Weight Loss
I am redoing my previous post, to make it speech worthy.
A teacher asks a class to tell about their objects of worship. Other kids are telling about stone Buddhas and wooden Jesuses, and this cute but chubby boy sais: we have a metal object of worship. Every morning my mother stands on it and says "Oh My God!"
Mr Toastmasters, fellow Toastmasters and welcome Guests,
Please raise your hand if you know someone who made new year resolutions related to diet, exercise or weight loss... Great! I think I found my audience! I was thinking about weight loss forever. I remember sitting down in elementary school , grabbing my tiny belly with my tiny hands and proclaiming to myself: this gotta go! 30 years later, my self-image did not change a bit: I still see myself as cute but chubby. I still think about weight loss.
By the way, I lost some weight in the last two weeks. 2 1/2 pounds. According to Mayo Clinic , this is the healthy way to lose weight: 1-2 lbs per week. I'm just showing you this is how it looks, I'm not going to pass it around , because it's easy to lose. Anyone can lose a couple of pounds. Everyone is doing it all the time.
70mln Americans on the diet can't be wrong. 50 mln gym members know weight loss. And the businesses built around weight loss are doing pretty well too. 70bln diet industry and 20bln fitness industry are growing every year. But even combined together they are half as big as the 165bln food industry.
Diet and exercise are hot topics and what I bring to the table is a 20 kg of weight loss in the last 2 years. This one you can pass around and see for yourself: it's not easy to lose this weight. And there is no way to lose it fast.
As they say it in small print, "these results are not typical". And after 30 years of weight loss research I'm bringing you my weight loss formula:
Don't go on a diet.
Don't go on an exercise program.
Don't go on a guilt trip.
These are sad, sad places. And the saddest thing about them is not going there. It's coming back.
It's just like a vacation in an all inclusive hotel. It's too perfect, too clean, too easy. You get used to it very fast , you can't stay there forever , and coming back is a disaster. Especially if you left a mess at home. It's OK to take a vacation from the mess, but you don't live on vacation. You live at home. And the way to deal with the mess is to keep your home clean. Not perfectly clean, but clean most of the time, or cleaner this year then it was last year.
Your body is where you live, and you already have a diet: it's a sum of everything you consume: food, drink , information, sights, sounds, ideas, clean things, dirty things, organic stuff, junk food, things you eat when you're on your good behavior, things you eat when no one is looking. Don't go on a diet. Don't go on a guilt trip about your diet. Just take what you are hungry for and if you're not hungry for it - leave it out. There are plenty good things to consume, but there's only so much you can take in.
Your body is where you live, and you already are doing exercises : everything you do is an exercise. Running errands, paper-pushing, commuting , stressing out, flipping channels, talking to people. We do group exercises, we do circuits every day. Don't stress out about the reps and the sets, just do something with your life, something meaningful. And if you don't want to - don't do it. There are plenty of exercises, pick yours.
I want to finish with a piece of research that is quoted often, but is misinterpreted, in my opinion.
Duncan MacDougall weighted six dying people and recorded weight loss of 21 grams when their souls departed from their bodies. MacDougall published his findings in the medical journal of American Medicine in 1907.
I believe he missed the point: The weight loss was not 21 grams. The weight loss was 120lbs for a 120lbs person and 200lbs for a 200lbs person, minus 21 grams. I think it's great that we as a society are worrying about weight loss all the time. Because eventually we are going to lose most of our weight, and will be left with 21 grams of something. And while we have all this extra weight, let's use it for a good purpose. And who knows ,maybe our diet and exercise will help our soul to carry less fat and more muscle.
A teacher asks a class to tell about their objects of worship. Other kids are telling about stone Buddhas and wooden Jesuses, and this cute but chubby boy sais: we have a metal object of worship. Every morning my mother stands on it and says "Oh My God!"
Mr Toastmasters, fellow Toastmasters and welcome Guests,
Please raise your hand if you know someone who made new year resolutions related to diet, exercise or weight loss... Great! I think I found my audience! I was thinking about weight loss forever. I remember sitting down in elementary school , grabbing my tiny belly with my tiny hands and proclaiming to myself: this gotta go! 30 years later, my self-image did not change a bit: I still see myself as cute but chubby. I still think about weight loss.
By the way, I lost some weight in the last two weeks. 2 1/2 pounds. According to Mayo Clinic , this is the healthy way to lose weight: 1-2 lbs per week. I'm just showing you this is how it looks, I'm not going to pass it around , because it's easy to lose. Anyone can lose a couple of pounds. Everyone is doing it all the time.
70mln Americans on the diet can't be wrong. 50 mln gym members know weight loss. And the businesses built around weight loss are doing pretty well too. 70bln diet industry and 20bln fitness industry are growing every year. But even combined together they are half as big as the 165bln food industry.
Diet and exercise are hot topics and what I bring to the table is a 20 kg of weight loss in the last 2 years. This one you can pass around and see for yourself: it's not easy to lose this weight. And there is no way to lose it fast.
As they say it in small print, "these results are not typical". And after 30 years of weight loss research I'm bringing you my weight loss formula:
Don't go on a diet.
Don't go on an exercise program.
Don't go on a guilt trip.
These are sad, sad places. And the saddest thing about them is not going there. It's coming back.
It's just like a vacation in an all inclusive hotel. It's too perfect, too clean, too easy. You get used to it very fast , you can't stay there forever , and coming back is a disaster. Especially if you left a mess at home. It's OK to take a vacation from the mess, but you don't live on vacation. You live at home. And the way to deal with the mess is to keep your home clean. Not perfectly clean, but clean most of the time, or cleaner this year then it was last year.
Your body is where you live, and you already have a diet: it's a sum of everything you consume: food, drink , information, sights, sounds, ideas, clean things, dirty things, organic stuff, junk food, things you eat when you're on your good behavior, things you eat when no one is looking. Don't go on a diet. Don't go on a guilt trip about your diet. Just take what you are hungry for and if you're not hungry for it - leave it out. There are plenty good things to consume, but there's only so much you can take in.
Your body is where you live, and you already are doing exercises : everything you do is an exercise. Running errands, paper-pushing, commuting , stressing out, flipping channels, talking to people. We do group exercises, we do circuits every day. Don't stress out about the reps and the sets, just do something with your life, something meaningful. And if you don't want to - don't do it. There are plenty of exercises, pick yours.
I want to finish with a piece of research that is quoted often, but is misinterpreted, in my opinion.
Duncan MacDougall weighted six dying people and recorded weight loss of 21 grams when their souls departed from their bodies. MacDougall published his findings in the medical journal of American Medicine in 1907.
I believe he missed the point: The weight loss was not 21 grams. The weight loss was 120lbs for a 120lbs person and 200lbs for a 200lbs person, minus 21 grams. I think it's great that we as a society are worrying about weight loss all the time. Because eventually we are going to lose most of our weight, and will be left with 21 grams of something. And while we have all this extra weight, let's use it for a good purpose. And who knows ,maybe our diet and exercise will help our soul to carry less fat and more muscle.