Maximizing Performance Through Applied Common Sense*

Do you feel deprived?  If you are like most people who are on crash diets, you feel deprived and what happens, right on schedule, you sabotage your diet.  The reason why diets fail, in addition to you feeling powerless to control your lifestyle, is because diets are so restrictive.  You might lose weight and then you gain it right back because you felt deprived for so long.  Then you want to reward yourself.  So, avoid feeling deprived by eating smaller amounts of what you want as opposed to huge amounts of everything.  Then when you do, you feel much less deprived and much more in control.  The idea is to change your lifestyle on a permanent basis, so eat in little bits as opposed to huge amounts at which point you will avoid feeling deprived.

Are you eating too much sugar?  If you are like most Americans… you are.  You are ingesting huge amounts of cookies, candy, ice cream, cakes, and on and on.  Think about how much sugar you are ingesting.  You are creating problems with potential diabetes.  You are over weight and you are addicted to the sugar.  So what do you do?  Give yourself three weeks to detox from the sugar.  It is very difficult at first because the cravings are huge.  When you take three weeks and you stay away from the refined sugar you will begin to feel better and have more power.  You will finally begin to lose weight.  The whole notion is to off-load the addiction to sugar and when you do, you will have more control.  Try it!  Three weeks! 

Most experts say that you need to drink about eight glasses of water a day.  If you drink more water, you have by far better digestion, you are going to sleep better, you are going to flush your system better and you’re going to feel full.  So, instead of over-eating, drink a large glass of water and you will feel less likely to want to over-eat.  The idea is that if you spend more time drinking water, you’ll notice that you actually feel better, you lose weight sooner, and you are more alert and conscious.  All the way around, it is better. So, take more water, eight a day and you will see more results.

If you’ve decided to improve your health, lose some weight, and get in shape you are going to have starts and stops.  You are going to have trouble; you are going to fail... everyone does.  When you fail, you quit.  Get back in the saddle.  So instead of just quitting, ask yourself, “What am I noticing?  Did I over-stuff?  What do I do now?”   Think in terms of recovery as opposed to quitting.    Most people set unreasonable goals for themselves then when they are unable to complete them they just quit.  So if you think about recovery, you are going to get back in the saddle. 

Do you lie to yourself to justify and rationalize about everything when it comes to being over-weight?  Do you say things like “I don’t over-eat.”  You know you over-eat!  You sneak it at night.  “Well, these cookies are small. I think I’ll have about three dozen,” or “I can eat this now and I won’t eat dinner.”  You know you are going to eat dinner.  “I can eat more because it says “light” on it.”  Oh, please!  “I’m big boned.”  When was the last time you checked how big your bones were?  If you spend more time telling the truth, you’re going to have more power.  It’s time to take more action as opposed to just rationalizing, when you do, you now are beginning to lose weight.