#32 - THINK FIT: I HAVE ALREADY TAKEN THE FIRST STEP.
14 May 2020 · 29 min
In this inaugural episode of the "Think Fit" series, fitness and life strategist Jorge Cruise introduces a daily 90‑day mindset program aimed at reducing stress‑induced belly fat and rebooting one’s life. He opens with striking statistics about the prevalence and health dangers of excess belly fat, then positions his 8‑Minute Method as a science‑backed shortcut for busy people. Cruise leverages his credibility—over 25 years of experience, 30+ books, and a client list that includes Oprah Winfrey, Khloe Kardashian, President Bill Clinton, and others—to assure listeners of his expertise. He explains that stress and cortisol are primary drivers of "stubborn" belly fat and that reshaping thoughts through affirmations can neutralize this effect. Drawing on influences from Louise Hay, Don Miguel Ruiz, and Dr. Christiane Northrup, he guides listeners through a core affirmation—"I have already taken the first step"—and encourages repeated vocalization. The episode also outlines the practical structure of the Think Fit series: a daily morning ritual, a 90‑day timeline, and a promise of future longer shows with guests. Cruise promotes his upcoming website (jorgecruise.com), a new newsletter, and provides direct contact information (hello@jorge8minutes.com) for listeners to join the email list or give feedback. He concludes with a motivational call to share the program with friends and community, emphasizing that each small step compounds into lasting change.
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It's a fact, 91% of us have a dangerous amount of belly fat. And it isn't just unsightly. When you have too much belly fat, you lower your immunity and increase your chances of diabetes, stroke, cancer, and even poor respiratory health. The good news is that you can reduce dangerous belly fat and reboot your life in just 8 Minutes. Hi, my name is Jorge Cruise, and I'm known as the 8-Minute Life Strategist to the world's busiest celebrities. I've been a fitness, nutrition, and life strategist for over 25 years, and you may have seen my work with Oprah Winfrey, Khloe Kardashian, President Bill Clinton, Tyra Banks, Wendy Williams, Kelly Clarkson, Dr. Oz, Tony Robbins, or even Steve Harvey. My passion to find science-backed life shortcuts has allowed me to write over 30 books and become a multiple New York Times bestselling author with over 9 million books in print. And I know I can help you too. Imagine getting the confidence you want during this COVID-19 world by having a Life Edge at any stage of your life, whether you're just starting your life or in midlife like myself or beyond. Even if you don't think you have enough time, money, or willpower, I know this podcast will show you how to finally put your life together. Welcome to the Jorge Cruise Show. Hi, this is Jorge Cruise, and it is May 14th, Thursday, and I'm starting a new series with you right now that I hope you're going to love, and I hope you're going to listen to every morning with me. Um, I have tea in the morning around this time, 5 AM. I'm up at 4:30, uh, I do some burpees on my own usually, and at 5 o'clock I'm going to be recording this for you guys and to share. Because I'll tell you what happened in the last few weeks here that I've been working with clients on a live stream. I have paid clients that I work with that do my 8 Minute Method, and it's really beyond fitness and even nutrition, but it's really life strategy to maximize and kind of reboot life. Because a lot of my clients, almost all actually, uh, are over 40 and they're all in midlife. And hey, I'm almost 50, you know, I'm going to be 50 next year in 2021. And I think at this stage of my life I have this sage knowledge. I took an incredible yoga intensive 200-hour class. It was a class, it was like like a credential program, uh, in New York City at the end of this last year. And one of the things that I was surprised— because most of the kids in the class were in their 20s, all becoming yoga instructors, and I was probably the oldest person in the class, right? Almost 50. And the instructors were all my age. But, uh, you know, they reminded the young ones that with, with age comes wisdom. And I feel like it's something I've heard from years, uh, that Tony Robbins taught me, that to whom much is given, much is expected. And so for me, I've always known that, and that's probably why I've written over 30 books, why I have 9 million books in print, why I've worked with everyone. I mean, you've seen my work, I'm sure, with Oprah to President Clinton. You know, I've had this privileged life, and I feel like this is the window, this is the time, and my clients have been asking for strategy on thinking fit. To stress less. And so this is what I'm calling Think Fit, and I'm going to do it every morning, and it's to help us stress less. I wrote a book a few years back with Hay House— they're great publishers— called Stubborn Fat Gone, and it was really about discovering how thinking fit could turn off stress and lower cortisol levels. And cortisol, my friends, if you don't know this, causes belly fat. Even if you don't have no sugar, even if you're fasting, those last few pounds, what I call stubborn fat, literally— and it's the fat that bothers us the most— can stick around for years if you don't conquer this thing called your brain. And I used to do seminars years ago, before I even wrote books, with the Learning Annex about how to have— how to think fit. Literally, it was called that. It was probably 25, 26, 27 years old. And I would do these events. I don't know if you guys are old enough to remember the Learning Annex, but in San Diego, New York, they had them everywhere. And I would have legions of people. I'd have 100, 200 people attend my events, and they were all people in midlife that were stressed out of their mind and wanted to use my 8 Minute Method back then, and they wanted to have this confidence, you know? And for me, what my 8 Minute Method has done is given me not just confidence, but it's lowered my anxiety. Anxiety, where I used to have panic attacks, and it's given me the ability to have a flat stomach, obviously. But beyond that, the list goes on and on. So this isn't about that though. This is not about interval training. This is not about 8-minute exercises. If you're interested in that, I have a new website that will be coming out soon. I'm hoping to premiere it tomorrow, Friday. I'll let you know in the morning if that happens. It takes a while to, uh, to get these sites up and to get them so they show up globally. But it'll be at jorgecruise.com. If you go to it today, there's nothing there. The site is down, the old site. The new site is coming. And the reason I'm doing ThinkFit with you guys is, you know, I was privileged to work years ago with a woman. Her name is Christiane Northrup. She's a doctor from Dartmouth University, dear friend of mine. I joined her on her PBS specials. She's a women's health expert. She was Oprah's gynecologist. So highly credentialed Dartmouth Ivy League kind of gal, and she encouraged me to write this book. She wrote an introduction to the book that says this program is fabulous. And, you know, I think thinking fit is still for me something I work on. So I'm doing this not just to share it with you, but to get my mind in the right place every morning after I do my workout. And it's my ritual. I tell all my clients that rituals equal results. Good rituals equal good results. Bad rituals equal bad results. And again, the glass is always half full even if you have a bad result, because with a bad result comes a golden nugget, a lesson. And with a lesson, you can change your life. So let's start this right now. What I'm going to do every day is I'm going to start it. It's a 90-day plan starting today. We'll do the math, figure out what the day it ends on. But day 1 um, for this ThinkFit is a simple two-part approach. I'm going to share with you an affirmation. I learned this 25 years ago from Louise Hay, who passed a few years ago in her 90s. But she— if you Google search Louise Hay, she is what people call the, the founder of, of positive thinking, of affirmations. And she in the 1970s and '80s wrote a book called You You Can Heal Your Life. And it was powerful. It changed the lives of millions of people. She created a publishing company in San Diego, and to this day, still one of the, the biggest publishing houses in the world. And they've always been a maverick. They've been in San Diego, not New York, and although they have New York offices, I've worked with all their top people. And I knew Louise, and she was beautiful. And she told me, Jorge, the words you say to yourself are the most important. So she says, speak carefully, you know. And I was privileged many years ago to meet Don Miguel Ruiz— Don Miguel Ruiz, I should say— the author of The Four Agreements. And his number one agreement was be impeccable with your words. So Think Fit is really about rewiring our mind with words. So I have a few words for you. The first set of words, this affirmation, is the following, and I want you to repeat this with me after I say it with you. It says, I have already taken the first step. One more time. I have already taken the first step. All right, I have already taken the first step. Say that, think about it. Open your mind up right now. I have already taken the first step. And then I'll pair this affirmation, and I would recommend you say this 10 times in front of the mirror. That's what Louise Hay had me do with 'All is well' was her affirmation. All is well. And even if your brain struggles and says, ah, No, that's not true. Because the affirmation again, here it is: I have already taken the first step. You're like, no, Jorge, I've been trying to change my life. I need to reboot it. I've gained 15 pounds during this pandemic. I'm lazy. I can't get to bed by 10. I can't get up in the morning. I can't do intermittent fasting. I can't work out. I'm just miserable and whatever. These— everything is happening for us, guys. The thing that Oprah taught me was that life is happening for us, not to us. So say this: I have already taken the first step. All right, and then the quote, uh, simple quote, I'm just going to say it here. It's a quote from— this is from just, you know, people that, that are well known, but, uh, this one is: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. It's anonymous, but you know, a lot of these quotes are anonymous, but it's just words that we've heard. Remember that a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. And I know for me, at 50, almost at 49, you know, I've been through now a second divorce, still not divorced. And I think of the partner I was with, the person I was married to, this person, as someone who taught me a great gift. You know, it's how I've come to peace with it, and I'm grateful for this gift because it's made me a better man, it's made me a better father, it's made me appreciate my business more, it's made me appreciate everything more. And so you gotta try to get in that direction, whether you've had a death— hey, my father passed on Christmas Eve this 2019, I've had that. My mother passed 20 years ago, you know. So, and whether you think you're an orphan like I am or not doesn't matter, but this is called life. This is life strategy work that we're going to start doing every single morning, and we're going to start using words to reshape our thinking. We're going to use words to reshape our actions because words are power. Words are like incantations. They can hypnotize us to do the right things. They can hypnotize us to take action. They can hypnotize us to have an incredible life or to have no life. And you need to have an incredible life. This is why we're here. We are here to live a life. We have a purpose. We have a reason. We're here to take action. We're here to enjoy our life. So please know this, guys. I share this with you from my heart to you. And I look forward to your comments. I want you to email me, tell me what you think of this ThinkFit strategy to stress less, because it's going to continue. I'm just going to keep doing these every day. I'll still have my regular podcast show on Mondays. I'm going to have a new newsletter coming out tomorrow, so sign up for that once it's up the website. I'll let you know if it's up tomorrow, but just know it's coming. You can email me though direct and ask to be put on the email list, and I will do it manually for right now. My, uh, I have my, uh my system working tomorrow. But please email me at hello@jorge8minutes.com. That's hello@jorge8minutes.com. Minutes with an S. Hello@jorge8minutes.com. That's my new website, uh, for a lot of my clients that I do my 8 Minute Method with. And more on that as well, of course, because that is a method that I've been doing now for 25 years for myself, publicly with, with my readers and my— with the book world for 20 years next year, my 20-year anniversary. But more will be coming out on that. And then look forward to every Monday, a longer show with a guest co-host, uh, where we'll talk about specific topics and all that. But right now, I want you to know that I'm here for you, and you've got a friend who's been through a lot himself. But I'm here to share with you light, I hope. And, and I look forward to your comments. Please comment on the podcast, give it 5 stars, please. This is how this grows here, and I'm grateful to your attention for listening and to share this. Share this with 3, 4, 5 people that you love that are in your community, whether it's work community, a church group, a family member, best friends from high school. Put it on your Facebook, put it on your Instagram, put it on your Twitter. Let's spread this ThinkFit method out there because it really is simple.. And I promise that if it can change one life, it'll be worth it. So I hope you can help me reach to that person right now. Think of that person that you know needs to hear this. I have already taken the first step and it implies a lot, and we have to give ourselves credit and we have to give ourselves compassion with life, with changing life, with rebooting our life. And if you're listening to this right now, You have already taken the first step, you know that. And the next step will be up to you, but one step at a time is how we eat an elephant. You don't eat the whole elephant in one bite. So, and life is an elephant. I don't know if that's good or bad. I've never had elephant meat. That sounds a little too, um, inhumane right now, but whatever. But you guys know I love good meat, but I also love good plants, and I love my carbs. So all We'll always be talking about food and nutrition and life strategy on the regular podcast. But thank you, thank you so much from my heart to yours right now for listening to my first edition of Think Fit. And it'll be just an ongoing series, a part of the podcast, the new show here. Thrilled you're listening. Have a beautiful Thursday, guys. I look forward to hearing from you soon. Email me at hello@jorgecruze.com. And with that, Make it a great day. All right, take good care. Peace and purpose.
