Two Turns from Zero

by Stacey Griffith

  You might have a High Three or a High Eight—but whatever else is on your checklist, the smile is the most important. Even more so than your keys. Because your smile is your intention. You have everything you need for the day. Acknowledge your intention, and smile in gratitude for the brain that has drawn up your MAP to get you motivated and your body that is in motion.

  How to Do a Car Cleanse

  Is your car a mess? Why? Would you be mortified if your boss asked for a ride home and saw the clutter and empty fast-food boxes and empty soda or water bottles tossed in the backseat? Or what if you went on a job interview and the person in charge of hiring you got a good look at the mess—do you think you would get the job? I don’t think so.

  I think about this a lot, as my mom was in sales her whole life. She was really good at it. She knew that her car needed to be immaculate because she might potentially have just made the biggest sale of her life with Mr. X, and what would she do if Mr. X suddenly asked her for a ride home? She knew that the second Mr. X got in her car, she would be judged. Messy car = messy person = no sale. Who wants to do business with someone who doesn’t care about their environment? My mom’s car was always in impeccable shape.

  Be like my mom—keep your car washed and polished and the inside detailed. You want your car to be as sparkling as you’d want it to be if Ryan Gosling asked you for a ride home.

  Ditch these:

  •Any food items.

  •Any dirty containers.

  •Empty or half-full water or soda bottles.

  •Anything that doesn’t belong in a car, such as a bag of old gym clothes or sports equipment, empty roadie cups, chipped coffee mugs, maps that are falling apart, broken umbrellas, extra forks and knives from last year’s picnic—all of which have been in my car at some point!

  Replace with:

  •A small bottle of sunscreen, as you can get a nasty sunburn without realizing it while driving.

  •Hand sanitizer for those messy moments.

  •A chamois and dust-brush for spot-cleaning.

  *Cleaning out your car is a great workout. Vacuum the inside and wash the mats. Wash the outside and then polish it. Your arms and abs will thank you.

  PLAYLIST

  FOR CLEARING OUT THE CLUTTER

  Use these songs as a soundtrack to your clutter clearing. Nothing like a little dance party to keep you upbeat as you sort through the piles! These are all sing-alongs, which is the point. You want to whistle while you work!

  Beyoncé

  “Formation”

  Tracy Chapman

  “Fast Car”

  Chuva Speaks Arab

  “Reckless Girl”

  Eminem

  “Cleaning Out My Closet”

  David Guetta ft. Usher

  “With or Without You”

  Quinton Harris-Koffee

  “Paradise”

  HiPOST

  “Livin’ It Up by Jagged Edge”

  Bruno Mars

  “Uptown Funk”

  Ben Pearce

  “What I Must Do”

  TLC

  “No Scrubs”

  PRIME YOUR BODY FOR CHANGE: FIRST, CLEAR THE CLUTTER OUT OF YOUR BODY

  One day, not that many years ago, I was talking with Meredith Geller, my holistic nutrition consultant, about cravings. Namely, my insatiable cravings for chewy candy like Red Vines and licorice. Those cravings had started when I was doing a lot of drugs and needed a sugar rush when I was coming down off a bender so I could get up and go teach a class with my usual pep with none of my students the wiser. After I got clean, my cravings for chewy candy didn’t diminish. If anything, they got worse.

  “Hmm,” she said as I told her all this. “Do you know what you’re really eating when you eat candy like that?”

  “Nope,” I said, chewing on another Red Vine.

  “Plastic,” she replied.

  I stopped chewing. “What? What do you mean, plastic?”

  “They’re not just made of a lot of sugar. They also have a lot of the same chemicals found in different plastics. Just so you know.”

  I looked at the shiny bag of candy. “You’re kidding me, right?” I said, hoping she was just saying that to stop me from scarfing it down.

  “I wish I were,” Meredith replied. “Just think about that next time you find your hand in a bag of candy. Say to yourself: ‘It’s plastic.’” She waited for a beat, then added, “And you know what plastic is, too, don’t you? It’s poison. Nonbiodegradable, indigestible poison. Got it?”

  Well, that was an OMG moment. I thanked her, threw the bag in the garbage, and have tried really, really hard not to eat them anymore.

  SG TRUTH Do I still have them occasionally? Yes, but I don’t buy them every day anymore. Believe me, I used to eat candy every day!

  My association with the sweet treats I once loved so much has been so tainted that I can’t think of any candy without seeing my intestines all twisted up and clogged with little beads of plastic. Talk about a deterrent!

  The pathway to radiance and good health starts with a solid foundation and an unraveling of built-up toxicity. This foundation is laid when you cleanse your body. Think of it as clearing the clutter from your system.

  To create harmony, longevity, beauty, radiance, vibrancy, and true wellness from the inside out, we need to follow basic principles of the laws of nature. This will allow your body to be the brightest expression of itself on every level.

  I love cleansing. (Meredith told me that using the word cleanse as a noun is actually incorrect—you want to think of this process as a verb.) I knew that my liver and pancreas are the organs in my body responsible for detoxification, but thanks to the kind of food most of us eat and our polluted environment and all the stresses of modern life, they needed extra help. That means cleansing is an ongoing process. Cleansing comes in many different forms—it can be from fasting, mono-diets (eating one food only for a few days), juicing, drinking bone broth, or others. Obviously, not everyone likes or can tolerate certain types of cleansing, and of course you should never start a period of cleansing without consulting your physician and/or certified nutritionist or advisor, who can tailor it to your needs. I also recommend that you do it in stages, starting with gentle, short cleansing periods and then working up to more intense, longer plans.

  HOW TO DO A BODY CHECK

  Be sure to get a comprehensive checkup with your physician as well as a full blood work-up before you start any weight-loss or workout regimen. This is common sense, but I’m always shocked when my students tell me they haven’t seen a doctor for years. You can be surprisingly deficient in certain vitamins or minerals, especially vitamin D; you might also have hormonal imbalances, especially with your thyroid; you might also have blood sugar issues. These can affect your progress and make it very difficult to lose weight or have normal energy levels. I learned this the hard way. I’ve always been a chronic ice chewer—I could tell you the name of every restaurant in my neighborhood that has great ice! One savvy doctor asked me if I had this habit and told me it was a symptom of anemia (go figure!) and ordered immediate blood tests. Turns out I was severely anemic (levels are measured at 1–500 and mine was 13) and could have gotten very, very sick. I suffered from a lot of totally avoidable problems for years because I avoided getting a checkup. Don’t let that be you!

  The “cleaner” we eat and the better care we take in feeding our bodies, the more potent all the nutrients we ingest will be. Everything in the body functions better when it is lighter and clearer.

  TRAIN YOUR MOUTH

  Eating isn’t like exercise in just one respect: You can get through life without ever doing a proper workout (not that anyone should!), but you can’t get through more than a few days without food and water. Just as you know that the key to success with fitness and everything else is to keep moving, every day of your life, the key to success with food is training your mouth. You can do this just as you train your muscles every time you exercise.r />
  The following steps will show you what to do.

  Recognize That Change Doesn’t Happen Overnight

  If you move two steps backward and one step forward, no biggie. Just make sure that the one forward step is bigger than the two backward ones. It took me many tries to stop drinking over many years—but I finally did. And many years to stop drugging, but it eventually stuck forever!

  You didn’t put weight on overnight, either. I always tell the moms who come to my classes that it took nine months for them to nurture their babies inside their bodies, and they should set a nine-month goal to lose the weight. Chances are you will lose it in far less time than nine months, but the target date should be nine months from the day your baby was born. If you get there early, congratulate yourself. You made a human! Or if it takes a little longer, that’s okay, too, because at least you have a reference point to know you should be on your way back to “you.”

  Clear the Clutter in Your Head About Food

  Now that you’ve cleared the clutter from your house, it’s time to clear the clutter from your head.

  Set your intentions about eating. This visualization is one of my favorites and will not let you down!

  Visualization for Dealing with Food Issues and/or Weight Loss: Think Orange

  Use this visualization as a template whenever you need help focusing on issues about your weight and/or weight loss. This one is particularly useful whenever you feel the need for encouragement. Do it before you have to go to dinner at your in-laws’, where too much food is always piled on your plate by your sabotaging relatives. Do it before a company picnic where there will be loads of your favorite foods. Do it before you to go the movies, when all you want is a big bag of buttered popcorn and a bag of candy, washed down with a supersized soda. (I always get a small popcorn without butter and a bottle of water.) Do it before you go to the grocery store, where you’re tempted to buy the wrong things.

  1.Go to a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed and where you can sit or lie down comfortably. Close your eyes, breath deeply and steadily throughout.

  2.Focus on the color orange. Everything you are going to see will be orange. You have splashed an entire canvas with orange paint. This color fills your eyes and your senses. It is bright, glowing. It is the color of power and resolve.

  3.Keep thinking orange. The success of all your issues with your weight is about getting focused on them, acknowledging them, and ridding them from your life.

  4.Try listening to the color orange. That’s right. (No, it’s not crazy!) Breathe in, breathe out. Through your ears is the focus here. That’s what listening is. You’re listening now to a color that you’re seeing with your eyes. (This is teaching you intense concentration and patience.)

  5.Open your eyes and go about your day. Remember that when you put yourself into that situation where there’s food you know isn’t good for you, you don’t have to say yes when people offer it to you. Keep your water in one hand and your cell phone in the other if you have a hard time.

  Stop using negative words toward yourself. No more “I wish I had,” “I shouldn’t have,” “I can’t believe I did that,” “Why didn’t I do this?,” “I’m so stupid,” “What was I thinking?”

  Replace them with a new playlist. Instead, write down and say positive mantras all day, every day. (You can get some from my app 2 Turns from Zero.) Put Post-it notes on the doors and mirrors and refrigerator. I do this all the time. My all-time favorite is Crush It!

  If you like, you can reinforce your eating goals with photographs—role-model photographs of a fit and healthy adult with strong muscles. Someone like Serena Williams, Gabby Reece, Michelle Obama, or another athlete or accomplished woman you respect.

  No more self-punishment, okay? No one ever makes perfect choices all the time and eats a perfect diet every day—if they did, they’d be missing out on some of the most delicious pleasures in life. Nobody is a perfect eater, and it’s impossible to be one. It’s not normal, and no one expects you to do that. Just eat smart. I know you can. I mean, I try to eat the healthiest diet possible, but I don’t always. What a bore it would be if I never had another french fry at Fred’s on Sunday, or slice of birthday cake, or, yes, even my number one craving, Red Vines.

  Stop beating yourself up if you eat a cupcake. You are not a failure because you got a sugar craving. Do not assume that because you ate a bag of potato chips, you’ve permanently derailed your eating plan and you’ll never lose weight. Balance that mistake with a double workout that day or the next day—think of it as calories on, calories off.

  You’re aiming for the center, remember? As my ninety-seven-year-old grandma calls it: “The Middle!” There are foodie fascists on one end, rolling their eyes at the thought of eating anything other than an artisan slice of hearth-baked spelt bread topped with Russian kale they grew themselves from seeds, and the junk-food junkies on the other, their fingers stained orange from the Cheez-Its they snatched out of their third-grader’s lunch box. You, I am certain, fall somewhere in the middle!

  Ban the word cheating from your vocabulary. When you tell yourself you cheated, it means that your mind is in the wrong place. You are setting yourself up to view food as good (perfect, unattainable diet) and bad (fast food, sugar, trigger foods you secretly binge on). Food isn’t good or bad. It is nourishment.

  Shake it off. When punishing words or self-flagellation rear up despite your best efforts, you need to kick them to the curb. Give yourself a shake-it-off moment. Find a buzzword that means something to you. It can be “Hey!” or “Yo!” or even just the word pivot. It should be positive, with energy and love attached to it. Then go into a room where you’ll have privacy, and jump up and down (or march in place) while saying that buzzword. Trust me, this works. Before you know it, the punishment words and the cravings disappear.

  Snack well. Grab a walnut and crack it and eat it, or a celery stick stack, or drink some cold, cold water. All these options help.

  Ask Yourself If You’re Really and Truly Hungry

  People often eat mindlessly because they’re bored. Or unhappy. Or procrastinating. Eating gives you something to do in the moment. It tastes yummy. It’s a distraction. It can temporarily make you feel good. But it can never be a replacement for admitting to what you’re feeling when you decide to eat instead.

  Be honest. If you’re really hungry, eat! If you’re not, give yourself a pivot, as above, or do a Moving Meditation or Visualization.

  Urge Surf Your Cravings Away

  I don’t like the word trigger as it’s used to refer to food cravings, because it’s the kind of word that’s jarring and puts fear in your mind. Much better to deal with cravings by Urge Surfing.

  An Urge Surf is a visualization technique I learned from my addiction counselor. When you think about something that you know is not a good choice, that is not part of your ultimate plan, instead of succumbing to the bad choice, turn it into a wave. Allow it to be nothing more than a passing wave, and then surf through the urge and let it pass.

  When you Urge Surf, I suggest you close your eyes, because that takes you outside your immediate surroundings. You don’t see what’s worrying you and making you want to eat a carton of ice cream. You just see the waves and surf through them. You could actually use this technique as a meditation if you want to, simply by placing your current thought inside the wave and letting it pass through you and onto the shore, releasing it from your body. Not a bad idea—try one now!

  Reward Yourself with Good Food and Atmosphere

  Most people associate what they’re eating with good and bad. This starts the first time a toddler is given a sweet dessert for eating all her mac and cheese and green beans.

  But if you think of food = rewards = sweets or your favorite (nonhealthy) foods, then where does the punishment fit in? By allowing you to eat the wrong foods. After all, who rewards themselves by eating broccoli? Well, you do! Or, you will, once you’ve trained your mouth. When you do eat, enjoy it
. Savor it. Be glad you are eating well. Take your time. Chew your food instead of gobbling it down. Pleasure is so often overlooked when you’re eating—but it is a vital part of learning to eat well.

  MY FAVORITE APPETITE KILLER

  Back when I was still addicted to plastic candy, I used to make cinnamon toothpicks. There’s something about cinnamon that instantly zaps your appetite.

  This is what you do: Take cinnamon oil, pour it in a zip-top bag, add the toothpicks, roll them around gently with your fingers to get them covered, dump them out on a paper towels, separate them, and let them dry. I’d keep them in a little jar, and when the cravings hit, I’d pop one in my mouth and suck on it. It worked every time!

  This also means you should never save the “good china” for company only, as my mother used to do. You are just as worthy as the best company you’ll ever entertain. Set a place at the table, even if (and especially if) you’re on your own that night. Use a cloth napkin. Light candles if you like. Arrange the food artfully on the plate. Be aware of your surroundings and all the senses that are engaged when you smell something delicious and then taste it. The more delicious your food, the more satiating and satisfying it is, so you will automatically eat less of it.

  Train Your Eye, Too

  Since super-sizing entered the fast-food realm, portion sizes across the board have increased to a ridiculous degree. A bottle of Coke used to have only six ounces inside—now you can get it in two liters! If you’re used to a certain volume of food being a “normal” size, it’s easy to underestimate how much you’re actually eating. It’s also very easy to overlook how many serving sizes are listed on food labels. A serving of chicken should be only as big as the palm of your hand, not cover the entire plate. A serving of pasta is only two ounces—not half the box.