reason. Carolyn says, I need to do that also. Stop at night, close the kitchen. Great idea for approach. Yeah, and program yourself in. That's one of the big mantras we have. That's one of the big sessions is Dinner and Done. People love that one. And again, it's— it speaks to that. It helps program your mind to be able to say, okay, kitchen's closed, it's closed, we're all done. But once you get good at that— see, that's— again, that's another skill. When you can close the kitchen And be done. That's a huge skill in managing your weight, you know. Um, stop, dog. This dog is annoying me today. Debbie likes to blowtorch your fat, right? It's just funny like that though, you know. It's just like they just make things sound so ridiculous, and but it's appealing to us. It's literally hypnosis, blowtorching fat off your body. Believe me, I've written weight loss copy for 20 years. You know, and it's just like there's some of the best hypnotists in the world, right? Blowtorch the fat off your body. You get such a visceral idea of what that is. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't have to eat for 18 hours. I don't give a shit. Fat being blowtorched off, melting it off. It's going, right? And you imagine that in your mind. It's like, that's not what's happening, unfortunately. What's up, Sherry? Sherry says Jim's advice about the amount of work it takes for your body to digest food is really helpful. Yes. It takes a lot of energy for your body to digest food. It's one of the highest uses of energy in your body is digestion. So yeah, that's a very important thing to understand. So yeah, and I think maybe most practically that shows up. I used to eat right until I went to bed, and I used to sleep like shit. Me expanding the window of time between when I stopped eating and when I went to bed was one of the greatest things I ever did to my body. It felt incredible. And again, I kept making it bigger and bigger until I found the sweet spot for me. But yeah, digestion is an enormous use of energy. So when you eat a bunch of food and then go to bed, your body is like running a marathon trying to digest the food while you're trying to rest and recover with sleep. And so it is a big reason why you don't sleep as well and you wake up exhausted. So switching that is very valuable. Debbie said, I haven't eaten today, uh, not on purpose, just after travel stuff occupied me, and then there's you in this live. No, I get it, Debbie. But again, see, that's part of what we learn in the program as well, is that things lead us to the next thing. So yesterday was an outlier day. You're traveling for 8 hours and it threw off yesterday, and throwing off yesterday is kind of throwing off today a little bit. That's normal. It's natural. It's why in Program Yourself Thin, one of the things we talk about when we get back from vacation or when we get, you know, on track from an off time, holidays or whatever, we have a reentry period. Because, um, sometimes we have to kind of readjust because most of our behavior, folks, is subconscious. You're not consciously deciding everything you're doing all day. I hope you know that. It's estimated you make over 200 food decisions a day, and most of those you're making just on autopilot without even realizing it. So I think it's really important to realize that. Again, this goes back to cognitive load concept, that if you're going to manage your weight, you've got to do it strategically, and dieting is the absolute worst approach. You can't consciously manage all of your eating decisions. You— it won't last. It's not going to last. You have to program them in so they kind of happen automatically. But again, yesterday, Debbie, is the perfect example of this because yesterday happened and it kind of threw off your normal schedule. And that had— that impacted today, most likely. Your hunger, your energy levels, your schedule, maybe you slept in a little more, but, but things because of yesterday went the way yesterday went. It affects today. Say this Tuesday is probably different than last Tuesday if last Tuesday we're just kind of at home living your normal life, right? So we need to appreciate that piece of the puzzle because it's a huge piece. Yeah, Carolyn loves the 5 Whys too. Yes, 5 Whys is good stuff. Go deeper. Yeah, kitchen closed. Um, yeah, Carolyn says, yeah, me too, no food yet, never hungry in the morning. Yeah, and again, I, I will say this, right? So again, we all have our personal— like, I like eating early in the morning, always have. I've tested not doing it. I just like it. It works out well for me. But I look at that in the context of not just like, oh, that's what I like to do. I've zoomed out, and me eating in the morning allows me to manage my hunger in a way that allows me to influence my eating all day long. So if I didn't eat till noon, what happens is I start to get hungry 8, 9 o'clock. Now for three hours, I'm thinking about food and I'm saying no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And my hunger keeps increasing and I keep saying no. I don't want to live that way because I want to spend my energy on my work, on my life, on learning, on doing things. So for me, it was a lot easier to eat in the morning, feel good. And then I work and I don't think about food because I know I'm going to eat my lunch and I know I'm fine hunger-wise until I get there. Or I might eat something in between there. Okay, so, so again, I have something I could eat in between there too. And, you know, but I have a structure to my eating and that actually calms me down a lot. You know, a lot of you dieters are fighting your hunger and it's a, it's a fight you're not gonna win, unfortunately. So, you know, you got to learn to manage your hunger. But again, you know, so, so, um, for all of you, those out there though, because I hear a lot of people say, well, I don't like to eat breakfast. But one thing you got to consider, because I've tested both out, okay, you really want to consider, do I really not like to eat breakfast, or am I still stuck deep back there? I don't want to eat breakfast because I want to keep my calories low. If I don't eat breakfast, I'm not— my calories aren't going to go up, because that is a core diet tactic, maybe the number one: try not to eat calories, right? And you try not to eat breakfast, you try not to eat lunch, you start getting so hungry so that by the time you start eating, you're really hungry. Well, you know, the hardest time to control your calorie consumption is when you're really hungry in front of a lot of food. So again, a lot of times we say, yeah, I don't, I don't like to eat in the morning, but okay, but how hungry are you during the day? And then how is your eating lunch, afternoon, evening? How's the eating the rest of the day? 'Cause if you're consistently overeating, I like to say a lot of times the problem— where the problem shows up is not where the problem was created. And I would say the number one tactic I see dieters using to sabotage themselves is trying not to eat. 'Cause you get up in the morning, your willpower's at a maximum, and your hunger typically is at the lowest rate. And so, you know, willpower's up here, hunger's down here. You say, oh, I'm not gonna eat breakfast. I'm not gonna eat it. And you've trained yourself. I'm not gonna break. I'm not gonna be right. But meanwhile, your willpower is lowering. Now it's lunch. No, okay, I can still do. I don't have to eat. I'm not gonna eat. I'm not gonna eat. And now now we're into the afternoon. Now the hunger is up here and your willpower is down here. And if you're eating, oh morning and lunch are great, and then the afternoon and nighttime all falls apart. Well, is it because you don't have the willpower in the afternoon and night to stop yourself from eating, or is it because The way that you've been living the day has caused you to be so hungry and so weak that now you don't have the— you're not set up to manage your eating well. So a lot of times we think those calories we save in the morning are gonna make us lose weight, but really those calories we're skipping in the morning are making us so hungry that we're eating twice that amount of calories in the evening. It's just something to consider, you know, because that's a very, very common pattern. Stefan's weight loss journey. Now that's what a GLP-1 is for. Now maybe. Yeah, I mean, GLP-1s again, this is a GLP-1 safe space. So again, there's lots of people in the program on them. But you know, GLP-1s aren't aren't a miracle cure either. You know, so again, that's not what they're for because they don't really help you structure your eating. They don't help you optimize what you're eating, your health. They certainly don't work on your lifestyle. They don't work on your mindset. And these things are absolutely crucial pieces of not only managing your weight, um, long-term, but of getting the satisfaction and the quality of life that you desire from the weight loss in the first place. Because weight loss in and of itself doesn't fix everything, in case y'all didn't know. Debbie says, by the way, daughter and food, we did so much together this weekend. She snacked while I drove. Worked well for me. No pressure. Nice job, Debbie. That's, that's wonderful, Debbie. That's what I mean. And I want you to appreciate that because again, this journey we're on in Program Yourself Thin is not just about the weight. We take the weight and wrap it in personal development. And so for Debbie, being able to communicate with her daughter, um, more honestly and openly, being able to kind of be in their own lanes and they are able to, um, you know, your daughter's able to do her thing, you're able to do your thing, and it's cool. That's a huge thing, you know what I mean? So that may not show up to scale this week, this month, but that's a huge improvement. So that's wonderful, Debbie. Nice job. What's up, Lisa from Florida? A lot of people from Florida here. Debbie's from Florida. Yep. Lisa says, I stress eat and emotional eat even when I'm not hungry. Yeah, well, this is why GLP-1s are not a perfect solution. I see Steven said, I lost 133 pounds and I'm perfectly healthy now, had bloods last week. Great. Okay, but what I want y'all to hear is don't get caught up on just 133 pounds. It's great, congratulations, that's your path. But again, the GLP-1s are I would say they're— it's kind of one layer. And again, congratulations, and I'm happy for you. I want you to understand that. I think you're better off now being 133 pounds. Wonderful. Okay, but I don't know how long you've been 133 pounds anyways, by the way. Um, but again, living at your goal weight is completely different focus than losing the weight. And I don't know how long you've been down in the weight and stuff. So if you've been down for a while, then you're starting to learn this. If you've just gotten down 133 and you got more weight you want to lose, Living at your goal weight is completely different mindset than losing weight, and this is what the GLP-1s have not answered yet: is we don't know what happens to a giant population of people that have lost weight on GLP-1s, and now they're at the same weight injecting themselves. Because when people are losing weight, most people, whether it's a diet or GLP-1 or stomach surgery, trade the excitement and the pleasure of the food for the excitement and the pleasure of the weight loss. As long as they can watch that scale go down, that's the thing that keeps them driving, keeps them going. And the big question— I mean, even dieters, 85 to 95% of dieters that lose the weight and get to their goal weight put the weight back on. So just getting to goal weight does not answer everything. It's not a complete solution. And what happens is we trade the excitement and the pleasure of the food for the excitement, pleasure of the weight loss. So I always say the worst person in the world to ask how GLP-1s are, how the diet is, or how the workouts are is someone who's actively losing weight because they're so fired up about the weight loss they don't give a shit what they're doing. We never find out how they actually feel about what they're doing until they've been at their goal weight for 6 months, a year, 2 years, which by the way is what Program Yourself Thin is built on. It's built on studying people that have lost weight and kept it off for at least 2 years. So it's about the mindset of a person who lives at their goal weight. And the important piece of that, and this builds right on what you just said, Lisa, about the emotional eating and the stress eating, is that ultimately a lot of people are using food for emotional reasons. And when someone GLP-1 is losing weight, they don't give a shit that they're not emotionally eating or they're not stress eating or they're not loneliness eating. They don't care if they're losing weight. But once you get down to the goal weight and the excitement of the weight loss and that whole thing is gone, now you're just living your life. Now you're face to face with the emotional eating, with the stress eating, because now you're not— listen, emotional eating is a symptom of a deeper problem. The deeper problem is that you don't know how to manage your emotions genuinely, so you use food. And it's not an unusual thing because we live in a culture where we've been conditioned to manage our emotions with food our entire lives. We've been conditioned to use food to manage our emotions. So we feel sad, we can turn to food. Feel lonely, turn to food. We're celebrating, turn to food. So to actually manage emotions without needing food is a skill set that GLP-1 does not give you, that getting to your goal weight dieting-wise does not give you, that stomach surgery does not give you. It's its own separate skill. And so I would suggest that, yes, Lisa, the emotional eating really doesn't have to do primarily with the food and your hunger. It has to do with the fact that when you get stressed, the best strategy your brain believes you have to reduce your stress is to eat. That's your best strategy at this moment in time. That's why when you get stressed, you go right to it. It's the best strategy that you've got available to you. So you should reframe this, Lisa. This isn't a process of not eating, because isn't the answer to emotional eating is not don't eat, don't do it? But if you don't emotionally eat, all that happens is you end up being a thin stressed person, a thin lonely person, a thin anxious, sad, angry person. So the weight loss does not fix that. You need to have the skill, the ability to manage your emotions genuinely without needing food. That's not only the way to manage your weight more effectively, but it's more importantly the way to improve your quality of life. Because if you're stressed and you usually manage your stress by stress eating, and you say, I'm not going to stress eat, well, okay, great, you might lose some weight, but now you're stressed still. That's the problem. You don't want to be a stressed thin person. You want to be a thin, healthy, happy, relaxed person. And you're not going to be able to do that just by controlling food. You've got to learn a process for managing our emotions. That's why in Program Yourself Thin It's literally a whole section in the mindset piece. There we go. Emotions. How do you manage your emotions genuinely? The good news is it's not even that hard. That's the weird part. It's really not. You can feel all sorts of emotions. You've never learned how to do it. But again, that's the perfect example in my mind of why GLP-1 stomach surgery diets aren't enough, because they're not getting to the core issues. And I believe you need to get to the core issues. I need— I believe you need a holistic, comprehensive approach to managing your weight. I really do. I don't think there's any one tactical thing you can do that's just going to fix it all, whether it's GLP-1, a diet, some crazy workout. I just think there's got to be more because it's not just about weight. You think weight's going to fix everything, folks? You've all been at your goal weight before. Right? Everyone's been at their goal weight at least, at least for a day. You were there. If everything was so amazing at that weight, why did you ever put the weight back on? Why did you ever put weight on in the first place? And what you're going to start to realize is it's exactly this shit. It's, oh, I got stressed, I don't know how to handle it, I put the weight on, I was anxious. It's almost always related to emotions in my experience. There's other factors sometimes too, but the number one by a mile is emotional eating. And none of those things fix the emotional eating. Yes, Pamela. Pamela says, I don't wait to eat until I'm chewing on nails. Exactly. That's a smart strategy. But dieting— what's dieting taught you over the years, right? It's taught you to hang on as long as you can. Let's see how hungry you can— you know, how much hunger can you fight off? That's really the subtle message of dieting, I think. Yeah, so Stephen says took me two years and another twenty pounds to goal again. Stephen, please, or Stefan, I'm sorry if I'm saying your name wrong. Please understand congratulations. But this I can't urge you enough to go and get the hypnosis session I give you again. You can all get this. All you need to do, you can go to my bio, click the link, and go get the hypnosis session. If you're on Facebook, just type mind M I N D. And it'll send you a link. But but here's the thing, Stefan. Again, congratulations. Okay, I'm so happy for you. But I want you again exactly what I was saying. You're still in the weight loss mode, you know. And again, you're way on a better path. But I'm telling you, please, please start to focus on the mindset piece a bit. Okay, I say this all the time. Even before GLP ones, my number one reason for doing this is the people that successfully put the work and time into getting results. And then can't maintain it. Losing weight and living at your goal weight are two completely different things. You all have never learned how to live at your goal weight. This is literally why I wrote the book on. I wrote the book, The Tao of Living at Your Goal Weight, because no one talks about living at your goal weight. All we hear about is losing weight, and they're just two separate things. All right. That says, I've had a plateau with my weight. How long do I ride it out until I need to reassess my deficit? Um, well, it depends, you know what I mean? It depends where you're at in the process. If you just started, you know, if you're 150 pounds overweight and you started, um, cutting calories down, uh, 2 weeks ago and you haven't lost weight, I would reassess now, probably, right? If you're 5 pounds away from your goal weight and it's been a month since you haven't lost weight, I'd probably give it another month. You know, so it kind of depends. I don't know how long, um, you've been on the plateau, and I don't know what your situation is, you know. But I would, um, I would— again, my average number is a month at least, but it then it depends on the specifics of the situation too. All right, Stefan walks for mental health. Nice, that's good. Um, Carolyn says, yes, by the time I make a 2:00 PM meal, I'm eating a big enough amount. Then supper, 609, I'm looking for more. Yeah, um, yeah, again, I'm not saying what the right or wrong thing is, Carolyn. Again, it's just I, I don't know the answer for any of you, you know what I mean? I, I can't, I can't just come in, and I don't think anyone does, by the way. I don't think the dietitians know. I don't think the doctors know. I don't think the stomach surgery doctors have any clue. They can't tell you what to do because everyone is so unique and different. You need to figure this out on your own. No one can tell you this. So even for Caroline, I can't— I don't know what the right way for you to eat is. I can just tell you the patterns that I notice, right? And you can reflect on those and experiment with them again in search of finding a better way forward. Always looking for a better way forward. Um, Lisa says, I'm trying to drink a liter of water every morning slowly after I get up. Uh, followed by a 40-ounce cup of coffee with a scoop of protein powder, and then I wait till I get hungry to eat, and I'm trying to eat food from our vegetable garden and cook healthy. I've been using the Crock-Pot several times a week, and the food is delicious. Great job, Lisa. Nice job. Um, I would tweak that a little bit. Um, the big thing I would tweak is the scoop of protein powder. I wouldn't rely on that. That— that to me, I don't love that morning routine. Now, again, if it works for you, great. But if it was me, I would absolutely— if you're trying to eat healthier, I would not want to rely on a 40-ounce cup of coffee with protein in it for my nutrition until lunchtime. And then I wait till I get hungry to eat. Okay, that's a loaded term though, honestly. And I know— listen, listen, please understand, people. I've been working— I've done over 6,000 private weight loss sessions. So it's like, I know how you all think. So there's, there's words that mean something different to me than the average person. So when I hear Lisa say, and then I wait till I get hungry to eat, that's a huge red flag for me. It doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong, but it's definitely something I would, I would kind of poke a little bit because that a lot of times for dieters means I try and see how long I can go before I eat. If that's what it means, that's probably setting you up for failure long term. If you're really in tune with your hunger, then great. But I don't know if you are because 40 ounce cup of coffee with a scoop of protein is not going to satisfy you the way that my breakfast of Ezekiel toast with peanut butter, natural peanut butter, and an apple with natural peanut butter. We're in two different worlds. I'm way more satisfied. I've got fiber in my body. I got protein, you know, complete proteins going in. Um, I got, uh, you know, the carbs that really my body loves. I got all the stuff my body loves, and I feel very satisfied. You know, protein powder— I, I think protein powder and protein in general is really the big problem right now. And again, protein's important. Please let me be clear about this right from the beginning. Um, protein's important, but I think it's way overstated, and I think it sucked up all the energy in the room. Um, and that energy be better spent on fiber and whole natural foods. But when we rely on protein powders, I think more often than not you're gonna find that you're hungrier than you want to be. Protein powders are not satiating. I guess they're more satiating than water, but I will see your protein powder with, you know, apple and peanut butter and Ezekiel bread all day long. Carol said, dang, I thought I fixed everything. Nope, GLP-1's not, not the magic thing that fixes everything, unfortunately. I'd never use a GLP-1 for 2 reasons. One, I had a friend who lost 70 pounds and regained it when she stopped using, and I'm scared of the future side effects. A lot of that is not known yet, and I'm not willing to play routine with my health in that manner. And that's a fair— that is a fair, um, point of view. Um, they have never tested GLP-1s in a large population just for weight loss. They have for diabetes. They've studied for over 20 years, but Um, so yeah, it is, it is new in that sense. And the biggest thing is exactly what you said, that the second you come off it, you put the weight right back on. And the big scariest part of that is that when you lose the weight on GLP-1, if it works, you tend to lose weight very quickly, which means you also lose a lot of muscle. And then if you come off it, you put a lot of weight on quickly, but it's not muscle. And so now you've transformed your body composition to be less muscle and more fat. This is one benefit of protein, is that all of you middle-aged women are terrified of getting older without having muscle, right? So the GLP-1 is a very important, big decision. I think people have taken it way too lightly. I think it's a miracle for a lot of people, please understand. But I also think a lot of people have— are going to regret diving into the GLP-1 too quick because they never intended to do it long term. I think the majority of people using GLP-1s to lose weight without any health reason other than they want to lose weight and the general health benefits they expect from that, but they're not diabetic, you know, they don't have metabolic disorders. I think the vast majority of GLP-1 people are thinking, I'm going to do this until I lose the weight, then I'm going to come off it, and then I'm going to figure out how to stay on it. And I, I see this all the time, and it's literally just diet thinking applied to the GLP-1. And that is a very dangerous thing to think about, because if you do that with a diet, you know, I'm gonna diet until I lose weight. Okay, fine, because you're gonna lose weight slower. With the GLP-1, you're gonna do it, you'll lose weight quickly, but you're losing muscle quickly. And the second you say, I'm gonna get off of this, well, now you've just— you've recomposed your body in the wrong direction. And it's— I think that's gonna be the number one. You know, I didn't really understand it 2 years ago. I was reading about GLP-1s, um, from the company studies themselves. And one of the big things that they all were saying, their biggest negative I would say back then, was that they were nervous about how much muscle people were losing on this. And at that point, I did not understand the weight gain piece of it because we didn't have enough enough people yet. But that to me is the biggest fear I have physically, mentally, emotionally. My biggest fear is that you know the quality of life piece that that food is a big part of our emotional. Stability. I know I was just talking about emotional eating, but even in a healthy way, food is a big part of our quality of life—what we look forward to, what we celebrate with, what we enjoy—and I think muting that for the rest of our lives is another thing that a lot of people are not really going to be willing to live with, even if it helps them lose weight. That's that's another piece that I'm curious to watch. But it's a big decision, and I think people unfortunately are not given the full picture. As I think doctors just want to give it to you now, um, but they're not considering, are you really planning on being this forever? Because if you're not, please take an extra week and think about it. Because if you're gonna come off this, if it's gonna work for you, you're gonna lose a lot of weight quick and a lot of muscle. And if you're gonna come off this, you're gonna put the weight back on, but it's just gonna be the fat. I don't know, something to think about. All right, Debbie's from New York. I don't know why that makes sense. Transplanted there, huh? Long Island to Florida. Um, Lisa says, you make some excellent points. I'm glad I could catch this live today. Thank you so much. Well, you're welcome, Lisa. Yeah, and I'm glad. Um, this is what I'm here for, everyone, folks. I— this is my mission in life. I'm here every Monday through Friday at noon, um, to talk to you all about this and help as much as I can. So pop on here and use it. I mean, there's— again, I'm here to serve you, so genuinely, you know, um, I'm here every day. So pop on here. You can hop on every day, ask questions. I'm happy to help you out. Okay, it's it's service that that I look at. But if you're really serious again, please click the link in in my bio or type mind M I N D into the Facebook chat and get the free hypnosis session. Get into my world for a little bit. See all the things I give you for free. See if they help out. You know, Zoe says what Greek foods are okay for weight loss? You're Greek, right? Yeah, I'm Greek, but it doesn't matter. I mean, the Greek foods are the same thing as the Italian foods, as the Chinese foods, all the rest of it. It really comes down to calories at the end of the day. But in order to manage our calories, I think the most important thing is that we get as much whole, natural, fresh foods into our body as possible. And so whatever kind of style of cuisine that is is almost irrelevant. Um, the more healthy, whole, natural food you can get in your body, the easier it is to manage your calories, you know. Um, Debbie says apparently they discovered a new drug for GLP-1 users that is meant for after the weight loss. Yeah, I'm sure they will. You know what I mean? But again, until they come up with some magical pill that does everything, I you know I'm gonna put my time into. I don't know. I say this every day too, and I'm not trying to be an asshole, but it's like you know all we do is hear GLP one success stories through the media. If you compare any GLP one success story, literally anyone, to program yourself thin success stories, it's clear that the program yourself thin success stories. Blow them away because they now—I mean, it's without question—it's natural. You have to pay anything anymore. It costs a fraction of the price to begin with. You have a long-term plan now. You know how to run your mind. Your lifestyle's gotten better. Your mindset's better. You've got an eating plan that really works for you. You can still go to holidays and enjoy food as much as you ever did, if not more. You can go on vacation and eat the foods and enjoy them as much as you ever have, if not more. You have a real long-term strategy and plan to. Not only manage your weight, but to live as the person you want to be. So, you know, again, they can make all the promises in the world of the GLP-1s. And you know, in fairness to Program Yourself, then really isn't a weight loss program so much as a weight loss program wrapped in personal development program. And so fundamentally, it's different anyways. Yeah, Lisa says yes. I need to learn some better happy coping skills besides eating. Yeah, well, Lisa, it's not even need to; it's that you want to, right? Wouldn't it be nice? Let's just put the weight piece to the side for a second and the eating to the side for a second. But Lisa, wouldn't you like a life where you felt— because you mentioned stress, so I'm going to speak specifically to that. I'm sure there's other emotional eating patterns you have, but let's just stick with stress eating for a second. Beyond the eating piece, let's just put that aside for a moment because I know you stress eat, which you think what? It relaxes you, but it doesn't relax you. It just distracts you from the stress, right? Because there's whatever's stressing you out, you're focusing on it and you're getting stressed. And then you say, wait a second, I'm gonna eat something. So the second you do that, you take your focus off the stress thing and you focus on the food. So that alone has a stress-relieving property to it. Then you start eating, and eating has a stress-relieving, pleasure-inducing property to it. But then you finish eating, and now are you more stressed or less stressed? Well, if you're in a food coma, you're still less stressed, but you wake up the next morning and now you're, you're more stressed than you were before you start eating. So the eating doesn't actually reduce your stress levels; it just distracts you from them for a little while. And so, Lisa, wouldn't it be nice again if we put the food to the side for a second? Wait to the side for a second. Wouldn't you in your life? Wouldn't it be a drastic improvement in the quality of your life, the quality of your relationships, your ability to produce and do the things you want to do in life, the adventures you want to go on, the goals you want to achieve? Wouldn't all those things be better served by you? Being able to be more relaxed and calm and grounded in your life. If you could start to kind of live your life not on your heels, but just kind of well-grounded, calm, thinking clearly, seeing the big picture, not emotionally reacting to things, but being able to consider things, think about things, make the best choices and options moving forward. To be able to relax and to breathe in your body, to have all the benefits of that moving forward. How would that impact your relationships if you were more calm and grounded, felt more peaceful? How would that affect your work, whatever it is you do in your life? How would you show up differently if you just felt more relaxed, if you had a greater ability to feel more calm and grounded? And hopefully when you consider that, you're like, oh, that'd be really nice. Because if it does feel really nice, I want you to change your language. I don't want you to say, yes, I need to learn some better coping skills. I want you to say, oh my God, I want to feel that way. I really want to feel that way. I want to be that version of me. I want to be the Lisa who can be more calm and grounded and respond more rationally, more calmly, more effectively. I want to feel more peaceful. I want to be more in a flow state in my life. This is who I want to be. And if you start to think of yourself that way, I hope that's appealing because that becomes the pleasure piece of the puzzle and that changes the language. I need to, I need to figure out how to better way. I need to, I need to figure out. It changes from that into oh yes, I've lived long enough to know that I want to be more relaxed. It's not just the weight. I want to lose weight too, but I want to be more calm. I want to be more at peace, and I want to live my life that way. Right? And hopefully that's exciting. What's up, Rhonda? Rhonda said this managing emotions is totally me. That's why I eat late at night, etc., and really snacking all day long. Well, congrats, Rhonda. Again, the first step in programming yourself, then when we talk about eating, is always number one. It all starts with awareness. All right. So congrats, Rhonda. You know, sometimes we we become aware of a problem in our lives, and we oh now now I got deal with that. I'm a mess. I want you to celebrate that you're aware of that now, because now, Rhonda, now that you realize the emotional component to it, now you can go to work on a specific solution to that problem. The problem isn't that you don't have willpower to stop yourself from eating. The problem is that you lack the skill to manage your emotions at night, whatever they may be. And it's not managing your emotions like, oh, I need to lower my stress. It's about what you want to feel more of. That's why managing your emotions isn't that difficult. Because it's pretty easy to feel emotions. You may not believe this. Um, so it's not about, oh, I have to be less stressed. It's about, I want to be more relaxed. It's not about, I got to stop feeling so lonely. It's about, I want to start feeling more connected. Does that make sense? It's about what we're moving towards, what we want to have. And I think if you approach it that way, Rhonda, I definitely think that you'll, you'll start, you know, interfacing with some new territory. All right. Um, yeah, Lisa says amen to that. I definitely need to work on my mindset coping skills. Yeah, I just said that. Um, yes, yes, Carolyn. Carolyn says the book's great and it's not expensive. No, this book is not expensive at all. It's less than $10, and I think the digital version— I don't know, I forget how much it is, but it's like $3, $4 or something. And there's an audiobook version of it. But yeah, go check this book out. I love this book so much. I really do. I wrote it and published it last year. But, um, what this book actually is, is— I haven't talked about this book much lately. What's wrong with me? But it's so good. But it basically takes you through the entire Program Yourself Then system, you know, in a very easy, accessible way. But it's very powerful in and of itself. So yeah, you can get that over at Amazon. But thanks for reminding me that, Carolyn. Uh, Renee says, I'm trying to lose 12 pounds. I go on a diet every Monday and mess up. Yeah, exactly, Renee. But that's, that's the typical pattern. So don't start so— you're, you're, you know, you mean you're starting Monday 100%? Start Monday at 40%. See if you can make it to Tuesday or Wednesday, then that'd be an improvement. Then start the next week on Monday at 40 or 50% and make it to Wednesday. 100% one day versus 50% 3 days is 100% versus 150%, you know what I mean? So you've just made your— you've made your results 50% better by doing it that way. But whatever you do, Renee, don't— this is a— you're like a human like all of us, right? We tend to do— we, we tend to do the same thing over and over. Program yourself there. And neuro-linguistic programming We have a tenet we follow, which is if something's not working, do something different. So whatever you do, Renee, unless you like starting over every Monday, um, but if you want to get better results, whatever you do, please don't start Monday the way you always do. Start Sunday. Start— that won't matter though, because again, the issue is not the day. The issue is that you jump into Monday trying to be perfect, and you are perfect until you're not perfect, and then you're You're completely off. In Program Yourself Thin World, we call this all-or-nothing thinking. And in Program Yourself Thin, we're all-or-something. So we're— we'll do all sometimes for sure, but most of the time we're in the something mode. And what's happening to you is you're all Monday and nothing the rest of the week. That's a strategy for, for failure though, unfortunately. Um, Debbie says, Jim, have you tried Teddy peanut butter? It's really good and not overpriced. That's exactly the peanut butter I eat. Yes, I eat Teddy peanut butter. I love it, and it's the greatest. And I was just reading about legumes and how great they are, and that makes me feel even better. But yes, thank you for that because yes, Teddy is what I eat, and I it's my favorite brand. Yeah, Lisa says you're a godsend. Thank you. I'm going to start watching every day as much as possible. Nice job, Lisa. Make sure you get the hypnosis session. I give more away for free than anyone that I know. Literally, if you go sign up for the hypnosis session I give you, I give you a full hypnosis session for free. I give you a training called Reprogrammed. It's a 20-minute training. I show you the whole system, show you the reader rehearsal technique, everything. That's free. And then I, I put you into an email program, um, where I coach you every day. It's really good, I think. I used to charge for— used to be a program I charged for. Now I just give it to you. Um, so go check it out. All right. Yeah, Julie said, yeah, wow, needed to hear it, uh, said like this. Uh, yeah, and that's what I'm here for. Again, I am a hypnotist and an NLP practitioner and a coach. And so my trade, the tools of my craft, are my words, are my concepts, are my ideas. And that's what I've been working on for over 30 years personally and over 20 years professionally. So yes, when you hear the right information in a different way, it just goes into your brain differently. And that's what I aim to do here every day, is to talk about weight and how you're going to manage it more effectively. in ways that aren't about dieting, GLP-1s, or surgery. Because there's absolutely a natural, holistic, predictable, reliable way to manage your weight that you've never heard of, is basically what I'm saying. And I'm here every day talking about it for free. So pop up out here. Sherry says, the personal development piece of the program has been so huge for me. The first time I've lost weight and felt overall like a better me. Yeah, that's pretty important, right? Wouldn't you say, folks? Right. What's up, Karen? Yes, you're welcome for the information. Hello from Maine. All right, yep, Maine. I'm just planning on going up there. So yeah, Maine's beautiful. Um, Lisa says, I'm always more stressed and I'm very unhappy with myself when I stress eat, and I just keep asking myself, Lisa, why do you keep destroying yourself? Why don't you do what you know you're supposed to do to be successful? So today's day 2 of trying. I've been changing habits slowly and learning new meals with mostly vegetables that are delicious, um, but I'm trying to do everything right, but I don't know everything yet. So you're A godsend. You're amazing. Well, thank you. It's great to learn from you, but I want to make a complete lifestyle change that I can live with for the rest of my life. I don't want to go off of something and regain it all back. I'm done living like that. My mind, I'm done living like that. Yeah, I don't blame you. Um, but here's the problem, Lisa, and this is the same problem for all of you, because unfortunately dieting's taught you to just say words that don't really have a lot of meaning. So when I hear someone, um, say something like, but I want to make a complete lifestyle change that I can live with, Um, what's that mean? What does that mean? Because I believe you. I do believe you. I believe you believe what you said, but I believe what you said doesn't mean much to you. Meaning, what is a lifestyle? Listen.
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