“How a Comedy Sketch Changed My Life” is the prologue of My book The Weight Loss Habit: The No BS, No Gimmick, (Sort of) Easy Way to Lose Weight and Keep It Off Forever, which comes out tomorrow, June 9.
It’s only $6.99 on Kindle or $9.99 on paperback.
I’m copying the prologue here:
My Chubby Childhood
It all started with a comedy sketch.
Let me take a step back.
I was always a chubby kid.
I’d get my clothes from what was politely called the “husky” section.
I was cursed with a slow metabolism, and learned terrible eating habits from my father, who was the kind of guy who would order his corned beef with extra fat, and go back to the buffet for thirds and fourths. (And then needed triple-bypass surgery when he was fifty, and died from heart-failure when he was fifty-seven.)
My family tried to spare my feelings by calling this “baby fat” and complimenting me on my broad shoulders, even though I would have been better served by them teaching me proper eating habits and refusing to stock cookies in the pantry.
Then when I hit fourth grade, I became the target for a bully, at the same time that I started suffering from clinical depression.
This was before depression was being diagnosed in children. I wouldn’t understand what was happening and get properly medicated until I was an adult.
I just knew that sometimes I would mentally disappear into a fog. Without the treatment I needed, I self-medicated with food. And that made me balloon up even more.
Even after I escaped the bully that was tormenting me by graduating to a different school, I couldn’t escape the depression.
I was still a socially awkward weirdo, and being fat certainly didn’t make me any more popular.
Eventually I managed to find a group of nerds and outcasts to be my tribe. But by then, my eating habits were set.
We’d stay up late into the night playing Dungeons and Dragons, which is a game where you spend ten hours straight sitting at a table while consuming an entire large pizza, tube of Oreos, and a two liter bottle of Mountain Dew. Or at least, that’s how I played it.
In college, I’d hang out for hours in the cafeteria with my friends. We even called ourselves the “Cafeteria Gnomes.”
And while I was there, why not take advantage of the unlimited food? Grab a snack, another ten chicken fingers, refill my sugary soda, and hit the build-your-own-milkshake bar?
I Didn’t Want to Be Fat
There were plenty of times throughout this period that I *tried* to lose weight. Of course I didn’t want to be fat.
But my diets inevitably failed as I couldn’t stick to them.
You know, the same thing that happens with everyone who Struggles to lose weight.
By the time I was 23, I was fatter than ever before, had no lovelife to speak of, and, as this was not too long after the dot-com crash, was also unemployed.
I was spending my days sitting around watching TV, killing time, and snacking.
I’m giving you this background so you’ll know I understand the Struggle.
And so you won’t scream and throw the book out the window when I tell you the next bit. Because I warn you it’s going to sound dumb and obnoxious at first. But please stick with me long enough for me to explain.
The Comedy Sketch
I was watching an episode of The Man Show, Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Corolla’s comedy vehicle before they got super famous. They had a sketch about a new miracle diet called the “Stop Eating So Much” diet.
Of course this sketch was unsympathetic and oversimplifying.
It was obviously written by someone who has never had to Struggle with weight, who Doesn’t Get it.
It failed to understand that people who try to lose weight have far more willpower than those who are naturally skinny.
Some might even call it downright cruel.
But despite all that, this sketch would change my life.
It would completely alter my relationship to food.
Divert my path from following my father to an early grave.
And ultimately, shift my entire perspective on the world, not just in terms of diet and health, but for everything.
If you’re screaming in rage at this point, I get it. Last chapter I mocked the diet books that tell you all you have to do is eat less and exercise more, as if we’ve never thought of that.
Turning the Dumb Sketch Into a Strategy
But after watching this sketch, I thought, “Why not?”
Instead of trying a diet based on deprivation, cutting out all the foods I loved, and trying to eat healthy, I decided to try just eating the foods I would normally eat, but less of them.
It was just basic math and biology – All else equal, if I was consuming fewer calories, I would lose weight. Period.
Okay, you’re probably still furious, because it still sounds like I’m treating you like an idiot. This is all obvious.
Consume fewer calories and you’ll lose weight. Duh.
It’s the way I went about doing this.
The strategy I put in place for ensuring I would consume fewer calories.
That was the magic, the secret sauce, the one piece that is missing from all the other diets and why those diets fail.
Anyone can tell you to eat less.
Anyone can decide to consume fewer calories.
The hard part is figuring out how to do that, and stick to it.
Not just today, not just tomorrow, not just over the next three months, but for the rest of your life.
Does that phrase “for the rest of your life” fill you with sadness or dread?
That’s why most diets fail.
By the time you finish this book, it won’t.
So what is this magic strategy I’ve been hyping?
Well, it’s not just one strategy, but many. Which is why this is a book and not a paragraph.
However, there’s one fundamental idea that all the others stem from.
Read the book to find out what that is.
Don’t forget to order by today, to get your exclusive bonus content.
Interested in more excerpts from The Weight Loss Habit? See:
- Why Diets Fail
- The Fundamental Rule of Weight Loss
- The Miracle of Frozen Food
- Eating Fast Food For Fun and Weight Loss
- 28 Ways to Exercise That Aren’t Going to the Gym (In the book this is expanded to 45 Ways)
- Reward Yourself During Or After Exercise (But Not With Food)
The book has 52 chapters of specific strategies on ways to build lifelong habits and make weight loss easier.
Order here.
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