Impulsivity – If you want to give a name to what ails us, this is it. It’s the root cause of obesity and debt for most people. At its extreme it’s what leads to financial ruin, the destruction of families, and obliteration of health.

It is action without thinking, or even action that has overridden thinking… almost as if we’ve been driven to do something. It is giving into selfish desires without taking fully into account its possible consequences to the individual or the family/community.

In the world of consumerism, this is how you want to train your consumer to act. You want them to be as impulsive as possible.

Just do it.

Just Buy it.

Just Eat it.

Just think of the example of the super-market check-out. Most people do not go to a supermarket to get the gum or candy at the checkout isle…but they do go home with it.

Learned Impulsivity at its best.

Granted, Impulsivity has been shown to have a genetic component and may be inheritable, but the fact remains that it can also be trained and cultivated, which is EXACTLY what is happening right now, and it’s starting at a very young age.

Impulsivity is basically seeking a small, short term gain at the expense of a large, long term loss, so it is NOT synonymous with Spontaneity.

Going back to latin, spontaneus means “of one’s own accord” …truthfully I have no clue what ‘impulsivity’ roots from, but I’ve heard “acting under stress of emotion”

So living spontaneously means a flexible lifestyle, where you do things of your own accord. It’s not that you are doing things without knowledge of the consequences, but that you’re willing to see where the path takes you, without struggling or trying to force events to occur.

Living Impulsively is a mass-consumption lifestyle, where you do things to meet your immediate urges with little to no regard for the long term consequences – it’s not about the path, but the immediate satisfaction.

When living impulsively it is impossible to eat less than you want and spend less than you earn. Highly impulsive people have a very difficult time completing a 24 hour fast. They get cravings they simply can not overcome. However, you can eat less, spend less and fast while living spontaneously.

So the realization is this – Impulse control is incredibly important to weight loss success.

Controlling impulses will allow you to eat a little less, workout a little more, spend less and stress less. Spontaneity will allow you to do these same things, however you may do them while traveling a path you never new existed.

BP

You know exactly what I’m talking about.

Throw. It. Out.

I know you paid money for it. I know there are people in the world that are starving. It doesn’t matter right now.

This is an ESSENTIAL DIET HACK, and one that I’m positive if you can master it, you will see massive increases in your success.

It’s the day after Halloween.

Your house is FULL of candy you DO NOT NEED.

Throw it out.

(If you have kids, keep enough for them, but you do not need a month’s worth of Candy.)

Throw it out.

It doesn’t have to be Halloween.

It could be the day after a birthday, or a retirement party…you name it.

The half eaten cake in your fridge? WHY DO THAT TO YOURSELF??

I know you feel guilty but you need to learn to WIN this battle.

By keeping that food you are PAYING to have more Body Fat then you want.

Repeat after me.

“IF I KEEP IT, I EAT IT.”

(Use this rule for leftovers too.)

You can keep the ‘healthy’ ones, but honestly, half of a two-day-old large pizza?

Admittedly this is one of the hardest Diet Hacks to master.

But it pays off big time.

So remember

I believe ‘treats’ are for celebration…Birthdays, Retirement parties, Super Bowls..you name it…but saving them for after? That’s for Body Fat.

Thow it out.

BP

Honestly, this may come across as a little ‘conspiracy theory’ but I believe it to be true.

The double-edged wrath of food.

Yep…Wrath.

OK, I guess it’s more “Over-eating” the simply food..but you get the idea

Let me paint the picture for you…

Coffee shop at lunch time (Coffee Culture on Appleby for anyone in the Burlington, Ontario area)

Random bearded guy sitting in the corner, eavesdropping (that’s me)

You know what the bearded guy hears on any given lunch hour?

Complaining.

Complaining about two things:

Money and body fat.

Now here’s the trap, the part that drives me crazy…

It costs money to build and maintain that body fat.

At the risk of being redundant this needs to be stated again ==>

It costs money to build and maintain that body fat

This is the result of our food-economic and food-marketing environment.

You’re allowed to try and eat healthier, but you’re not allowed to try and eat less.

And because of this we strive to eat healthy spending EXTRA money on HEALTHY things, but we can’t seem to EAT LESS.

It’s a trap.

We struggle with whether or not it’s OK to skip breakfast, how long we should go between meals, whether or not a cola is empty calories, is High Fructose Corn Syrup killing us..what about grains? But really…no matter what…

We’re paying to build and maintain the very body fat we HATE.

Or…when we look at it form a different angle.

Someone is PROFITING from our misery.

Our excess body fat is a symptom of overspending on food.

(which always makes me question overly obese government officials preaching fiscal responsibility)

My meal today came to 8.47

Medium coffee two cream, everything bagel toasted with fried egg, bacon and tomato. Cinnamon Scone.

I get this same lunch once or twice a week, almost every week.

But, mostly it’s the ONLY lunch I eat on any given week  (I eat a full lunch maybe once or twice a week)

So, I’m OK with this spend.

But, what about people who spend 10 dollars a day EVERYDAY on lunch, AND want to lose weight?

The economic cost adds up….so to the health costs.

For most people, if I handed them Seven thousand dollars right now it would certainly help out with their debt.

And seven thousand dollars is about how much a person would save if they cut three of those lunches out every week for 5 years.

Yes, five years is a long time, but really….Why are we paying for this extra body fat?

And the longer we carry that extra body fat, the worse it is for our health.

So why do we do it?

Is it simply that we need a break from work every day so badly that we are willing to pay 10 dollars and 20 pounds in body fat to get that break?

is it a pleasure thing? Are all of our meals simply SO DELICIOUS that we can’t do without them?

Is it the social aspect or do most of us eat alone?

Could it be the marketing, economics and public opinion driving us to eat consistently?

(After all Someone is PROFITING from our misery.)

The bottom line is that this is a major source of stress for most of us..money and fat, fat and money… and they’re much more related then most of us realize.

If you weigh more than you want to, you are eating more than you need too.

If you are eating more than you need to you are spending more on food than you need to.

So consider this:

Other than the health benefits and the self esteem benefits, their is also a major financial advantage to learning to eat less.

It’s small but it adds up.

And lastly, remember every time someone tells you about the dangers of eating less, or how you need to eat more to lose weight and be happy…

Someone is PROFITING from our misery.

BP

www.EatStopEat.com

Sure I remember most of my lessons, but I’m not sure if I really
‘got’ them.

Take for instance…Pavlov’s Dogs.

I’m sure you’ve heard the story: Pavlov was the man behind some of the most famous scientific experiments.

Basically, he took a group of dogs and rang a bell every time they were fed.

In grade 9 science class, you were probably told that this was a perfect example of conditioning, and that would be the end of the science lesson.

And boy, would you have missed a VERY valuable nutrition lesson.

You see the dog’s salivated because they were hungry.

They had been conditioned to become hungry at the sound of the bell.

…even when there was no food present. No food smell, no food sound, and certainly no food taste.

Just a bell.

The bell alone caused a powerful expectation of food. And this expectation caused the dogs to drool.

THAT IS HOW POWERFUL THE EXPECTATION OF FOOD CAN BE.

It mimics hunger perfectly.

So the part that may have been left out of your grade nine science class was that the bell was eventually able to cause an extreme desire to eat…

This exact same conditioning happens to us almost everyday.

There are little things in our lives can cause us to A) THINK we are hungry and thus B) overeat.

So what are your bells?

It could be the smallest thing. A sight, a person, even a sound or a smell.

Repeated enough times, this small cue could be the cause of what you beleive to be hunger AND could be causing you to overeat.

So here’s the point of today’s email – On the days when you are fasting pay special attention to when you feel the need to eat. Try to identify the cue that caused this wanting…this is how fasting can help you eat better on the days when you do eat.

Once you know the cue, it will help you tell the difference between hunger and conditioning.

Just another example of the benefits of the Eat Stop Eat lifestyle.

BP

We also ate.

Actually, given the way I was eating, I’m not sure if anyone else even had the chance to eat.

I was a glutton. I’m not sure why, but I think I subconsciously decided to either start training to be a professional eater, or was just trying to see if I could make my stomach explode.

It was THAT bad.

Personally, between you and me, I blame my sister-in-law-to-be’s Xmas cookies. They are amazing, and they are what caused me to “break the seal”.

To use lingo from my alma mater (the University of Guelph) – I crushed it.

Xmas cookies, walker’s chocolates, muffins, some AMAZING meat balls (thanks Mom!), more muffins, more Xmas cookies, pastry, even more cookies….and a stick of celery

It wasn’t until my stomach actually started to hurt and BEGGED ME TO STOP that I realized I had gone WAAAAY overboard.

But this is what happens when you hit the holiday season. You over eat and when you do, there is a chance you overeat BIG TIME.

But here’s some interesting info for you: At the height of my stomach busting gluttony, about 1 hour after my eating frenzy, I tested by blood sugar.

5.5 mmol/L (about 100 mg/dL)

Average.

Not even postprandial (the amount you would expect from an average person after an average meal).

Thank you 2 years of fasting and weight training.

I ate sugary cookies and pastries until I could barely keep my eyes open and still had a normal blood sugar reading.

Here is another great thing I want to share with you. On the drive home, I obviously knew I had overate, but I also knew it wasn’t a big deal.

I knew I wasn’t going to wake up 5 pounds heavier on Monday (I checked this morning..just to make sure)

And since I knew I could fast twice this week I still had everything under control.

So here’s my point – We all mess up. And chances are if it’s gonna happen, it’s going to happen during the holidays. Yes I could have been a little better, but (AND HERE IS THE IMPORTANT PART) there is no need to stress out.

Devoting your entire life to losing fat and not taking time off to enjoy the cookies every once in while is a recipe for a very boring life.

Don’t let your quest for weight loss get in the way of what truly counts.

Food, family and friends.

BP

PS – Freedom comes from knowing that you CAN eat less. That your metabolism won’t slow down and you won’t lose muscle just because you decided not to eat for 24 hours.

you can also under-eat without stressing out.

Eat Stop Eat – Experience freedom now.

“In a typical high school with more than 1,000 students, the cafeteria would sell only three to five pieces of fruit in total per day, which is extraordinarily low, and virtually no one is buying plain milk.”

If Dr. Wilson’s research is correct, than the obesity epidemic is only going to get worse in the next couple years.

Combine these stats with the lack of physical activity in children and we are in a whole lot of trouble.

And, don’t think an hour in the gym is going to fix this problem. While exercise is highly effective, its calorie burning ability is greatly exaggerated.

In a recent research study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, men who were asked to walk briskly for 15 minutes 14 times in a one day period (that’s 3.5 hours of walking) only increased the calorie burning by 500 Calories. This is roughly the same amount of calories in one slice of Starbucks Banana loaf.

Exercise helps. Eating less works. Eating less and exercising is the magic combination to promote and maintain weight loss.

BP

PS- In another research study published this month it was suggested that lifestyle modification works better than traditional dieting. I couldn’t agree more. I beleive on of the main reasons so many people are having long-term success with Eat Stop Eat is that it teaches you to change the way you think about eating. Learn more about Eat Stop Eat by visiting HERE.

This book did not disappoint me. Almost every page had great facts about the way food is marketed and the factors that make us decide to eat. This book is definitely in my list of top-ten must-read nutrition books.

I’ve been racking my brains trying to figure out the top lesson I learnt from this book so that I could share it with you, and I think I have it.

You know how everybody these days seems to be blaming the food companies for our obesity problem? – As if it’s some giant conspiracy?

Well the number one thing I learnt from “Mindless Eating” is that there is no “fat conspiracy”.
Food companies do not care if you EAT their foods. They only care if you BUY their foods and continue to BUY their foods.

The people at McDonalds don’t care if you buy a happy meal, turn around and throw it in the garbage, just as long as you buy the happy meal.

Also, food isn’t designed to be “fattening” (Whatever that means). Food is designed to be inexpensive for the companies to make and desirable enough for you to repeatedly purchase.

This is the great conspiracy. Yes food companies, restaurants and shopping centers go to great lengths to figure out how to make us BUY there food, but we are the ones making the decision to EAT the food.

And this is where some of the great ideas from “Mindless Eating” come into play.
Do you remember the picture of the four glasss I posted on my blog on Monday (look below)? Every glass in the picture contains 1 and a half cups of fluid, except for the small squat one, it has 2 cups.

This is reffered to as the “horizontal-vertical illusion”. If you picture an upside-down capital “T” where both the horizontal line and the vertical line are the same length, we will always see the vertical line as being longer.

So if you were to fill the small cup to almost the top, like most of us do, it would contain a little over 2 and a half cups of fluid.

So a morning cup of orange juice could actually be a morning 2-and-a-half cups of orange juice. This could account for an extra 33 grams of sugar and 165 Calories!

This is just one great example of how our assumptions combined with some excellent marketing get us to buy more and consume more. If we can become more aware of these “overeating ques” that are around us every day, then we can be more aware of ways to avoid them.

BP

Fasting Diet, Circuit Training