Think Yourself Thin

by JJ Smith

  Here are some tips for leveraging a support system to help you lose weight:

  • Take a few minutes to think about what support you need on this journey. Use a journal to write down a few notes and be as specific as possible so your family members know how best to support you. An example would be, “Eat junk foods in a different room than where I am.” This will allow family members to have a better understanding of how to support you.

  • Communicate your goals with your family. This will allow them to hold you more accountable. As an example, if your goal is to stop eating candy and sweets, then your family can help you avoid them when you’re home or out in public.

  • Keep unhealthy foods out of sight. Ask your family members to keep their unhealthy foods in a place (garage, cabinet, room) where you will not see them. If the foods are not visible, you will feel less tempted by them. Out of sight, out of mind.

  • Tell your family and friends to not give you food as a gift! Explain to them that when a person trying to lose weight is given food as a gift, the temptation can be very difficult to overcome as cravings increase.

  I hope these tips help you to create a supportive environment that allows for success. Everyone needs support and encouragement to achieve his or her goals in life, so be proactive about maintaining a supportive environment.

  SO HOW DO YOU CHOOSE A SUPPORT SYSTEM?

  So many people put effort into finding the right exercise or weight-loss plan, but do not put any energy into creating their support system. But as we have seen, this support system is crucial, and it is worth putting some thought into setting up the best system to ensure your success.

  Do not assume that your closest family member or friend is the best source of support. Think very deeply and be brutally honest about who has been helpful to keep you on track in the past. The ultimate support system will be made up of people who have a common goal of getting slimmer and healthier and are committed to doing whatever it takes to achieve it. This could include working out together, cooking together, meal-prepping together, sharing recipes, grocery shopping or just touching base on the phone weekly. It really depends on what support you actually need. Encouragement can come in many forms. Some folks just need a motivational word or quote each day to stay on track.

  Consider your support person’s availability. Discuss how much time and energy you both have to devote to the partnership and how realistic it is to be available to support one another. At this time, discuss the primary mode of contact and support. Determine if you prefer phone, email, or text communications, this will be key to maintaining contact. Everyone likes to communicate in different ways. If you really need more face-to-face time, discuss that as well and figure out the best times to achieve it. The goal is to ensure that there is time devoted to listening and encouraging each other.

  We touched on having a support community, and social media groups can be a good way to maintain success and get the support you need. Online support communities on social media help you to maintain accountability and get the encouragement you need. Whatever form of support you prefer, make sure to set up your support system very early on in your journey.

  THE BUDDY CONTRACT

  Something that is becoming popular in the weight-loss community is the “buddy contract.” This is a document that spells out the mutual goals of two people and the ways they plan to help each other achieve them, as well as a mode of communication.

  The buddy contract should include both short-term goals (such as, “Meet at the gym three times a week to work out together”) and long-term ones (such as, “My goal is to lose 120 pounds to achieve my ideal weight”). Just make sure the goals are specific and achievable.

  Once you write up your buddy contract, you can both maintain a copy of the agreement and post it somewhere so you can reread it often and be reminded of what you are trying to accomplish.

  Reevaluate your buddy relationship from time to time to ensure that it is working for both of you. Do not be afraid to call it quits if the relationship is not working out. Just like with any relationship, if you are not getting what you need, have a heart-to-heart with your buddy and either work to fix or end the buddy relationship. The purpose of the relationship is to enhance the weight-loss journey and make it easier to achieve your goals. If that is not happening, no need to force the relationship. In most cases, the support buddy relationship can blossom into a beautiful friendship for many years, so enjoy it. You may be building a lifelong friendship that continues for the rest of your life.

  CONCLUSION

  Long-term weight loss is about changing behaviors and habits, which is very challenging. Having a support system in place will help you keep going when you feel like quitting. Your support system makes celebrating your successes more rewarding and fulfilling. It is also more fun celebrating with others. Your support system also encourages you to continue healthy eating and keeps you lifted up when you struggle. It will remind you that you are not alone and will make the journey more enjoyable and successful.

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  Supercharge Your Spiritual Life

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  WE KNOW THAT there is more to weight loss than nutrition and exercise. Sticking to a diet regimen and ultimately making lifestyle changes to lose weight permanently are the outcomes of how we feel, what we think, and the actions we consistently take. The main problem is not your physical weight but what is happening in your mind and spirit, causing you to gain weight. Until your mind and spirit are engaged in your weight-loss efforts, excess weight will continue to be a problem for you. In this chapter, you will learn that who you are spiritually drives how you feel, what you think, and hence the actions you take in your life. I hope to give you a fresh perspective on spirituality without regard to religion so you can better apply positive spiritual practices to your life that not only support weight loss, but also accelerate and virtually guarantee it!

  I coach thousands of people to weight-loss success every year. To that end, I spend countless hours creating content and programs designed to help people lose weight, get healthier, and grow in confidence and self-esteem. This is my life’s work. I am passionate about helping people get to the next level in their lives. I cannot begin to express the pure joy I feel when I see people transform their lives.

  In fact, everyone on my team and especially my best friend knows this. When I see a particularly dramatic transformation photo or receive a success story by email, I immediately call him. If he does not answer right away, I keep calling. I am literally bubbling over with joy and have to share the good news. And of course, I always want him and everyone else that hears their success story to be as overjoyed as I am. This is the work that I feel called to do at this point in my life, so I experience pure joy when I see others achieving their weight-loss goals.

  How do I know I am called to do this work? Well, I love what I do. I am really good at it. I get a great deal of internal joy from it. My life’s journey has led me to this work and more important, it has been confirmed in my Spirit. Whoa! Confirmed in my Spirit? What does that mean? Well, it is a deeply personal, soul-based feeling that I feel connected to. I have a sense of responsibility for it and feel like it has what I am supposed to be doing on this earth.

  I am a Christian woman with a deep faith in Christ. A more accurate description of who I am is “I love God, but I just cuss a little and listen to lots of hip-hop.” I was raised in the church, sang in the choir, and taught Sunday school for years. However, I did not find my calling in the Scriptures. It was not written anywhere that I am supposed to help hundreds of thousands of people around the world lose weight and get healthy. That is what I discovered as part of my own unique spiritual journey.

  MY JOURNEY TO SPIRITUALITY

  I grew up with the best Mom and Dad a child could ever ask for. Unfortunately, my dad passed away over twenty-five years ago. I wish I could introduce you to my dad. He taught me everything about competing, winning, learning, and being proud of
who I am and where I came from. He was athletic, smart, confident, generous, humble, and deeply spiritual. He loved and served his community and you would be hard pressed to find anyone who did not both like and admire him.

  When I went to college, it was one of the happiest times in my life. I had many natural gifts, had worked hard in high school, and graduated at the top of my class. I tested well on my SATs and had the option to go to just about any college that I wanted, including Ivy League schools. But through campus visits and consultation with my mom and dad, I decided to attend Hampton University in southern Virginia. Hampton is a historically black college and university (HBCU) and though it might seem counterintuitive to attend an HBCU when you have an Ivy option, my parents knew it was the right school for me.

  In the midst of getting settled in and making new friends, my family discovered the unthinkable. My dad had been diagnosed with prostate cancer, which prompted my own initial deep study of health and wellness. I looked into anything that I thought would help my dad get well! I studied alternative medicine and any available treatments for his cancer. Of course, I wanted desperately to learn ways to help my dad. My attempts were futile and so were those of the numerous doctors and family members. My dad passed away the day I graduated from Hampton University.

  After my dad died, I had to figure out how a man “so good” and “so needed” could be taken away from our family so soon. I had to deal with a devastating personal loss of my dad, who I loved with all my heart. I admired him and wanted to be like him and make him proud of me. There is still not a day that goes by that I do not feel deeply connected to him. I would love to hear him laugh again, see him hit a golf ball, or have him see who I have become today.

  None of the Sunday school classes I had taught, sermons I had heard, or funeral services I had attended prepared me to handle the loss of my dad. I knew my dad lived “right” and was going to heaven, but no words or logic could console me. This would be something that I had to experience for myself, which sparked a deeper, more personal spiritual journey. Ultimately, I hung on to everything he taught me, but especially his last words to me. He said, “God is real. Seek Him and get to know Him for yourself.” For me, this was the start of a deeper spiritual journey that caused me to transcend my thinking and grow spiritually beyond my religious practice and culture.

  This chapter is not about religion. It is about spirituality and my establishing a strong spiritual foundation. Who I am spiritually does not compete or conflict with my religious beliefs. It only serves to reconcile who I am as an individual and how to actively apply my religious beliefs to my life.

  Spirituality escapes no one. Whether you subscribe to a specific religion, are agnostic, atheist, or claim to be nonspiritual, no one escapes it. Spirituality is a universal human experience regardless of your religious practices or religious denials: the primary purpose of who you are as a spiritual being will be considered, contemplated, and resolved for you at some point in your life.

  SO, WHAT IS SPIRITUALITY?

  Spirituality is not religion, but religion can be a spiritual experience for many. Spirituality does not have to be religious or tied to any particular theology, practice, or deity. Spirituality is inclined to be more personal and private whereas religion tends to be more corporate, and organized with specific doctrines and rituals.

  Religion can be defined as the belief in and worship of a higher power, usually a God or gods based on faith, with some organizational structure governed by a set of doctrines, habits/rituals, and practices. Whereas spirituality refers to an inner path enabling a person to discover the essence of their being. Spirituality includes a sense of connection to something bigger than ourselves, and it typically involves a search for meaning in life. It is about becoming the best version of yourself in the areas of health, love, relationships, purpose, and community.

  Initially, much of our spirituality is shaped by our religious ideology. As we reconcile our theology with what sits well in our spirit, we become more enlightened and develop spiritually. Even if you do not subscribe to a particular religion, you still must reconcile and embrace who you are as a spiritual being. There are universal questions that everyone must answer for themselves, often without regard to their religious beliefs.

  What is my purpose? What is the meaning of life? How am I connected in the world? Is there such thing as a one true love? Questions like these are examples of those universal questions that must be discovered on your own unique spiritual journey. You may hear many religious or intellectual discussions that attempt to answer many of these questions, but they will not matter until you accept “the” answers in your spirit and store them deep within your soul.

  Who we are spiritually rarely fails us, but what we feel can be easily negotiated or ever changing, like the wind. In an earlier chapter, we talked about how resistance prevents us from achieving our life purpose, dreams, and goals. What we believe intellectually is always open to debate as new information is made available to us all the time. How we reason, remember things, and solve problems are all controlled by the front part of our brain called the cerebrum. The cerebrum is designed to change. In fact, there is a relatively new area of study called neuroplasticity, which deals with the brain’s ability to change at any age as we learn, forget, and age.

  What we believe in our spirit lives in a deeper more sacred and protected place: our soul. What we believe deeply, we are more connected to. This goes beyond our intellect. It is the internalization of our beliefs and why we believe them. Our soul is the spiritual part of us that is distinct from the physical self. It cannot be observed or monitored. What we feel in our spirit can often defy logic.

  When I decided to become an author, I had a great job. I was an executive and partner in an IT management consulting firm, made great money, and was admired by my team and customers. I was often referred to as the Michael Jordan of consulting because of my ability to execute. Why would anyone leave that for the uncertain life of an author? I had no platform, had never written any books, and had never thought of making a living as an author. However, it was something that I had to pursue. I knew it deep within my spirit.

  Every day I would say, “I have to change my life.” Many would look at me, confused when they heard me say it, but I did not need their approval. I would just go back to laboring away on writing my book. They did not know, but I knew in my spirit that it was my time to do what would eventually lead me to my calling. No one else could know. It was a part of my own spiritual journey.

  SPIRITUALITY PAVES THE WAY TO WEIGHT-LOSS TRANSFORMATION

  At the heart of every problem, including problems with your weight, is a spiritual problem. We lose our power to lose weight and keep it off because we are disconnected from our spirit and divine purpose in life.

  If being spiritual is becoming the best version of ourselves and seeking our highest purpose in life, then it is supremely spiritual to want to be the healthiest version of ourselves and losing weight is an important part of that. Sure, there are many ways to achieve better health; build more muscle, improve our cardio, be better hydrated, and become more flexible, are just a few examples. These are all excellent things to do for better overall health and well-being, but the granddaddy of them all is to achieve and maintain a healthy body weight.

  Being overweight is often a precursor to diseases that can kill or cripple you, including diabetes and metabolic syndrome, atherosclerosis, arterial plaque, cardiac arrest, pulmonary hypertension, and stroke. There are other conditions associated with carrying excess weight that simply hinder your overall health and ability to enjoy time with family and friends.

  In addition to the physical issues associated with being overweight, there are a number of psychological and social issues too. Overweight and obese people are often targets of bias, stigma, and negative perceptions at work, school, and in interpersonal relationships.

  As you embark upon your spiritual journey, it is important to realize that food cravings are a
wake-up call to help us understand what we are truly craving in life. Most of our physical cravings lead us back to a craving for more meaning and purpose in life. Food becomes our comfort, our joy, and our peace, which leads to unhealthy eating and being overweight or obese. However, food can only fill your stomach, never your soul.

  Spiritual maturity will help you realize that your true weight-loss goal is not a number on the scale. Your real weight-loss goal is peace. As much as I worshipped God, I turned to food in times of sadness, boredom, loneliness, stress, and even happiness. Now I just want peace over the struggle with my weight. Ironically, many churches feed our food addiction by using food for fellowship, not realizing that they are sabotaging many of us with unhealthy food choices.

  For me, exercising consistently is a big challenge. However, the more I make exercising about spiritual growth, the less I focus on weight loss. Same with eating. Every time I wanted to eat when I was not physically hungry, I would ask myself if I was feeling spiritually hungry. With each pound I lost, I looked at it as a journey not to get slim but to grow spiritually. I began focusing on the spiritual goal of breaking free from the control of food rather than the physical goal of losing weight.

  Scientists are now telling us what we already know. We’ve already been told by wise men, spiritual leaders, and our parents since the beginning of time that having a stronger connection with your God (in my case) and for others, Allah, Buddha, or the universe, will help you live longer and better.

  Science has found that people who have strong spiritual practices are more resistant to health problems and actually live longer. Giancarlo Lucchetti, MD, PhD, is a researcher and scientist focused on spirituality and health. He is the lead author of a study that calculates that the life-lengthening benefits of spirituality can be compared to eating a high amount of fruits and vegetables or even taking blood pressure medication. This validates that a stronger spiritual foundation is key to a healthier life.