If you want to lose weight, but are struggling to get motivated, there's a good chance it's because you're focusing on the wrong thing. This video will give you a new way to think about your weight.

The post Weight Loss vs Weight Mastery appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.

Your body is a delicate and complex system and your weight and ultimate health involve more than just cutting calories. The more you understand about how it works, the easier it is to lose weight and create the health you deserve. 

In this video, you'll learn...
- The Top Calorie Sources of American Adults
- How Your Primary Exposure To The World Affects You
- Why Inflammation Can Lead To Obesity
- The 4 Hormones That Control Your Weight
- How To Use The Power Of Your Microbiome

The post Healing Yourself To Lose Weight appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.

The post Hunger Hormones appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.

In the previous post, I referred to the “Biggest Loser” mentality.

This is when all you care about is how quickly you can lose the weight. You don’t care what you have to do…

You just want results...Fast.

If fast is all that matters then you’re likely to choose extreme plans over sensible ones. And if all that matters is fast results, you unconsciously set yourself up to have to be perfect.

If you’re shooting to lose 2 pounds a week, than eating a pint of ice cream one night feels like you blew it.

You see when you shrink the time frame you magnify your mistakes and increase the need to be perfect.

If you were racing in a sprint, a little trip causes you to lose.

If you’re racing in a marathon a little trip doesn’t mean much.

When you start thinking of weight loss in time frames of months and years (rather than days and weeks) the missteps and mistakes don’t seem as bad, which makes it easier to continue.

This is why changing your mindset is so important.

Never mind gastric bypass surgery, you’re better off getting a brain transplant.

I know this from my personal experience of losing over 50 pounds and KEEPING it off for 21 years and from working with hundreds of clients over the years who have transformed their bodies by transforming their thinking.

A mindset shift is the one constant in every single weight loss success story.

Regardless of your genetics, metabolism, thyroid or any other physical disadvantage you may have, it is important to remember that people in your exact situation have succeeded.

And the secret is always that they changed how they think.

You need to remember this because it’s easy to get tricked into thinking the problem is physical. It’s not.

You may have disadvantages. It may be easier for others to lose weight, you may have gotten yourself addicted to certain foods, but you do have the power to change your weight.

It wasn’t always this way for me. Like many good things in life it was pure good fortune.

When I was really struggling with my weight, alcohol and depression I came across the concept of role modeling. Which is basically finding people getting the results you want, discovering what they’re doing and doing it.

I began by looking for people who had lost weight AND had kept it off for at least 2 years.

Luckily, it didn’t take long to find these people (hint: many of them I me tat the YMCA and yoga classes).

Very quickly I started noticing patterns of thought with these people.

I was surprised to find that almost none of them were dieting. I heard over and over about how it was a change in how they thought of food, their health and ultimately how they thought of themselves.

Almost all of them spoke about creating a different lifestyle that supported and nurtured their weight loss and increased health. And they viewed it as a journey not a destination.

The main thing I hope you get from all this is that you need to set yourself up for success.

And that always starts with your thinking.

Make it easy to win and remember that taking control of your body and health is one of the most enjoyablethings you can do in your life.

*In case you missed it, check out part one.

The post The “Biggest Loser” Mentality (part 2) appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.

I’ve always loved carnival games.

Even though I know they’re rigged against me, I can’t give up on the idea that I can still win.

Every time I go I say I’m not doing it this time.

But all it takes is one carnie to show me how easy it is.

“Watch” they sayand then flip the ball off the backboard into the basket 5 times in a row

“See. It’s easy. You can do it.”

So I give them my hard earned money and proceed to bounce 3 balls off the backboard over the basket and onto the ground.

Feeling like I was closer on that last ball, I fork over more money. Same result. And so it goes until I run out of money or finally give up and walk away, promising to never fall for it again. I try not to think of the hundreds of dollars I’ve spent winning $.80 stuffed animals.

The truth is it’s not much different than what the weight loss industry does to people everyday.

Diet Carnie’s barking at us constantly about how easy and how fast we can lose weight.

Just use this pill and you won’t be hungry.
Just follow this meal plan and the pounds will melt away.
Just buy this exercise equipment to get in the best shape of your life. 

No matter what they’re selling one thing is always the same…INSTANT RESULTS.

Listen, theres a steep psychological price for being bombarded by these messages constantly.

I call it the “Biggest Loser” mentality.

How quickly can I lose the most amount of weight. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this is appealing.

We’re impatient people in an impatient culture.

Faster is better, but there’s a harmful side effect to thinking only in the short term.

Choosing Unsustainable Methods

It’s kind of like if you needed to get a lot of money quick.

Going back to college, working as an intern and working your way up the corporate ladder isn’t gonna work.

If getting money fast is the only thing that matters, your best option might be robbing a bank.

When it comes to weight loss if you only consider how quickly you can make it happen then you turn to extreme diets and workouts.

You think to yourself it doesn’t matter what I have to doas long as I get some results.

But what happens after a few weeks?

You’re a few pounds lighter, but you’re also grouchy, irritable, bored and hungry.

If there’s one thing worse than not being able to lose weight, it’s losing weight and then putting it all back on (just ask the 70% of Biggest Loser contestants that regained the weight).

There is another way to lose weight. It’s not something I came up with.

It’s something I recognized from studying people thathad lost weight AND KEPT IT OFF for at least 2 years.

When I realized it, I was shocked.

It was hard to believe I could have missed something so obvious, but I did.

I’ll tell you what it is in part two.

The post The “Biggest Loser” Mentality appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.

When I was a kid, my mom got me a Rubik’s cube.

I’d seen people solving them in 5 seconds on the show
“That’s Incredible”, and I was pretty good with puzzles...

So when I got it I was expecting to make short work of it.

I quickly found out it wasn’t as easy as I thought.

BUT… I was determined. 

I'd work on it as soon as I woke up, when I got back from school, after dinner, all weekend.

I spent weeks trying to figure it out, but the furthest I could ever get was 2 sides done.

After a month of trying to solve it, I got so mad that I took a butter knife,
stuck it in between the cubes and pried the corner one out.

They all came out and I put them back in the right way.

I don’t recommend this because it made my Rubik’s cube all loosey goosey,
which caused doubts and suspicions when I told my family I'd finally solved it.

Now the interesting thing isn’t that I have unresolved anger issues with puzzles,
it’s the beliefs I created.

Before the cube I considered myself pretty good at puzzles.

After the cube I believed I wasn’t.

I’d seen people solve it in 5 seconds and I couldn’t figure it out after 5 weeks,
so naturally that must mean I’m not good at them.

From that point I didn’t bother with puzzles because I “knew" I wasn’t good at them.

Now fast forward 30 years into the future.

I’m watching YouTube and somehow I see this video of Justin Bieber
solving a Rubik’s cube in like 10 seconds.

Well, now I’m really confused. "How can this be?" I thought to myself.

I find my wife and go how can Justin Bieber do this in 10 seconds and I could never do it?

she goes…“You just need to follow the formula" 

I'd never heard of any formula because there was no internet when I was a kid,
but it turns out there IS a formula.

So, I looked it up, followed the steps and solved the cube in 5 minutes.

One thing I noticed right away was the strategy (if you want to call it that)
I’d been using before would never have led to me solve the cube. EVER.

The actual solution was completely counter-intuitive to me and without
the formula it didn’t matter how hard I tried, how committed I was or
how patient I tried to be because I was using the wrong approach.

The final step in restoring my “puzzle self esteem” was something I read
in an interview with 14 year old Colin Burns, the fastest cube solver in North America.
(here’s a video of him solving it in 5 seconds)

He said “It’s almost impossible to figure out how to solve it on your own.
You need to follow and memorize the algorithms.“

This statement helped to completely wipe out a 30 year limiting belief.

I was no longer “bad at puzzles”, I just didn't realize was a formula.

So, what does this have to do with your weight?

If you’re relying on diets, you’re just like me and the Rubik’s cube.

You know you have to eat better and exercise,
but you don’t know HOW to get yourself to do it consistently.

So you experience the same thing I did with the cube. Frustration.

But it’s not your fault.

After helping people lose weight for over 15 years, 
I’ve found most people have never been shown the formulas for…
- replacing bad cravings with healthy ones
- resolving emotional eating issues
- generating consistant motivation
- installing healthy habits into your life
- transforming how you think about yourself and food
and that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

So be gentle with yourself and begin to question some
of the limiting beliefs you’ve accepted over the years…

…because some of them are not true.

to your health and happiness,
Jim Katsoulis

The post The Rubik’s Cube and Weight Loss appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.

Sitting in a doctor’s office and having to face the reality that you’re at an increased risk of developing diabetes, heart disease or any other weight related issues is a very powerful experience which can become the spark needed to finally commit to living a healthier lifestyle and dropping the extra weight.

However, that initial spark is usually about as much as you can expect from the doctor because the truth is that in spite of all the schooling a doctor goes through when it comes to actually losing weight, most don’t know anymore than the average person.

#1 How to Eat

Although you probably think your doctor knows what you should eat to lose weight, the truth is that most doctors receive very limited training in nutrition. A University of North Carolina study found most medical students receive an average of only 19.6 hours of total nutrition training over their entire four years of medical school.

Now I have some conspiracy minded friends that say this is intentional because the money is in the treatment and not in the cure (or prevention) of diseases. Whether this is the reason or not, I don’t know, but it does seem clear that the current healthcare system is more set up to treat symptoms than what causes them.

Even with all the advancement in medicine worldwide obesity has more than doubled since 1980. Doctors are very good at identifying if you should lose weight, but in most cases the suggestions they give you come down to this…

Eat Better. And Exercise.

Basically, they’re just telling you things you already know.

#2 How to Exercise

Even though study after study is proving just how important exercise is to our weight, overall health and quality of life. Fewer than a quarter of doctors surveyed in a 2013 report felt they had adequate training on nutrition or physical activity to counsel patients.

And this lack of training is negatively affecting them too. According to a Medscape study in 2012, over 42% of male doctors and 36% of female doctors were overweight or obese. It can be hard to get your mind around the idea that the people you trust most with your body are not trained extensively in the two areas that are the very foundation of health, but it’s true.

#3 How to Stay Motivated

Honestly, if I had to pick the type of doctor who would be most effective in helping people lose weight, I’d choose a Psychiatrist (as long as treatment didn’t include medications). Because ultimately, losing weight comes down to getting your mindset right.

Most overweight people know what to do to lose weight (eat better, exercise more). The problem is they don’t know how to get themselves to do it consistently. This is the third and most important aspect of losing weight that most medical doctors are not able to help you with.

Knowing how to motivate yourself is the most overlooked part of almost every weight loss plan. A lot of people who want to lose weight end up struggling because they’ve never been taught the simple mental techniques you can use to get yourself to WANT to eat better and exercise.

Instead people try to fight against themselves and rely solely on willpower to deal with cravings and bad habits, but as we’ve all experienced, the willpower usually fades as time goes on.

And once the willpower fades it’s very difficult to maintain your new behaviors.

Luckily, there are much more effective ways to change your behaviors than willpower and they all start with being able to motivate yourself (I’ll show you how in a moment).

But first, I want to finish by making clear that I am not unappreciative of doctors. In fact, I’m super thankful for everything they do and am not blaming them in any way.

The bigger point I want to make is that our healthcare system is currently not set up to help you achieve the level of health you want and deserve. You need to accept that it’s your responsibility to find the strategies and support you need to take control of your weight because no one is going to do it for you.

Now if you want to experience how much easier it is to lose weight when you’re motivated, then I have a gift for you. It’s called the Motivation Machine

The post 3 Things Your Doctor Doesn’t Tell You About Losing Weight appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.

1. DO Study Food Labels. Become curious and start paying attention to what you’re eating. You’ll probably be surprised at what are considered serving sizes and just becoming aware of the ingredients in the foods you’re consuming will dramatically help you choose better foods. Remember that ingredients are listed in order of most to least, so be prepared to see corn syrups and other sweeteners regularly listed first and second.
2. DON’T Starve Yourself. You wake up and you’re not that hungry so you skip breakfast (-400 calories), lunch comes and you’re kind of hungry but you’re able to eat just a small snack (-500 calories). Then late afternoon hits and you’re STARVING, unable to fight your hunger you start eating everything until you go to bed. (+2000 calories). Don’t make this mistake. Eat throughout the day and keep your hunger scale around a 5, so that you can make good food choices throughout the day.
3. DO Relax & Rest. Have you heard the saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”? In weight loss this is especially true. If you make relaxation and rest a priority you’ll lower your stress levels and be able to automatically make better food choices. Which is the key to losing weight easily because it’s infinitely easier to avoid 400 calories than it is to burn 400 calories.
4. DON’T Tell Anyone. Seriously, just keep it to yourself when you start (this starter kit will help you). I know you’re excited, but something strange happens to people when you tell them you’re trying to eat better and lose weight. It’s like it becomes their mission to sabotage you. So, it’s better to be quiet about it and let them notice after you’ve lost 15 pounds.
5. DO Learn From Your Mistakes. You’re going to overeat or make the wrong choice at some point, EVERYONE DOES. The secret is that you look at that mistake and learn from it. What could you have done differently, if you get in a situation like that again what else could you do? Don’t beat yourself up because that leads to more overeating. Learn and move on.
6. DON’T Start Exercising intensely. If you haven’t exercised in months or years, do not jump right into some extreme exercise program because you’re likely to over-stress your body and/or hurt yourself. Both of which can sabotage your weight loss more than a case of Ben & Jerry’s. Start out slow with your exercising and remember that consistency is more important than intensity.
7. DO Set Up A Reinforcement System. When it comes to changing your habitual behaviors you have to plan for how you’re going to maintain the changes after the initial excitement fades. You do this by having a support system in place that keeps you focused, motivated and inspired until being thin and healthy becomes completely automatic. The Motivation Machine will help you with this.
8. DON’T Give Up Foods. You don’t have to swear off ice cream and chocolate forever to lose weight. Actually giving up foods is one of the top reasons people fail to lose weight. As soon as you start thinking about how you’ll never be able to eat your favorite food again, you’re in trouble. The truth is you don’t have to give up any foods to slim down, you just have to eat less of them. Remember you want to lose weight to increase the quality of your life, not make yourself miserable.
9. DO Expand Your Time Frame. I know this is a tough pill to swallow for most people because we want results yesterday. But, the truth is that thinking about how much weight you can lose in days and weeks leads to trying harmful, unsustainable eating and/or exercise plans. People often overestimate how much they can lose in a month and underestimate how much they can lose in 6 months. The secret to easy weight loss is thinking about it in longer terms.
10. DON’T Diet. The chances are really good that if you’re reading this you’ve tried at least 10 times to lose weight by dieting and failed to lose the weight or keep it off. This should be proof enough that dieting doesn’t work, but I know it isn’t. So, think about all the people you know. How many of them have lost weight (and kept it off) with a diet? You know the saying that “insanity is doing the same thing over and expecting a different result” well don’t be a crazy person. STOP DIETING. Knowing what to eat isn’t enough. What you really want is a new lifestyle. You don’t want to just lose weight. You want to be healthier. Have more energy, feel happier and be more relaxed.

The post The Top 10 Do’s and Don’ts of Losing Weight appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.

The following is an excerpt from an interview that I did with Scott Tousignant from the MP3 audio program, Unstoppable Fat Loss. If you adopt the mindset that we cover below and apply it to your workouts and nutrition plan, you can expect success and amazing results.

Scott: When it comes to the mind, and you teach all the fantastic ways to reprogram it, what are some of the things that people are doing that are holding them back, in regards to their current mindset?

Jim: Well, that is a great question. I am going to kind of break it down, because, people do not realize that they are literally sabotaging their own success, with the way most people think about weight loss. Usually, when you ask a person how they’re going to lose weight, the answer is always
they are going to go on a diet.

The problem with a diet is that the presupposition of a diet on a deeper level is that a) it is only temporary, and b) it is going to mean deprivation. Those two things do not create lasting results, obviously.

I spend a lot of time talking about the conscious and unconscious mind; so let me give you a little bit of foundational information on that.

Scott: That would be great.

Jim: We all have a conscious and unconscious mind. Your conscious mind is logical; it understands what you should do. Everyone knows what they should do to lose weight. I mean there’s not a person out there that doesn’t know that. Basically, eat better and exercise more.

Scott: Right.

Jim: The other part is the unconscious mind. And this is the part of our mind that truly runs the show. So we like to think that we’re consciously in charge of everything, but we’re not. There’s too much stuff going on in our lives to consciously think about every little thing.

The example I use a lot to describe this kind of difference in our minds is when we drive. When you first learned to drive, you understood how to do it. You saw your parents doing it most of your life, and it seemed pretty simple. Then you went and got behind the wheel. And you began gunning it, braking too hard, you couldn’t keep it straight. But as you continued driving, it just became completely automatic.So that when you get in the car now, you don’t even think about driving.

And if you look at all the things that are like this, all our lives become pretty routine. We don’t have to think about it, it just kind of happens. And that’s the unconscious part of our mind.

Scott: Sort of like what happens to me a lot, where I follow the same path to work all the time. And if I’m going down the same road with a different destination and my mind is somewhere else, I catch myself continuing along that path when I really should have turned a couple of miles back.

Jim: Sure, sure. That’s a common phenomenon. They call it “highway hypnosis, ” and everyone’s experienced where you’re driving and you kind of go past the exit. You’re just lost in thought. So, when you’re lost in thought, who’s driving the car? It’s your unconscious mind.

And if you look at reading and writing, at one point that was extremely difficult to do, but now it’s completely automatic. It’s so automatic that if I held a word up in front of you on a piece of paper you couldn’t even not understand it.

That’s how quick your unconscious mind is. So that’s what runs most of our lives. Now, we can obviously make decisions. Our conscious mind matters. But most of our behaviors are automatic. They’re kind of programmed into our unconscious mind so that we don’t have to think about them.

When you get up in the morning, you go through the same routine. It just becomes a process. You don’t have to be thinking about it. But the problem is that our eating behaviors, our exercise behaviors, those are in the unconscious mind as well.

The important part is this. The conscious mind is logical. We all know what to do, right? I mean if we could run everything consciously, no one would smoke. Everyone knows it’s bad. But the unconscious mind is in control, and the unconscious mind is not logical. It works by association.

The classic example is, you’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs, right? He was a Russian scientist, he was studying dogs, and he came up with this experiment where he put the food in front of the dog and they would salivate. And every time he did this, he would have someone ring a bell. Put the food in front of them, salivate, and ring a bell, over and over and over again. Eventually, all they needed to do was ring the bell and the dogs would salivate. Because in the dog’s mind, the sound of the bell and the food had become one, and now elicited the same response.

So, that’s called associative conditioning, and that’s how our unconscious mind begins to work.We can’t approach it in the same way that we do consciously.

That’s why when people do dieting, they know what’s good, they know what they should do and all the rest of it, but they never go to the unconscious level where they begin changing up their association for what these things mean. They’ll say, “I know I need to eat healthy food, ‘ but on a deeper level, they think healthy food is boring, gross, not fun.

So, they’re constantly fighting against these associations that they have. That’s how most people start. They rely completely on willpower to do this.”

Willpower is not the most effective way. I say if your willpower is so strong, do you want to take your breathing and let your conscious mind be in control of that? Or your heartbeat, do you want to consciously control that?” So, the most powerful part of your mind is your unconscious mind, and you need to learn a few basic techniques on how to influence it and how to program it so that you have the connections and the associations that you want.

So, that’s kind of the beginning on the conscious and unconscious mind.The next two things I want to point out, and this is kind of the foundation that we will keep referring to, is that the unconscious mind, first of all, does not understand negatives. Now this is very important.

What I mean by this is, most people, when they start dieting, are totally focused on everything that they can’t have.Now if I tell you… Use all the will power you guys have got. Get all your will power in your body, because I want you to not think about what I’m about to say. And everyone who is listening to this: get ready. Don’t think about what I’m about to say. Don’t think of a yellow banana. Don’t think of a yellow banana. Yellow banana.

Scott: [laughs]

Jim: All right, what happens? [laughs]

Scott: Total banana in my head right now.

Jim: It’s impossible not to, because your unconscious mind needs to think about it first in order to understand what I’m even saying. So it’s very difficult not to think about what I’m saying. There’s very little difference between your experience when I say: “Think of a yellow banana. Don’t think of a yellow banana.” “Think of sundae. Don’t think of a sundae.” “Think of a cookie. Don’t think of a cookie.” “Don’t think of a cookie.” [laughs]

But this is what people do themselves on diets constantly. They keep telling themselves what they can’t eat, and then they are unintentionally focusing on exactly what it is that they want to reduce in their lives.

Scott: Right.

Jim: That’s one problem. And the other thing is this, and this is very important. The unconscious mind cannot tell the difference between vivid imagination and reality. The unconscious mind will respond to vivid imagination.This is why horror movies exist, because you can go watch a horror movie, you’re in a theater with a hundred other people and you’re safe, but you’re sitting there and you’re all tense, you’re nervous, you’re not breathing, because you’re living through the movie. You’re vicariously living in that movie, pretending you’re the character or in that situation, and you start to actually have the physical response like you would have if you were in that situation.

Scott: Right.

Jim: So when you add these two things together, what people on diets are doing is… I mean, think about it right now. Think about your favorite dessert. Think about it in really vivid colors. Think about the most enjoyable time you ever had it, and you might find your mouth start to salivate.

Scott: That’s right.

Jim: Now this is what people are doing to themselves 24 hours a day when they go on a diet. And they’re actually increasing this. They’re increasing, physiologically, their desire for these foods [laughing] that they want to avoid. So you can see how it’s almost like self-torture.

Scott: Totally!

Jim: And this is why a lot of times people find it very difficult to stay on a diet, because they’re concentrating exactly on what they don’t want.

This interview was an excerpt from the MP3 audio interview program, Unstoppable Fat Loss . To learn how to get the complete interview and many more, click here

The post The Anatomy of a Thin Mindset appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.

Any time that you set out to make a change in your behavior you want it to be as easy as possible. The way to achieve this is to make sure that you’re truly motivated to make it happen from the beginning. Very often we get motivation and excitement confused. But when you understand the difference and focus on creating motivation you’ll find that change becomes much easier.

So what is true motivation? Here are three steps to help you experience it first hand:

1. Before you commit to any changes decide why you want them.
What are you going to get from these changes? How will it increase the quality of your life? After you answer these questions, redefine the change in terms of the benefits.

Ex: “I need to eat well” becomes “I want to eat in a way that will help me slim down and feel better about myself.” Rather than “I’m going to exercise” refer to it as “I’m going to energize myself” or “I’m going to increase my metabolism.”

2. When something goes wrong, think about how you’re going to fix it.
Doing something new means that you didn’t know how to do it, which means that you’re going to make mistakes. The questions is are those mistakes going to be signals letting you know that you’re a little off course and need to readjust, or are you going to use them as reasons why you can’t do it? The choice is yours, and your results will be different depending on which one you choose.

3. Don’t set time limits.
Tony Robbins used to ask the question: How long would you give your kid to walk? What’s your answer? Forever if that’s what they need, right? Your change can’t be a question of if, it needs to be a question of when. If you’re going to make a change in your life then you need to start with the decision that it is going to happen no matter how long it may take, because it is so important. This way you save valuable energy in pursuing and adjusting to reach your goal, rather than wondering if its possible or if you’re going to stick with it.

The post 3 Secrets to Weight Loss Motivation That Lasts appeared first on Program Yourself Thin.