The Five
keys to your success
There are five keys to the success of this diet. They are:
First, let’s discuss the first two bullet points since
they are interrelated. The issue of the
food you eat is the number one factor that you control that impacts your weight
and your overall health. The real experts,
who know what they are talking about, say 90% of being thin, starts with your diet,
I have been told the same thing from a number of doctors and trainers that I
have met over the years. The goal here
should be waist size, not the amount of weight you have lost. You could lose a lot of weight and still be
overweight. In addition, overeating is a
major factor in the development of the three biggest killers in the country:
heart diseases, cancer and diabetes.
Now, since the food you eat is a factor you do have control over, this
problem can be solved with the ideas I will share with you.
I never thought of food this way. I always thought of eating as a one Way
Street, a fun thing to do and, when it comes to having fun do you want to have
a little or a lot? Obviously a lot, the
more fun you can have the better.
However, just as a sports car can be a lot of fun to
drive, it can also be dangerous; food is really the same way. As you will soon see in the pages of this
book, overeating is one of the primary causes of being overweight and or obese.
This fact brings us to our first rule. Food is fuel, nothing more and nothing less. As an analogue, think of fire. Fire can cook your dinner or burn your house down. Food is needed for your survival but if used incorrectly will actually threaten your survival.
Second, think of weight loss as your new hobby. In order to be successful at losing weight and keeping it off, you will need to think of it as your new hobby. A hobby is defined as an activity that is not part of your occupation but is something that you do for pleasure. By responding to the challenge of weight loss by treating it as a hobby, I believe will insure your success.
Third, let’s take a look at the importance of speeding up your metabolism. Having a fast metabolism is the holy grail of dieting. Without question, it is the ultimate goal. Think of all the people you know who are naturally thin. It is safe to say the one thing they all have in common is a fast metabolism. They of course hit the genetic lottery in that they were born with a fast metabolism. Odds are that is not the case for you, which is true for the majority of us, including myself. The answer is to come up with a sure fire way to speed up your metabolism so that it can be as fast as your thin friends metabolism.
The way to speed up your metabolism is based on four factors.
Here is the rule to follow to have a lighting fast metabolism. Anything that speeds up your metabolism is good and should be actively pursued. Anything that slows it down is bad and should be avoided at all costs.
You were probably surprised to see sleep and vitamins listed next to the other factors you were most likely aware of, your diet and muscle tone. However, you will soon see the importance of these two factors that have long been ignored by diets in the past. You are now aware of the four factors necessary to have a fast metabolism.
Equally important is awareness of the factors that will
slow your metabolism down. The following
is a listing of things that will slow your metabolism:
Fourth, let’s take a look at the idea of creating a budget for your calories. This budget will have low calories but provide you with the consumption of pleasurable foods that fill you up. This is the same concept you have used countless times when managing your own money. A good budget has a few rules that make it successful. This can also be applied to your calories. For example, you will see that not only what you eat, but the timing of those calories is a crucial factor to your diet success.
At first glance, the idea of creating a budget for your calories may make you think of the age old diet techniques of counting your calories. However, this is not the case. When I think of counting something, such as the money I get back at my bank from a teller, I think of a very simple task. But the actual managing of that money, pardon the pun, is much higher on the food chain. Managing your money is a much more complicated and comprehensive process than simply counting it.
Remember in the introduction of the book I mentioned no food is off limits and you can even continue to eat your favorite foods? The way to make this work for you is to budget your calories using the tactic of the 80-20 rule.
The rule states 20% of your activity will create 80%
of your results. Or stated another way, there is a small core of activates that
will create the majority of your results.
For example, 20% of all diamonds can be used for jewelry, the most
lucrative use of the stones, with the other 80%, either being used for
industrial purposes or thrown away.
Here is how the 80-20 rule works for your diet. First, come up with a daily calorie goal, for example 1,500, which I will explain why I picked that number a little later. Now this number may seem low but you will soon see through smart choices of food this number will be enough to satisfy your appetite. Second, identify the 20% of foods that you really like and find out the number of calories in them. Next, find new healthy food that will make up the rest of your diet that will enable you to reach your daily goal. For example, let’s say two meals of your favorite foods total 800 calories. Then the rest of the food that you eat that day would need to total 700 calories, which means your total calories for the day would be 1,500, which is your goal for the day.
Here is the good news, despite my big weight loss, every day I am able to eat a combination of my favorite foods: bread, pasta, cookies and cake every day. Of course, I take full advantage of this opportunity in that I always eat a fattening desert each day. But there is a technique or trick that enables me to eat this, normally off limits, food to someone who is looking to lose weight and keep it off. In order to help you with this task, I will provide a list of my foods that will give you a good idea of your choices and enable you to build your own food list.
Fifth, I have adapted the concept of a psychological flashback to help you lose weight and keep the pounds off. Historically, the concept of a flashback is thought of in negative terms, such as a soldier who fought in a war that has vivid memories of traumatic events that he witnessed. My adaptation is of a positive nature.
I want you to go to a store and pick up bags that weigh the same amount that you want to lose, such as rice or fertilizer, depending on the type of store you choose. Obviously be careful here if you need to lose a large amount of weight. In that case pick up as many 10 pound bags as you can. Now, that weight you are lifting is the extra weight you are carrying around 24/7. Hold these bags for as long as it takes so that you can vividly remember what that weight feels like. Further, think of what I mentioned earlier regarding what fat looks like: 20 pounds of fat would fill a case of 24 cans and still have enough left over to fill a blender.
I want you to be able to vividly remember this experience and what 20 pounds of fat looks like whenever you are tempted to over eat. I believe this can be a very strong motivator enabling you to stick to the plan that I will outline in the Edison Diet.
Now that you know the “what” behind these five areas, the all important “how’s” can be found in the rest of this book, including my specific story. However, before you read my specific story section, I want you to become well versed in the nature of the weight loss process. Consequently, in the first section of the book I will discusses the problems or causes for being overweight. In the second section there will be a discussion of the solutions needed for successful dieting. Understanding both these factors will build a foundation that will enable you to get the most out of my individual story in the third section of the book.
In the first section I am looking at this problem in a totally different way than anyone that I am aware of has ever looked at it. Namely, I want to make you aware of the fact that more likely than not, being over weight is not your fault and once you fully understand why I say this, I think it will enable you psychologically to dramatically increase your chances of being able to be successful. .
In the second section of the book I discuss solutions for the problems that I listed in the first section. It is important to have a thorough understanding of what the solutions look like. That way, when I specifically discuss them in the third section of the book where I tell my own story, they will be familiar to you and can have a big impact on your thinking. In other words, by writing the book in this manner, I believe you will get the biggest benefit of my story of how I successfully lost those 35 pounds, enabling you to lose the weight you want to lose as well.