Renee IOWL - Workbook - 1 - 18

I NSIDE O UT W EIGHT L OSS
COURSE NOTES AND WORKBOOK
RENÉE STEPHENS
http://insideoutweightloss.com/
RENÉE STEPHENS, PH.D.
Certified Hypnotherapist, Certified Life Coach, MBA
A former food addict, Renée Stephens, PhD has come a long

way. She lost her weight over 20 years ago, and now she is on
a mission to stop the slimming struggle. She wants you to know
1) that lasting change is possible and 2) that weight loss can be
your door to a more joyous and fulfilling life, and she wants to show you the way to get
there, today.
To Renée, weight loss is not about dropping a few pounds for swimsuit season, it’s about
getting out of our own way, stopping the self criticism, and falling in love with our lives and
our bodies.
Renée specializes in helping one of the most difficult populations: women who have
struggled with their weight for years, tried all the diets, and often given up.
Using her intuitive skills, spiritual awareness, and state of the art tools from Neuro Linguistic
Programming (NLP), Hypnotherapy, and Life Coaching, Renée helps her clients re-wire their
brains to change not just behavior, but deep seated motivation. The result is both an ease
of living, and an awakening to the rest of life.
Renee is the author of the book "Full-Filled" (Simon and Schuster, 2012. She hosts iTunes
top weight loss podcast, Inside Out Weight Loss,), and is a featured expert in the film "The
Inner Weigh".
She holds a PhD in Psychology and an MBA from the London Business School, and BA from
the University of Virginia. She is a Certified Hypnotherapist, Certified Master Practitioner of
Neuro Linguistic Programming, Certified Life Coach and Certified Destination Coach.
Prior to dedicating her life to psycho-spiritual weight loss, Renée had a successful career in
Marketing and International Business, working for companies including IBM, Sun
Microsystems, and the former Price Waterhouse. She speaks fluent Spanish, and reasonable
French and Portuguese, especially after a little practice!
© 2013 Renée Stephens

Insideoutweightloss.com Page 2
PROLOGUE
In this introduction you will learn how to set yourself up for success as you
lose weight easily from the inside out. Plus I will share the deep dark secrets
of my own weight struggle so you know where I am coming from.
INSIDE OUT WEIGHT LOSS
Welcome to not just a new program for weight loss, but to a whole new
paradigm around weight. Inside Out Weight Loss is not just about looking
good for swimsuit season but rather about letting go of what has been holding
you back and living a life that you are passionate about. Inside Out Weight
Loss goes way beyond the basics of diet and exercise. We will be accessing
the operating system of your mind/body to bring ease and joy to your weight
loss journey and fullness to the rest of your life.
This isn’t your standard weight loss program, in fact, we will be spending very
little time talking about what you should and shouldn’t eat or what you should
and shouldn’t do. You already know that. And if you don’t, there are plenty of
places you can get that information.
Instead, we will be dedicating each precious minute of

“This book is about changing our time together to inspiration and action. Getting you
the inner to change the outer. It to do what you already know that you should.
is about turning the old model of

This book is about changing the inner to change the
weight loss and the old beliefs
outer. It is about turning the old model of weight loss
inside out.”
and the old beliefs inside out.
Traditional diets require willpower and mean deprivation. Inside Out Weight
Loss isn’t about deprivation or willpower at all. In fact, it is about integration
and transformation.
On a practical note, you may be wondering if you will need a diet plan to go
with this program. The answer is – maybe. This program works with and
without an eating plan. If you don’t want to follow a plan and you just want to
make continuous improvement, just do the simple mental exercises we will be
discussing.
If on the other hand, you want to see quicker movement on the scale, then
follow a balanced plan.
What Inside Out Weight Loss will do is make following your plan much easier
than you have ever experienced before. Same behaviors, difference
experience. Why? With Inside Out Weight Loss you are building a solid
foundation for your journey. You are mapping out a clear path for a
harmonious and inspiring journey.
MY STORY
You may be wondering why I am so passionate about weight loss. I am

passionate because I’ve been there, and I am now on a mission to eradicate
the weight struggle from the planet. I hope you’ll join me.
Let me tell you a little bit about where I come from. My own struggle began
when I was about 11 years old. My best friend and I decided to go on a diet
because, well, our mothers were always on a diet.
And so it began. We counted calories and learned how to obsess about food.
The obsession led to a small weight gain which led to more dieting which led
in turn to binge eating and even more dieting. I became quite good at both.

As a binger I would go on late night rampages stuffing myself with anything I
could find with sugar or fat in it, in my dimly lit kitchen. To atone for these
sins, I would jump around on my bed for an hour at a time.
As the binges grew worse, my diet became more extreme. I went on a

commercial weight loss program that was 750 calories a day for months at a
time. Complete with egg and grapefruit plateau busters (which by the way
stopped working after a while) and a soy based snack that seemed to
resemble gerbil feed.
I also did a liquid protein program that was eventually pulled from the market
because people started dropping dead while following it. But most of all, I
excelled at guilt and self criticism.
Fortunately, I eventually saw a nutritionist who asked me to keep a food diary.

By some miracle, probably a planetary alignment at the astrological level, I
actually did and I was honest about what I ate. I will never forget her red ink
comments written across my diary – “frequent use of chocolate syrup”. It
seemed so clinical.
It turns out that on that particular day I had catalogued in my journal, I was
desperate for sugar and the only substance that fit the bill at that particular
time was a squeeze top bottle of Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. It went on
everything from Trisketts to cereal.
Thanks to that nutritionist, I noticed I had a problem called compulsive

overeating and I wasn’t alone. After two years of thinking about it, I finally
started attending meetings of Overeaters Anonymous and worked the 12
steps. For the first time I understood there was a connection between my
eating behavior and my emotions.
I actually lost the weight and now life was supposed to be great. All my
problems were supposed to melt away. But that is not what happened.

I found I was still depressed and still ate compulsively. So I went to
psychiatrist who put me on what was then a brand new generation of anti-
depressants, SSRIs, and I took Prozac for a year.
Fortunately, I weaned myself off the anti-depressants by substituting regular

exercise. I was OK but I wasn’t happy. And I still binged on “safe” foods. I
could even binge on a bag of rice cakes, and trust me; you have to be pretty
dedicated to the cause to do that, because they taste like cardboard.
Still, I stayed like that for about a decade and a half – slim, but weird around
food. I ate no sugar for 16 years and barely any white flour.
Finally in my mid 30’s I had a career and health crisis. I contracted acute
mononucleosis for the second time in my adult life which developed into
chronic fatigue syndrome. I was forced to take time off work to recover.
I eventually learned that my body was speaking to me. It was telling me I

was in the wrong career for the wrong reasons. In high tech at the time, I
went to part time and flex time work, none of which was fulfilling. Eventually I
just quit and studied what had always fascinated me – human motivation.
That study led me to Neural Linguistic Programming, Hypnotherapy, Life

Coaching and some other disciplines along the way. I
“I discovered that if I applied discovered that if I applied the powerful tools that I
the powerful tools that I was was learning to my own remaining food issues, I got
learning to my own remaining extraordinary results. Results I didn't even think were
possible. I stopped being a compulsive overeater.
food issues, I got extraordinary
results. Results I didn't even I soon realized that this was my life’s work and began
think were possible.” practicing on fellow students, friends and eventually
clients. That was over six years ago and I have been
helping people full time ever since.
To me there is no greater joy than to see a client rediscover the joy of living
and launch themselves into their best life.

And that is why I created Inside Out Weight Loss.
Now that you know a little about me, let’s talk about what to expect and how
to get the most out of this program.
THE INSIDE OUT WEIGHT LOSS STEPS
We will start off by shoring up your motivation to change. I want you to know
something very important, right from the start, if you are a veteran of
multiple weight loss attempts like me.
“If you have been up and down

If you have been up and down the scale more times
the scale more times than you
than you care to remember, and even though your
care to remember, and even resolve seems to peter out only after a few hours –
though your resolve seems to congratulations. Each attempt that you’ve made
peter out only after a few hours increases the probability of your success with Inside
Out Weight Loss. Why? Because you have learned a
– congratulations. Each attempt
great deal about what doesn’t work. Now it is time to
that you’ve made increases the learn what does.
probability of your success.”
We will start by cataloging what doesn’t work in your
life and really makes you want to change. This is what we call your away
from motivation. What you really really want less of in your life.
Once we’ve done that, you will already be chomping at the bit to get going.
We will pump up the motivation a step higher, and not just so you are first
out of the gate, but so you are primed for success for the long haul.
We’ll start by turning your “don’t wants” inside out into your “do wants”. This
is your chance to dream – dream about your skinny jeans and looking good in
your swimsuit; dream about vibrant health and throwing away your meds
because you don’t need them any more; dream about being your best you,
the highest expression of your body and your being.

Next we’ll clear the path for a smooth takeoff on your journey. Let’s face it, if
all of you really wanted to be healthy now, you would be. All of you isn’t quite
on board yet though is it? Because if it were, you wouldn’t be downing that
scone with your morning coffee, and the drive through and the late night
snacks wouldn’t beckon.
So you are in conflict. Part of you is all for being slim, fit and healthy. That
part of you is reading this right now. The other part of you wants to kick back
with the chips and salsa! No need to worry - we know this and we also know
how to resolve this conflict. We know how to create the
“So you are in conflict. Part of most powerful force for change in the universe – inner
alignment.
you is all for being slim, fit and
healthy. That part of you is
Next, we will go step by step to bring your dream into
reading this right now. The reality, to make this vision your life. I will be walking
other part of you wants to kick you through specific techniques and frames that will
bring ease and joy to your journey. We will cover topics
back with the chips and salsa!
like how to overhaul your body image, how to access
No need to worry - we know
your food operating system, overcoming perfectionism,
this and we also know how to how to zap cravings in their tracks, overcoming binge
resolve this conflict.” compulsive eating and the subconscious secrets to easy
weight loss.
GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS PROGRAM
What is the best way to embark upon this program? Research shows that our
greatest chance of successful change happens when we create a support
community around us.
“This is just to show that I listen to you” you may be thinking. Well it is and it
is much more. Our most powerful learning comes when we teach.
Years ago, fresh out of business school, I was living in Barcelona. I got a job
as a professor of finance at a local university.
Finance wasn’t exactly my favorite subject at business school but that’s what
the job was. So I got my text book and I was precisely one lesson ahead of
my students at any moment in time. To this day, I can tell you all of the
intricacies of net present value and the internal rate of return even in my
sleep. I learned it because I taught it.
So what is the lesson for you? Teach what you learn here. Find one or more
friends or family members and recruit them on your journey. Create a study
group where you meet once a week to teach and learn from each other. If a
member of your group flakes out on you, call them on it and find out what’s
up. And if they really are gone, then find somebody else. Make this a top
priority for you and commit to making it happen.
Take action, start a movement. We are turning traditional willpower and

deprivation based weight loss programs inside out. Join us for joy, ease and
the best of your life.
Connect with me, start a conversation, ask me a question, or post a comment

at http://renee.personallifemedia.com/ or you can email me at
renee@personallifemedia.com. There is also a Yahoo Group you can join
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/insideoutweightloss/.
The more that you interact, the more that you participate in this program, the
more you put in, the more that you will get out of it. You’ll get out double
what you put in, but you must put in to get out. Inside Out Weight Loss is not
a passive transformation. Make a commitment today to engage, to participate,
to learn and to teach.
“Be the change you wish to see Remember Gandhi’s words ~ Be the change you wish
in the world. World peace to see in the world. World peace begins with inner
peace.
begins with inner peace.”

CHAPTER 1
UNSTOPPABLE WEIGHT LOSS MOTIVATION
During the next two chapters, you will learn to amp up your motivation for
positive change. Do the simple exercises and I guarantee you will be
chomping at the bit to create the body and the life that
“This chapter will cover where you have been dreaming of.
you are now, and how you know

This chapter will cover where you are now, and how
you want to change.”
you know you want to change. In Chapter Two, you will
be creating the “you” you want to be, simply by doing something we often
forget to do – dream.
Next we will lay the foundation for the long run and walk you step by step
into the body and the life of your dreams. We will cover topics like how to
sabotage self sabotage, overhauling your body image and breaking the cycle
of overeating.
MOTIVATION
Let’s talk about that motivation base that will get you raring to go. First, it is
important to understand that there are two types of motivation – towards and
away from.
Towards motivation is motivation toward what you want to create. For

example, I have a client who doesn’t really care about losing weight for her
health; she cares about losing weight so that she can fit into all the size 12s
in her closet. And yes, she has a closet full of clothes that don’t fit her, so
that’s what gets her going.

I have another client who is over 60 years old and what she really cares
about is turning heads. So whatever it is for you, it is the towards motivation,
the motivation that pulls you forward, that is an important part of your
motivation structure.
What is away from motivation? Away from motivation is obviously what

you want to avoid. It is the worst case scenario oftentimes that really gets
you going.
I’ve got a question for you. What speed do you drive on the freeway? Why?
There’s a good chance that you choose the speed you regularly drive on the
freeway because you want to avoid getting a ticket. You probably, if you are
anything like me, choose the highest speed that you can get away with, that
you think is safe and that will avoid a ticket. So your motivation is to avoid
getting a speeding ticket. You have an away from motivation strategy.
I have my own away from strategy and quite honestly it is a little

embarrassing to admit. I am a big fan of working out – in fact I have been
doing it for about 25 years now. I like to think that I am a highly evolved
human being who likes to work out for my health, and for my ongoing
spiritual evolution which would be a towards motivation. But when I really
slow down and notice my thought process, it is actually an away from
motivation that gets me going.
So what’s kept me sweating these 25+ years you may ask? When I think
about whether or not to drag my body to the gym, I get an image in my mind
of my own butt looking like cottage cheese. Yes, it’s the cottage cheese butt
that gets me going. I know it’s shallow, but heck, it works!
So away from motivation is what you want to move away from and it is very
very powerful. In fact, taken on its own, it is more powerful than a towards
motivation. But we don’t have to take it on its own. In these two chapters we
will explore both towards and away from motivation.

Why? Because the most effective and lasting motivation is a combination of
towards and away from. While running away from the cottage cheese butt
will get me to the gym, it won’t get me fit. As soon as I get far enough away
from it, I’ll slack off unless I also have something else compelling that I am
moving towards.
Think about it. Perhaps you resolve to go on a diet is greatest when you just
can’t button up those pants any more. Maybe you want to lose 20, 30 or 50
pounds to really be where you want to be. But it will only take 5 pounds to
get back in those pants and be comfortable. So if your motivation is only an
away from motivation you’ll take off those 5 pounds and then when the
pounds are off and the buttons button again, you’ll slacken off. The threat is
gone, so you feel like you can relax, far short of ultimate goal which is 20, 30
or 50 pounds.
I had a client who started her weight loss journey with a strong away from
motivation. At 63, she was morbidly obese and had just had both of her
knees replaced and she was barely mobile. Her away from motivation was to
move away from being disabled by her size. After she had lost 30 pounds
down with new knees, she began to be able to get around on her own and so
the away from motivation was fading away in its intensity.
So together we developed for her another motivation base. We developed her

towards motivation. She became excited about fitting into an airplane seat
without needing a seat belt extension. Then, after she accomplished that goal
several months later, she became excited about walking the block and a half
uphill from her home to a park.
Here’s an email from about a year ago. It may not seem like much to you, but
it brought tears to my eyes when I read it. You see, Liane is 4′10″ and when
she started working with me, she weighed 232 pounds.
And the block and a half that she walked was straight up hill. Here’s the email
that made my day:

“Well, it is Saturday morning and I have walked up the hill to the park and
back home. This 20 minute feat marks a goal and a 4+ year desire.
My ’someday’ finally came today. If I never do this again, I have achieved”.
“Well, it is Saturday morning At her next session, she had already taken this
and I have walked up the hill to accomplishment in stride and was planning her next
the park and back home. This 20 walk up the hill with the neighbor’s dogs. By the way,
she’s down 14 lbs so far, and it’s beginning to show.
minute feat marks a goal and a
4+ year desire. My ‘someday’ I am so grateful to be able to do the work I do, and to
finally came today. If I never do be part of transformations like the one Liane is going
this again, I have achieved.” through. Thanks to all of you, who allow me to do it.
What a gift!
Since writing this, Liane is down over 125lbs in total from her highest, and
she did it one block at a time.
Today Liane loves walking anywhere she wants in our hilly city of San
Francisco. She is strongly motivated toward mobility and health now. That
motivation replaced her away from motivation and kept her going for the long
haul.
“If you want to lose weight for If you want to create lasting positive change, create
lasting motivation to be slim, fit and healthy and if you
good, then you want two sided
want to lose weight for good, then you want two sided
motivation – towards and away motivation – towards and away from.
from.”

HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO CHANGE?
Write your answers to the following questions. It is important to write them

down because we’re lighting a fire here – a fire that you really want lit
because it is going to get you going and launch you into your own personal
transformation. It will launch you on a journey of becoming slim, fit and
healthy for a lifetime.
So don’t sell yourself short. Go ahead and write your answers down. These
questions will really shore up your away from motivation.
What unwanted behaviors do you have?

What is it you are doing that you wish you weren’t doing?
Do you roar through the bread basket the moment it is plonked down
on the restaurant table in front of you?
Do you eat uncontrollably?
Do you say things to yourself that horrify you if you heard them said
to a friend?
Do you make social plans and cancel them because you feel bad about
yourself or can’t find something to wear?
I have a recent client who never keeps social plans and all of her friendships
are suffering because she binges and she has eaten so much that she can’t
possibly imagine going out to eat with her friends so she cancels again and
again and again. What is it for you?

 What unwanted behaviors do you have?
What unwanted symptoms do you have?

Do you have multiple wardrobes for your multiple sizes?
Do you feel breathless when you walk up a flight of stairs?
Do you feel older than your years?
How many good years do you really think you have left?
How is your health?
How is your cholesterol?
Is there heart disease or diabetes in your family?

If so, then you know you are headed for a train wreck if you don’t cultivate
health. And by train wreck I mean things like a heart attack, diabetes or a
stroke. Think about that one – loss of mental capabilities because of
deprivation of oxygen to the brain. We are talking about things like walking,
talking, eating, even going to the bathroom on your own. And don’t even get
me started about diabetes!
Even if you think you are too young to start worrying about these things,
think again. The seeds are sown now. As Stephen Covey of The Seven Habits
of Highly Effective People says – your habits define you. Time passes quickly
in the status quo. Bring your future in close and look at what you are creating
now.
I want you to make a conscious decision about the kind

“As Stephen Covey of The
of future that you create for yourself, and I want that
Seven Habits of Highly Effective future to be one that you want. I want that future to
People says – your habits define be one that excites you and pulls you forward.
you. Time passes quickly in the

Think about the path that you are on now, where it is
status quo. Bring your future in
taking you and the consequences of not changing.
close and look at what you are
creating now.” Personally, right now I am not that worried about how
long I live past say, 80 years (of course I recognize
that this attitude might change as I get closer to that age) but at the moment,
really what I care about is not so much the length of my life past a certain
point, but the quality of my life.
As I advance in years I want to be vital and active. Not only able to take care
of myself on my own, but to really enjoy every moment of this lifetime. That’s
what I want. That’s what gets me going. That’s my towards motivation.

 What unwanted symptoms do you have?
Now think about your behaviors and symptoms and consider – What are the
consequences of those behaviors and symptoms?
Do you wear unflattering clothes that hide your figure? I had a client the
other day who wore the same uniform daily of jeans and a T-shirt, always
dark.

Not because she liked it, because she didn’t like it, but because it covered her
body and it was unobjectionable. Is that really how you want to present
yourself? Unobjectionable?
What about professionally? Have you stayed in an unsatisfying job because

you lack the self confidence to change?
What about relationships? Are you happy romantically? Do you have partner?
Are you happy with that partner? What about your sex life? If you are not
feeling confident about your body there is a good chance that your sex life
isn’t what it could be.
 What are the consequences of those behaviors and symptoms?

What other people are affected by your problem? Do you have children?
I had a client who had become bulimic in her forties. Her bingeing and
purging were a huge secret to everyone. In fact, I was the first person that
she had told. During the course of our work together her brother was
hospitalized from complications from guess what – bulimia. It then came out
that not only was her brother bulimic, but her mother was bulimic and her
aunt was bulimic.
Yet no one had known. The secrets of the mother were passed down. Even
though the children didn’t know consciously, they still learned her behavior.
There are no secrets between parents and children get how you think.
I am often asked how to help overweight children and my answer is always

the same. Model the behavior that you want them to copy. Be the change you
want to see. They’ll pay little or no attention to what you say, but rapt
attention to what you do. If you are a parent, small eyes are watching you.
Be the change that you want them to embody.
Think about whom else is affected by the current situation, the status quo.
Your partner? Spouse? Your friends that you might be canceling your plans
with? You co-workers if you are grumpy or introverted? Really, when you
think about it, who isn’t affected?

 What other people are affected by your problem?
How are they affected?
Now zoom out five years on the path you are on now, the path of no change.
How is your health? How are your relationships? How do you look? How do
you feel?
What about 10 years from now? 20 years?
Know that this is the future that you are creating now unless you change
course. A small correction in course now can make a huge difference when
magnified by 5, 10 or 20 years. How are you doing?

This is the reality of your life and your future. This is what you are creating.
Take ownership of it, take responsibility for it and then turn that inside out so
that it becomes the fire that fuels you to positive change and transformation,
the fire that fuels you to participate in this process, that gets you going, and
that hardens your resolve to make change happen now.
If you haven’t already, form that group, document

“There is only one moment for
what you have, study this material and follow the
action and that is now. Seize it simple exercises because we are going to create a
and let’s go together.” different future. We are going to move you far away
from that future that you have just seen towards the
future that jazzes you, that excites you and that gets you going. There is only
one moment for action and that is now. Seize it and let’s go together.
In the next chapter, we’ll begin by creating that future, the one that excites
you, the one that you may not even let yourself dream of. It is time to start
dreaming. It is time to grab hold of these possibilities and take action. It is
easier than you think.
“21st century weight loss is Throw out your old ideas of weight loss requiring
about inner alignment because willpower and feelings of deprivation. 21st century
weight loss is about inner alignment because when you
when you are aligned internally
are aligned internally the universe bows to your intent.
the universe bows to your
intent.” If you haven’t already, get your support team together,
create your study group, and invest the small amount
of time it will take now to set yourself up for success. Remember that you will
get back more than double what you put in but you must put in to get back.
In the next chapter we will go deeply into how to create that towards
motivation that will keep you going for the long run.
“Be the change you wish to see Remember Gandhi’s words ~ Be the change you wish
to see in the world. World peace begins with inner
in the world. World peace
peace.
begins with inner peace.”
CHAPTER 2
DREAMS OF DIET SUCCESS
In the last chapter we discussed how to create lasting motivation for weight
loss. We learned how to mix the most effective motivation cocktail by
combining towards and away from motivation. This is your motivation base.
We looked at away from motivation which is what you strongly want to avoid,
the worst case scenario. Why start there? Is doesn’t seem like much fun now
does it? Because away from motivation, what you don’t want, is the quickest
and most compelling way to light a fire under ourselves.
Think for a moment of the way you feel when your fat pants no longer fit. You
know that feeling. You get up in the morning, you put the pants on you
haven’t worn for awhile, that haven’t been in the washer or drier recently,
and the button just doesn’t quite make it.
Or think of the way you feel when you see a photograph of yourself and you
don’t even want to recognize that that’s you. That’s the “you” that you are
presenting to the world. It is horrible feeling, and it is a feeling that
crystallizes your motivation. It is a powerful away from motivator. That type
of motivation is guaranteed to get you started.
In this chapter we will look at towards motivation – the fun part! We will build
the dream that keeps pulling you forward and we will create it in a way that is
self renewing.
We learned in the last chapter that away from motivation is great for resolve;
it is great to get us going. And yet, as soon as we get far enough from it, as
soon as we get to the point where that pants button will close again, we slack
off, we relax a little bit, we take it easy.

How is it that we motivate ourselves to keep going for the long run? How is it
that we motivate ourselves to make life time, lifestyle changes?
Lifestyle changes – those are the buzz words aren’t they? Everybody wants to
make a lifestyle change. Yet how many of us really know how to do it?
With Inside Out Weight Loss you are learning how to create motivation for the
long run, how to create that lifestyle change that’s going to make you easily
and joyfully naturally slender.
If you haven’t filled in the questions from the last chapter, go back and do it
now. You really want a written record of where you were before you started.
Why? Because when change is done well, when your transformation is
thorough and fully integrated into who you are, it is very easy to forget that
you ever had a problem. You may be thinking “Yeah, right, I wish!” But really,
it’s true.
In one of the first classes I ever taught, towards the end of the program, I
was chatting with one of the participants who had lost about 25 pounds
during the 12 weeks. As I was congratulating him on his progress I asked him
what had specifically changed for him. He said that he had just stopped
buying potato chips so wasn’t really eating them like he used to and that had
really helped. “That’s wonderful” I said “Didn’t you target potato chips when
we did that compulsion blowout in class?”
“Yes” he said “As a matter of fact I did”.
“How long had you had this problem of overeating potato chips?” I asked
“About 25 years” he said
“And about when did you stop buying them?” I asked
And he thought for a long moment and then finally said “Well I guess it was
about the same time as the class”.
With Inside Out Weight Loss you are learning how to create that motivation.
It’s easy to forget that you ever had a problem. And yet think about the value
of remembering where you were when you started. Think about the value of
remembering where you came from. Why would you want to remember that?

Well for one thing, you want to know what works so you can use it again for
other issues in your life.
I remember one client who had gone from regular food and wine binges to
easily and enjoyably eating and drinking moderately. She was facing a big
challenge at work and was wondering how she would ever make it through. I
said to her “Well, wait a minute. You’ve just resolved a life long struggle with
your weight and with food. Don’t you think you can handle a little work
stress?” She looked at me and smiled and realized that she could. And in fact,
she is now preparing to quit her job and launch her own business. Something
she had never before thought was possible nor had the confidence to allow
herself to dream about.
My message here is that I want you to document where you are now. I want
you to catalogue your symptoms and the affect that they are having in your
life. If you need any more convincing that you want to create a better life for
yourself, this will do it. If you have filled in your answers to the questions in
the last chapter, you will have made a great start on documenting where you
are when you begin this journey.
The next step is to have your photo taken and paste it on the next page. By
the way, when you have this photo taken, be sure to look miserable! This is
your before photo – you want to feel good when you look back and notice
how far you’ve come. I know, I know, it’s not fun. But just think about how
great it will feel to look back at the photo, the weight and this chapter to see
how far you’ve come. Give this gift to yourself.

Date: ___________________________________________

DREAMS
Let’s talk about your dream – what you really want to create in your life. As
Oprah would say, creating your best life. It may require something of a shift
in your mindset to create it. Because for most of us, it is actually really easy
to think about what we don’t want, or what we don’t like about ourselves. In
fact, we can obsess over it because we are feeling the pain. It is at the top of
our minds.
It is kind of like walking in the wind. Have you ever walked against a strong
wind? You are so aware of the wind making every step more difficult. Yet
when you turn around and walk with that same wind you barely notice it
easing your steps. That is what it is like – we really notice the pain when we
have it but sometimes we forget to notice when things are going well, when
the wind is with us.
How much time do we really spend thinking about what

“Today it is your time to dream we do want to create? Typically, not nearly enough
and create.” time. So that’s what we are going to be doing today.

Today it is your time to dream and create.
If you were building a house for yourself and the builder asked you what you
wanted to build and you said “Anything except for what I have now”, the
builder would just stand there. He wouldn’t know what to create. You could
spend as much time as you like describing what you don’t like about what you
have now, but the builder still wouldn’t know where to begin or what to create.
“If you want to create a new If you want to build a new house for yourself, if you
want to create a new body, you have design it first.
body, you have design it first.
You have to dream about what you want otherwise it
You have to dream about what
just won’t happen.
you want otherwise it just won’t
happen.”

To demonstrate the power of becoming clear on what you want, let me tell
you about a client of mine who suffered from a great deal of neck pain
because of her arthritis. In fact, the pain was so great that it was interfering
with her ability to exercise. The natural thought is simply to say “I want the
pain to stop”. Yet I asked her what she wanted instead of the pain. If she
could replace it with something, what would it be?
After a great deal of thought and discussion she realized that what she
wanted was a feeling of flexibility and openness in her neck. That’s all we did
that session. We simply arrived at a positive statement of what she wanted to
feel in her neck, of what she wanted to create or build. That weekend as it
happens, she went to a yoga retreat which was something she had done
several times in the past but it had never helped her with her neck pain.
But this time it was different. She went in with the intention of bringing
openness and flexibility to her neck. Guess what? For the first time in years,
after that yoga retreat, she went days pain free. Simply from holding the
intention, from knowing that she wanted to create flexibility and openness in
her neck, she did it.
Knowing what you do want, what you are moving towards, is powerful of
itself. It creates a pattern for the subconscious mind to follow, a plan that the
builder can build from. It must be stated in the positive because the
subconscious mind doesn’t understand a negative command. What do I mean
by that? Let’s do a little test.
Don’t think of a pink elephant right now, especially one with purple spots all
over its ears. Don’t think of it now. What image do you have in your mind?
I’m willing to bet that it’s of a pink elephant with purple spots on its ears
because you can’t not do it. It’s irresistible. The suggestion has been made
and the subconscious mind is so quick that it immediately goes to create it
before it can begin to understand the “not”.

What is it that most of us tell ourselves when we go on a diet? You guessed it
– don’t eat. Don’t do that, don’t be bad, and don’t even think about food all
day long. And especially, don’t obsess about it. Great! No wonder we feel
tortured, we are torturing ourselves. The conscious mind is kicking in and
saying “You idiot, you just did what you weren’t supposed to do. You always
were a rebel. I’ll do better next time, I promise not to eat too much.” And
there we go again. We can entertain ourselves for hours like this and be worn
out from the effort.
Begin to think about what you want to do instead. What do you want? Let’s
start with the big picture, the 30,000 foot desire. What’s your dream? Is it to
fit into your smaller sized clothes? I had a client in her sixties whose main
motivation was to turn heads on the street. Remember Liane from the last
chapter who really wanted to fit into an airline seat without using a seat belt
extension.
Others just want to stop bingeing. Did you catch that? Stop bingeing. What
does the subconscious mind hear? You guessed it. Others, instead of bingeing,
want to have peace with food. A client last week burst into tears when she
thought about eating three meals a day like a normal person. Why? Because
all she did was binge and starve herself so three meals a day was a dream
she hadn’t even let herself dream.
This week she came in, not only having eating regular meals for the first time
in months, but she had actually shared meals with friends.
So what’s your dream? I really want you to let yourself go here. Oftentimes
when I start with a client they’ve trained themselves to ratchet down their
dreams because they’ve had so much disappointment in the past. So they are
ruled by their disappointments.
They will say things like “If I could just resist the cookies at work, if I could
just force myself to stop after a glass of wine”. If that’s all you’re dreaming,
that’s all you’re going to get. Resisting the cookies means that they will still
call to you and you’ll have to work at it, you’ll have to use your willpower.

Hear this, willpower means work. It means resisting something that you really
want through a force of will and you’ve only got so much of it, probably much
less than you’d like to think.
My advice is – use willpower only for things that you have no other recourse
for, like doing your taxes because, believe me, you’ll need it.
“Is your dream having your Let’s get back to dreaming. Is your dream having your
energy back, feeling good when you wake up in the
energy back, feeling good when
morning, having a Baywatch butt? Well for those of us
you wake up in the morning, over 25 that may be a bit of a stretch but hey, we’re
having a Baywatch butt? Well dreaming here, you know!
for those of us over 25 that may

What’s your dream? Is it playing with your kids on the
be a bit of a stretch but hey,
beach? Come on, what floats your boat? Let’s have
we’re dreaming here, you
some fun here! And you know this is coming … once
know!” you have an idea of what your dream is, you’re going
to write it down at the end of this Chapter. If you have
an image of it you may even want to draw it, or collage it.
I know it’s a little corny and for those of you “my life is too busy for this stuff”
types, think again. Think about those away from motivators that you came up
with in Chapter 1. You are on a non-stop flight to that future right now, the
ugly depressing one, the cottage cheese butt one, unless you do something
now. If not now, then when? You get the picture here? Good.
If you have a vision of yourself slimmer, make sure it is a vision of a future

‘you’, not the ‘you’ of 5, 10 or 20 years ago when you were last the weight
that you want to be. We’re moving forward here. You want to evolve not
regress. I know it is not fun, but just how great it will feel. There was
something unstable about where you were, something that led you to your
weight gain, to the place that you are not happy with now. The new and
improved you is a future you, a more mature you, a wiser you, a more
evolved you, who has what you want but better than ever before.

Think about it. Even those people who do those historical re-enactments, the
Civil War Battle re-enactments or the Revolutionary War re-enactments, they
still go home to running water and electricity. You may want to re-visit the
past and re-create the best bits but you are going to upgrade. You are going
to be able to go home to electricity and flush toilets. Make it better than it
was before.
There is a maturity to you in the future that your old you didn’t have. Wisdom
and there is a stability, a resilience to him/her. And no matter what life
throws at this future you he/she bounces back to center. Let me suggest that
that’s who you want to create, the new and improved version.
So dream your dream and in the next chapter we’ll fill in the details so your
dream becomes absolutely irresistible to you so you start creating it right
away. It’s easier than you think.
 My dream is …

CHAPTER 3
GUIDED JOURNEY TO GET WHAT YOU
WANT
So far on this program we have discussed how to amp up your motivation to

change, your motivation to lose weight for good. We’ve covered the two types
of motivation – towards and away from.
In Chapter 1 we developed your away from motivation, the things that

absolutely compel you to get going because you so much want to avoid them.
In Chapter 2 we began building your dream. We also talked about the

importance of documenting your before state, where you are before you
started because that will crystallize your motivation
“We then began building your and allow you to appreciate how far you’ve come as
dream by thinking about what it you continue with this program.
is that you want. We’re building

We then began building your dream by thinking
the foundation here of a lasting
about what it is that you want. We’re building the
structure for a lifetime”
foundation here of a lasting structure for a lifetime.
In this chapter, we will go into greater detail of what you want, of your dream.
In fact, I will be guiding you fully into that state so that you can really
experience it, craft it, so it is just right for you and begin attracting it to you.
DREAMING
First I’d like to talk to you about dreaming itself. I’d like to talk to you about a
really wonderful dreamer – Walt Disney.

Think what you will about Disney parks and products and the multi-national
corporation that Disney has become – you may love it or hate it – it doesn’t
really matter. What does matter is that Walt Disney himself, the founder, was
an incredible visionary. But more than an incredible visionary, Walt Disney
had the ability to dream and to make his dreams a reality.
Robert Dilts, one of the originators of Neural Linguistic Programming, decided

that it would be fascinating to find out how it was that Disney did his magic.
How did he create the wonderful things that he created? How did he turn his
dreams into reality?
From Disney’s writings and from the workings of the Walt Disney Company
Dilts modeled the process by which dreams become
“From Disney’s writings and reality. There is some very interesting information that
from the workings of the Walt we can harvest from this model to use to create what it
Disney Company, Dilts modeled is that we most want in life.
the process by which dreams

Disney said “What I do is that I love to dream, and in
become reality. There is some
my Company I have my people (cast members as he
very interesting information that calls them) dream their most wonderful dreams about
we can harvest from this model what they create. They sit back in their chairs with
their feet up looking into the sky and just imagine what
to use to create what it is that we
could be in a perfect world. They imagine, they dream,
most want in life.”
they dream together, they have fun with it.
That is a process that is easiest enough for us all to do if we will let ourselves.
He put a high value on dreaming. But the brilliance of his process isn’t so
much the dreaming phase, that’s of course very important, but the brilliance
of his process is what comes next.
First, Disney said, “You must dream your dream. You must imagine the story
of the poor girl with the stepmother who is discovered by Prince Charming
and becomes a princess later in her life.”

You can that story, but the next step is to go to your dream and put together
a plan to make it into reality. You dream in your dream and then you put your
plan into reality. You go into a planning phase.
Here’s the final piece of Disney’s dreaming strategy, of his strategy to create
reality from dreams. The final step was the critic step.
After the dreamer had dreamed the dream about Cinderella and the realist
had put together a plan of how this movie, this animated feature film might
be created, then the critics were allowed to participate. What Disney did, is he
would have the critics in the dark room with no windows; the most
unpleasant room in the entire building, would be the place for the critic. It
would be the proverbial dark closet under the stairway that Harry Potter had
to live, where the critic would stay. What is brilliant about this? What is
brilliant about is that the dreamer is separated from the critic.
In other words, if you invite the critic to your dreaming party, you’ll never go
anywhere. So many of us have had this experience haven’t we? We have an
exciting idea, we’re so excited about it, and someone says to us “Ah, but that
will never work because of grumble… grumble… grumble… Ah, that will never
work because… because… because…” That is when the critic is in the wrong
room. The critic gets out of that closet under the staircase, comes in and rains
on the parade of the dreamer. The important thing about creating your dream
into reality is to keep your critic, your critical voice, away from your dreamer.
How does this translate into weight loss? The way that this translates is that
as you dream your dream, as you envision the house that you are building to
live in, building the house that will be your body and your home, you want to
keep your critical voice away. There will be a time and place for the critic to
come in because we need that input, but first, let’s have the courage to
dream the dream.
In a moment I am going to be walking you through the steps of that

dreaming. I am going to be walking you through the detailed plans and
creation for that beautiful house or castle that you are building for yourself.

Remember to keep your critic at bay. If you have those critical voices that say
“that will never work because I’ve never been successful in the past.” If you
have those voices that say “I’m just a big boned person”, or those voices that
say “My mother was fat, my father was fat, my cousin is fat and my dog is fat
so I am always going to be fat”, just say “Thank you very much”, turn down
the volume on those voices and put them in the dark closet under the
staircase until it is time to listen to them. They will certainly have their place,
but at the right moment.
What Disney did is that he would have the dreamers dream the plan, the
movie, the feature film, the park, then he would have the plans put together
and then finally the critics would come out and they would poke holes in the
plan because there might have, in fact, been holes in the plan. There usually
are holes in the plan that need to be resolved so we welcome the critic at that
time. We welcome the critic – we say “Thank you very much for letting me
know that and now that I know that there could be a problem, thank you,
we’ll adjourn for a moment.” Then you go back to dreaming the solution,
planning the actions steps that you’ll take to resolve the problem that the
critic has brought to your mind.
I hope this is making sense. Simply what I am suggesting is that as we go

through this process of dreaming that we are about to embark on now, if you
encounter your critic, just say “Thank you very much, I’m just going to turn
the volume down on your voices and ask you to adjourn to another room
while I dream my dream and plan my plan. Then your input will be invaluable
to me.”
GUIDED MEDITATION
Now we are going to go into a short meditation to help you fully experience
what it is that you so much want.
Take a moment to relax.

Think about the way you want to be. I want you to begin by imagining what it
is that you want. Is it fitting into those clothes in your closet, feeling a certain
way in your body? Is it going to your high school reunion and feeling terrific?
I remember going to my 10 year business school reunion and I was kind of

surprised because the women who were there were actually in much better
shape than the men that where there. I wonder what that’s all about.
Thinking about your dream of looking terrific and feeling terrific. Maybe it’s a
dream you have of your body regulating its blood sugar perfectly, maybe it’s
a dream that you have of being in wonderful health, being active and mobile
as you grow older, or maybe it’s a dream that you have of mobility. Whatever
it is, if it’s simply that you want to look terrific or feel terrific, that’s fantastic.
Begin to think about that now, and in fact, as you drop inside, what I’d like
you to do is imagine that you have it. That’s right, go ahead and drop inside,
drop down inside, going to that place that is so comfortable within you. It is
time to spend some time you with you and as you do, you find yourself
relaxing more with each breath. You find yourself letting any noises or sound
that coming from the outside environment to simply take you deeper inside,
not because I say so, but simply because of your desire for the highest and
the best for yourself.
That desire allows you to sink deeply, as if into a wonderful pillow or cushion,
deep down you go. You become very aware of your inner experience, of the
feelings, the sensations, the sounds, and the sound of my voice that takes
you to the place of opening, opening to your heart’s desire. You imagine that
you have the body and the life that you want. You imagine that you have your
body just as you want it; your body is at its highest expression of itself.
It is the optimal weight for you if that’s what you want, it’s at the optimal
mobility and flexibility for you. Perhaps there’s a glow about you and you
simply just step into that. You imagine it and step fully in to that, to being the
way that you most want to be.

This is it; this is what you have desired for so long. You have resilient health –
what does that mean? It means that your health is such that no matter no
what happens you are always one of those people who just bounces right
back. Your body fights off whatever the office bug is before you even notice
that it’s done so. You have resilient health and energy that emanates from
you. As you get into this feeling, of feeling truly good in this body that you
want, being the way that you want to be, I want you to begin to notice some
of the details. Notice how you look, notice that you have loads of energy, that
you are healthy, whatever it is.
How is it that you look? Imagine looking into a mirror and seeing your
reflection. Imagine someone else noticing how you look, someone else seeing
you and commenting on it saying “Hey, you look terrific! What have you been
up to?”
Now I would like you to imagine the kinds of things that you do, that you are
this way. What are the kinds of behaviors that you have, what are the things
that you do? Do you shop once a week, twice a week? Go to a Farmers’
Market? Do you request salads and eat lots of vegetables? What kinds of
things do you do? Do you have support meetings? Do you have good friends
that you share your fitness with? Do you take time out for you? What is it that
you do, that you are this way?
Now what I’d like you to do is to begin to think about the kinds of thoughts
that you have that cause you to take the actions that you take that result in
this body that you have, in this physical manifestation of what you have.
What goes on in your head? Do you think “Oh I wish I could have 5 more
pieces of bread, I could eat the whole basket” or do you think “You know, I’m
really not interested, I don’t want something that will weigh me down. I’d
much rather focus on the conversation.
I’d much rather really enjoy my entrée when it arrives.” Do you think that it is
a burden to make healthy choices or you do you think that it is a treat to
have them available to you?

What are the kinds of thoughts that you have that cause you to behave the
way that you behave, because every behavior begins with a thought? What
are those thoughts for you? How do you feel that you have this body? Notice
the physical sensations, the emotional experience, how do you feel that you
have this body? I bet it feels pretty darn good. Notice where in your body you
feel good. Notice how you feel good. Simply notice what it is like.
If there is any kind of sound that goes with this feeling, hear it now. Is it
music, is there a beat, or is it simply your inner voice telling you that it is
easy, that you prefer to be healthy and fit.
What are the things that you believe about yourself that you think these
thoughts, feel these feelings, hear these sounds and words, that result in you
behaving the way you do and looking the way you do? What do you believe
about yourself? Do you believe that you deserve the very best; do you believe
that it can be easy for you; do you believe that health and fitness are your
top priorities? Do you believe in yourself?
What are the kinds of beliefs that you have that allow you, that cause you to
think those thoughts, feel the feelings, hear the sounds, to take those actions
that result in the body that you love to have? Notice that those beliefs might
even extend beyond health and fitness and your body. Notice that those very
same beliefs that support you being healthy and fit support you living your
best life and support you living your passion. Notice the beliefs.
And as you notice those, think about whom you are that you are slim and fit
and healthy. Who are you that you are slim and fit and healthy?
If your old identity was that “I am fat” or “I am not good enough” or “I am
somehow less than” what is your new identity? Your identity is that you love
to feel good, and you are like what that you love to feel good? Notice it,
enjoy it.
If you don’t yet know the answer to the question “Who am I that I have what
I want?” you could even imagine a metaphor coming to you –

I am like a ______________________________
What are you like? What comes to you? Are you like a ____________? Is
there an animal that comes to mind? A symbol? What are you like? Who are
you? Allow that question to reverberate in your mind until the answer comes
to you, until you see or feel or hear the answer – who are you?
Next I’d like you to notice your soul. How is it that you renew, that you have
what want and are who you are, that you are slim and fit and healthy? How
do you renew yourself? What is your source of energy, your source of
inspiration, your source of life? What is it? What is it like? Is it like a stream of
light that comes in and through you and spreads out from you? Is it like a
fountain? What are you like? What is it for you? What is your source of
renewal and connection to something greater than yourself, something that
makes this whole journey easy for you? Notice.
You could even imagine being that which you are connected to. What would
that be like? To stand in the flow and be the flow. To stand in the light and be
the light. What’s that like for you? Imagine it. You are in the light and you are
the light. Notice that you have stood in source and been source, that you
have stood in spirit and been spirit. That suddenly, who you are brings new
ease to your behaviors, to the simple choices that you make, and the things
that you do that result in this body, this fitness, this health, this slimness that
is the physical manifestation of you. Notice how all is enriched and renewed
and takes on new dimension and meaning now that you have exactly what
you want.
You behave in the ways that you behave – at restaurants and with friend,
home alone in the evening, home with family, in the mornings, in the office,
wherever it is that your travels may take you, on vacation. Notice how you
are.
Notice what it is like in those situations that used to be difficult for you, those
situations that used to throw you off balance, notice how easily you self
correct. You bring yourself back into balance and back into center.

As you enjoy all of this, allow it to expand. Allow this good feeling, and the
best bits of this good feeling to expand for you. Notice that as they expand,
the bits that you don’t like as much simply slide away and the best bits
expand more. As you enjoy these feelings and this experience of having what
you want, it continues to expand, and you notice that as your awareness
comes to an aspect of this feeling that you most enjoy, you sink so deeply
into that enjoyment that the enjoyment expands and gets even better for you.
Delicious and filling isn’t it? So much so that it is almost as if what brought
you to this feeling doesn’t even matter any more because you notice that you
can feel this good in the body that you have now. Notice that you are feeling
this good in the body that you have now. And you realize that it’s always
been there, that which has now been activated and is attracting more ease
and more good feelings into your life even as you read this. Because that is
what the law of attraction says doesn’t it? It says that the more that we feel
good, the more good feelings we attract to ourselves. How easy it is in this
place to be, and enjoy, to bring ease and joy to our lives, and to our
behaviors.
As you now come back from the place of imagination into the present
moment, these delightful and delicious feelings linger in you, becoming richer
and deeper.
This chapter talks about the importance of true dreaming and the Disney
strategy of creating your dreams and turning them into reality. Remember to
finish dreaming your dream and planning your plan before you allow the critic
to add his comments. It is important to turn down the volume on your critic
while you are dreaming and planning and then allow the critic to come in once
your dream has been dreamed and your plan has been planned to provide
useful input.
Take some time at the end of this chapter reflecting on that delicious journey
of having what we know that we so much want.

In the next chapter we will discuss how it is to get out of your own way and
how to begin dissolving anything that has been preventing you from fully
enjoying and experiencing that which you most desire.

CHAPTER 4
BREAKING FREE IN THE WEIGHT LOSS
FITTING ROOM
Let’s set an intention for this journey. Take a moment to think about what it
is that you intend to get out of this journey that you are on, out of Inside Out
Weight Loss Workbook and exercises. What is it that you want? Is your
intention to learn? Is it to attain weight mastery, to become naturally slender,
to release a certain amount of weight by a certain date? Whatever it is – set
that intention now.
I’d like to share my intention. My intention for Inside Out Weight Loss is to
enable you to have what it is that you want, by providing tools and inspiration.
My further intention is to end the weight struggle and free you to thrive in the
rest of your life.
How are you going with your support group? Have you set one up? Have you
talked to somebody about what you are doing? Are you sharing what you’ve
learned? Even if you are a “lone ranger”, group support will take you to the
next level.
I know, because I was a “lone ranger” for a long time, I hated the idea of
group support. That was until I thoroughly convinced myself that I was
absolutely and utterly incapable of solving my weight problem on my own.
That’s when I got together with others and that’s when I sought help. Think
about it – it’s not required, just desired.
So far, we have talked about how to set up your motivation base, how to get
you going, not just jumping out of the gate but with the stamina and
resilience to last the long run as a naturally slender person.

We’ve talked about towards and away from motivation, the two kinds of
motivators that will be very powerful for you. We described creating your
away from motivation and you filled in the workbook to record and to clarify
what it is that you don’t want, what you powerfully want to move away from.
We’ve talked about what it is that you do want, what it is that pull you
forward, what it is that you want to create, you’ve identified your towards
motivation. Within your towards motivation we’ve spent a great deal of time
talking about your dream and dreaming your dream.
We’ve talked about the process of dreaming and looked at how Walt Disney
created his dreams, turning them into a multi-media empire that spans the
globe. His simple process was dreaming, planning and then criticizing.
Disney’s genius was in separating his critic from his dreamer, they were in
separate rooms and a long way away from one another. The critic was used
at the end of the process, only to reveal areas that
“If you want to build a house, could cause the program to fail. Then the dreamer was
called back in to dream up a solution to the problem.
you must first create the plans
and those plans must be detailed
In the last chapter we went on a guided journey for
plans in order for the builder to you to go into the details of having what you want. We
build your home. did this because if you want to build a house, you must
first create the plans and those plans must be detailed
plans in order for the builder to build your home.
We went into creating those
detailed plans, not just at the We went into creating those detailed plans, not just at
level of what it is that you want the level of what it is that you want on the outside -
on the outside - how you want to how you want to look, how you want to be in the world,
what size clothes you might want to be in - but what
look, how you want to be in the
are the behaviors that allow you to be that way?
world, what size clothes you
might want to be in - but what I am here to tell you that there are no secrets; there is
are the behaviors that allow you no magic formula or pill to being slim, fit and healthy.
The formula is very simply calories in versus calories
to be that way?”
out equals weight gain or loss. If you burn more than

you take in you will reduce your weight.
If you burn less than you take in, you will store the extra calories as fat.
That is the formula. There is no magic pill. There is not even a lucky
metabolism – we will go into the metabolism question in Chapter x.
There are certain behaviors that you are going to have to take. Inside Out
Weight Loss is a very powerful journey to allow you to become naturally
slender, but I don’t have a secret recipe that will allow you to eat cakes and
donuts on the sofa all day and still be slim, fit and healthy – it doesn’t work
that way.
In the last chapter we went through a journey where you thought about the
kinds of behaviors that you will be taking to be slim, fit and healthy. Not just
the kinds of behaviors but the way that you’ll be thinking and what goes on in
your brain. How do you feel in your body? What kinds of things do you say to
yourself? Beyond that we covered the things that you believe about yourself,
that you are naturally slender, that you are slim, fit and healthy. Who are you?
What’s your identity that you are slim, fit and healthy? And even beyond that,
how do you renew yourself, that you are slim, fit and healthy? How do you
connect with source, spirit or even your higher self to renew? What would it
be like to be your higher self, to be source or spirit? And in that context, all of
those other things in terms of who you are, what you believe, how you think,
feel and talk to yourself, how you behave and how you look take on a new
meaning.
WHAT’S HOLDING YOU BACK?
In this chapter, we are going to be talking about what it is that’s been holding
you back from creating this. We’re going to be talking about creating the kind
of inner alignment that enables the universe to bow down at your feet, to
create and manifest the desires that you hold. There is no more powerful
force in the universe for change than inner alignment – when all of you wants
the same thing.

Think about what it is that you want. Thinking about the kind of you that you
are creating now, that you so much want, perhaps you’ve dreamed about it
for years, imagine trying it on, and imagine actually being that way.
You’re slim, you’re attractive, you’re healthy, you’re fit, and you’re energetic
– you’re whatever it is that you want. Imagine no more blood pressure
medication, no more insulin, and no more diabetes - whatever it is that you
want to create - imagine health, wellness, and wellbeing. Thinking about that,
I want you to imagine for a moment that you step into it. I want you to
imagine for a moment that you have that. In fact, actually stand up right now
and imagine a you who already has what you want right there in front of you.
Now this person has exactly what you want, somehow they have figured it out
– you don’t even necessarily know how they’ve gotten there, you don’t even
necessarily know the steps they took – but there is something about this you,
this evolving you, this you that is slightly ahead of you in the future who has
already achieved your desire that tells you that that they’ve got this one
covered. You can trust them.
Imagine that person in front of you and in a moment you’re going to step into
that person. In a moment you’re going to step in and become that person.
Doing this on the floor while standing up is a great thing to do but if you’re
not in a place where you can do that, simply imagine doing it in your head.
Ready?
1…
2…
3…
 step in
Be the person the person that you want to be and notice what it is like. Feel
the way it feels to have what you want. This is it! This is what you have been
dreaming of. You’ve got it now. And as you’re here, I like you to think and
notice very carefully – do you like it? Really, do you like it? Now that might
seem like a funny question to ask, but the reality is, is that if all of you
wanted it, you’d already have it by now.

So there must be a part of you that isn’t so excited about it. Maybe not - I’ve
had clients come to me who are already in alignment and simply want my
support in moving forward - but think about it. Does
“Does any part of you at all any part of you at all object to having what it is that
you want? Notice any physical sensations in your body,
object to having what it is that
any sensations, or any discomfort. Does any part of
you want? you object?
One client said “If I had what I I’ve heard all sorts of really valid objections. One client
said “If I had what I wanted, if I were slim, fit and
wanted, if I were slim, fit and
healthy, if I finally lost these last 15 pounds, then I’d
healthy, if I finally lost these last
have some kind of other problem. My Jewish mother
15 pounds, then I’d have some said to me everybody’s got a somethin’; everybody’s
kind of other problem. My got their problems. Better the problems that you know
Jewish mother said to me than the ones you don’t know. So if you’ve got one that
isn’t so bad, then keep it!.” That was her objection.
everybody’s got a somethin’;
everybody’s got their I’ve had other clients who’ve had other kinds of
problems.” objections. Another one of my clients was in a
wonderful relationship and engaged to be married. This
was her second marriage and she was very excited because she was very
much in love with a wonderful man who she was looking forward to marrying.
As she thought about any part of her objecting to being slim, to dropping this
last weight that she wanted to drop she thought “You know what, I don’t trust
myself. When I’ve been slim in the past I’ve gotten a lot of attention from
men and I haven’t been very faithful. With past boyfriends and past
relationships, I have not been very faithful and I really don’t want to screw
this one up because I really love this guy.”
She was keeping herself a little bit overweight to be safe, because she didn’t
trust herself. If she got attention from other men, she thought she might blow
it with the guy she has now.

There are all sorts of objections. I’ve had many clients who will say “I just
don’t feel safe”. One woman said to me “The truth is that I do get a lot more
attention from men when I’m slim and I don’t like it. Being overweight is
really safe for me. It’s safe.”
There are all sorts of layers of objections that people might have, all sorts of
different types. I simply want you, as you stand here imagining having what
you want, to discover if you have any objections. Is there any part of you that
objects? Let’s face it; if all of you were aligned and wanted this it would be as
easy as pie (so to speak!) You would already be behaving the way you want
to behave and doing what you want to do and your body would show it. You
would have what you want. So what is it in you that isn’t so sure?
Another way of looking at it is – what’s really great about being overweight,

what’s really great about overeating? What’s the upside of it? There’s got to
be something that you are getting out of it. One client called it a party in her
mouth, “I just want a party in my mouth!” Other clients have said it’s
comforting. Other clients have said “The one thing my mother used to do for
me was give me food and I felt that I would betray her if I didn’t eat it.”
There are all sorts of things that you might be getting out of being overweight.
It is time now to notice those things, whatever they are. Is it as simple as the
party in your mouth? Is it a matter of comfort or safety? Is it a matter of
trusting yourself? Is it a matter of being afraid to break out of a belief system
offered by your mother or your father? I’ve had clients who feel like “My
mother was always suffering, so I need to suffer too, so we can have that
bond and connection. Somehow I’m betraying her if I am happy in the way
that I want to be if she’s not.” What is it? Simply notice it.
As you notice it in your body, I’d like you to notice the physical sensations
that go with it. Find the physical sensation in your body – probably
somewhere in your torso region. Take a moment. Where is it in your physical
body? What are the physical sensations? If you can’t tell where it is in your
body, take a guess.

If you’re thinking that it’s in your toe or in your ear, ask yourself where would
it be if it was somewhere in your torso? If it’s in your toe or in your ear then
that’s a sign that you are somehow disconnected from your body. Emotions
live in the torso. That’s where they are, that’s where they exist. The torso is
where the organs, endocrine system, and all of the systems that
physiologically create an emotional experience are. If it was somewhere in
your torso, where would it be? Simply notice it.
As you notice what it is inside of you that objects, I want you to simply thank
that part of you for letting you know. Thank that part of you for letting you
know what the objection is. Even if it seems silly to you, inconsequential or
it’s a little, tiny, peepy voice, don’t worry, pay attention. We want to make
this super easy for you and the way we’ll do that is by allowing all parts of
you to participate in this process. Now that you know where it is in your body,
I want you to imagine that you could actually take your two hands, hold this
part of you and remove it from your body physically. Hold it out in front of
you so that you can see what it is. Hold it right there. Just take your hands,
pull it out of your body and look at it.
What does it look like? Do you see a symbol or an image in front of you?
What is it that you see there? Take your hands and pull it out and look at it.
What is it? What is the first thing that comes to mind, even if it’s silly or you
don’t understand it, what is it?
Notice it and say to it “Thank you. I notice you here in front of me. I
acknowledge you. Thank you.” Say to it “You’ve been with me for some time
now and I have a very important question to ask you. Please tell me what is
the gift that you have wanted to give me all of this time? What is the gift that
you have been trying to give me?”
Listen for the answer - the positive gift, the comfort, the safety, the freedom,
the connection - listen for that answer.

 What is the part of you that objects?
 What is the gift that it wants to give you?

When you know that gift you say “Thank you. I, too, want that gift and
together we are going to create new ways for me to have it that work even
better than what’s been going on in the past. We’re going to create new ways
because we can. We will bring in new resources and we will update because I
know that you have been slogging and struggling along trying to give me this
gift all of this time and it hasn’t been working so well. In fact, you may have
started doing this way back when I was a kid, in my teens, when I had a child
or when something changed in my life, you’ve been doing this for a long time
now. You have been doing the very best that you can with dedication,
persistence and loyalty. It’s time to help you out and to get you some new
resources.”
I’ll bet this part of you is delighted and saying “Well, it’s about time! My God,
I’ve been waiting here – it’s about time!” And it is time. It’s time to give that
part of you new resources, to give it an update.
How often do we really take the time to try on for size what it is that we are
wanting? So often it is easy for us to say “Oh my gosh I’m jealous of so and
so because they have such and such. This person has all this money, this
person has the perfect body and I’m jealous or I hate them for it”.
Yet, do we really stop to imagine what it would be like to have what they
have and try it on for size? Sometimes we spend so much time denying
ourselves or feeling like “I can’t have that so I’m going to be grumpy about it”
that we forget to imagine what it would really be like to have it. That’s why it
is worthwhile taking the time to do what you’ve just done – try it on for size,
imagine what you want and see what it’s like. Imagine all of the ways it would
be in your life at the level of behavior, thoughts, feelings, identity and beliefs.
What’s it like? See if all of you really likes it. If all of you really does want it,
you’re going to get it. If there is a part of you that’s been holding you back
then we can change that. We can give that part those new resources.

In this chapter we tried on for size the dream that we’ve been dreaming to
find out if there is a part of us that’s been holding us back. In the next
chapter, we’ll go deeper into freeing you from what’s been holding you back.
We’ll be talking about meta-outcomes, the goal of the goal, and how to truly
resolve conflict from the inside out.

CHAPTER 5
YO-YO DIETING, POSITIVE INTENT AND
CHRONIC FATIGUE
Let’s set our intention for this chapter. Mine is to inspire you to break through
a pattern that’s been holding you back as you create new patterns that bring
joy and ease to your life as you become naturally slender. Take a moment
and think about your intention, what you would like to
“By keeping our critical voice
get out of this chapter.
thoroughly removed from our
inner dreamer we found that we So far on the Inside Out Weight Loss program, we’ve
can dream a better dream and amped up our motivation to change by creating both
we can allow ourselves to go for away from and towards motivators. We created lasting
motivation that will get you through the long run. We
what we truly and deeply
then spent time understanding how to really dream
desire.” about what we want. By keeping our critical voice
thoroughly removed from our inner dreamer we found
that we can dream a better dream and we can allow ourselves to go for what
we truly and deeply desire. We learned how important it is to separate our
critical voice from our dreamer. How important it is to dream first, and
criticize later.
Next we went on a guided journey to fill in the details of this new reality that
we are creating. In the last chapter, we learned about the power of inner
alignment in attracting to you what you want, attracting to you the life and
the body of your dreams. We then we walked through a process to find out
what has been holding you back. You tried your new body on for size to see
how you like it. In this chapter, we’ll take it a step further as we look at the
power of positive intent and understand the concept of meta-outcomes.

Did I mention that I had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for 4 ½ years? The first
time that I got Chronic Fatigue Syndrome resulted from a case of
Mononucleosis that I contracted at the highly convenient time of my
honeymoon. It turns out that I had Mononucleosis during my wedding and I
didn’t know it. As soon as we arrived at our honeymoon destination, beautiful
Sydney, Australia, I couldn’t get out of bed. I went to see a doctor there who
told me that the last thing I should do is kiss my new husband.
That Mononucleosis ended up devolving into my first bout of Chronic Fatigue

Syndrome that ended up lasting about 12 or 13 months. The second bout
started 8 ½ months after the birth of my first child when I was working full
time, working out an hour a day and breastfeeding my child about four times
every night. I collapsed at that point and got acute Mononucleosis again. It is
about a 2-3% statistical chance that that can happen, but I managed that and
I’m very proud of that!
That also devolved into Chronic Fatigue Syndrome for me and this time it was
more severe than the last. I ended up having to take significant chunks off
work and I tried everything to get better. I did supplements, I did yoga, I did
meditation, I read books about it, I went to the doctor and had my blood
tested every which way. In fact, I did a supplement program where I was
taking 14-20 supplement pills a day trying desperately to find something that
would give me my energy. The interesting thing about this is that none of
that stuff worked. Today I have tons of wonderful energy – I work out 5-6
times a week, I run around after my two kids, run my practice, and do my
show – I have loads of energy and I am grateful every day for it. Later we will
talk about how I reclaimed my energy that was there all the time.

POSITIVE INTENT
First, let’s talk about positive intent. We’ve talked about intent, and the power
of intent but what does positive intent mean? Positive is the idea that behind
every action, every behavior that we have, there is a positive intent.
So what does that mean? That means if I stuff my face,

“Behind every action, every
there is a positive intent behind it? That means if I
behavior that we have, there is a punch my neighbor, there is a positive intent behind it?
positive intent. That means that if I scream at the guy driving while
So what does that mean? That talking on his cell phone, there is a positive intent
behind it? Yes, it does. The assumption is that behind
means if I stuff my face, there is
every behavior, without exception, there is a positive
a positive intent behind it? That
intent. I use this assumption and I make a conscious
means if I punch my neighbor, decision to believe this about myself and about my
there is a positive intent behind work.
it? That means that if I scream at

When I had my weight struggle, when I was going up
the guy driving while talking on
and the scale, when I was jumping around in my
his cell phone, there is a positive bedroom at 11pm at night trying to work off the sins of
intent behind it? Yes.” indulgence from the day, or the ones that I anticipated
for the next day, I hated myself. I hated the part of me
that made me engage in these out of control behaviors. I didn’t understand
the behaviors and didn’t understand myself for doing them. I was used to
being a pretty darn high achiever. I was used to being able to do whatever I
set my mind to but with the food stuff, I couldn’t do it. No matter how hard I
tried, it fact it seemed like the harder I tried, the worse I did.
Positive intent means that beneath those behaviors I was trying to get
something good for myself. The reality is that human beings prefer pleasure
over pain. Can anyone disagree with that? Who would rather have pain than
pleasure? Pleasure is innate to us. Some of us may believe that pain is a
route to pleasure – we believe the no pain no gain mantra in the gym. Pain is
enjoyed in that context because it is a route to pleasure. It is a route to
enjoying your healthy, fit, muscular body. We all prefer pleasure over pain.

Even when pain seems to be the first choice, it’s always because it’s a route
to further pleasure.
Let’s take an extreme example of someone who is violent, someone who

wants to kill someone else. In the news there was a story of an astronaut who
went on a mission, not with NASA, her mission was to
“Nowak, a mother of three, is accused get vengeance on the woman who she thought had
stolen the heart of another astronaut she was in love
of confronting the woman at the
with. This is the Lisa Nowak story.
Orlando airport after driving from
Houston while wearing an astronaut
Lisa carried arms in her car and was out to do some
diaper so that she would not have to
serious damage to this other woman. What was her
stop.
positive intent? I am willing to guess that she thought
that if she were able to get vengeance on this woman
She allegedly pepper-sprayed the
or take her out of the picture she could at least feel
woman through a partially lowered
relief and perhaps at best, she could reclaim the heart
car window. In Nowak's vehicle, of the man she was in love with. There was a positive
police found a BB gun, a new steel intent for her. She wanted to feel good and she thought
mallet, a knife and rubber tubing. that this behavior was necessary to make herself feel
good.
Documents showed that Nowak's
bizarre 969-mile road trip to confront The same thing can be applied to anything. Let’s take it
her rival may have been sparked when to the very personal level. Let’s take it to the level of
she uncovered steamy e-mails sent to doing behaviors that we don’t want to be doing. You
her boyfriend by the other woman.” may remember from the last chapter when I asked you
- CBS News - to take out of you the part of you that was
uncomfortable with the change, the part of you that
was objecting to having what you want. You might think “I’d like to just
annihilate that part.” Some people talk to me about the angel on one shoulder
and the devil on the other “If I could just get rid of the devil, I would be fine
and all would be well.” What happens when you try to get rid of that devil?
I lived in Barcelona, Spain for a couple of years. After Franco had died and
there was the new democracy in Spain, the Catalans, who live in Barcelona,
were very insistent on speaking Catalan.

Why? Because Franco thought that Spain would be better off having a single
language. He thought that perhaps there would be greater glory to him and to
the country if everyone spoke Spanish. He outlawed all languages other than
Spanish. Did the people who spoke Catalan and the other regional languages
in Spain just say “That’s a fine idea, let’s go for it and drop our culture while
we’re at it?” No, they went underground. They didn’t speak it publicly, they
didn’t print things in the language that could be seen by the authorities, but
they kept it very much alive. Their desire and their attachment to their
language grew stronger during the years that Franco was in power.
When Franco died and democracy came to Spain, they went wild with Catalan.
The official language of the 1992 Olympic Games was Catalan, and to the
dismay of some people who had gone there to perfect their Spanish, Catalan
was spoken more widely than Spanish because it had been suppressed. If you
want to make something stronger you suppress it and that is why there is so
much Catalan spoken and enjoyed in Catalonia, the part of Spain where
Barcelona is.
If you want to be like Franco, and make whatever it is that you are
suppressing stronger, then you can go ahead and try to get rid of the devil on
your shoulder. You can try to annihilate the parts of you that try to behave in
ways that you don’t want. And you’ll make them stronger.
So what’s the alternative if the heavy handed approach doesn’t work? What’s
the alternative? The alternative is to understand the positive intent and to
look for the positive intent. Another way of doing this is to look for the gift.
Look for the gift that the part of you that has been behaving in these ways
has been trying to give you. That’s what we were doing in the last chapter.
I’d like you to think about the part of you that gets you to overeat, that part
of you that gets you to under exercise and that part of you that makes those
bad choices – think for a moment about that part of you. What is it that you
get out of it? What’s the upside? What is the gift? What’s the positive intent?
That positive intent may be comfort and it may be safety.

For some people it is “Yes, I do feel safer this way” and that safety message
can actually be very very important. Safety is a primary human need. For
some people who are overweight, being overweight is a very good defense
against unwanted advances from the opposite sex particularly in the cases of
sexually related trauma. Rape victims and victims of sexual abuse will often
gain weight to prevent people from being attracted to them to keep
themselves safe. That strategy really does work in the absence of a better
alternative.
The weight is serving some sort of purpose and we are

getting something out of it. You could say that the weight
is a solution. Clotaire Rapaille postulates in his book The
Culture Code that being overweight is actually a solution
to a problem not a problem in and of itself. Until we find
a better solution we are going to stay with the one that
we have – over eating or being overweight.
What the heck does this have to do with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome and
what’s the solution to all this? When we have this part of us that wants to
provide us with a solution, provide us with more pleasure, provide us with
comfort so it gets us to do things that another part of us doesn’t agree with,
we have an inner conflict.
It’s like we have an inner tug of war. You know that game we play on picnic
days where we have that big scratchy rope. One team is on one side, 4 or 5
people, and one team is on the other side with the same number of people.
Both teams are holding the rope with a little flag in the middle while one team
pulls and pulls in one direction and the other team pulls and tugs and tugs in
the other. Sweat is dripping off their brows, they are grunting and moaning
and for each incremental effort that one team puts out, the other team
matches it and pulls back. So much energy is being expended in this
monumental struggle. As the teams pull from one side to the other, enormous
amounts of energy from both sides is being expended and that little flag in
the middle just moves a little bit each way. That is the inner conflict.

We have one part of us that is pulling and tugging in one direction – I want to
be slim, I want to be fit and I want to be healthy, and the other part of us is
pulling and tugging the other way – I want to eat to what I want when I want,
I want to be safe, I want to have comfort, I want to have a party in my
mouth! You’ve got a great tug of war going on inside of you. If you’re tired,
no wonder you’re tired – think of all the energy that’s being expended in this.
One side may win for a little while. You go on a diet, everything’s great,
people saying you look terrific. “Yahoo, what was I thinking before? I’ve found
the solution.” That one side wins and wins and it’s so happy.
But what about the other side, the part that wants comfort when times get
tough, the part of you that wants to be safe? What about that side? It’s sitting
back in its corner isn’t it? It’s sitting back in its corner and its plotting and
planning when it’s going to get its own back, when it’s going to have its time
in the sun. It waits strategically, like Arnold Schwarzenegger waiting to
become governor of California, for that moment when everything is right. It
waits until some big stress comes your way, you change jobs, you have a
fight with somebody, or something happens to have its moment in the sun. It
says “Oh well, just this once. I’ll just have this treat, just this once”. Or it
says “What the heck, I’m OK now” so you start eating again and you go right
back to your old habits.
Then it’s having its day in the sun, the weight is coming on, you are getting
comfort and it’s so much easier. You get into habits. Isn’t it nice to be able to
go out to drinks with the girls or have a snack mid morning when you’re at
Starbucks because you didn’t get enough sleep last night? It’s great.
And the other side is sitting in its corner. The other side is plotting and
planning how it’s going to start to speak Catalan again. The struggle
continues and what you get is the “yo-yo” pattern. What you get is the up
and down – you lose weight, you gain weight, you lose weight, you gain
weight.

Then the next time you are at the grocery store with the cake and the chips in
your cart, you start reading the magazines that tell you how to drop 10
pounds in two months or one month or three days, or whatever the heck
those magazines say, and the struggle continues. So if you’re tired, there is
probably some kind of serious inner conflict going on with you.
When I was constantly tired, I tried everything to get better. I was about to
take a four drive to go see a special Chronic Fatigue doctor to see if he could
help me, I read books on the subject, and I did everything I could do because
I hated being inactive – that was the worst possible thing for me because I
was an exercise nutcase and it was really important to my sense of self worth
to be fit. What was it in the end that helped me and allowed me to have the
kind of energy that I have today? It was resolving my inner conflict.
I had some big conflict going on; I had all sorts of conflicting limiting beliefs
going on in me. There were beliefs about having to work hard to be
worthwhile. There were beliefs about needing to do the kind of career that I
thought other people thought that I should do. Turns out I wasn’t even right
about what I was so sure that other people thought that I should do and I
was marching along on that path trying to be someone that I wasn’t. The
conflict was taking monumental amounts of energy from me and sapping all
of my life force so all I could do was the most minimal amount of activity. It
was only when I discovered the positive intent of the various parts of me that
were in conflict that I was able to resolve that conflict. Let me make that a
little bit clearer with an example about weight loss.
One part of you is saying “I want to be slim, fit in all my clothes and go to the
beach with my kids” or whatever it is, and the other part of you is saying
“Wait a minute – I want comfort, I want down time because I’m running so
hard all day long and the only break that I give myself is having a snack.”
I had one client who was very successful. She was the graduate of a top
university, she had already amassed a large amount of wealth through real
estate at a very young age and she had a full time job where she was moving
up the corporate ladder. As you could imagine, she was a very busy woman.

No time for breakfast, if it was eaten at all it was grabbed and munched on
the way out the door. Lunch was eaten at the desk as she typed away on her
keyboard and dinner was often eaten at her desk as well. There were no
breaks in her day. The only semblance of a break was getting a snack to
distract her from whatever it was that she didn’t want to do. A snack
distracted her from the intensity she put on herself to accomplish her goals.
What happened? She would get a lot of snacks and she would find herself
uncontrollably bingeing because she never gave herself a break.
What was the positive intent of that eating behavior for her? It was to have a
bit of down time. My goodness, we are not machines, we can only work so
hard but what are the expectations that we put on ourselves? When we
resolved her inner conflict, all of a sudden she started taking some time for
herself. Her first homework assignment was to sit in the break room and have
lunch. Lunch moved from the break room to a bench outside with a beautiful
view of the San Francisco Bay. She felt restored and it didn’t even take that
long. She could feel restored in a 30 minute break. That was the conflict that
was raging in her and why she had this crazy behavior she didn’t understand.
As soon as she understood at a deep level what the gift that the part of her
that was doing this behavior was, she was able to accept the gift and find
ways that worked even better to bring comfort to herself. Taking 20 or 30
minutes to sit outside and enjoy the view was taking a break, stopping and
clearing her mind.
I want you to think very seriously about what the gift is from that part of you
that’s been getting you to behave the way that you’ve been behaving that
you don’t like. There is one, guaranteed. If you try to deny it, annihilate it,
blow it up, and get rid of it, it’s going to come back like it always has. Why
not embrace it? Why not thank the part of you for wanting these wonderful
things for you and work together?

META-OUTCOMES
What is a meta-outcome? A meta-outcome is the goal of the goal. Meta

means overarching; the one above. The meta-outcome is the goal of the goal,
the outcome of the outcome.
When we think about the gift and what these behaviors that we don’t
understand are trying to do for us that’s good, we’re thinking about the
outcome of the outcome. The first goal might be something like “I eat
because I’m pissed off, I’m angry, I’m bored” so the goal is to relieve the
boredom. What is the goal of the goal? The question to ask is “If I’m able to
relieve the boredom as I want to, what then will I have that’s even more
important?” You could answer “I’ll have peace, I’ll be able to rest, and I’ll be
entertained.” You can take that up a level higher as well. If you are
entertained, what then will you have that is even more important? You can
come to something like “If I’m entertained I’ll feel joy”. The goal of the goal,
the meta-outcome is joy or peace.
Think about anything that you can think of that you don’t like about your own
or anyone else’s behavior and find out how high you can go with the meta-
outcome. Think about what the ultimate goal of that behavior is. And I’ll bet
that you’re going to end up with things that are universally considered
positive like peace, joy, love, and even contentment because that is what we
want. We all want pleasure over pain. Every human being on the planet and
every animal on the planet too I would imagine desires pleasure. Not having
been an animal in this lifetime I don’t know for sure but that’s my guess.
We’ve been talking about the power of positive intent and by understanding
this positive intent we can honor the part of us that we have been tying to get
rid of. When we resolve those inner conflicts we create inner alignment, the
most powerful force for change in the universe. We can resolve that tug of
war between the teams in your body. Imagine for a moment that instead of
each team on opposite sides pulling and grunting, they put down that rope,
come together and move forward together. They could go ten times as far
with a tenth of the effort. What would that be like for you? Imagine.

In the next chapter we will do something that we rarely do in the Inside Out
Weight Loss program, we’re going to talk about food and learn the foods that
will make your slimming journey easier. It’s not about the shoulds and
shouldn’ts, it’s about what is going to make your life easier. I’ve got some
very fascinating things to share with you.

CHAPTER 6
FOODS THAT WILL MAKE YOUR LIFE
EASIER
Why does Inside Out Weight Loss matter? It matters not in the “I’m getting
ready for swimsuit season” kind of way, not in the “I’m getting ready for my
high school reunion” kind of way, but rather in the “Live your life to the
fullest” kind of way. It is not just about being beautiful for vanity’s sake; it’s
about really coming into a place of inner alignment and living our true
potential.
Every moment that we spend in criticism and every moment that we spend
unhappy with ourselves or not engaging in life, is a moment lost of this life.
It’s a moment of our death. Inside Out Weight Loss is about not just
annihilating that inner critic, in fact not annihilating that critic at all, but re-
purposing that energy to truly bring joy and fullness to our lives.
In this chapter you’ll learn what Technicolor tasty is and how our taste buds
have become lazy. You will learn about the foods that make it easier for you
to be naturally slender.
Let’s set our intention for this chapter. Mine is to inspire you to break through
joy and ease to your life as you become naturally slender. Take a moment
and think about your intention, what you would like to get out of this chapter.
So far on the Inside Out Weight Loss program, we’ve spent a lot of time
amping up our motivation to change by creating both away from and towards
motivators. Away from motivators are those things that you really want to
avoid and towards motivators are your dreams that pull you towards them.

By having both towards and away from motivation you set yourself up for
lasting enthusiasm and lifestyle change. We then spent time understanding
how to dream and we got some information from Walt Disney’s strategy. We
learned how he created tremendous success in his media and Amusement
Park empire by separating his dreamer from his critic. We learnt the
importance of dreaming our dreams, planning our plans and only then
allowing the critic to have his say so.
In the last chapter we looked at the power of positive intent and understood
the concept of the meta-outcome – the goal of the goal. We learnt how to
amp up your energy, even if you have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome as I did.
In this chapter we will do something that we rarely do
“Eating good food will make on the Inside Out Weight Loss program, we’re going to
talk about food. We’re going to talk about what foods
your life easier and will make
to eat and what foods to avoid and why. Not in the
you feel better – that’s the only context of you should or shouldn’t eat this, but rather
reason to eat it.” in the context of what will make your life easier. Eating
good food will make your life easier and will make you
feel better – that’s the only reason to eat it.
I should mention that I am not a nutritionist, but I do know an awful lot about
food because I was obsessed with food for years of my life. I studied
everything I could, as do my clients. Most of my clients have an encyclopedic
knowledge of nutrition.
KNOWLEDGE OF NUTRITION
I want to share a very amusing story from the book The Culture Code by
Clotaire Rapaille. Rapaille is French psychologist who now lives full time in the
United States and helps Fortune 500 companies market their products by
understanding the deep desire that people associate with different types or
categories of products.

He has done some research into the American cultural code for fat, what fat
means in America. He tells a story I found so amusing that I have to share it
with you.
It seems that some years ago Rapaille was invited to give a talk at a
symposium at Tufts University on obesity. Lecturer after lecturer at this
symposium came up and presented their papers on the solution to the obesity
epidemic in the United States. Person after person suggested their
approaches that all revolved around education and around simply telling the
American population the benefits of exercise and the evils of over eating and
being overweight.
Rapaille noticed something about this particular group of PHDs, medical

doctors, and uber educated people in the audience. He noticed that 2/3 rd of
them were overweight themselves and 1/3rd of the audience were actually
obese.
Rapaille takes the podium and says “I think it’s fascinating that the other
speakers today have suggested that education is the answer to the country’s
obesity problem. If education is the answer, why hasn’t it helped more of
you?”
As you might imagine Rapaille was not invited back to Tufts University or to
the obesity symposium but I just love that story because it’s so true. We
educate and educate ourselves and yet it doesn’t allow us to behave any
differently.
Think about people who are naturally slender already, people for whom
weight has never been an issue, you know those people that we all love to
hate. The kind of person that seems to have the fortunate metabolism or the
person who seems to be able to eat anything they want and not gain, think
about those people closely for a moment now.
There are many of them in other countries, in Asia for example, and you may
even have some naturally slender people in your life.

For those naturally slender people, particularly ones in other countries, do you
think that they are slender because they know all about protein grams and
complex vs. simple carbohydrates?
Do you think they have studied food combining and they follow the rules of
never eating a fruit with a protein past 6pm in the evening or whatever those
crazy rules are? What about that one about never eat in the evening because
it goes straight to fat? I love that one, because as you know from the last
chapter, I lived in Spain for a couple of years. In Spain, where the population
is generally very slim, if we ate dinner at 9pm we’d be opening up the
restaurant. It was very tacky to eat an early dinner – for the Spaniards, the
later the better for dinner. Same thing goes for Argentina and probably many
other cultures as well. If eating late at night packs on the pounds someone
forgot to tell the Spaniards and the Argentineans. It doesn’t pass the common
sense rule.
If all these people are naturally slender and aren’t counting carbs, aren’t
counting protein grams, don’t know about essential fatty acids, food
combining and all the rest of it, then why do we think that that’s going to
make us magically slim? We’ve learned more and more about nutrition over
the years. We have nutrition labeling on all our products which I am very
appreciative of, I think it’s a great thing but I don’t necessarily think it is
going to help you change your behavior. If you are someone who wants to be
healthy then you will observe the labels and make good choices but if you’re
overweight and struggling, it’s not going make a difference. Education doesn’t
help. Ask any addict. Does knowing the dangers of addiction help an addict
not be addicted? No. It doesn’t.
If education isn’t the answer, then what is? The answer is understanding our
motivation structure. The answer is creating inner alignment so you resolve
the inner conflict.
We are going to talk about food in this chapter in the context of what foods
make it easier for you to be slim, fit and healthy, what foods will make it
easier for you to be naturally slender.

CONVENTIONAL FOODS VS ORGANIC
Years ago when I recently started this work I held a class for a prominent
company here is Silicon Valley and I was very excited because I was going to
do a taste test.
I brought in a whole bunch of food that was organic and a whole bunch of
food that was conventional. We have conventional bread vs. organic bread,
conventional fruits vs. organic fruits and conventional vegetables vs. organic
vegetables. I laid them all on the table for the class to vote on which they
preferred. I so smug because I thought that certainly, once they taste the
good stuff they would never want to go back. You can imagine my reaction
when the class preferred the conventional foods. Most people in the class
preferred the conventional foods to the organic ones. I didn’t quite know what
to do. I was lost.
I’ve come to understand the reason why that is. The food industry, like any
other industry, is motivated by making money. That’s the capitalist way and
it’s a system that seems to work better than the other systems that are
available out there. Big food companies are very motivated to sell more of
their product. That’s how they make more money by selling product. The food
industry thinks about it and asks “What can we do to sell more product? We
can make more people want to buy more of it by making them want to eat
more of it.”
In the 1960s the whole area of food science was created. There was also
another noble goal, not just profit, but to feed the world. There was a real
problem with malnutrition as there still is in pockets of the world, but
generally not because we don’t have enough supply but because we can’t get
it to the people who need it the most. The idea was to end hunger and to
make money while they were at it. The food scientists went to work to create
foods that would be cheap to produce, that would last a long time on the shelf
so that they wouldn’t spoil, and to make foods that we would want to eat
more of so that we would buy more of them over the competition.

The food industry has been remarkably successful in these endeavors. We
have food that has shelf life that you wouldn’t believe – even fresh lunches
that are prepared for parents to buy for their children have a shelf life of
about six months. When I pack a lunch for my kids it barely lasts for a day
because it isn’t chock full of preservatives.
All sorts of ingredients have been invented, ingredients that I call the
unpronounceables. Do you know what a Mono-Diglyceride is? You might want
to because you are probably eating a whole lot of it if you’re eating
conventional foods that you find between the outer perimeters of your
grocery store. The rule of thumb is that if you can’t pronounce it, your body
doesn’t know what to do with it.
The reason that people didn’t like the organic foods better when they took a
taste of them, is that those conventional, non-organic, processed foods have
been engineered in such a way to scream flavor and taste at our taste buds. I
call them Technicolor tasty. They scream at us. You can’t just eat just one
Dorito, it’s impossible. Tortilla chips are the same way – they are foods that
are designed to make us want to eat more and more of them. I am delighted
to know that the food industry is now beginning to make smaller portions of
our food. Most of the foods that are processed and have ingredients that are
unpronounceable are Technicolor tasty and scream at our taste buds.
So what happens? Our taste buds become lazy and that is what had
happened to this group in one of my first weight loss classes. The taste buds
become lazy and unable to perceive the subtle textures and flavors of the
natural, minimally processed foods that we eat. There is a process of re-
training that must occur. I had to go through it myself. I was raised on
Wonder Bread, Twinkies, Ho-Hos, I used to love frozen Ho-Hos, frozen
chocolate éclairs and all sorts of other highly processed junk foods. It took
time for my palate to re-learn the subtle flavors of food. It is like going from
drinking cheap boxed to wine to drinking fine wine and expecting to be able
to discern all the different subtleties of flavor without having taken the time to
appreciate it and notice.

Re-educate your palate by cutting down on the amount of processed foods
that you eat. See if you can improve your diet by 50%, see if you can
improve the quality of the foods that you eat.
“See if you can improve the If you have a junk food diet or a processed food diet, if
your food is full of unpronounceables, see if you can
quality of the foods that you eat.
improve by 50% now, and then another 50%, so that
If you have a junk food diet or a
over time you improve the quality of the foods that you
processed food diet, if your eat.
foods are full of
Here are a few of the ingredients that the body finds
unpronounceables, see if you
particularly difficult to deal with and stay naturally
can improve by 50% now, and
slender.
then another 50%, so that over
time you can improve the The first one you already now about I’m sure, if you’re
quality of the foods that you reading this book then you must know about trans-fats.
Trans-fats are in many of the packaged foods we eat
eat.”
today, less and less I’m delighted to say because of the
public awareness campaign, and these fats almost go into your body and
never come out. There is no safe amount for human consumption. They are
very shelf stable, they produce a delightful flaky crust and they are terrible
for our bodies. The food industry loves them for their shelf stability properties
and low cost, and yet our bodies don’t know what to do with them. Ironically
they were invented to replace saturated fat in our food which was thought to
be very unhealthy and the trans-fats were thought to be healthier. Trans-fats
in the forms of hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils should be
removed from your diet. Check out your labels, they are still in quite a lot of
foods, but fortunately less and less because food manufacturers are taking
them out in response to the public demand.
The other food that I’d like to make you aware of is high fructose corn syrup
(HFCS). High fructose corn syrup is a sweetener that is developed from corn,
processed and modified through high temperatures, and is in a huge amount
of the food that we find on supermarket shelves these days. Because high
fructose corn syrup is fructose it doesn’t trigger insulin response in the body.

There has been a lot of research, particularly out of UC Davis, that suggests
that HFCS for some reason is linked 1:1 with the increase of obesity rates in
this country.
High fructose corn syrup is very cheap to manufacture and very shelf stable
so it will last for the next 100 years on the shelf. Do you really want
something that has that kind of shelf life in your body?
It turns out that it somehow messes with our ability to tell if we are hungry or
satisfied. Somehow we don’t get the message that we’re satisfied and we
want to eat more of it. If I’m a food manufacturer and I’ve got a product that
lasts forever, never goes off, dirt cheap and it makes people want to eat more
of it, I’d think I’d died and gone to heaven! This is the best thing I’ve ever
seen in my foods.
Food manufacturers love it but you will want to hate it because it’s going to
make your life easier if you do. The less of it in your diet the less cravings you
will have. Take it out of your diet and take it out of your kids’ diets please
because it’s all over kids’ food.
The other day I was in the grocery store and I was looking at some apple
sauce. My kids wanted to get the cute ones that are in the individual
containers that I don’t like to buy because they produce a lot of waste, and I
picked it up not suspecting anything and glanced at the ingredients. Guess
what? There in apple sauce is high fructose corn syrup. What the heck is
HFCS doing in apple sauce? That’s the last place that we need it because
apples are naturally sweet. Read those labels. HFCS is all over yogurts that
are incredibly sweet.
Your life will be easier if you eliminate it or dramatically reduce it from your
diet. You can completely eliminate it from your diet. The transition is a little
bit difficult as you find foods to replace those foods, but once you get in the
habit of buying more healthy foods then you will find it very easy to sustain.
What other foods do you want to eat to make your life easier? You want to
eat foods that have complex carbohydrates in them and good protein content.

What about sugar? Sugar is an interesting one because I’d rather eat sugar
than HFCS because sugar is a fairly natural product. It comes from the sugar
cane. Refined white sugar is not as bad as some things but, you know, it’s so
darn addictive. The truth is that it may be easier for you if it’s completely out
of your diet. It takes the body about 3 days to eliminate something from the
system.
So if you are addicted to sugar, or if there is a lot of sugar in your diet, and I
speak from experience here – my idea of a healthy lunch in college was an ice
cream cone with some chocolate covered peanuts on the side to add protein –
if you’ve got a lot of sugar in your diet, give yourself about 3 days to get off
the sugar. When I did this I actually had headaches and shakes because of
the withdrawal. You can do it cold turkey or you can wean yourself off of it.
Again, reduce your sugar intake by 50% and you’ll find that the less you eat
the fewer cravings you’ll have. When I have something sweet, immediately
the next day I want more sweets. Now I have a moderate amount of sugar in
my diet, in fact very little, but occasionally if I’m at a dinner party and there
is a particularly good dessert I may have it, but as a conscious choice that I
make because I know that I’m going to have to deal with the cravings the
next day. That’s no fun; I don’t feel at choice when I’m subject to cravings.
Sugar, for many of us, is highly addictive and it can make our life more
difficult. By moving towards less processed foods, more organically grown
foods that are free from hormones and pesticides, by moving to foods that
have more natural flavor, we will reawaken our taste buds to the subtleties of
natural nutrition and make our lives easier. It is easier for our bodies to tell
us if we’re hungry or we’re full if we’re eating minimally processed healthy
foods.
Protein is great simply because it lasts longer in our stomachs than a

carbohydrate. Fats last even longer than protein. Have some fats in your diet,
have some protein in your diet, have complex carbohydrates in your diet and
eat moderately of all things.

All of the comments I have made in this chapter and everything I’m telling
you about the foods really doesn’t matter at all unless you’ve done the inside
out part of your journey. The food doesn’t matter at all unless you’ve cleared
the way and the inner objections, unless you’ve discovered the gifts and
you’ve found new ways to receive the gifts that your unwanted behaviors are
trying to offer you. What you eat is probably about 10 – 20% of the effort. I
want to be very clear about that. It is very easy for us to latch on to food as
the answer to all the issues. The real answer is the inside out answer.
These are just some types of foods that are going to make it easier for you. I
encourage you to do your own research because different bodies are different.
My body likes a high carbohydrate diet and other bodies thrive with high
protein. Find out what’s best for you but give yourself a chance by eating
foods that are not adulterated and do not confuse your system’s signals of
hunger and satiety and don’t create instant cravings.
I get kind of worked up about these topics because I care so much about
making things easier for you and freeing you, me and all of us from the
weight struggle.
In the next chapter we will learn what being naturally slender is and how
naturally slender people make decisions about what and how much to eat.
You’ll be amazed and delighted by how simple the decision strategy they have
is.

CHAPTER 7
THE NATURALLY SLENDER EATING
STRATEGY PART I
In this chapter we’ll go where you’ve long wanted to go, we’ll go inside the
heads of the naturally slender to learn how they make decisions about what
and how much to eat.
Let’s set an intention for this chapter. Mine is to enable you to break through
joy and ease to your life.
So far on the Inside Out Weight Loss program, we’ve learned how to create a
powerful motivation cocktail of towards and away from motivators. We then
spent time understanding how to really dream about what we want by
keeping our critical voice thoroughly removed from our inner dreamer. We
then we went on a guided journey to fill in the details of the new reality that
we are creating. We also talked about the power of positive intent and meta-
outcomes and how to amp up your energy levels, even if you have what I did
which is Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. In the last chapter we talked foods that
will make it easier for you to be naturally slender.
In this chapter, we are going deep into the minds of the naturally slender to
discover just what it is that makes them tick.

NATURALLY SLENDER
Let’s start out by understanding who are these naturally people anyway?
What exactly is a naturally slender person?
For some of us it might seem like an alien species. If you think about it, you
know someone who is naturally slender, maybe it’s a relative, parent, sibling,
cousin or uncle, or maybe it is a co-worker, someone
“Let’s start out by you see every day. These are the people we look at in
wonder. We think, my God, no matter what they do,
understanding who are these
they always seem to be slender. These are the people
naturally slender people we love to hate.
anyway? What exactly is a
naturally slender person? For So who are these people and what is it that is going on
in their minds? When I was struggling with my weight I
some of us it might seem like an
used to look at them and wonder how is it that they
alien species.”
think. Now we know what goes on in the minds of
many of these naturally slender people to enable them
to be slim year after year. If you think about the people around the world who
are naturally slender, and there are many more of them in other countries
than there are in the United States because here in America we’re getting
fatter and fatter I’m afraid, think about Americans, Europeans or Asians who
are naturally slender, say someone in China who’s always been slender and
never made an effort with it – do you think that person is counting calories?
Do you think that person is counting carb grams or fat grams? Do you think
they are doing some magic formula of food combining, never eating a protein
with a fruit past 6pm on a full moon? I don’t think so.
In fact, I bet most of these people don’t even know what a protein gram is.
They just eat naturally. If they don’t even know what protein and
carbohydrate grams are, and they don’t have access to light mayonnaise,
light this and light that, and 100 calorie packets, what is the trick for these
people? If this were really hard work for them, do you think they’d be able to
do it their whole life?

If being slim for them, was really the effort that so many of us think it is, do
you think that they’d be slim and fit? I don’t. It seems to be that all these
people I have ever seen or known, that it is the most natural thing in the
world. That’s why we call them naturally slender.
“If being slim for them was The truth is that this is where you want to be. You want
to be naturally slender. Why? Because if you staying
really the big effort that so many
slim for you means deprivation and hard work, when
of us think it is, do you think push comes to shove, you’re not going to do it. You
that they’d be slim and fit? might do fine when it’s your top priority and your whole
I don’t.” life revolves around counting your calories and getting

your food just right, but when stress comes up in your
life, you change jobs, start or end a relationship, have a big financial loss hit
you, when things get tough and when it’s really really hard work, you’re not
going to make it anymore, you’re going to quit. In order for you to be
sustainably slim, you want it be easy. I tell my clients “If it’s too much hard
work there’s something more that we need to do together to make it easy for
you”.
Let me tell you about a recent client of mine. We were at the 3 month marker
of our work together and she said to me “You know Renee, this entire process
has been effortless and easy. That’s just how I set my intent to do it, to be
effortless and easy.” She was down 15 pounds without following any kind of
diet plan.
That’s how it can be for you. Don’t take my word for it; study this material,
do the exercises and you will find out for yourself that if you’re finding it a
real struggle, then something’s not right. Let’s go now into talking about the
naturally slender – what goes on inside of their minds.
METABOLISM
Let’s talk about metabolism – this is a big deal for a lot of people. Many of
you who struggle with your weight will say “I just have a slow metabolism”.

We look at people who are slim and say “They just have one of those lucky
metabolisms”. Is this about metabolism? Are we going to be resetting our
metabolism here? Do you have a problem with your metabolism? Can you be
naturally slender with the metabolism that you have?
Let’s think again for a minute about those naturally slender folk. These are
people for whom year after year their weight stays about the same. So what
do we know for sure about them? One thing we know for sure about them is
that their metabolism changes over time. How do we know that for sure?
Because that is true for every human being on the planet.
Our metabolism will vary depending on the amount of physical activity or

exercise that we get, and it will also vary depending on the amount of lean
muscle mass that you have on your body. The more muscle you have, the
higher your metabolism, so people who are naturally slender who have a lot
of muscle will have a higher metabolism than those with a little bit of muscle.
Your metabolism will vary by how much weight you carry around so if you are
200 pounds you are going to be burning a lot more calories taking a walk
than someone who is 150 pounds. The amount of sleep that you get will
influence your metabolism and your hormone levels will influence your
metabolism. There are many factors that go into your metabolism at any
given moment on any given day. This is true for the naturally slender.
So we know that, for them as well as us, metabolism varies constantly. The
question is, if their metabolism or their burn rate is varying constantly, how is
it that they are the same weight? Logic tells us that they’re the same weight if
their metabolism and burn rate varies, then their intake amount must vary.
They must, somehow, be matching what they eat, the calories they consume,
with the calories they burn. They are doing this without the aid of little packs
that we strap to our arms and special testing; they are doing this
automatically and naturally. They naturally match their intake to their burn
rate.
So what is the amazing mechanism that allows them to do this?

Specifically designed by Mother Nature herself, we have a built in mechanism
to do this matching for us so that no matter what our metabolism does, we’re
eating an appropriate amount. And that mechanism is hunger. Hunger has
been carefully designed by whoever does the designing out there to tell us
when we need more food and when we’ve had enough. You’ve probably
known some people, for example some little old ladies, who eat like a bird.
They have a very slow metabolism and they have a very low intake so they
are slim. You may have also seen at a competitive sports event like a 10K or
a marathon people finishing in the middle or the back of the pack who are
overweight while still doing an incredible amount of exercise.
I had a new client come in recently who completed an Ironman – running a

marathon, swimming 2 miles in the open water and cycling slightly over 100
miles all in one day. This took her 12 hours of continuous aerobic exercise
and she would train sometimes 9 hours a day for this event for months. And
you know what? She gained weight while she was doing it. That’s why she
came in to see me. She said “I figured that if I did that much exercise I would
automatically lose weight”.
The same thing happened to me. I had the same brilliant idea. I trained for a
marathon, raised money for charity, I ran 26.2 miles, and after all that I
finished 2-3 pounds more than when I started. I was confounded. I thought
“Enough of that!” and I haven’t run a marathon since. However, I will say that
it was a great experience and I’m really glad that I did it. There are a lot of
other benefits of doing this kind of event but losing weight wasn’t one of them
for me. Some people will lose weight when they amp up their exercise and
some of us won’t. It is not about having the perfect metabolism or about
doing enough exercise.
I see a lot of this in parents with overweight children. They get them to do
extreme amounts of exercise, hours a day sometimes, hoping they’ll slim
down and it doesn’t often work. They get really fit which is a wonderful thing,
but really it is all in the matching, not in increasing the burn rate. It is in your
ability to match your intake with your burn rate. This is really important and
very few people understand it.

We keep on wanting to say it is about the metabolism and we want to blame
somebody or something out of our control. It’s not. It’s
about your ability to match your intake rate with your
“It’s about your ability to match
burn rate and the mechanism that the body has to do
your intake rate with your burn
that is hunger.
rate and the mechanism that the
body has to do that is hunger.” Your hunger is there to tell you when your body needs
more fuel and your fullness or your satiety is there to
tell you when you’ve had enough. Eating when you’re hungry and stopping
when you’re satisfied makes a whole lot of sense.
Before you start thinking “Well, wait a minute, I don’t know if I can do that”
or “I don’t know if that will work” or “I’m always hungry”, let me say a few
words about that. I have worked with many people who are always hungry.
Their appetite is way of whack and they might not even be able to distinguish
whether or not they are truly physically hungry or emotionally hungry. It may
feel exactly the same to them. Because they are always feeling hungry,
they’re always eating.
I’ve worked with others who never feel hungry. These people do so much
“preventative eating” that they never let themselves feel any hunger. How do
they decide it’s time to eat? When food is available, when someone offers it,
or when it’s lunch or dinner time. In our culture with the amazing availability
of food anywhere at any time, you’re going to be overweight if this is your
strategy.
So how do you reset your appetite?

(a) Follow a plan. Sometimes we are so out of whack with what we think is a
normal portion and with what our stomachs are used to eating that we need
to do it manually. We need to determine an appropriate portion for ourselves
manually. This is a tried and true method, it’s the counting calories or points,
weighing and measuring and it is in fact what I did back 20 some years ago
when I lost my weight. After a few days of discomfort and adjustment your
stomach is going to adjust and your appetite is going to adjust – the body is
pretty amazing that way.

(b) You can do this instead of following a plan or as well as – simply intend to
reset your appetite. Have a chat with your body and intend to adjust and
reduce your appetite. This may seem kind of silly and small compared to the
size of the problem you have but intent really is a powerful thing. If you just
open up it, you might be surprised at the results.
(c) I have a guided journey called the Appetite Adjuster that

is designed to help to designed to help with this very thing.
You can find it here:
http://reneemethod.net/index.php?option=com_virtuemart&Itemid=74
TUNING IN TO YOUR BODY
I’d like to share with you a way that you can begin the process of tuning into
your body so that you pick up your body’s cues of hunger and satiety.
Remember that it really doesn’t matter at what your metabolism is; it’s all
your ability to match your diet, intake and consumption with your burn rate.
If you want to start matching, you are going to have to start tuning in. For
some of us, it is difficult when we start out because we are used to tuning out
of our bodies. We have, at some point, made a decision either consciously or
unconsciously to not pay attention to our bodies. We may have decided or felt
that being in our body wasn’t a nice place to be – we don’t feel good in our
bodies, our bodies are sources of pain and discomfort – so we made a
decision to tune out and not pay attention. Now it is time to start tuning back
in and if you feel any discomfort as you do it, as you start paying to those
sensations inside your belly and body, that’s just fine. Just sit with it and
breathe right into it.
Have you ever had a feeling that lasted your entire life? I didn’t think so
because feelings come and go. If you tune in into a feeling that’s
uncomfortable for you, be present with it and breathe right into the heart of it,
breathing in positive energy or white light. You could do this while you are
reading this right now.

Tune in and breath positive energy into your body and on the out breath
exhale and let go of any negative energy or discomfort that you’re feeling.
Continue to do this slowly and deeply until you feel really comfortable.
Here’s what I want you to do. You know how nutritionists and diet plans often
suggest you keep a food diary? Often it is the first thing that you do so that
you can be aware of what you’re eating. I don’t really want you to keep a
food diary, you can do that if you’ve found that helpful, but what I do want
you to do is start keeping a hunger diary.
A hunger diary is where you rate your hunger on a scale from 0 to 10 before
you eat and after you eat. You are going to rate your hunger on a scale from
0 to 10 before you eat and after you eat. 0 is famished, fall on the floor
hungry, about to pass out and 10 is I am stuffed like a turkey on
Thanksgiving. Simply right this down in your Palm Pilot, Blackberry or in your
notebook that you keep with you and track it. You can even graph it at some
point if you’re technically inclined to see when it is when you are most
inclined to eat when you’re not hungry or eat past the point of feeling full.
Are there specific times that trigger you? Are there specific foods that trigger
you? For example, I read something recently where a binger was saying that
her binges always started with carbohydrates and always ended with protein.
Perhaps it is eating those simple carbs that inspire you to eat when you are
not hungry and keep going long after you’ve become full. Pay attention to
that when you keep this hunger diary. This hunger diary is a tool to help you
identify the times and situations that are most likely to cause you to eat when
you’re not hungry or beyond the point of being full.
Keep a written hunger diary – just doing it mentally will help but if you’re
serious about this journey and are ready to make a change then start keeping
your hunger diary on paper or in an electronic format. You will start taking a
note of it so you can see the patterns that emerge over time. This is very
important.

INSIDE OUT WEIGHT LOSS HUNGER DIARY
0 = starving  10 = stuffed
Hunger Hunger
How did this food make me
Date Time Food Before After Taste, Texture, Flavors
feel over time?
Eating Eating

CHAPTER 8
THE NATURALLY SLENDER EATING
STRATEGY PART II
In this chapter you’ll learn exactly how to think like a naturally thin person.
This is the part of the weight loss and diet story that no-one talks about and
you need to know.
Go ahead and set your intention for this chapter. Is it to soak in this strategy
like a sponge? Is it to have your diet and weight loss experience be easy and
enjoyable? What a concept that is! Whatever it is, go ahead and set that
intention now. My intent in this chapter is to enable you to break through
what’s been holding you back and move firmly into living your dream.
So far on Inside Out Weight Loss we’ve learned about creating the motivation
cocktail that will get you going, including defining what you are moving away
from and dreaming the dream that draws you towards it. We also talked
about the power of positive intent and meta-outcomes, as well as how to amp
up your energy levels even if, like me, you have chronic fatigue syndrome.
We spent a chapter going over the nuts and bolts of what foods in your diet
will make your journey easier.
In the last chapter we learned who these naturally slender folks are and what
they do, and equally importantly, what they don’t do. We also learned the
truth about high and low metabolisms and why some people can do extreme
exercise and not lose weight.
In this chapter we’re going even deeper into the minds of the naturally
slender to learn how they decide to learn what and how much to eat. This
really is the untold story, the part of the story the researchers forget to
consider.

The National Control Weight Registry is a registry that draws information from
people who have successfully lost at least 30 pounds and kept the loss for at
least a year. It is a wonderful research project designed to determine what
really does work in the long run. Yet the questions in the National Control
Weight Registry are focused on what it is that these people do and barely at
all on how they think. Aren’t our actions preceded by thought? Isn’t
everything that we do started by thinking a thought?
Consider this idea. Imagine you are in a bakery and there in front of you is
your favorite thing and you think “OK, I’ll have it just this once” or “Heck, I
deserve it”. Now what do you think you’re going to do if that’s your thought in
the bakery looking at your favorite thing? Or you’re walking by the office
goodies and you think “Oh, just a couple of M&Ms won’t hurt”. You’ve got that
thought, and after you’ve thought that thought, what happens with your hand?
I bet very shortly it’s going to your mouth with whatever it is in it.
So what you think really does precede what you do and

“So what you think really does
if you want to change what you do, you must first
precede what you do and if you change how you think. This is the whole concept behind
want to change what you do, Inside Out Weight Loss – changing your thinking first
you must first change how you so that you can change your behavior. We’ve got to
start with the thinking otherwise it will be a huge
think.”
struggle.
If you say to yourself “I deserve this” as you walk past the office goodies or
consider that second or third or fifth slice of pizza, if you’re thinking “I
deserve this” – you do deserve good things and you’re going to go ahead and
eat it. If your idea of something good for you that you deserve is a treat that
puts extra calories, saturated fat, cholesterol and processed substances into
your body that your body won’t know what to do with, that’s what you’re
going to do. Let’s look at the thinking that happens first. In this chapter we
are talking specifically about naturally slender thinking.

I am wondering how did you do in the last chapter – did you keep your
hunger diary, did you write it down? Did you at least check in with your body
before and after eating to notice when you were hungry and when you
weren’t? Did your notice if you’re eating when you are hungry or when you’re
not hungry?
I tell you a secret; it is very very rare indeed for a person to be overweight
because they eat when they’re hungry. People who are overweight are not
overweight because they eat when they are truly hungry. They are
overweight because they eat when they are not truly physically hungry or
they eat past the point of being full. If you haven’t tried out the hunger diary
exercise, go back and review the chapter and start tracking your hunger
because that’s the beginning of the process.
THE NATURALLY SLENDER EATING STRATEGY
I know that you are waiting for me to start walking you through this naturally
slender eating strategy. Let me first say that this strategy is actually detailed
in the book “Heart of the Mind” by Connirae
Andreas and Steve Andreas. What they have done is
model the strategy of naturally slender people. There is a
great description in the book. I have actually met with
Connirae and had her teach me this strategy step by step.
I have enhanced it over the years through my work with
clients and the result is the process that I am about to
walk you through now.
The first step is – I’d like you to imagine a hypothetical future situation when
something makes you think about food. Maybe it’s seeing food, maybe it’s
smelling food, perhaps you look at your watch and it’s 12 o’clock and it’s time
for lunch, think of any kind of situation that makes you think about food. This
can be a situation where it’s appropriate for you to eat or a situation where
it’s inappropriate for you to eat, it really doesn’t matter.

As we go through this process I want you to allow the answers that come first
to your mind to be the answers that you think of. So later on when I ask you
to think of a food, then just allow the first thing that comes to you to be the
one that you use. Theirs is no need to censor here or think about only raw
vegetables and low calorie food – I want you to go for it!
So think of a situation that makes you think about food, and I’ll use an
example to help you out. Let’s imagine that it’s 12 o’clock and it’s time for
lunch.
The next step is – you think that it’s time for lunch and you’re going to check
in. What I want you to do is put your both of your hands on your stomach. A
lot of people are a little confused about where your stomach is. If your hands
are on your belly, below your belly button, you’re going to move them up so
that they are just below your ribcage. This is mid torso. Put your hands on
your stomach, tilt your head down slightly, drop inside and notice how your
stomach feels now, at noon, in this hypothetical situation. It’s noon, a
hypothetical situation, your hands are on your stomach, and your head is
tilted down slightly. The body posture is important as I walk you through this
because we are installing this strategy directly in your subconscious. As you
are reading this now, I am speaking to both your conscious and subconscious
minds so allow your conscious mind to be aware and as conscious as you like
while your subconscious tunes in to how you feel in your stomach. So check
in. How hungry are you? Remember that hunger scale? Rate your hunger
from 0 [fall on the floor famished]  10 [stuffed like a turkey on
Thanksgiving]. Check in – how might you be on this hypothetical future day
at noon?
Next step – start thinking about what would feel good in your stomach right
now. It’s noon, you are as hungry as you are, and then think about and listen
to your inner voice and ask this question. You know when you’re listening
really closely to something you might tilt your head slightly; you might put
your hand over your ear and take your hand away from your stomach in this
step. Tilt your head and listen very very closely.

Listen to your inner voice when you ask “what would feel good in my stomach
right now?” You will see the answer in a moment.
Straighten our your head, tilt it back slightly, look above eye level and you
are going to visualize something you would consider eating at lunch time.
There it is. You see a portion of food that you are considering eating. Maybe
it’s what’s there in front of you, maybe it’s an item from a restaurant you
know, something you tend to fix yourself from home – whatever it is, just see
it there, see that portion. Good.
This is the really important piece. I want to you to do a trial run before you
actually eat anything. Put your hands on your stomach again, checking in mid
torso, and now you’re going to imagine eating what you just saw. Get a little
bit of taste in you mouth, feel it as it goes down into your stomach and you’re
going to imagine what it would feel like feeling it in your stomach over time.
Imagine it in your stomach over an hour, two hours, and then three hours. I
want you to feel you it in your stomach for next 2-3 hours. What’s that like?
Do you like the way it feels over time? You may like the way it feels when it
lands in your mouth and on your taste buds but what I am asking is “How
does it feel in your body over time?” Let’s face it. The amount of time that
you’re eating this isn’t very long. I think I read something recently where it
said that the average American spends 7 minutes eating dinner. So it’s not in
your mouth for very long but it is in your body for a long, long time. So just
think about what it feels like. When you go through this process imagining
what you would like for dinner, I want you to imagine what it would be like to
sleep with this in your stomach and how you’ll feel waking up in the morning
having eaten this the night before. This food will stay with you.
That reminds me of an interesting point. A lot of people say “I’m not

interested in breakfast, I’m never hungry at breakfast time” or “I hate
breakfast”. Whenever someone says that to me I want to find out what they
do for dinner. If they are overeating at dinner no wonder they’re not hungry
at breakfast time. They’re still full from dinner. If you want to get yourself to
eat breakfast then consider eating a lighter dinner.

Let’s get back to the strategy. How does this food that you’ve just seen make
you feel over time? This is the crux of the naturally slender eating strategy –
over time. Most of us have overly discounted how foods
“How does this food that you’ve make us feel over time. I want you to really amp that
up and expand until it gets to that place when you
just seen make you feel over
realize that it dwarfs the immediate feeling. It is really
time? This is the crux of the all about how it makes you feel over the next several
naturally slender eating strategy hours. Does it give you energy throughout the
– over time.” afternoon? Do you feel light, energized and ready to go?
Do you feel satisfied? Do you feel like you have the
nutrients and the energy to keep you going? Check in and find out. And when
you’ve done that ask yourself this question “Do I like it, do I like the way this
makes me feel?” If the answer is “Not really” then maybe you are a little
surprised by that because you always eat the Super Grande Burrito at
lunchtime. You now realize that you always have indigestion in the afternoon
or want to go for a nap. So you think “OK” and then consider another option.
Sometimes that other option will be to have nothing at all. What would that
be like if you ate nothing at all? Not so good perhaps if you’re hungry but if
you’re not hungry, maybe nothing is right for you. Maybe you would rather go
and sit outside for a few minutes, take some deep breaths, have a cup of
herbal tea, take a break, or pretend you’re a smoker and take the time
anyway.
Do you like it or not? If you don’t like it, if you’d like to consider another
option, now is the time to do that. If you’ve tried out the Super Grande
Burrito now it’s time to imagine eating the salad, the soup or something else
that you really like. Go through this process of trying out and trying on for
size these different options on this occasion. Which one of these options
makes you feel the best over time? Take your time here and check it out.
What makes you feel the best over time?

You might come to that conclusion that the Burrito didn’t work so well, the
salad was a lot better but maybe not all that dressing, or soup really sits well
with you and makes you feel light and energetic in the afternoon. What
makes you feel the best over time? When you’ve found that thing then you
know that you have just chosen to maximize your pleasure over time. What
you have chosen when you choose the food that makes you feel best over
time is maximum pleasure over time. You have chosen the most pleasure for
the most time.
Does that sound like hard work? I don’t think so. We’re talking about going
straight into hedonism here. We’re talking about maximizing the good feelings.
Who knew that being naturally slender involved maximizing the good feelings?
This is a secret that nobody seems to know. I am here to tell you the good
new that you get to choose that thing that makes you feel the best. This is a
great revelation. Dieting isn’t about deprivation. Being naturally slender is not
about deprivation otherwise how would all those people around the world that
are naturally slender year to year and don’t think a thing of it do it? Nobody
has that willpower, it’s too much. The naturally slender way, the easy way, is
to say “Hey, what’s going to make me feel the best over time?” That’s what I
want. I want the food that is going to sit just right for me. That’s how you do
it.
I want you to think about all those situations when you think about food. For
all of those situations you go through these steps. Notice how hungry you are
when you think about food. Is it the smell, is it the sight of food, the time on
the clock or is it hunger? You check in. You put your hands on your stomach,
you tilt your head down slightly, and you check in and ask “How hungry am I
right now?” Then ask yourself “What would feel good in my stomach right
now?” Even if you’re not hungry you might want to give it a trial run. You see
something attractive, it’s that time on the clock that says it’s time to eat or
you feel hungry and you think “OK, let me check in”. You put your hands on
your stomach, tilt your head down, and check in to see how hungry you are
on a scale of 0  10. Am I a 0, 1, or a 2? How hungry am I?

Then you ask “What’s going to make me feel good over time? What would I
like to eat right now?” You look up and see a portion of something you are
thinking about eating. This is a mental image that you’re visualizing. Once
you see that you put your hands on your stomach and you check in. You
imagine eating it and feeling it in your stomach and in your body over time.
How does it feel in your stomach over 1, 2, and 3 hours? Do you like the way
that it makes you feel? Is this a good feeling? If not, imagine something else.
A double Super Grande Burrito with extra guacamole and sour cream is not
working for me, let me try something else. You think about the salad, you
think about the soup, or you think about the sandwich – whatever it is. You
keep experimenting and you keep trying these things on for size until you find
something that’s just right.
Maybe you feel better waiting. Maybe it’s a situation where you think “You
know what, I’d rather be really hungry for dinner because then I’ll really
enjoy it. I’d rather save my appetite up because then I’m going to really
enjoy this special restaurant we’re going to or this special meal that I’m going
to have.” That’s fine too because you get to experiment in your mind with all
of these foods to find out what is going to maximize your good feelings over
time. That’s how you are naturally slender. This is something that is very
intuitive to us. Believe it or not, I bet you did this way back before you were
overweight if you can remember back that far.
While you are learning the naturally slender eating strategy right now and
going through the process again and again, you’re going to make some
mistakes. You’re going to get it wrong. You’re going to screw up. How do I
know that you will overeat again? Because even naturally slender people
overeat from time to time. They overeat maybe because they eat something
they haven’t eaten before, they go to a restaurant they’ve never been to, or
they go to someone’s home and the food is richer than they expect. They eat
it, it’s heavier than they thought and they feel like they’ve overeaten.
Sometimes they will overeat because they’ll make a conscious decision to.

I love the book French Women Don’t Get Fat by Mireille
Guiliano where she tells how if she knows she is going to
have a particularly fabulous meal; she will eat less before
or after. She’s doing the naturally slender eating strategy.
She is imagining in her mind what it would be like and
choosing what will make her feel the best over time.
You are going to think about what is going to make you

feel best over time and sometimes you’re going to screw
up. Get used to it because it’s going to happen. The only
way we learn, in cases like this, is by doing and by
screwing up. That’s how babies learn to walk. They get up
and they fall on their bottoms 1000 times before they
take that first step. That’s how you are going to learn to be naturally slender.
If you overeat, no worries, because there is a natural self correcting
mechanism built in to the naturally slender eating strategy.
If you’ve overeaten at lunch time, how are you going to be self correcting
when you get to dinner? What happens the next time that check in and put
your hands on your stomach? Are you going to be as hungry as you would
otherwise be if you hadn’t overeaten? Or are you going to feel kind of full
because you ate too much at lunch? You are going to be kind of full. When
you think about what’s going to make you feel best over time now is going to
be a very different answer than it would be had you eaten differently before.
The self correcting mechanism is built in to this strategy.

CHAPTER 9
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT PART I
In this chapter we will learn about a guiding concept in my work that will
allow you to truly sustain the positive behavior changes that you’re making
for the long run. Few programs talk about the concept that we will be
discussing today. What will really get you through for the long haul? Not just
surviving, but thriving.
Set your intention for this chapter. Is to soak in this information like a sponge,
or to have your diet and weight loss experience be easy and enjoyable? –
What a concept that is! Go ahead and set it now. My intention in this chapter
is to enable you to break through what’s been holding you back and move
firmly into living your dream.
So far on Inside Out Weight Loss we’ve learned about creating a powerful
motivation cocktail, the power of positive intent and meta-outcomes. We
learned how to up our energy levels by resolving internal conflicts and
creating inner alignment. So often we think we’re exhausted or tired just
because we’ve been drinking too much caffeine or not care of ourselves and
we forget to notice that it’s really the internal conflicts that sap our energy. In
earlier chapters we learned how to resolve those conflicts. We spent a chapter
going over the nuts and bolts of what foods in your diet will make your
journey easier. I don’t spend a whole lot of time talking about food because
it’s really only about 10% of what makes you successful on your journey but
there are some foods that will make your journey easier.
In the last two chapters we learned about the naturally slender and what their
secrets are to staying slim no matter what life throws at them. We learned
the truth about high and low metabolisms and we also learned that it isn’t
necessarily running a marathon that’s going to slim you down.

In the last chapter we walked through the naturally slender eating strategy
designed by Connirae Andreas detailed in the book Heart of the Mind. We
trained our minds to become relentless pleasure seekers so that we can
become naturally slender.
In this chapter let’s talk about a guiding principal in my work. It’s a principal
originally promoted by Dr W. Edwards Deming in his Total Quality
Management (TQM) system that he taught the Japanese back in the 1950s.
TQM has everything to do with why Toyota is known for
“What could building Toyotas
its quality cars. What could building Toyotas possibly
possibly have to do with have to do with becoming naturally slender? An awful
becoming naturally slender? An lot because what the Japanese learned is a concept
awful lot because what the called Kaizen or continuous improvement.
Japanese learned is a concept

Continuous improvement – how could we apply that to
called Kaizen or continuous
life behavior change? The way that lasting behavior
improvement.” change works is not perhaps what you think. Let’s look
at the pattern that many of us have had so many times.
The pattern that has gotten you into this cycle that you haven’t been able to
break until now. What does it look like?
WILLPOWER WEIGHT LOSS
You’re chatting to some colleagues at work or some friends and you notice
that someone has lost a lot of weight. “What did you do to lose all that weight
– you look great!” They will tell you “I went on the North Beach Diet and it
has you eating carrots for breakfast, mashed potatoes for lunch and
lemonade for dinner. The weight just melted off me, I wasn’t hungry at all
and it was fantastic.” You rush out to the bookstore and buy the North Beach
Diet and stock up on mashed potatoes for a century. Everything is great. You
follow this diet for days, maybe a week, and the pounds just melt off you. It
feels great.
You love mashed potatoes but you get a little bit tired of them by day 5 or 6
and you’ve really had enough mashed potatoes.

And then you’re at the office birthday party and there’s a big chocolate cake
just calling your name, you’re at a meeting and there is a big plate of cookies
right in front of you, you go to a party, a friends house for dinner, or the
other thousands of food opportunities that occur in our lives and you think
“Just this once I’ll have a little bit”. It tastes so good because quite frankly
you can only eat so many carrots, mashed potatoes and lemonade.
What happens? You have a little bit, then a little bit more and before you
know it you say to yourself “I’ve blown it. I’ll never be successful. I’ll start
tomorrow and eat this just for tonight”. Before you know it, those 5 pounds
that you lost in the blink of an eye eating the crazy diet are back and they’ve
brought a few of their friends with them. When those pounds come back, they
don’t like to come back alone, they like to bring their friends.
This is your pattern. I call it the willpower weight loss pattern. There is a
burst of enthusiasm that gets you on some crazy program. If you have a
testimonial from someone you’ll do it, right? If it
“You have an incredible amount
worked for them, it’s got to work for me. We can do
of willpower. The reason that just about anything. Congratulations, you have an
you’re not naturally slender incredible amount of willpower. The reason that you’re
not naturally slender already is not for lack of willpower,
already now is not for lack of
but because of an excess of willpower. Because you
willpower, but because of an
have so much willpower, you rely on it, and you know
excess of willpower.” that you can get yourself to do just about anything for
a few days in that initial burst of enthusiasm. What
happens? The willpower runs out and you get tired. In the 12 Step Program
they used to call it white knuckling – really willpowering your way through it.
What I want you to do is throw out your willpower. It’s not serving you, in
fact, it’s distracting you. Your over active willpower is the cause of the
challenges that you’ve had, rather than the solution. Let’s talk about what we
can do instead of having that willpower that inevitably leads us to the let
down and disappointment that perpetuates the lose-regain-lose-regain cycle
that we’re all so familiar with. What is the alternative, what can we do instead?

KAIZEN – CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Let’s look at this concept of Kaizen, continuous improvement, borrowed from

the Japanese. The aim of Kaizen is to create a state of continuous
improvement, to make that your default, so that everything that happens
becomes an opportunity for small incremental improvement. Notice that I said
small incremental improvement. We’re not talking about breakthroughs here.
Breakthroughs are wonderful and exciting but they don’t happen every day.
You can’t rely or count on breakthroughs or sudden epiphanies to really take
you through the day to day of being a naturally slender eater. You need an
alternative. We must have a way of working with the day to day. There are so
many situations in life.
I went to an addictions treatment workshop about a year ago, and one of the
fascinating things that the workshop leader described was that in his
experience treating those addicted to hard core drugs like cocaine, crack and
heroin, it was actually easier to recover from that sort of addiction than to
recover from an alcohol addiction. He explained that the reason it was easier
is that once you leave that environment of being a hardcore street drug user,
you no longer are subjected to the cues everywhere you go like you are with
alcohol and food. Once you are no longer a hardcore street drug user you are
not running into drug dealers every where you go on the street. You can
effectively leave that universe for the most part and change your life. With
something like food, you can’t do that. You’re going to have food cues at work,
at home, and socially with your friends, they’re everywhere. Having an
epiphany or going to an intensive treatment program is fine if you don’t have
to go right back into that environment, but if you do, you need another option.
You need Kaizen – continuous improvement.
Kaizen means that you are mining your everyday experiences for areas where
you can become just a little bit better and areas where you can handle the
situation just a little bit better next time. What that means is that when you
overeat, you don’t say to yourself “Oh I blew it, oh I might as well go for it
now, I’ll just start tomorrow” because tomorrow never comes.

The alternative is to use those experiences as springboards for improvement.
You’re going to be mining all of those experiences and using them to help you
become even more successful. It is impossible to make a mistake that you
can’t learn from. All of your experiences, screw ups, and falling flat on your
face is now going to help you by creating a learning mind. Your mind is
continuously learning from its experiences and it doesn’t have to be hard
work. It is actually very easy.
You go to a party, you overeat, and you are feeling really bad about yourself
as a result of it. You drink too much, you say things you wish you hadn’t said,
and you’re thinking “Yuk that was so bad”. What is it that we usually do? We
think to ourselves “Oh God I blew it, that was so bad, I’ll never change”. Now
you can change because I want you to learn the learning mind technique –
the re-do.
THE RE-DO
Let me tell you a story about the golfer who was popular before Tiger Woods
– Jack Nicklaus. Jack Nicklaus was an extraordinary golfer and won
tournament after tournament. He was interviewed and asked “How do you do
it Jack? You are so perfect; do you ever make a mistake?” He answered “Well
of course I make mistakes. I make them all the time. But what I do when I
make a mistake is something that a lot of people don’t do.”
So many of us make a mistake, say we put our foot in our mouths, and we go
over that mistake again and again in our minds cringing each time. I call it
the foot in your mouth cringe syndrome “Oh I can’t believe I did that”. We do
the same thing when we overeat. We say “Oh I can’t believe I did that, how
horrible”. What we are actually doing when we cringe over it, is we are
rehearsing and reinforcing the negative behavior in our subconscious minds.
We are rehearsing an emotionally charged behavior in our subconscious
minds which makes it stick.

What Jack Nicklaus said was “What I do, is when I hit a shot and it doesn’t go
where I want it to go, I imagine hitting that shot again in such a way that it
goes just right. I hit the sweet spot and I see the ball in my mind’s eye going
exactly where I want it to go. I do this every time.” That was one of his
secrets to becoming a great champion golfer. We can use that same secret
with a technique I call the re-do.
Think of the last time that you overdid it, the last time that you overate. I
want you to see yourself behaving the way that you would like to behave in
your mind’s eye. An important thing to know when you do this is that you
want to feel the way that you would like to feel. Ask yourself this question
“What quality and feeling state would I like to have in that situation so that I
do a better job next time?” Is it calm, confidence, centeredness, balance or
something else?
While you come up with the answer I’ll tell you another story. About 2 years
ago I was on vacation with my family and another family in Central America. I
had been sick with a traveling illness and I was just recovering when we
decided to go squeeze in a trip to a waterfall in the morning before lunch. By
the time that we got to lunch in this tiny little town in Central America I was
famished. It must have been 2.30pm. We went to the only restaurant around,
we sat down with all the kids in tow and we ordered our food. It took about
an hour for the first food to arrive which was the kid’s food. We could not get
help from the staff, we couldn’t get them to bring us an extra plate to share
the food between the kids, and we just couldn’t get anything out of them. My
blood sugar is so low at this point because not only have I barely eaten that
day, I have barely eaten in days and I really need to eat something.
My food finally comes last, and it’s wrong. I’ve ordered a baked potato (which
I know was a silly idea for Central America as potatoes are not their specialty
but I wanted something bland) and the potato isn’t even cooked all the way
through – it’s raw in the middle. I flipped out. I got up and marched into the
kitchen, I got an extra plate, I complained loudly to my family and friends, I
was a grumpy you-know-what and it was not me at my best moment.

Finally, after I had salvaged any available calories from that meal and
recovered my wits, I went about apologizing to my family and friends. I
realized that this was really a vestige of the old me – the me that used to
freak out about food. This was a context that I hadn’t yet healed. There are
very few of those left for me but this was one of them. I thought “OK, that
was pretty ugly. How would I like to be next time?” I thought “I’d like to
notice and remember that hunger is just a feeling.
I’d like to realize that starvation really isn’t at my doorstep. I could probably
go a long period of time before I would have any sort of health consequences
so we are talking about a feeling”.
That helped me a lot. Hunger is just a physical sensation. It doesn’t have to

be a high drama moment in my life and my family’s life. The quality I’d like to
have is to be calm, a little bit detached and focused on resting and chatting
with the people around me. Then I ran a mental movie (the Jack Nicklaus
technique) in my mind of a Renée behaving in this calm way. I saw her going
to the table, she’s tired, she’s realizing that it’s going to be a long wait and so
she relaxes and becomes present. I ran that movie in my mind a few times
and didn’t think much more about it.
A few months later I had a very similar situation, not in Central America but
back here in beautiful San Francisco, when we met someone for dinner. The
dinner that was supposed to happen at 6.15pm didn’t actually get served until
after 9pm. It was a situation that was completely out of my control and would
have activated those same triggers. Because I had run this mental rehearsal
and I had re-done the situation before in my mind, I now had a new pattern
that I could use in this situation. I found myself being much calmer and
present in this situation even though my food did seem to be the very last
food to arrive at the table, even though my blood sugar was really low and I
was really starving. I ended up enjoying myself at the meal because I
recognized that it was just a feeling and in the end I really would be OK.
That’s the power of the re-do and because of that simple mental technique I
was able to heal a context or a trigger situation that I hadn’t yet healed.

How do you integrate this continuous improvement concept into your life –
the Kaizen of weight loss? The way you are going to do it is each night before
you go to sleep you’re going to run through your day and you’re going to
think “Is there any situation where I would like to do better next time?”
This is not the woulda, shoulda, coulda, aren’t I a bozo?
“Each night before you go to This is instead a second chance. It’s the Groundhog
sleep you’re going to run Day technique from that Bill Murray movie where the
through your day and you’re same day repeats again and again until he gets it right.
This is what you get to do and you get to do it any time
going to think “Is there any
you want.
situation where I would like to
do better next time?” This is not I encourage you to find a regular time to do it like that
the woulda, shoulda, coulda, time at the very end of the day. You think “There were
those donuts at work, I ate 5 of them and I wish I had
aren’t I a bozo? This is instead a
eaten a bite of one or chosen the carrot sticks instead”
second chance. You get to do it
or whatever it is you wish you had done. Think first
any time you want.” what is the quality or feeling state I’d like to have and
then imagine yourself having that quality or feeling
state and now behaving differently. Go ahead and adjust this movie until you
get it just right, the way that you like it, and run that movie. If you like, you
can break state which means see a blank screen, clear your mind for a
moment and run it again. Then clear you mind with a blank screen and run it
again. You can do this several times but at least do it once.
I’d like you to do one of these, no more, each day. If you don’t have anything
in the day to re-do then congratulations that’s wonderful, but otherwise go
ahead and do your one re-do. I don’t want your evening to be about re-doing
every moment and every breath you take so limit it to one and do a re-do
each night. If you were to re-do one situation like this every night for a month,
after a month you’d have 30 or 31 done. Wouldn’t that be great? It doesn’t
mean that you are going to get 31 situations exactly right after a month, but
it does mean that you will be better off than where you were a month ago.

It’s a beautiful thing how your improvement can compound because that is
the secret of Kaizen – continuous, compounding improvement by doing these
re-do techniques. Experiment with a re-do and you will be surprised and
delighted by the results. Set your expectations low. All we want to do is be a
little bit better than the time before or learn from the situation. If you do
nothing more than learn from the situation about what doesn’t work, you’re
ahead of the game.

CHAPTER 10
CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT PART II
In this chapter we’ll learn more about continuous improvement or the

Japanese concept of Kaizen. Set your intention for this chapter, drop inside
for a moment and become present with you. Realize that this is time you are
taking for you and open yourself up to healing and breakthrough. You’ve
found this book for a reason. Know that you’re in the right place and there’s
something here for you. You may have a lot of other commitments, you may
have children, and you may always be giving – now it’s time to take time for
you.
Set your intention, whatever it is – learning, breakthrough, or a break from

your day to day responsibilities. My intent in this chapter, as in all chapters, is
to enable you to breakthrough what’s been holding you back and move firmly
into living your dream.
So many of my clients tell me as we go through the process months after

we’ve started “Oh my goodness Renée, I’ve realize that I’ve become that
person that I dreamed of being back when we first met”. I can’t wait for that
to happen to you. For you to become that person you dreamed of back at the
beginning of this book, that wonderful you. Notice how you are already
becoming that person. Feel gratitude and thanks. If you haven’t come as far
as you would like to by now, no worries, the concept is the concept of Kaizen,
continuous improvement. We mine from every experience that we have,
learning and improvement. In that way, you can never fail.
So far on Inside Out Weight Loss, we’ve really set the groundwork for your
success. We learned about towards and away from motivation – motivation
that will take you not just to the initial enthusiasm phase, but for the long run.

You may want to review your motivators from the beginning of the book –
think about them again because it is time to renew your motivation.
We have also learned how to resolve internal conflict, how to identify and
resolve whatever it is that has been holding us back by understanding the gift
of our own resistance. If we’re in inner conflict we may be feeling run down,
depleted, or experiencing low energy. By understanding and acknowledging
the gift of our unwanted behavior or what we thought was an unwanted part
of ourselves, we can take advantage of that situation and turn it around into
one of our greatest strengths.
We spent a chapter going over the nuts and bolts of what foods you want to
have in your diet, the foods that will simply make your journey easier. I am
not talking about shoulds and shouldn’ts; I’m talking about what’s going to
bring energy to your body and fullness to your life. I’m talking about foods
that will make your life easier so why wouldn’t you choose that? I know
because crazy as I am, I actually spent sixteen years without eating any
sugar. I know it is hard to believe that any human being can do that,
especially one whose favorite lunch in college was an ice-cream cone with
chocolate covered peanuts (that was my idea of protein!). I was a sugar
addict and I spent sixteen years without sugar because my philosophy
borrowed from Twelve Steps was that sugar makes me out of control so my
life is easier without it. That was how I was able to do it. It didn’t feel like an
effort. Think about foods that you want to eat because they make your life
easier and revisit the chapter that talks about what food will do that for you.
We learned about the naturally slender, those people that used to drive us
nuts because it is so easy for them no matter what they do. Maybe they have
the golden metabolism or were blessed at birth? We uncovered some of those
myths. We talked about how marathons, ironman triathlons and massive
endurance events can affect our metabolism and our weight.
We walked through the naturally slender eating strategy to train our minds to
become relentless pleasure seekers so that we can become naturally slender.

Inside Out Weight Loss is about enjoying ease and effortlessness in your
journey. It’s not about deprivation because you know deep inside, that when
you overeat and when you eat junk food, you are really depriving yourself of
health, of looking good in those cute clothes in your closet or in the window of
the shop that you love, and of feeling really good in your body. That’s what
you are depriving yourself of. Wake up to that notion – that real deprivation is
what you do when you don’t treat yourself like a queen or a king and give
yourself the very best.
In the last chapter we talked about the Japanese concept of Kaizen –

continuous improvement – and how it allows us to harvest our day to day
screw ups to become better and better. We borrowed a technique from
champion golfer Jack Nicklaus that I call the re-do. We
“Instead of going straight to the create a learning mind. Have you tired the re-do yet?
candy bowl yourself imagine How is it working out for you? It’s fun, especially if you
allow yourself to play with it a bit.
doing what you wish you had
the chutzpah to do or you could
What do I mean by playing? See yourself telling your
do without fear of boss where to go instead of going straight to the candy
consequences. Now imagine the bowl yourself imagine doing what you wish you had the
chutzpah to do or you could do without fear of
quality that you’d like to have
consequences. Once you’ve got that out of your system,
that will make it easy for you to
once you’ve had fun imagining telling him where to go
be the way you want to be.” or whatever it is you really wanted to do for the short
term pleasure of it, imagine the quality that you’d like
to have that will make it easy for you to be the way you want to be. Imagine
the quality that you’d like to have that will make it easy for you to behave the
way that you want to behave. These qualities are often something like calm,
balanced, compassionate, forgiving, centered, or strong.
I gave the example in the last chapter of that time when I was in Central
America and freaked out because my food didn’t arrive on time. It was the
ugly Renée syndrome. I used the re-do technique to heal that context. I am
really interested to know how these re-dos are working for you.

THE LEARNING MIND
It is not about getting it perfectly right once or even the next time because
it’s not going to happen. All we want, our only goal is to learn from previous
experiences. We want to be in a state of a learning mind where we are
grateful for the experiences that we have. We want to harvest our day to day
experiences to become springboards for positive change. If we do just that, it
will be amazing how far we can come in a very short period of time even
though it only appears that we make small incremental improvements. This is
the process by which Japanese car quality dramatically exceeded the quality
of cars coming out of Detroit because the Japanese had been systematically
improving over the years.
I want to give you another example. I want you to think about a baby. I don’t
know if you’ve ever seen a baby learning to walk or not so let me explain to
you how it happens. When a baby learns to walk they watch other people
walking around and they think it’s pretty cool. Before you know it they are
pulling themselves up on the coffee table. They pull themselves up and they
don’t get too far do they? They pull themselves up and plop right back down
on their wet or poopy diaper. Do they say “Oh no, I’ve blown it, I’ll never
learn to walk because I must be a defective baby”? No. They pull themselves
back up again plop right back down again and again and again and again.
Until finally after 10, 20, 30 or more attempts they get to the top of the
coffee table and they hold on there in that wobbly, adorable baby kind of way.
They wobble away while they are trying out their new round little feet that
have never been walked on before and plop – down they go again. Do they
despair “I’ve blown it. I’ll start again tomorrow I promise, but for now I’m just
going to wallow in my own self pity”. No. They don’t do that. They pull
themselves right back up again because it was cool wobbling up there and
they say “I want to do that again”. Pretty soon after a couple of hundred
more attempts maybe they can let go from the coffee table and they can
stand there wobbling back and forth before they go plop right back on that
diaper. Again up they go, undeterred, and right back down again and again
and again.
Before you know it they are taking their first tentative steps on the coffee
table and fall down many, many times again. Finally they can put 2 and 3
steps together and before you know it, they’re running all over the house and
it’s time to childproof quick! Can you tell that I’ve been there? Yes.
That’s the way that you learned to walk, that’s the way that I learned to walk,
that is the way that all of us learned an incredibly complex skill that has taken
researchers huge numbers of hours, dollars and experiments to even attempt
to duplicate it. The last update I saw they still couldn’t make robots walk like
a human being can. Yet we do it easily and effortless
“Ask any creative person or without even thinking about it. That is the nature of the
perhaps you are creative learning process.
yourself and you’ve been

Ask any artist, ask any creative person or perhaps you
through a creative process – do
are creative yourself and you’ve been through a
we create things by getting
creative process – do we create things by getting
discouraged every time we get it discouraged every time we get it wrong? No, in fact the
wrong? No, in fact the most most creative people will build their mistakes and
distractions into the creative process. You may
creative people will build their
remember the Disney strategy for creating where we
mistakes and distractions into
dream undeterred by the critic. We want you to put
the creative process.” that critic aside, the one that says “You didn’t get it
perfect today so you’ll never get it right”. We want to
put that critic aside and say “Thank you very much. Wait for a moment,
please; there will be a time and a place for you. When that time and place
comes you will be incredibly valuable, but I don’t want to waste your input. I
want to save if for when it’s most necessary, thank you very much.”
Let’s go about learning from our day to day experiences – the boring day to
day office party, hanging out with the kids, the social plans experiences. I
want you to do some re-dos so that you go over in your mind the way that
you would rather be on a daily basis.

NO SUCH THING AS FAILURE, ONLY FEEDBACK
I want you to think about the idea that there is no such thing as failure only
feedback. This is a guiding principal from Neural Linguistic Programming
which is one of the things that is the basis and the inspiration of my work.
Think about the idea that there is no such thing as failure only feedback.
What I’ve noticed with people who struggle with their weight is that we are
inordinately self critical. We are always finding fault with ourselves, not quite
good enough and striving to be better. Why do we criticize ourselves so much?
What is the positive intent of it? Often the intent is to make ourselves better.
If we say “No, I’m not good enough or no, that is not acceptable” then the
hope is that we will be better and improve. It doesn’t always work out that
way. Quite the opposite is true. We easily find ourselves in a viscous cycle
where we feel bad because we haven’t been good enough and haven’t met
our standards. When we feel bad we really, really want to feel good right
away and what will help us to that? Food makes us feel better. We eat and
because we eat we then feel bad and so we want to eat again. We get caught
in this cycle of over eating.
On the other hand, if we recognize that there is no such as failure only

feedback, then all of a sudden these experiences become learning
opportunities. This realization is the thing that will move you forward. This will
break that cycle that has been holding you back and keeping you stuck like a
hamster in a hamster wheel. The learning mind is the willingness, the
conviction, and the understanding that it is learning from our experiences that
makes us better. The gift of our mistakes is our ability to learn from them and
this is what will guide us on our way. This gift will allow us to evolve, to
improve as human beings and to create happiness. I don’t care how badly you
screwed up. In fact, the more you screwed up the better, because it is a
richer learning opportunity.
There is no such thing as failure, only feedback into the system that tells you
how to navigate. An airplane that flies from San Francisco to New York is
never on course, did you know that? An airplane that flies from San Francisco
to New York never flies in a single straight line because it cannot.

What the navigation system does is continuously make adjustments and
continuously make corrections. This leads me to the intriguing topic that we
will be covering in the next chapter – the concept of self correcting.

CHAPTER 11
SELF CORRECTING PART I
Set your intention for this chapter by dropping inside for a moment and
becoming present with you.
It is no accident that you are reading this book. You’re reading this book for a
reason. There is something for you here, something important. Realize that
this is time for you and open yourself up to healing and a breakthrough. You
have found this book for a reason. Know that you are in the right place and
there is something important for you to learn and grow from here.
My intent with this book is to enable you to break through what’s been
holding you back and to move firmly into living your dream. I know that it’s
possible; I know that you deserve it and I know that you can.
So far on Inside Out Weight Loss, we’ve learned about creating a powerful
motivation cocktail, the power of positive intent and meta-outcomes. We’ve
learned how to up our energy levels by resolving internal conflict and creating
inner alignment. We even spent a chapter going over what foods in your diet
will make your journey easier. Notice that there are no good or bad foods on
the Inside Out Weight Loss program, just foods that make it easier or harder
for you to be naturally slender. We’ve also learned what metabolism matching
is, and why high and low metabolisms don’t really matter very much. We
walked through the naturally slender eating strategy and trained our minds to
become relentless pleasure seekers, so that we can become naturally slender.
We also discussed the concept of Kaizen, or continuous improvement, to set

the frame for change. Change does happen in breakthroughs, yet we can’t
have breakthroughs all the time. It would be too much for us to process.

So instead we focus on making continuous small incremental improvements
that in and of themselves seem like very small and achievable steps, yet over
time they add up to breakthroughs, to a lifetime of being naturally slender.
Continuous improvement is all about turning your mind into the learning mind
that it was born to be and allowing yourself to learn from every experience
that you have. In this chapter we’ll be discussing a
“In this chapter I’ll be concept so important to lasting change, that this could
introducing a concept that is so very well be the single thing that makes the difference
important to weight loss and and allows you to begin living your dreams right now.
The concept is that of self-correcting.
keeping it off that it just might
be the one difference that makes I want to share a story with you. A client of mine, I’ll
the difference for you.” call her Sally although that’s not her real name, had
been in a binge pattern for 39 years, her entire adult
life. She’d gone from binge to binge to binge, always unhappy with her weight,
always feeling too big, and too fat. She’d been to every weight loss program
you can think of. She’d even been to Stamford Eating Disorders Clinic, as I
recall and yet nothing had allowed her to escape this binge/starve pattern
that she’d established for so many years. Her pattern was this – she would
wake up in the morning and eat a tiny bird breakfast. By 11 am of course
she’d be starving, and because she didn’t keep any binge foods or junk food
around, she’d get in her car and drive to the store to buy food and binge on it.
By the evening she wouldn’t be hungry for dinner, so her husband would eat
alone, while she starved herself until the next morning when she resolved to
start afresh. She resolved anew every day tirelessly and relentlessly to make
everything new and good from now on.
She would have her tiny bird breakfast. Then, of course, by 11 o’clock she’d
be famished again. And so it went, year after year after year. She declined
many social obligations because of this, and she hated the thought of
traveling. She even had medical complications that resulted from her poor
eating habits and had to take many medications on a daily basis. She came to
a program that I ran and the first thing we did was a compulsion blowout on
some small candies that she had become addicted to. She found that she
never wanted to eat those candies again.

She couldn’t believe it because she’d been addicted to these candies for a
long, long time, for years. So she decided that she
would work with me one on one.
“She decided that she would
work with me one on one. We
We had the first session and she had tremendous
had the first session and she had results from that session and came back in and said,
tremendous results from that “This is fantastic Renée. I’ve been binge free since I
session and came back in and came in before and I can’t believe it. But, you know,
I’ve tried so many things and I’ve had this problem for
said “This is fantastic, Renée,
so long, how do I know that this is going to last?” And I
I’ve been binge free since I said, “Well, that’s a really good question. What possible
came in before and I can’t things could throw you off? What possible things could
believe it. But you know I’ve throw you out of balance?”
tried so many things and I’ve

We talked about it for a while, and we ended up with
had this problem for so long,
about four different categories of things that could
how do I know that this is going really throw her off – big banquet meals with her
to last?” husband, traveling, and the goodies at work. I can’t
remember what the others were, but I remember that
there were four specific types of situation. In fact, if you think about your own
triggers, you’ll probably determine that they are similar types of triggers that
occur again and again and again. It’s not that you have thousands of triggers,
it’s that you have several types of triggers that occur again and again in your
life, and this was certainly the case for Sally. We addressed each type of
trigger until we got to a place where she said, “You know, I can handle that.
That’s easy. I can handle that one.” We did this for all of the types of triggers
until we had finished several sessions later. She never really had a problem
again because she had learned how to self-correct before things got out of
hand.
I’d like to share with you an email that Sally sent me about six months ago.
“I just want to tell you that I’m at my two year anniversary. I’ve been
binge free for two years now. It’s a miracle for me. I’m doing very well
with food in lots of situations, such as home alone, in the car, at
parties, traveling to Italy, to China, going to pizza parlors, etc.

I wouldn’t say that I’m completely normal about food, but I’m enjoying
my good food, and I’m no longer compelled to eat candy, cookies, and
crackers. It’s more normal than I have ever been before, and it’s a
great relief after all these years. I’ve also been off anti-depressant
medication for many months now, and I was on some type for twenty
years.”
So what does Sally’s story demonstrate to us? It demonstrates the power of

self-correcting. Sally learned how to bring herself back into balance in the
types of situations that could throw her off.
I want you to think about that for yourself. What are the types of situations
that could possibly throw me off? What are my trigger situations? I think
you’ll find that there are categories that occur again and again. The most
common ones I hear from clients are being home alone at night and
socializing with friends, especially after a drink or two, when somehow the
inhibitions go down and restraint goes out the window. What are the
situations for you that always seem to throw you for a loop? Think about
those. I encourage you to write them down on the following page.

 What are the types of situations that trigger me to overeat?
 What are the types of situations that throw me out of balance?
If categories naturally occur, fantastic, if not, not to worry, that’s not

essential.

The next step, as it was for Sally, is to go through those types of situations
until you feel absolutely confident that you can handle each one easily and
you’ve got lots of ways to deal with each of them. Don’t worry if it takes you
a few iterations to master each type of situation, just remember Kaizen –
continuous improvement.
You’re going to run that mental movie in your mind until you get it just right.
If in reality it doesn’t come out just right the first time, that’s alright – you
can make it even better the next time. Remember that these situations
reoccur for you again and again and again so you’re going to have lots of
practice opportunities. You’re in a state of learning mind, where each
overeating episode that you have, each screw-up that you have, is simply an
opportunity to learn and a pointer to a situation or a trigger that hasn’t yet
been resolved for you.
I’d like to talk for a moment about the airplanes that I mentioned at the end
of the last chapter. I told you that an airplane that flies from San Francisco to
New York never actually flies in a straight line. The entire time that it’s in the
air it’s going back and forth and back and forth correcting based on how much
it’s been thrown off course by the winds and weather conditions. That’s what
the automatic pilot system and the live pilot does. Their job is to correct the
course of the plane on an ongoing basis. The more frequently that they
correct, the smaller each correction is, the more efficient the flight is, the
faster that it gets to its destination.
It’s the same way for weight loss and becoming naturally slender because, as
we’ve talked about before, you know that you are not going to be perfect. If
you were perfect you wouldn’t be human, you wouldn’t be alive because
everything that’s alive changes and grows all the time constantly learning,
changing and growing. So forget about perfection; it ain’t going to happen!
What is going to happen is that you will make mistakes. You will have
learning experiences. I know that it may be sounding like a politically correct
thing to say, the kind of euphemism that I might use in a preschool, and yet
it’s true. Every situation is a learning opportunity for you.

I want you to begin to think about the ways that you can bring yourself back
into balance. Say you overeat a little bit. How are you going to bring yourself
back into balance? In the book French Women Don’t Get Fat the author says
she eats something like three hundred meals a year in fancy restaurants,
drinking fabulous wine and champagne and eating gourmet food. So how
does she do it? How does she maintain her slim figure? Her secret is simply
that she self-corrects even though she doesn’t call it that. What she says is
that if she is going to an especially wonderful meal where she knows she’s
going to want to eat a little extra, she’ll either eats less before hand or eats a
little lighter afterwards. In other words, she’ll correct for it. A lot of other
times she’ll choose not to have to correct for it and eat moderately in the
meals, sampling and savoring each bite. Does this begin to remind you of the
naturally slender eating strategy?
Here’s a quick quiz: How does the naturally slender eating strategy build in
self-correcting? How is it built into the process? Think about that for a
moment.
The naturally slender eating strategy builds in self-correcting because you are
constantly checking in with your body’s wisdom system, and with the
navigation system of your body. If you eat something that’s a little too much,
what’s going to happen the next time you think about eating and you place
your hands on your stomach and you check in? Will you be starving? Maybe
not. You’ll probably be less hungry because you’ve eaten something
substantial recently. If you over eat at a holiday party or a holiday meal, the
next day you’re not going to be that hungry so you eat a little bit less. This is
the concept of self-correcting.
You will overeat from time to time and sometimes you’ll under-eat. Have you
ever starved yourself? I know I have. I get way too hungry but it doesn’t
matter. It’s all about developing the skill of bringing yourself back to center. I
tell my clients “I don’t care if you overeat. I know you’re going to overeat,
and the way I know you’re going to overeat is that naturally slender people
overeat.”

I have to share this amusing story. At Thanksgiving my
“She said “Well you never
friend, Hollis Polk, asked me to write a guest column
overeat”, and I said, “I do
for her newsletter. It was called Surviving and Thriving
overeat. But I correct very through Thanksgiving and the Holidays. When she sent
quickly.” it out she added her own commentary “The most
I may overeat by only a couple amazing thing about Renée is that she never overeats.
Not only does Renée never overeat, but her family
bites before I’m correcting. In
never overeats”. I felt so embarrassed when I read that.
fact I eat a bite or two too much I talked to her about it afterwards and she said “Well
regularly every day, but I’m not you never overeat”, and I said, “I do overeat. But I
so hungry at the next meal correct very quickly.”
because I have a little less space

I may overeat by only a couple bites before I’m
in my stomach. That’s how I
correcting. In fact I eat a bite or two too much
maintain my weight. What we regularly every day, but I’m not so hungry at the next
want to do is narrow the interval meal because I have a little less space in my stomach.
That’s how I maintain my weight. What we want to do
of self-correcting. ”
is narrow the interval of self-correcting.
Maybe you go on overeating or weight gain episodes that last months or even
years, then you get disgusted with yourself, and you get motivated to change
because the pants don’t button. Have you ever been
“You starve yourself or you there? Do you know that feeling? The latest diet book
follow the diet religiously and comes out and this time you’re going to do it, you’re
going to correct for all that overeating, and you’re
that’s a type of self correcting.
going to do it in a blitz. You starve yourself or you
You may last for an hour, a day, follow the diet religiously and that’s a type of self-
or several months and then the correcting. You may last for an hour, a day, or several
pendulum swings the other way months and then the pendulum swings the other way
and you’re back into the overeating. What we want to
and you’re back into the
do is reduce the intervals of self-correcting. Instead of
overeating. What we want to do it taking you months or years to get back in balance, it
is reduce the intervals of self only takes days, or maybe weeks which would still be
correcting.” an improvement. You start with a week on and a week

off and then eventually it only takes you a day.

When you know that you can self-correct within 24 hours or less, you’re there.
You are naturally slender. Eventually you get to the point where you self-
correct bite to bite, meal to meal. That’s what we’re talking about.
In the next chapter I’m going to share with you specific ways that you can
build your self-correcting skills.

CHAPTER 12
SELF CORRECTING PART II
Set your intention for this chapter by dropping inside for a moment and
becoming present with you.
It’s no accident that you’re reading this book. You’re reading this for a reason.
There’s something here for you, something important. This is time for you. So
wherever you are, whatever you’re doing open yourself up to get exactly what
you need to take the next positive step forward. Is your intent for this chapter
to experience one or more “Aha’s”, to simply to make the next important step
forward in achieving your dream, to experience a breakthrough, or to be
inspired? Whatever it is go ahead and set your intention now. My intent for
this program is to end the weight struggle and free as many people as
possible to live their best lives. My intent in this chapter is to enable you to
dissolve what’s been holding you back and move clearly into living your
dream, because I know it’s possible, I know you deserve it and I know you
can.
So far on Inside Out Weight Loss we’ve learned about creating a powerful
motivation cocktail, the power of positive intent and meta-outcomes or the
goal of the goal. We’ve learned how to up our energy levels by resolving
internal conflict and creating inner alignment. We even spent an episode
going over what foods in your diet will make your journey easier. We also
learned what metabolism matching is and why high and low metabolisms
don’t really matter that much. We’ve walked through the revolutionary, and
yet intuitive naturally slender eating strategy to really get inside the minds of
the naturally slender. We trained our minds to become relentless pleasure
seekers so that we can become naturally slender.

We also discussed the concept of Kaizen – continuous improvement, to set
the frame for lasting progressive iterative change. Change does happen in
breakthroughs, yet we can’t have all breakthroughs, all the time. It would be
too much for us to process. It’s really all about the every day incremental
improvement, doing those redo’s on a daily basis, running those mental
movies, and being ever more of who we want to be. We won’t even get it
right every time and that’s OK because that’s part of a process. Just like a
baby learning to walk, we’re going to fall down a few times too. But that
doesn’t mean that we can’t have fun while we’re doing it or we can’t
appreciate the richness of the learning experience.
In the last chapter, we introduced the concept of self-correcting, and I shared

Sally’s inspiring story. Remember that for her there were only about four
types of situations that would throw her off and when she mastered those,
she made her binge pattern obsolete. Have you been thinking about the types
of situations that trigger you? Is it social outings, being alone at night,
afternoon munchies at your desk or the office goodies? Today we’ll be
brainstorming how you will self-correct.
“Self-correcting is about re-

Remember I don’t care if you overeat or not. I expect
balancing. It’s about renewing.
you to from time to time. I do. What I do care about is
It’s about responsible
how quickly and easily you bring yourself back into
overeating.” balance when you’re thrown off. Self-correcting is
about re-balancing. It’s about renewing. It’s about
responsible overeating. Ever thought of that before? I want to train you to be
responsible overeaters so that when you do overeat, you’re either going to
learn something from it, or if you intend to enjoy it that you do enjoy it (mind
you, overeating sometimes isn’t that enjoyable of an experience) and overeat
only when you plan to. I want you to be a responsible overeater. I want you
to learn how to overeat responsibly.
I had a client who was very upset when she came into a session even though
she wasn’t bingeing. She happened to be one of the many binge eaters that I
work with and she said, “You know, I’m not binge eating anymore, but I’m
still eating junk food. I want to eat all healthy food all the time.”

I said to her, “That’s interesting. You’re not bingeing, which is terrific, but
you’re still eating junk food”, and she said, “Yeah, it’s terrible, isn’t it?” I said,
“No, it’s great. Congratulations! If you can eat junk food and eat responsibly
and moderately, then imagine how much easier it will be to eat healthy
natural foods. Fantastic! We know that your change is really stable because
you can eat that kind of food and still eat responsibly and moderately. Not a
lot of people can do that, so that’s actually a sign of how thorough your
progress is.”
Think about that. Just because you’re so used to

“Just because you’re so used to
negatively evaluating your actions and behaviors,
negatively evaluating your doesn’t mean that they have to be negative. It may be
actions and behaviors, doesn’t that something you thought was negative is actually a
mean that they have to be positive. I had a client who came in and said, “I bought
an ice cream cone and it was really good. I ate about
negative. It may be something
half of it and I thought, you know what, I’m not
that you thought was negative is enjoying this anymore”, so she threw it in the trashcan.
actually a positive.” How cool is that? That’s the kind of thing that naturally
slender people do that just confounds us.
I remember when I first got together with my husband; he’d fill up his fork,
get it half way to his mouth and decide that he was full. He’d put the fork
down, push his plate away and be done. I looked at him like he had just
arrived in a spaceship from another planet. Who is this guy? How can you get
the fork halfway to your mouth and then put it down? But that’s what he did,
and I never understood it, until now. He self-corrects. He’s in tune with his
body. That’s what we’re learning to do now with Inside Out Weight Loss.
I’d like to share with you the three tiers of self-correcting. If you’ve done your
homework you know that there are certain types of situations that are
triggers for you. Even if you haven’t done it, you can probably think of those
most common types of situations for you. Now I want you to think about
things a little differently because that’s what we do on Inside Out Weight Loss.

There are three levels of self-correcting. I like to call them the first, second
and third lines of defense. Self-correcting is about renewing and rebalancing.
The question is: how do you rebalance when you’ve been thrown off? When I
say rebalance, I’m not just talking about how you eat less if you’ve overeaten
a little bit or how you starve yourself, I’m talking about how you renew
yourself energetically. What are the types of things that you do to renew?
What are the types of things you have in your life that you might think of
these as stress relievers, or things that you enjoy? I’ll tell you right now, if
you don’t have a number of things in your life that you do because you enjoy
them, ideally something every day, then I’m not surprised that you’ve
struggled with your weight.
In order for you to be slim you have to put yourself first and make yourself a
priority. You know what they say on airplanes. We’re back to airplane
metaphors now. All the wisdom that I ever learned was sitting in an airplane
and hearing them say, “Put your own oxygen mask on first before helping a
child or someone next to you, because if you don’t you won’t be around to
help them.”
RENEWAL AND REBALANCE
So how do you renew? It’s absolutely critical that you have ways to renew
and rebalance yourself or you will have nothing to give. How do you rebalance
yourself energetically, emotionally, spiritually and physically?
The first line of defense in self-correcting involves things that you do on your
own. These are quick and easy small things that you do on your own that
bring you back into balance. Common things that people do in this category
might be exercise. One of my clients paddles her way to peace in a kayak.
Fortunately she has a body of water near where she lives, and she can go out
kayaking as often as twice a week, and she says the moment she gets out on
the water she feels peaceful and renewed. Maybe it’s playing with your dog or
your cat that renews you.

Other people that I know love to groove away in their dance classes. Or
perhaps it’s a weightless water workout, stretching in a Pilates class, hiking in
the morning mist near your home, beating out your issues in boxing class,
going on a beach walk if you live near the beach, getting out into nature, or
biking across the country. Oh wait a minute, I said quick and easy. Scratch
that one. I did have a client who cycled across the country and if that’s what
it takes to self-correct, great, but you may be detained for some time before
you get back into balance. Let’s focus on ones that are quicker and easier.
What are the things that you do? Exercise is an obvious one, listening to
music, being creative, and doing arts and crafts. Do you like to scrapbook,
knit or tinker around in the workshop? What is it that you like to do that
brings you pleasure – painting, drawing, going out into nature, swimming, or
being with a child or a cat. The first line of defense self-correcting
mechanisms are things that you can do on your own.
The second line of defense self-correcting mechanisms are required when life
has thrown you a bit more of a loop, you’re a little bit more off balance, and
it’s going to take a little extra effort. Maybe you’ve gone for a walk, maybe
you’ve gone for a swim, maybe you’ve done some meditation or listened to
some music and you aren’t there yet and you need more. Second line of
defense self-correcting involves someone else, not a professional, but a friend,
a colleague, or interacting with other people. One of my mentors, Robert
McDonald of the Telos Healing Center, says that “We’re wounded in
community, and so we’re healed in community.” Often times we need to
reach outside of ourselves to be healed and supported.
What are some of the things that you can do that are second line of defense
self-correcting, to bring yourself back into balance? One of them you’re doing
right now; reading this Inside Out Weight Loss book. You could talk to a
friend, take a class in something fun, go to a comedy club and laugh it out,
speak to a friend over the phone, attend a spiritual group, and even if you’re
not religious, go to a church and just drink in the peaceful atmosphere where
other people are.

These are second line of defense self-correcting mechanisms and they always
involve someone else. We’re wounded in community and we’re healed in
community.
The third line of defense in self-correcting is for when life really throws you a
loop and you’re way out of balance. You go and get professional help. You can
meet with a coach, a hypnotherapist, a masseur, a healer of some sort, and
get professional help, because you’re worth it. As they
“Meet with a coach, a say in the old adage, “A stitch in time saves nine”.
Going to get timely support from a qualified
hypnotherapist, a masseur, or a
professional will allow you to be back in balance so
healer of some sort, and get much quicker than it might be if you isolate yourself.
professional help because you’re It’s simply in the asking for help sometimes that we are
worth it. As they say in the old most healed.
adage, “A stitch in time saves

I have many of my clients who are on our ‘call me if
nine.” Going to get timely
you need me’ basis. I remember one client who had
support from a qualified been doing great for a year and then her work situation
professional will allow you to be changed. She was working long hours, she found
herself overeating again, and she didn’t know what was
back in balance so much quicker
up. She tried and tried, but she wasn’t getting herself
than it might be if you isolate
back into balance, so she came in for a session. We
yourself.” found some underlying issues that hadn’t yet been
resolved in her earlier work. We addressed those issues,
we resolved them, she went back and she was immediately right back on
track, one short session later even though she had felt completely out of
whack before she came in. There are many wonderful professionals out there.
I suggest that if you don’t already have some in your PDA or your online
address book, that you identify some. Ask for referrals from friends and find
out who might be available to help you self-correct when you need it. The
third line of defense, self-correcting, involves someone else.
I bet you can guess what I’m going to suggest that you do to accelerate your
learning. I had a client the other day, he came in and I said, “And I’ll be
giving you homework assignments.”

He said, “Homework? Ooh, yuck, I hate homework. That reminds me of
school”, which is funny because this is a guy who was a voracious learner.
He’s always taking classes and loves to learn. He just had a negative
association with the word ‘homework’. It reminded him of some experiences
in school. I thought for a moment and I said, “Okay, what are we going to call
it?” We decided to call the homework assignments ‘accelerated learning
assignments.” He’s been completing his assignments immediately because he
loves the idea of accelerated learning.
Whatever you want to call it, your assignment at the end of this chapter is to
write down your self-correcting mechanisms. You can either brainstorm -
write down everything that you can think of, and then categorize them into
first, second and third lines of defense. Or if it’s easier for you to put them in
categories, “What are the things I do alone? What are the things I do with
other people? Who are the professionals that see to support me and my
healing?”
Write down a list, any which way, just get something down on paper. Start
brainstorming, “How do I renew?” This is so important. In fact, it’s so
important that I do say if you don’t do this, you might find yourself struggling.
If you don’t know how to rebalance and how to renew yourself, then how will
you get back on track? If you do know how you renew, if you have a facility
for these first, second and third lines of defense, imagine how easy it will be
for you to continually be moving forward and to become more and more
naturally slender with each day that passes.

 How do I renew? (Brainstorm)

 First line of defense (what do I do on my own?)
 Second line of defense (what do I do with other people?)

 Third line of defense (professionals who support me?)

CHAPTER 13
ADDING A GRAY SCALE TO
BLACK AND WHITE THINKING
In this chapter we’re going to be talking about black and white thinking, and
how you can add a gray scale to discover the entire Technicolor world, the
Land of Oz that lives between those two extremes.
Go ahead and set your intention for this chapter. You know how to do this by
now. Drop inside for a moment and become present with you. Take a deep
breath, and allow yourself to simply let go of any tension or stresses from the
day. Drop inside and become aware of your inner experience, aware of
sensations in your body, your feelings and thoughts. With each breath that
you take as you read this chapter, you can allow any tension, tightness or
cares of the world just simply melt away as you open up. Open up to positive
and lasting change.
So what is your intention for today? You know that you’ve come to this
program for a reason. It’s no accident. There’s something here for you.
Perhaps you’d like your intention to be to find it. What is it that you want to
get out of this chapter? Would you like it to springboard you forward into
living the life of your dreams? Would you like to be inspired? Would you like
to have an “aha” moment, or perhaps you’d like to learn a practical step that
will make the difference for you. Whatever it is, go ahead and set your
intention now. My intent for this program is to end the weight struggle and
free as many people as I possibly can to live their best lives. My intent with
this chapter is to enable you to dissolve what’s been holding you back and
move clearly into living your dreams, because I know that it’s possible. I
know that you deserve it. And I know that you can.

So far on Inside Out Weight Loss we spent a long time talking about towards
and away from motivation and how to really shore up your motivation for the
long haul. You might want to even check back in with those motivators and
update them to really make sure that you are motivated to continue pursuing
your dream, getting better and better with each new thing that you learn
each day. We’ve learned how to up our energy levels, the way I overcame
chronic fatigue, by creating inner alignment and resolving internal conflict. We
even spent a chapter going over what foods in your diet will make your
journey easier. We also learned about metabolism matching and that in many
ways it really doesn’t matter what your metabolism is. What matters is your
ability to tune into your body and match your intake with your energy burn
rate. We walked through the naturally slender eating strategy and trained our
minds to become relentless pleasure seekers so that we are naturally slender.
We then discussed the concept of Kaizen – continuous improvement and

learned how to have an ever learning mind by doing a simple daily technique
at the end of our day called the re-do. We re-do and learn from all of those
experiences that we might do differently the next time that they come up in
our lives. We also have been talking over the last two chapters about a really
important, incredibly valuable concept that is missing from most of the other
weight loss programs that I’ve seen on the market. They all talk about what
to eat and how to get yourself pumped up and motivated. We know that ‘rah-
rah’ type of motivation can’t last a lifetime and at some point we want to
relax, we want to rest and we’re all going to screw up because that’s the way
that we learn. That’s the nature of being the imperfect human beings that we
are. It’s the way that we all learned to walk, by falling down on our little
bottoms again and again and again, until finally we took those first excited
steps, fell again and then we took more exciting wonderful steps. And before
you know it, we were exploring everything that we could find – all because of
the joy of screwing up and learning from our mistakes. You listed the kinds of
situations that have been trigger situations for you.
In the last chapter we talked about the first, second and third lines of defense
for self-correcting. What do I mean by this? How is it that you bring yourself
back to center?

How is it that you renew when you get depleted and when you become out of
balance? It happens to all of us. It’s not just modern life; it’s any kind of life.
It’s the nature of the human experience, unless perhaps you’re the Dalai
Lama and in his case maybe he’s renewing all the time through all that
mediation he does. I know he’s on to something, because he’s always
laughing, that guy. Did you have a chance to think about the first, second and
third lines of defense? Maybe you’re thinking about them again now as we
talk about it. I hope that you’ve written them down at the end of the last
chapter. What are your first, second and third lines of defense?
I’d like to share with you a few other types of first lines of defense. For
example, we’ve talked about a lot of different types of exercise that people do
to get a natural high. Another way of self-correcting, or a first line of defense
that you can do on your own, is eating a healthy breakfast – especially a
protein rich breakfast. Protein is digested more slowly than carbohydrates, so
a protein rich breakfast will give you a stable supply of energy for the
morning and set you up for success throughout the rest of the day.
“Whey protein, three quarters of You remember Sally, the one who wrote me after two
years to tell me it’d been two years since she had a
a banana, a little bit of peanut
binge and she was off of her antidepressant medication
butter, some oat bran for fiber,
that she’d been taking for seven years? For her, one of
and whir it away in the blender her most important self-correcting mechanisms was to
and I feel great after drinking start her day with a substantial protein rich breakfast.
that. A protein rich breakfast Personally I love to make protein shakes. How do you
make protein shakes? You go out and buy some protein,
might be a great way for you to
I use whey protein, I add three quarters of a banana, a
start your day.” little bit of peanut butter, some oat bran for fiber and
whir it away in the blender, and I feel great after
drinking that. A protein rich breakfast might be a great way for you to start
your day.
What’s another way to self-correct? Think about the naturally slender eating
strategy, what could it be? Where do you put your hands when you’re
thinking about food?

You put them on your stomach, that bit just below your rib cage, above your
gut. That’s where the stomach is. And you check in. For me, I love to feel
hungry. Why do I love to feel hungry? Because it tells me that I’m on track. It
tells me, “Ah, good, I’ve eaten about the right amount and I’m really going to
enjoy the food I eat the next time I decide to eat.” I love to feel hungry for
that reason because if I eat when I’m not hungry, I’m really depriving myself
of an awful lot of enjoyment. When I feel hungry, and I like to feel that way
multiple times a day, certainly between meals, it tells me I’m on track. I can
become comfortable with that. I also feel like I’m more alert when I’m a little
bit hungry. So hunger, which is just a physical feeling, it’s really just a
sensation like having to go to the bathroom, it’s just a sensation that gives
you information, hunger is a good thing and a great way to self-correct. Wait
until you’re hungry again. That’s what the naturally slender eating strategy
has built into it.
What else? Meditation. We mentioned that one in this last chapter. Here’s one
I really love; make a gratitude list. List all of the things that you’re grateful
for in your life. Compare yourself to people who are less fortunate, and I’m
willing to bet that there are a whole heck of a lot of
“Plan out your meals. When I them that you can compare yourself to. Are you one of
lost my weight I used to plan my those people who like to compare yourself to magazine
models and rich and famous people that we see in the
meals the night before because
media all the time? How does that make you feel? I
that set me up for success. When
know the effect it had on me for a long time. I never
you plan you’re running a felt like I measured up. Compare yourself to the
mental movie of the way that majority of the population, rather than the best
computer technology and photo editing can do.
you’d like to be. Remember the
Compare yourself to the real world. Turn on Jerry
re-do? Do you need to pack a
Springer to feel grateful. Just kidding!
lunch for the next day? Where
are you going to get at food that Take time off to do something restorative – anything
makes you feel good? How are from a manicure to a Yoga class. Planning is another
great first line of defense. Plan out your meals. When I
you going to set yourself up for
lost my weight I used to plan my meals the night
success?” before because that set me up for success.

When you plan you’re running a mental movie of the way that you’d like to be.
Remember the redo? Do you need to pack a lunch for the next day? Where
are you going to get food that makes you feel good? How are you going to set
your self up for success? Music and affirmations are other great ways to self-
correct in the first line of defense.
There are all sorts of great ways to set up your first line of defense, your first
line of self-correcting to bring yourself back into balance, ideally before things
have really barely gotten out of hand. The sooner you do it, the better. Set
yourself a challenge, “Well I know I’m going to overeat from time to time or
I’m going to get emotionally out of balance, and my challenge is to figure out
how quickly I can bring myself back into balance.” How quickly can I bring
myself back into balance? That’s where I want your attention focused.
You know that black and white thinking that we are all so vulnerable to? “Oh
my god, I overate. I’ve blown it now. I had three extra bites of cheesecake
and since I’ve blown it I might as well go for it.” And you proceed to eat the
rest of the pie. That’s black and white thinking. It really doesn’t do us any
favors. You may be eating appropriately for your body all week long and
consume enough extra calories in one episode to neutralize all of that. Then I
tell you what’s going to happen; two days later when you forget that you
overeat or that you overate or that you over drank you’re going to say, “Oh, I
can never lose weight. I just have the metabolism of a bird and it, it’s not fair,
and it never comes off of me”. You forget about that one blowout. You’ve
conveniently developed amnesia about how much you overdid it in that one
episode. So you lose motivation. You say, “Oh gosh,
“The DIF is where you want to it’ll never work for me because I’m so good all the time
focus. The DIF means you focus and nothing works for me.” That’s the pattern that I’ve
seen over and over again.
on reducing the Duration, the
Intensity and the Frequency of So what we want to do is focus in on how quickly you
your overeating episodes.” can bring yourself back into balance and how quickly
you can make the DIF. The DIF is where you want to
focus. The DIF means you focus on reducing the Duration, the Intensity
and the Frequency of your overeating episodes.

If you’re a binge eater, then the intensity might be a really important thing
for you to reduce. If you are a grazer, then you want to reduce the frequency
of your overeating episodes.
The first thing that will help you to reduce the duration, intensity and/or
frequency of your overeating is figuring out where you are before you begin.
You want to document where you are now, so that you can appreciate the
magnificent progress that you make over time.
Ask yourself, “What is the Duration of my usual overeating episodes?” Does

it last for two minutes? Two hours? Two days? It doesn’t really matter as long
as you’re consistent in describing the duration and it doesn’t matter how you
describe it. What’s the Intensity? How much am I overeating? Are we talking
about a couple bites of a sandwich or are we talking about a grocery bag or
two? How many extra calories are we talking about here? What’s the
Frequency? How often are you overeating? Is it many times a day because
you’re grazing and taking just a mindless handful here and there? Or is it
once a day you have a blowout, once a week or once a month? So document
that below, and then you want to focus and set your intent for reducing one
or more of those metrics.
 Duration – how long do your overeating episodes last?

Does it last for two minutes? Two hours? Two days?

 Intensity – how much do you overeat?
Are you eating the whole cake? Are you eating an extra half a sandwich?
 Frequency – how often do you overeat?

Is it five times a week? Is it once a week? Is it five times a day?
Remember we’re talking about adding a gray scale or Technicolor to black and
white thinking, so let’s not go for everything at once because I know that’s
where our minds love to go. What we want to do is think about one
reasonable objective, one reasonable goal that we’d like to reduce in one of
those trigger types of situations. That’s what you want to be tracking. You
want to focus on, “I overate so how do I bring myself back into balance?”
Now you’ve got a list. In fact you’ve got three lists. You’ve got your first line
of defense, those things that you do on your own. You’ve got your second line
of defense, those things that you do in community with others, by connecting
with your friends, your support buddies, and people that you enjoy.

Perhaps it’s simply being in a dance class, being around other people, or
doing a meditation with other people. You’ve got your third line of defense,
which is going to seek professional help from a coach, a hypnotherapist, a
counselor, or maybe even a massage therapist or a facial – ooh that feels so
good, yum, wonderful!
That’s the great thing about self-correcting is it feels so good. That’s the
whole point of it, isn’t it? Put on your own oxygen mask first; get your own
massage first. Oh, I’m sorry. I mean to enjoy yourself and to take care of
yourself. Maybe it is getting your own massage before you buy that gift
certificate for someone else. Take care of yourself.
I want to remind you to make the DIF and make your journey easier. Reduce
the intensity, duration and frequency of your overeating episodes. Let’s state
that in the positive - increase the duration, the intensity and the frequency
of your eating and exercising in ways that make you feel great about being
alive and make you live your best life.

CHAPTER 14
QUESTIONS TO SELF CORRECT
In this chapter we’ll be discussing great questions to ask yourself to add that
gray scale to black and white thinking. In other words, great questions that
will allow you to self-correct, to mine your experiences whatever they are, no
matter how much that you think that you’ve screwed up or messed up, and
turn those situations around, to become a naturally slender person.
Go ahead, drop inside and set your intent for this episode. Spend a moment
centering and becoming present with you. Notice any sensations in your body,
any feelings, and any images that come to your mind. Relax. Take a deep
breath. As you let go, let go of any tension or tightness in your mind/body
system, knowing that you’ve come to this place for a reason. There’s
something here for you. Set your intent to discover what it is. It’s time to
spend some time with you, renewing, relaxing and revitalizing. What is your
intent for today? Is it inspiration, motivation or information? Perhaps it’s to
learn one more thing to take you that much further. Perhaps it’s support.
Whatever it is, go ahead and set your intent now. My intent with this program
is to end the weight struggle and free as many people as possible to live their
best lives. My intent in this chapter is to enable you to dissolve what’s been
holding you back and to allow your problems to evaporate like shallow
puddles in the sun. My intent is to allow you to move clearly and easily into
living your dream, because I know that it’s possible. I know that you deserve
it. I know that you can.
So far on Inside Out Weight Loss we’ve learned about towards and away from
motivation, positive intent and meta-outcomes. We learned about resolving
our internal conflicts to create inner alignment.

Resolving inner conflict is one of the most important steps that you’ll take,
understanding the gift from the part of you that’s been causing you to overeat,
that’s been causing you to behave in ways that you may not be in alignment
with. Understanding those gifts can create a beautiful foundation for lasting
positive change.
We even spent a chapter going over what foods to eat, and as you know, I
think food is about 10% of the recipe that’s going to make you successful. It
really is a very small piece of the puzzle and one that gets an inordinate
amount of attention. Whenever I’m at a party or a social event and people
ask me what I do and they want to talk about weight loss, whenever I find
that conversation gravitating to what foods to eat, I know that we’re on the
wrong track. I know that it really isn’t about what you eat, but rather how you
eat it, what your intent is and what you want.
We spent a couple of chapters going over the naturally slender eating

strategy, training our minds to become relentless pleasure seekers so that we
can be naturally slender. We also discussed the concept of continuous
improvement, how to be like a baby learning to walk and enjoying every
experience that we have because it allows us to learn. Every weight loss
attempt that you have ever made is contributing to the probability of your
success now with Inside Out Weight Loss. Why?
“The better you are at self-
Because you’ve learned an awful lot about what doesn’t
correcting and the more work, and now it’s time to learn what does.
competency that you develop
means you can bring yourself We also went in depth to understand self-correcting,
another core concept that will bring your back into
back into balance, ideally before
balance whenever you get thrown off. The truth is that
you’ve even overeaten. Now life will throw you for a loop. The better you are at self-
that’s Nirvana, isn’t it?” correcting and the more competency that you develop
means you can bring yourself back into balance, ideally
before you’ve even overeaten. Now that’s Nirvana, isn’t it? You can self-
correct when you’re emotionally out of balance and your food is still OK.

What we learned in the last chapter is that the real goal is to reduce the
duration, intensity and frequency of your overeating episodes. Overeating is
defined as eating more than your body needs to be the weight that you want
to be. It is eating when you’re not hungry and eating past the point when
you’re satisfied. So it’s all about how quickly and easily you bring yourself
back into balance. If you overate a little then you correct a little the next time
you think about food and perhaps you eat a little bit less. If you overate a lot,
then you’ll be even less hungry the next time.
We spent a lot of time discussing first, second, third lines of defense. First line
of defense, self-correcting is how you correct on your own. Second line of
defense is how you correct in community with others. And the third line of
defense is seeking professional help, and knowing who those professionals
are. You want to have a short list of people that you go to that you know can
help you rebalance when you really need it, because as they say, “a stitch in
time saves nine.”
You also listed your trigger situations, just like my client Sally did, that could
possibly throw you off. That’s what you want to learn and be confident about
self-correcting from – those types of situations that occur again and again in
your life that throw you off. When you really think about it, I bet you there
aren’t that many; I bet you there are just a few.
In the last chapter we were talking about adding a gray scale to black and
white thinking and adding color to black and white thinking. Did I mention the
spa syndrome? Maybe you’ve never been to a spa before or maybe you have.
The spa syndrome is what I have heard many times from my clients. It’s the
idea, “I’m going to go away to this intensive program where we eat nothing
but lemon rinds and cayenne pepper for a week, meditating fourteen hours a
day, everything will be taken care of, and the weight will melt off me”, and it
does indeed. You go to the spa and the more you pay the less you eat – I
think that’s the way it works. Don’t get me wrong, I love the spa experience.
In fact, I have a dream of running a workshop at a spa and hopefully that’ll
happen in the near future.

But it’s the idea that we’re going to go away and in a blitzkrieg week of
overhaul all our problems will melt away. We’ll go to the extreme of being
toxic in our daily lives to the extreme of detoxing. I’ve heard the same kind of
syndrome when it comes to the idea of the detox. “Oh
“We’ll go from the extreme of my goodness, I need a detox. I need to clear out my
being toxic in our daily lives, to system. I need to clear it all out. I need a Roto Rooter
to get everything gone. I need a detox.” And the
the extreme of detoxing. I’ve
concept is great, especially when it’s done with a
heard the same kind of
spiritual practice in mind but the detox I’ve seen used
syndrome when it comes to the in our culture is more a politically correct or more
idea of the detox. “Oh my palatable way of saying that I’m going on an extreme
goodness, I need a detox. I need weight loss regime so that I can atone for the sins of
my overeating.
to clear out my system. I need to
clear it all out. I need a Roto Now that’s all well and good, but the problem is how do
Rooter to get everything gone. I you reintegrate into your life? How do you deal with
need a detox.” The concept is those trigger situations? Remember Sally and her four
types of trigger situations? How do you deal with your
great, especially when it’s done
types of situations that throw you off? Going to the
with a spiritual practice in fasting spa isn’t going to do it. You need to figure out
mind.” how you’re going to deal with the situations that occur
in your daily life. We use the spa syndrome and the
detox syndrome to simply to go to another extreme, swinging the pendulum
back to the opposite extreme, which keeps the cycle going.
I want to tell you the story of my client who went on a fabulous vacation in
Tuscany. She goes to Italy every year with her family and has a wonderful
time. When she’s there it’s idyllic. She eats fresh food all the time, she shops
every day, she’s out in the clean air (or not so clean if everybody’s smoking),
and she really has a wonderful time with her family in Italy on this vacation.
When she came back after one of these trips, she said to me, “Oh my
goodness Renée, it was fabulous. I’ve resolved that I’m never, ever going to
eat processed food again. I’ve seen the light. I feel so great when I eat this
way.”

I thought, “This is wonderful. This is a really fantastic reference experience
for her to have.” And yet, I was a little bit concerned, maybe more than a
little bit, because I know that this client of mine has a very demanding sales
job. She has built a very successful career out of nothing and become an
extremely successful sales person. She travels a lot, she’s really busy, always
on the go, managing many different things, she’s a single mother, and she’s
got a very demanding lifestyle. I knew that the idea of shopping every day
and cooking fresh food every day was probably not too realistic for her.
We started talking about how she would self-correct and how she would make
the most of her life. And sure enough, it was only a couple of days after her
return to work that she had to go on a quick air trip from San Francisco to Los
Angeles for the day. Well of course she had no time to shop, she had no time
to cook, and she had to eat in the airport. Then she had another trip after
that, across the country in the same kind of situation.
Because we had already brainstormed about how she would handle this type
of situation before she went on these trips, she realized that she’s not going
to be eating beautiful fresh produce from the Farmer’s Market, freshly
prepared every day. Sometimes it’s the peanut pack on the discount airline
because that’s all you get. She was able make the most of the situation that
she had. No, it wasn’t ideal but she made the most of it. She was very proud
of herself for eating a pack of peanuts when she was hungry and passing on
the overstuffed sub. She was proud of choosing a salad, which wasn’t the
best salad she’d ever seen, but it was the best that was available. She came
back feeling, “You know, it wasn’t great, but it was good”. She had learned
how to mange the situation that she had.
So that’s the kind of thing that I’m talking about. I’m talking about
integrating this into your lifestyle. You’re not going to make the extreme
overhaul and expect it to last. We want things that will address those
situations that used to be triggers for you. How do you self-correct from those
situations?

I remember another client of mine as we were walking through the naturally
slender eating strategy announced to me that one of the situations that was a
big trigger for her to overeat was the movie theatre. I think they do that on
purpose with all those popcorn smells that they seem to fan out to
everywhere in the theatre. She said, “I am not going to give up my milk duds
and popcorn. No way!” We started walking through the eating strategy
reminding her that she can have her milk duds and popcorn if that’s going to
work for her. We got through it, and I said, “Well how is it going to make you
feel to eat the big box of milk duds and the tub of popcorn while sitting
through a movie?”, and she said, “Well actually, it’s not so good. It’s kind of
heavy now that I notice it, but I guess I never really notice it because I’m so
busy watching the movie.” I said “Wow! Is it worth it then if you’re not even
going to notice it, because boy those milk duds and popcorn are going to set
you back from your weight loss goal quite a bit.” She said, “You know, it’s not
worth it because it’s not all that good – I’ll have nothing.”
Notice what she’s saying here? She’s using black and white thinking. She’s
gone from eating the milk duds and popcorn to having nothing. She said,
“Well that’s no good. I like to eat something in the movie theatre.” And then
she had this epiphany, “Maybe I could have a small milk duds or maybe I
could have just popcorn.” She got a big smile on her face and she was so
excited about this concept of having something that was between the two
extremes that was livable for her. Sure enough, the next time she went to the
movie theatre she didn’t even care, and she forgot to have the milk duds and
popcorn. I think maybe she had popcorn once and maybe milk duds another
time, and then she kind of lost interest in all that mindless eating in the
movie theatre that she wouldn’t even enjoy. Maybe occasionally she has it,
but she found the gray scale, she found that world in between the extremes.
That’s what we’re doing here. We’re finding the world in between the
extremes. I had another client, and she was known for going on extreme
programs and being extremely on and extremely off, so I gave her a
homework assignment, which was to be radically and excessively moderate.
Her homework assignment was to be excessively moderate.

That was an interesting challenge for her, and it opened up a whole new
world of possibilities
I want to do is share with you some questions that will allow you to open up
that gray scale of thinking, that place where if you can’t do the fresh, organic,
raw food, and you’re in an airport. How you going to survive? How are you
going to make this a lifestyle?
I remember one client, she said, “Oh my goodness. We went to a big fish fry
and I overate because there was just so much food”. It had been two weeks
since we had spoken and I said to her, “I understand the fish fry – that was
tough but what about the other 13 days and 22 hours?” She said, “They were
great. I was moderate, I was sleeping well, and I was eating well.” I said,
“Well that’s fantastic. For 13 days and 22 hours all was well and for 2 hours,
not so good. That sounds pretty darn good to me.”
We want to add that gray scale by focusing on the positive. Here’s a great
question for you – how was this overeating episode different from past
episodes? What was different? How was it a sign of progress? Was it less
intense? Remember duration, intensity and frequency,
“What about this situation the DIF? Was it less enjoyable? Did you realize that,
“Hey, this really makes me feel bad?” Maybe you had
triggered me? Maybe this is a
to test it out one more time just to prove to yourself
trigger situation, a type of
that it really didn’t work for you. So ask yourself, how
situation that you hadn’t yet was this episode different from past episodes? What
realized. Maybe it’s up for progress have I made?
healing, it’s being served up by

Here’s another great question – what about this
your sub-conscious mind,
situation triggered me? Maybe this is a trigger situation,
saying, “Hey, I realize a lot of a type of situation that you hadn’t yet realized. Maybe
great stuff is going on here, let it’s up for healing, it’s being served up by your
me offer up this one because it subconscious mind, saying, “Hey, I realize a lot of great
stuff is going on here, let me offer up this one because
needs a little attention and a few
it needs a little attention and a few resources.” What
resources.” about this situation triggered me?

Then you can do a re-do. Remember running the mental movie that we
discussed in an earlier chapter of Inside Out Weight Loss? You can do a re-do.
How could I behave better next time? How could I behave differently next
time? Do your re-do.
Ask yourself, “How can I easily self-correct from this situation?” Notice how
that question is phrased, “How can I easily self-correct from this situation?”
I want to offer this final question that echoes what we’ve learned in an earlier
chapter that echoes the whole idea of a learning mind and continuous
improvement. This question is a question you could ask in any trying situation
in your life that would yield wonderful benefits it you simply made a habit of
asking it. The question is, “What is there for me to learn here?” I believe that
life offers up to us the same situation over and over and over again, until we
figure out how to deal with it. It’s as if we get infinite practice opportunities
until we get it right, and then we move on. So ask yourself, “What is there to
learn here? How would I like it to be next time?”
Notice that nowhere do I ask the question, “Why? Why not?” What if you ask
yourself, “Why did I overeat?” Go ahead, “Why did you overeat the last time
that you overate?” Because your mother spoke meanly to you when you were
five, because of that teacher, because it rained on the day of your graduation?
Why? Where does that get you? It’s a fascinating question if you want to
psychoanalyze yourself, but it’s not really going to get you very far. So we
don’t as “Why” questions on Inside Out Weight Loss, we ask “What?” We ask
“How? How can I easily self-correct? What is there to learn here? How was
this episode different from past episodes? What triggered me?” These are the
questions that we want to be answering ourselves.

CHAPTER 15
SETTING YOUR NEW YEAR’S EVOLUTION
In this chapter we’ll learn how to set your intention for the year ahead in a
way that sets you up for success. It’s time for your New Year’s evolution on
Inside Out Weight Loss.
Go ahead and set your intention for this chapter. Drop inside for a moment
and become present with you. You’ve come to this program for a reason.
There’s something here for you, something important. This time is for you, so
wherever you are, whatever you are doing, open yourself up to get exactly
what you need to take the next positive step forward. Whatever it is, go
ahead and set that intention for this chapter now. My intent with this program
is to end the weight struggle and free as many people
“I know that this may sound as possible to live their best lives. My intent in this and
in all chapters is to enable you to dissolve what’s been
extreme, but I’ll say it anyway -
holding you back and move clearly into living your
the weight struggle is
dream, because I know that it’s possible. I know that
oppression. In fact it’s the most you deserve it. I know that you can.
insidious kind of oppression that
exists, internalized oppression. Let’s review what we’ve learned on this program since
the beginning. We’ve been walking through the steps
We are our own worst
to end your weight struggle and to stop fighting with
oppressors when we criticize ourselves. I know this may sound extreme, but I’ll say
ourselves.” it anyway – the weight struggle is oppression. In fact
it’s the most insidious kind of oppression that exists,
internalized oppression. We are our own worst oppressors when we criticize
ourselves.

We waste our precious conscious mind focused on what we will and won’t eat,
when we will eat, what we should and shouldn’t eat, how fat we are, how we
should look, how we don’t look the way we want to look and how horrible it is
that our thighs are bigger than Kate Moss’s butt.
We go on and on and on, around and around in our heads, oppressing

ourselves and criticizing ourselves. We can entertain ourselves for hours, days,
weeks, months and years of our lives this way. How much of your precious
mental energy do you think that you’ve spent over the last five or ten years
obsessed with these thoughts of self-criticism? How can we possibly truly
enjoy ourselves if we’re oppressed and oppressing ourselves? How can we
truly give our gifts to others if we don’t even know what they are? I’m not
talking about the kind of giving that depletes but the kind of giving that
renews, that honors our divine nature, and that fulfills our purpose and our
mission in life. It’s time to end that struggle. It’s time to stop the internalized
oppression that we inflict upon ourselves.
So what are the steps to ending the weight struggle? We’ve been talking
about it in previous chapters of this program. It’s all about creating the most
powerful force for change that exists; inner alignment. Creating alignment
where there was acrimony, alignment where there was angst and alignment
where there was anxiety. How do we do this? We create inner alignment by
resolving our inner conflicts, our simultaneous yes and no to losing weight,
and by self-acceptance.
I walked you through this process in an earlier chapter. If you’d like more, I
also offer you a guided journey Sabotage Self-sabotage which will resolve the
internal conflict in the product section of my Renee Method website
[www.reneemethod.com]. This process is the foundation for creating the
alignment that will truly bring ease and joy to your weight loss journey. So
whether you do it through the earlier chapter of this program and write it
down or you listen to the guided journey that I offer on my site, do it,
because it’s critical. This is your foundation, the antidote to the yo-yo dieting
and willpower based resolutions that you’ve had in the past.

Also on this program, we’ve learned about what to eat, what foods will make
our journey easier. Not good foods and bad foods, but simply which foods
make our lives easier. We learned how to make decisions about what and how
much to eat. We also learned how to set the foundation for long-term lifestyle
change, because after all that’s what we want, isn’t it? Haven’t we had
enough of the diet of the moment? Haven’t we had enough of the resolution
and the resolve that takes us through a week, a month, however long, only to
be disappointed again? Do you want to set yourself up for another
disappointment? Or would you rather begin the practices and the habits today
that will make your journey easier and easier?
The first of these concepts is Kaizen – continuous improvement. Making small

incremental changes that may not seem like much, and in fact are very easy
to make, but making them consistently. When we make this kind of
continuous improvement day after day after day, we end up making dramatic
and lasting changes. The other concept is self-correcting, which we have
discussed in the last several chapters. It is absolutely critical to your long-
term success and to making your journey easier and easier.
NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTIONS
Let’s talk about New Year’s resolutions. At the beginning of every year you
decide, with great resolve and enthusiasm and guilt that has been building
and growing throughout the entire holiday season, that now is the time you’re
going to make changes. You’re resolving to never go back to the old ways
again. You know, it’s the day when everybody signs up for the gym, resolves
to go on their diet, to become neat and clean and organized, and that this will
be the year of a new you. Yet how many of us really stick to those resolutions
beyond the end of January? Maybe a few fortunate ones make it through
Valentine’s Day, but certainly by Saint Patrick’s Day our resolutions are long
since forgotten.

How about we take a different approach this year? How about we do
something that sets us up for lasting positive change? You see resolutions are
based on resolve and willpower. Typically our resolutions are based on a
strong away from motivation.
We want to move away from the kinds of excess that we typically have during
the holiday season – Thanksgiving and Christmas feasts, holiday candy and
cookies at every turn. These are things that have made us feel like we just
can’t stand it anymore and ensure our pants don’t fit anymore. It’s time to
create a new you because you’re beginning to think about that bathing suit
vacation that you might have planned in the not too distant future, and you
better start going now. Yet resolve can’t last because it is based on away
from motivation.
So what do we do now? We begin to create our towards motivation. You

remember from the early chapters when we talked about your away from and
your towards motivation, that away from motivation tends to peter out just as
soon as we get a little bit away from the thing that we’re running from to
make ourselves feel comfortable, when we feel like the threat has diminished.
But it isn’t enough to carry us through to lasting change. That’s why we want
to have both away from and towards motivators to keep us going in the long
run.
Let’s talk more about the downfalls of most typical resolutions. Number one,
they’re often way too ambitious. “I’m going to lose all the excess weight.”
“I’m going to home cook every meal.” “I’m going to meditate for half an hour
a day.” “I’m going to keep my office desk clean at all times.” They’re a little
too ambitious. Another of the downfalls is that there’s no concrete specific or
actionable plan to actually carry out the resolution that we’ve made. We don’t
have steps one, two, three, four, five and six to bring that plan or resolution
into reality.

Another downfall is that they’re often willpower based. What do I mean by
willpower based? They’re based on resolve and based on a strong away from
strategy. As they say in Twelve Step programs, they’re about white knuckling
it; “I’m going to make it through. I know I can make it through my two
o’clock or three o’clock caffeine and candy craving. I know that I can make it
through”. So we clench our fists, we grind our teeth and we run the other way
when the donuts appear at the office. By day two or day three it’s just too
much effort so we give up.
The fourth downfall of typical resolutions is that they’re unrealistic given your
lifestyle. For example, if you plan to go from not exercising at all to exercising
seven days a week for an hour a day, that seems like a bit of leap to me. Or
you plan to go from eating all your meals in fast food outlets to going
shopping everyday and cooking all of your meals fresh at home every night.
Perhaps you’re going to eat everything raw this year. Those are unrealistic
given your lifestyle. Perhaps you might succeed if you were a move star or a
celebrity and you had personal trainers and personal chefs, but let’s face it,
that’s not the reality for most of us. We have jobs, we have busy schedules
and we have to make something that’s going to fit in with our lifestyle.
So what’s the alternative? New Year’s evolutions are the alternative. New
Year’s evolutions are based on the idea that it’s as much about the process as
the goal.
THE THREE P’S OF LASTING CHANGE –

PERSISTENCE, PATIENCE AND PRACTICE
I want you to think about the three P’s of lasting change – persistence,
patience and practice.
Persistence means that you will keep at it, that you expect to keep at it, day
after day, even through the occasional fumble or maybe the frequent fumble.
Even through the occasional screw-up or the frequent screw-up you’re just
going to keep coming back.
It’s not so much about having the mega workout to end all workouts, but
rather going at it, keeping at it consistently, persistently day after day and
week after week. What does that mean? That means if you can’t do the
hour mega boot camp workout, and you can only do a ten or twenty minute
walk or at least take the stairs instead of the elevator, you go ahead and do it
because you are persistent.
I remember a while ago going to an exercise class here in San Francisco, and
the instructor was in phenomenal shape, she was a true inspiration. She was
slim, fit and curved in all the right places. She was amazing. My friend who I
had gone with asked, “How does someone get a body like that?” I said, “A
body like that does not come from a month long
“I started weight lifting when I program. A body like that comes from years of
was fifteen years old, so now I dedication.” I’m not comparing my figure to hers, but
don’t have to do the forever the reason that I look fairly fit for my height and weight
is that I’ve been at it since I was fifteen. I started
workout in the gym. My weight
weight lifting when I was fifteen years old, so now I
lifting workouts are about twice, don’t have to do the forever workout in the gym. My
sometimes three times a week, weight lifting workouts are about twice, sometimes
more typically twice a week, three times a week, more typically twice a week, and
they last about 25 minutes. That’s it. That’s all I do.
and they last about 25 minutes.
That’s it.”
But I keep doing it year after year, month after month,
decade after decade, on and on and on. I just keep
turning up. I just keep going back. So maintenance isn’t that big a deal. So
it’s same thing for you. Start now, acting as if you are maintaining your body
and your figure for the rest of your life. Develop a practice that you can keep
up for the rest of your life. That’s persistence.
What’s the second P of lasting change? It’s patience, patience with the results.
It seems that everyone that I ever work with is impatient for results. When I
ask, “How much weight do you want to lose?” they say, “Oh well, if I could
lose three pounds a week and lose 25 pounds in the next two months, then
that would be great. I would love that. I’d be happy with that.”

This may be a person who has been overweight for ten or twenty years, and
all of a sudden it’s urgent to take it off right now. The reality is that that
mindset just doesn’t work. That mindset creates a level of psychic stress that
is precisely the kind of thing that makes us want to eat in the first place. The
lesson here is to be patient, to focus on the journey, and to focus on the daily
successes that you can have.
So what’s a daily success? You remember from a previous chapter that a daily
success can be as simple as a learning opportunity. It can be as simple as a
screw-up. That’s right; your success can be a screw-up. Your screw-up can be
your success. As long as you mine that opportunity for learning, just like a
baby learning to walk by trying, trying and trying again. Take that infant
mindset, that mindset of the child who falls on his little bottom time after
time after time just for the fun of it. I know that this may sound far-fetched,
but your job, your mission should you choose to accept it, is to enjoy the
journey.
What’s the third P of lasting change? It’s practice. Practice is also like that
little child pulling himself up again and again and again and falling back on his
bottom until after a hundred or a thousand attempts he begins to walk across
the room. Make your practice a daily practice.
Look at the Masters – the people who understand what it takes to be truly
great at something. Look at a professional dancer, a prima ballerina, an
Olympic gymnast, a top athlete, a concert pianist or musician, or anyone who
has gained mastery in a specific area, you know that their mastery and ease
comes from daily practice again and again and again. Understand that the
journey is one of practice, doing the daily exercises, doing your re-dos,
focusing on inner alignment and on daily self-correcting. That’s the practice
that will lead you truly to weight mastery and to becoming a naturally slender
person.
The three P’s of lasting change are persistence, patience and practice. That’s
all it takes to keep showing up to your life and your journey as you enjoy it.

SET YOUR NEW YEAR’S EVOLUTION
Think about how you would like to evolve this year, what is your intention?
What if your intention for the year was to learn to enjoy eating like a slim
person? What if your intention for the year was to eat like a slim person more
and more with each week and month that passes? Think about what you
would like to manifest. It could be any dream that you have for this year.
Now think about how achieving that dream will make you feel in your body. I
want you to go into your body and think about how it will make you feel.
If you want to bring something new into your life, you must make room for it.
You have to let something else go. Think about what you are willing to let go
of in your life, so that you can make room for the new. Just as in nature, the
trees drop their leaves before the new leaves can sprout in the spring. If you
want to change something in your life, you must create room for it.
So what are you willing to let go of? Perhaps it’s as physical as the clutter in
your house, perhaps it’s a habit or perhaps it’s watching less TV. What are
you willing to let go to make room in your life for your intention for the New
Year? Go ahead and write down your reflections on what you’ve learned in the
last twelve months as well as what your intention is for the next twelve
months below. Make a note of how you plan to increase your patience,
persistence and practice, what your intention is for the next twelve months,
and how that will make you feel. And then add what you’re willing to let go of
to make it happen.

 What did I learn last in the last 12 months?

 What is my intention for the next 12 months?
How can I increase my patience, persistence and practice? How will I feel?
What can I let go of to make it happen?

CHAPTER 16
THE POWER OF RELAXED INTENT PART I
In the next two chapters we’ll go through two powerful exercises to bring
your New Year’s evolutions into reality. In this chapter we’ll be learning the
power of surrender and relaxed intent, and in the next chapter I’ll actually
walk you through an exercise of relaxed intent, to allow you to achieve your
desire even more quickly and easily.
Go ahead and set your intention for this chapter. Drop inside for a moment
There’s something here for you, something important. This time is for you. So
wherever you are, whatever you’re doing open yourself up to get exactly what
you need to take the next positive step forward. Whatever it is, go ahead and
set your intent now.
My intent with this program is to end the weight struggle and free as many
people as possible to live their best lives, to live their dreams. My intent for
this particular chapter is to enable you to dissolve what’s been holding you
back and move more clearly into living your dream, because I know that it’s
possible. I know you deserve it, and I know that you can.
So how is your support system going? You know how important it is to set
yourself up for success. Does your support system need a refresher? Who
have you recruited to support you? Who in your life is there pulling for you
and understands the kind of transformation that you want to make, and that
you indeed are making now? If you haven’t already joined the Inside Out
Weight Loss Yahoo group, I encourage you to do so. There you’ll find many,
many like minded people. You can find an individual support buddy or simply
support or be supported by the group. You can set your intention, you can
share your dream, and know that others are there encouraging you.

Let’s review for a moment what we’ve learned so far. We’ve been walking
through the steps to end your weight struggle and to stop fighting with
ourselves. We learned the component parts of motivation. I’d like to pause for
a moment here and say a word about sharing your dream, your towards
motivation, the motivation that pulls you towards it because it’s so compelling,
so bright and beautiful in your future.
One of the things that I’ve noticed with people that have been sending me
email and with my clients is that sometimes we set our intent we accidentally
state it in the negative. Let me give you an example; we might say, “My
intent for today is to not eat snacks or sweets between 1 and 4 PM because I
know that’s my challenging time of day.” What happens when we state our
intent, our dream or our desire in a negative? What happens when we say,
“My intent is to not eat between 1 and 4 PM”? What we’re doing basically is
giving our subconscious mind the direction to eat between 1 and 4 PM, to do
exactly what follows the “no” or the “not” in the statement. We’re actually
bringing attention and energy to what we don’t want.
“The trick is to turn it around so So what’s the alternative? Turn it around and state it in
that it’s the presence of the positive. This can actually become a bit of a game,
stating things in the positive. It doesn’t mean that we
something else. Remember the
never say something in the negative. Of course we do,
example I shared in an earlier
that’s natural. Sometimes it’s worthwhile saying what
chapter when I said, “Don’t we do not want. However, there’s an incredible power
think of a pink elephant with to following that negative with a positive statement.
purple spots, especially on its

Now I know that this can be challenging. You think,
big floppy ears right now?”
“What I really want is to not eat, so how do I state that
What comes to your mind? The in the positive? It’s an absence of something.” The trick
purple elephant. Don’t think of is to turn it around so that it’s the presence of
eating your favorite food. What something else. Remember the example I shared in an
earlier chapter when I said, “Don’t think of a pink
comes to mind? Eating your
elephant with purple spots, especially on its big floppy
favorite food.” ears right now?” What comes to your mind?
The purple elephant.

Don’t think of eating your favorite food. What comes to mind? Eating your
favorite food.
So what would you like instead? What would you like instead of eating
between the hours of 1 and 4 PM? Maybe you would like to feel calm and
relaxed, maybe you’d like to be focused, or maybe you would like to take a
break, go outside, take a walk around the building or call a friend. Whatever it
is, think about what you would like instead.
Another good example would be where a client of mine said, “I notice I’m
always tense when it’s time to eat and I’m always in a hurry. I’m in a hurry
all the time. 99.9% of my life I’m rushing around and I get a lot done in my
life as a result of that. I’m a multi tasker extraordinaire and incredibly
effective and productive, but I find that I’m even rushing through my meals,
and I don’t want to rush through my meals. I’m eating so fast that I want to
continue to enjoy the experience of being at the meal, so I get myself a
second helping just to extend the experience.” She said, “I don’t want to rush
anymore.” So, after a little bit of thought I said, “Well what is it you want to
do instead?” And she said, “Well, I’d like to be relaxed when I’m eating. I’d
like to be relaxed and eat calmly and slowly. I’d like to easily eat slowly and
in a relaxed way. I’d like to really enjoy and savor my food whenever I eat it.”
Another thing she didn’t want to do was snack while she’s preparing her meal.
So what would she like instead? She said, “I’d like to be relaxed and wait to
better enjoy my food during the meal time when I’m sitting at the table.”
Think about stating your intention, your desire and your dream in the positive.
It’s alright to start in the negative as long as you immediately turn it around
to the positive and end with a positive statement. You will be amazed and
delighted by what you find when you make this simple change. This is a great
parenting strategy as a secondary bonus. If you tell your kids what not to do,
the surest thing that they will do is exactly what you said not to. Not because
they’re rebels or they have it in for you, but really because children are so in
that space of the subconscious mind that they simply get the directive that
you give them.

They ignore the ‘no’ because that’s what the subconscious mind does. They
sense where your energy is, and because they’re so aligned with you they
actually go towards that.
OK, let’s finish our review. We talked again about motivation strategy, about
what the components of motivation are and we talked about how to create
the single most powerful force for change in the universe; inner alignment.
We talked not about good and bad foods, or shoulds and shouldn’ts, but
rather which foods will make your life easier and your journey more enjoyable.
We then walked through step by step how to make decisions about what and
how much to eat and learned the mindset of lasting change; the learning
mindset. In the last chapter we talked about setting your New Year’s
evolutions. We talked about how to manifest lasting positive evolution in your
life with the three P’s, persistence, patience and practice. So what are the
steps after that?
THE INTENSITY OF INTENTION
I’d like to talk to you about a concept that’s actually extremely important to
manifesting whatever it is that you want in your life. Have you ever noticed
that sometimes when we want something so much it’s
“Have you ever noticed that almost as if the very wanting of it prevents us from
getting it? Have you ever really, really, really
sometimes when we want
desperately wanted something, and it’s as if the very
something so much it’s almost
intensity of your wanting prevents you from having it?
as if the very wanting of it
prevents us from getting it?” Now this seems counter to the law of attraction. If you
know anything about the law of attraction, The Secret
and the various work around that, it says that you get what it is that you put
your energy in and what you think about. So this seems to go completely
against it. How can that be?
Do you know someone who’s wanted to have a boyfriend or a girlfriend really,

really badly? In fact you could almost characterize them as desperate.

It’s as if their very intensity, need and demand to have the boyfriend or
girlfriend is what prevents them from actually manifesting that. Or have you
known a couple who want to get pregnant? They try and they try and they try,
and they aren’t able to conceive. So they’ll decide to adopt, and bingo, along
comes a pregnancy, and now they have the blessing of two children, a
pregnancy and an adopted child. There seems to be something about the
letting go piece of it that’s really important to manifesting your dreams.
I’m talking about this in the context of weight loss, because it’s really
important. I see this pattern again and again and again in weight loss. We
become desperate for change. In fact, the people I’ve noticed who have the
greatest intensity, the greatest demand for change are the ones who struggle
the most. For example, my clients who suffer from eating disorders, binge
eating disorder, bulimia, or compulsive overeating, like I did, have a demand
and desire to be thin so intense that it actually seems to prevent us from
becoming thin.
I remember as a teenager I used to clip out images from Vogue magazine

and other fashion magazines of skinny waif-like models and put them all over
the mirror in my bedroom so I looked at them all the time. I so much wanted
it, but it’s as if the very wanting of it caused me psychic stress that caused
me to overeat and was counterproductive. I was trapped in that binge, starve
myself, and work out like a lunatic cycle again and again and again. The more
I focused on it, the more it seemed to evade me. I say to my clients that it’s
as if with weight loss the more that we try to grasp it and squeeze it in the
palm of our hand, the more that it slips through our fingers.
DETACHMENT
So what is that about, when we just can’t get what it is that we want so much?
It’s the demand for change. The Buddhist’s would actually call this attachment.
Many Buddhist practices, such as meditation, focus on detachment, on letting
go. It is the same concept here. Let’s borrow that concept and notice how
powerful it is to let go and surrender.

George Leonard and Michael Murphy wrote
a book called The Life We Are Given, and it
details something called integral
transformative practice. It’s a practice that
consists of affirmations, movements, Tai
Chi like movements, as well as community
support, all in the interest of manifesting
specific intentions that one sets for one’s
self in the context of the practice. In this
book, The Life We Are Given, there are
some really interesting concepts and
Leonard coined the term “focused
surrender.” Focused surrender means that state of wanting and focusing, and
yet surrendering and letting go simultaneously, of that with which we desire.
Now does this make sense? It seems almost counterintuitive. How could we
let go of what we want? I like to think of it as the difference between a
demand for change and an invitation. A demand for change is when we must
absolutely positively have something. Whereas an invitation is when we open
our hearts, open the doors of our soul and our psyches to let in that which we
desire, without the demand or desperation, but instead (notice the switch
from the negative to the positive) with openness, relaxation and surrender.
I’d like to tell you about an experiment that was conducted by a gentleman
named Dwayne Elgin of the Stanford Research Institute between the years of
1973 and 1975. Dwayne wanted to test the power of intention. He utilized a
magnetometer, which is a highly sensitive instrument designed to record on a
moving sheet of paper any changes or differences in the magnetic field, much
like a seismograph records movements in the earth’s surface. Dwayne’s idea
was that with the power of his intention alone, he could influence the
magnetometer. He hypothesized that if intention were real and that he truly
could focus his intention, then he could certainly move this tiny lightweight
needle of the magnetometer. What he did was focus all the force of his will on
the instrument trying to influence it and make the needle move.

He continued this concentrated effort for 20 or 30 minutes, focused, focused,
focused, watching the needle tracing almost a straight line, but with no
results. He did this again and again and again, and finally exhausted and
exasperated, he’d say to himself, “I give up.” At that precise moment, the
needle would start indicating a change in the magnetic field that in some
instances was so significant that the needle went entirely off the scale. To get
such results by normal means would take a force estimated to be one
thousand times stronger than that of the earth’s magnetic field.
Even physical distance didn’t lessen the effectiveness of his intentionality and
his surrender. In one example he was actually several miles away in his home
and he was able to influence the magnetometer at the precise moment of
surrender. It wasn’t the focus, the concentration and the intensity that caused
the move, but rather the moment of surrender, and perhaps even the
combination of the clear intentionality, the relaxation, and the release of
surrender. So what can we learn from this in terms of our weight loss journey?
That it is in the letting go that we are able to receive.
RELAXED INTENT
In the next chapter I’ll walk you through an exercise that I designed to allow
you to be in that state of what I call relaxed intent. That’s the magical state
that will allow you to achieve and manifest your dreams, to let go of your
demand for change and open up your invitation to your dreams. You can
practice this now before you read the next chapter.
Imagine having your dream and then imagine not having it and being
completely okay with that. I want you to toggle between the desire of having
your dream, and then imagine what it would be like to completely accept
yourself as you are now. To honestly say, “OK, it’s alright. If I don’t have that
I’ll be okay.”

I’ll tell you kind of a funny anecdote from the hugely important to the banal –
I use this technique all the time to manifest parking places. Now I want you
to know that this is no simple feat. I live in San Francisco, and my car isn’t
exactly what you would call petite. In fact, I often drive a minivan with a
bunch of kids in it, car-pooling them from one place to the next, and I’ll often
park on very busy San Francisco streets. So manifesting a parking place is no
small feat around here. I use this technique and have amazing parking karma.
I’m really good at manifesting parking places.
What I do is I visualize and imagine a parking place exactly within a block or

two of the vicinity of where I would like to have one. Then I imagine what my
backup plan is. “It’s OK. That’s what I want, but it’s alright. If I don’t get it,
I’ll be alright”, and I just take a deep breath and relax. I kind of toggle
between imagining getting the awesome parking place and not getting it. I
know this seems like a very silly example, but it’s still a great example of how
this technique can work when you toggle between intentionality and
surrender and relaxation.
Try it. If manifesting a parking place is a big deal for you where you live, then
this is a great exercise. Or maybe it’s something else that’s important for you.
Manifesting the quickest line at the grocery store for is a great one to use this
on. Practice simply toggling between wanting it, wanting it, wanting it, and
then relaxing. In the next chapter I’ll walk you through an exercise of relaxed
intent, to allow you to achieve your dreams even more quickly and easily than
you had imagined.

CHAPTER 17
THE POWER OF RELAXED INTENT PART II
In this chapter we’ve got a little bit of celebrity gossip for you. Plus, I’ll be
walking you through a powerful exercise to manifest your dreams. You’ll be
learning the power and the process of relaxed intent.
So go ahead and set your intention for this chapter. Drop inside for a moment
Make the most of it by being present, by reading and absorbing every word as
you become aware and in touch with you. This time is for you. So wherever
you are, whatever you’re doing, open yourself up to get exactly what you
need to take the next positive step forward. And you know my intent, but I
love to say it anyway. My intent for this program is to end the weight struggle,
and free as many people as possible to live their best lives.
My intent in this and all chapters of Inside Out Weight Loss is to enable you to
dissolve what’s been holding you back and move clearly into living your
dreams, because I know it’s possible. I know you deserve it, and I know that
you can.
CELEBRITY GOSSIP
Can I talk to you for a moment about Tyra Banks, the former super skinny
supermodel Tyra Banks, who now is the host of her own talk show? Yes, this
is the celebrity gossip portion of Inside Out Weight Loss. Tyra Banks has
come under a lot of criticism lately for gaining weight, about 30 pounds to be
exact.

Can you imagine what that must be like for someone who has made her living
as a super skinny supermodel to gain 30 pounds as the world watches? A
handy paparazzi was available to make that career making shot of Tyra
strolling down the beach, cellulite in tow, in her bathing suit. Of course this
picture went all over the internet as fast as you can blink and a controversy
erupted over Tyra’s weight gain.
Weight gain is a relative thing, isn’t it? I read in local celebrity gossip tabloid
that when Tyra was on the cover of Sports Illustrated and at the top of her
supermodel game, at 5’10’’ she was about 120 pounds. That’s what I read but
it could be a few pounds off, so let’s say it’s 130 pounds. At 5’10’’, that’s
pretty darn slim. So how much does she weigh now? We all know because
what Tyra did after all of this controversy came out and she was getting so
much of a hard time for gaining weight. She went on her TV show – it’s really
convenient when someone’s having a go at you to be able to have your own
TV show to have the last word back – wearing a tee shirt with her weight
printed on the front of it.
Can you imagine wearing a tee shirt that has your weight on the front of it for
all to see? The courage it must take. Nevertheless, she goes on her show with
161 in big block numbers right across her chest, telling the world that she
weighs 30 to 40 pounds more than she weighed as a top supermodel. I’ve got
to say I love and respect her for doing that. I think it is so great that she can
be bold with a woman’s most secret number; her weight.
I’d like to draw a distinction here – being 161 pounds and 5’10’’ sounds pretty
darn good to me. I’ll say that when I saw her picture in the newspaper, I
couldn’t figure out if it was her fat weight or her skinny weight, she looked so
darn good. It turns out it was her “fat” weight that I was looking at, and boy
did that woman look great. Of course supermodel good looks go a long way
but the curves looked wonderful on her. What I’d like to do is just distinguish
for a moment what I call healthy curvaceous from miserable curvaceous.
What’s the difference between healthy curvaceous and miserable curvaceous?
Let me tell you a little story.

THE BRAZILIAN BEAUTY
Back in the day when I was a corporate citizen, I was the head of sales and
marketing for Latin America, and I had a business trip down to Brazil. Well
Brazil’s a long way from San Francisco so I had to fly down to Miami and take
the overnight flight all the way down to Sao Paulo. Once I got to South
America I would stay for about two weeks because it really didn’t make sense
to go back and forth if it took so darn long to get there. So I had a weekend
to spare in Brazil, and my distributor invited me to go to the beach with his
family for the weekend. I happily seized the opportunity because I had
nothing else to do and didn’t know anyone else in that city.
I hopped in his van with his wife and three kids and off we went to the beach
to stay in his beach house. The next morning I woke up and went downstairs
and of course it was a beach day. I put on my swimsuit because it was time
to go out and enjoy the sunshine and the waves. I’ve got a big old towel
wrapped around me and I’m probably wearing shorts at the same time so
that no one can see anything. At the time I was a bit of a gym Nazi, working
out like a lunatic while being really, really self-critical
“She is so confident in her body and very un-accepting of my body even though I was
and she moves with a presence already slim.
and a self-assurance that blew

Then his wife comes downstairs. Now his wife, certainly
me away. She was totally
by supermodel standards and American standards, was
exposed in little clothing with an quite overweight. She was maybe 30 – 40 pounds
imperfect body, and yet she overweight in a way that was not particularly toned.
moved with a grace and a self- This woman had cellulite all over her thighs and a belly
that actually flopped over the bottom of her Brazilian
assurance that was amazing to
bikini. You know what I mean by Brazilian bikini? It
me.”
might not have been dental floss, but it wasn’t far from
it. She’s standing there in her bikini inside this house
before she goes for her morning walk, just loving life. She is so confident in
her body and she moves with a presence and a self-assurance that blew me
away.

I’m watching this woman, whose body is; maybe this is an exaggeration, sort
of my worst nightmare. She was totally exposed in little clothing with an
imperfect body, and yet she moved with a grace and a self-assurance that
was amazing to me. It had such an impact. There I am muscles tense, hands
strategically crossed over my belly, which is under my towel, my tee shirt and
my shorts, and I’m scared to death of letting anybody see what I have under
there.
I thought, “What’s wrong with this picture?” Here I am with my low body fat,
my trim and toned body that I work like a slave in the gym on, and I’m
scared to show anybody. And here’s this woman who is just so present in her
body. That made a huge impact on me.
From that day forward I realized that I was the one who was messed up. It
really didn’t have that much to do with my body. I could work and work and
slave and sweat away as much as I wanted, and I’d still feel bad about my
body, because my body didn’t actually have much to do with it. That’s what I
mean about the difference between healthy curvaceous and miserable
curvaceous. From what I can tell from Tyra Bank’s public persona, she feels
pretty darn good about her curves. She’s not that embarrassed about it. She’s
saying, “I weigh 161 pounds and I’ve got curves like a real woman, and I feel
good about it. I’m going public with this.” Because she knows how to walk like
a supermodel, she embodies how to be fully present in her body. That’s what
I admire and that’s what I love.
You can do that today as much as any day. Why wait? Why wait until you
have that perfect body, because my body may not have been perfect, but it
was pretty good, and I was still miserable about it. So what’s the point? The
point is to feel good about yourself and to feel good in your body right now.
RELAXED INTENT
Let’s review for a moment what we talked about last chapter, the power of
relaxed intent.

Remember the magnetometer experiment, and how that needle went off the
chart when the experimenter stopped trying? Not even distance got in his way.
Remember the parking spaces? I wanted to mention that while I’m a highly
skilled parking space manifestor, it doesn’t always work out for me. Can you
guess when I don’t get that plum spot very close to where I’m going? It
doesn’t work out when I most want it, when I demand a parking space. If I’m
in a high anxiety state of mind circling the block or
“If I’m in a high anxiety state of watching the clock tick as I sit at the traffic light and
mind circling the block or demanding that magical spot to appear right now
watching the clock tick as I sit at because I am late for an appointment or have to pick
up my kids, that’s when I don’t get it. When do I get it
the traffic light and demanding
easily? When I say, “You know, it’s okay either way.”
that magical spot to appear right
now because I am late for an So we’re going to apply parking space manifestation to
appointment or have to pick up weight loss. Who knew that parking spaces and weight
loss had so much in common? Did you practice toggling
my kids, that’s when I don’t get
between wanting something and being okay with not
it. And when do I get it easily?
that fabulous body or that healthy body or that fitting
When I say, “You know, it’s into your skinny jeans body? If you did, you might be
okay either way.” well on your way to manifesting your dreams.
So now, sit back and relax because I’m about to take you on a guided journey,
a guided exercise, the easy armchair variety, to create a state of relaxed
intent, to bring in your desires while being completely happy and
OK with where you are in this moment now.
GUIDED MEDITATION
So go ahead and relax and begin to drop inside, sitting comfortably in a chair,
wherever you are. It’s time to become present with you. It’s time to become
aware of the rhythm of your own body, your heartbeat and your breath. Take
a deep breath, exhale, and let it go. You might even let it go with a nice
audible sighing sound, “ahhh”.

Nothing feels as good as letting that tension and tightness melt away. Go
ahead and become even more fully present with your inner experience;
sensation, feelings, thoughts, sounds, and images. If your mind begins to
wander you can just notice those thoughts, and simply come back to these
words, noticing those thoughts and letting them float by like clouds in the sky,
or disperse like puffs of smoke. It’s almost as if the more that you notice
them, the more they disappear.
Now I want you to begin to think about what it is that you really want. You
may be thinking about that dream body, your dream body, your dream body
of the future. That dream body that’s you at your best – slim and sexy,
curvaceous and healthy, whatever it is that you want to be. You might be
thinking about being in great health, having excellent mobility, and loads of
energy. Develop an image of yourself that you want to be. See yourself
skinny and looking great. See that image. Hear what you hear. Hear your own
thoughts that you are that skinny. Feel the way it feels in your body. There
she is, or he is, looking wonderful, trimmed, toned, fit, everything that you’ve
ever wanted to be. This is what you are wanting. This is what you’ve been
wanting for so long, and make it real. Make it three dimensional and moving,
and see it as brightly and as vividly as you possibly can. And as you see it
and as you feel it, you become more and more aware of how much you want
that.
What you’re going to do in a moment is you’re going to hold onto it, you’re
going to grasp on to that image of what you want. You put everything you
want into it, every last thing about it. It’s there, it’s three dimensional, it’s
real, and you’re going to take your arms out and you’re going to wrap them
around this image and you’re going to tense all of the muscles in your body,
to hold onto it with everything that you have. Go ahead and do that now. See
that image. Feel that thing, that being the way that you want to be and hold
onto it with everything that you have. Tense all of your muscles, hold onto it
and notice it’s tricky because it’s an image and it keeps slipping away, and
the more that it slips, the more that you grasp so hard. Hold onto it now.

And… then… release. Let it go. Let it go. Watch it float away and watch it
dissolve into beautiful sparkles of light that float away into the universe. They
float away. You might imagine that they go to some sort of higher power; to
God, to spirit, to the universe. Watch them go. They slip away. They don’t
belong to you, because they don’t belong to anyone. They simply are. And
feel that release.
And again, you’re going to repeat this exercise. You’re going to put that
image back together. You’re going to see it in front of you. You’re going to
imagine it clearly and intently. You’re going to see the
“You’re going to see the you you that you so much want to be, perhaps the you that
you’ve been demanding to be; the skinny you, the one
that you so much want to be,
who doesn’t screw up, the one who always gets it right,
perhaps the you that you’ve who’s naturally and easily slender, that’s the one that
been demanding to be; the you’re going to see, and you’re going to hold on to this
skinny you, the one who doesn’t you, you’re going to hold on so tightly to her. That’s
right. Hold on so tightly to him or her, grasp her, feel
screw up, the one who always
the wanting this in your entire body, all of the desire
gets it right, who’s naturally and
that you have ever had, put it in to this grasping, this
easily slender. That’s the one holding on, to this image. And hold as long as you can;
that you’re going to see, and ten, nine, hold on tighter and tighter, eight, seven, six,
you’re going to hold on to this tighter, hold on, grasp, tense every muscle and fiber of
your being, five, four, three, tighter and tighter, two,
you, you’re going to hold on so
two, two, too much, one, and release. Let it go. Let it
tightly to her.” go. You don’t have to hold on.
You can relax and release and notice that you are. You simply are. Here, OK,
loved and beloved, forgiven, for being where you are in this moment now.
Grateful for this body that allows you to breathe, to listen, to move, and to
live. And you watch whatever that image was, it’s far away now. And those
dots of light are sprinkled in your future. Someone or something else is in
charge now. You’ve let it go. And in letting go, you’ve discovered the present
moment. You’ve discovered this moment, here, now. And as you do you begin
to notice the things in your life today that bring you joy.

Is it listening to inspiring music? Is it seeing or being with a child or a pet that
you feel unconditional love for? Is it simply being out in nature and smelling
the smell of a fresh flower or your favorite fragrance? These things are real
and here for you now. You can be present in this moment. You can be in your
body and grateful to have a body that allows you to live, that brings life to
you. And so anytime that you find yourself sad or discouraged, grasping or
wanting, grasp even tighter, and want even more. And then let it go. Release
it.
In a moment, you’ll be coming back to full conscious awareness, fully knowing

and understanding this exercise, so that it’s almost as if the very act of
demanding, wanting, or grasping, causes you to release it instantly, to give it
away. To give it away to spirit, give it away to God, give it away to universe.
Whatever it is that you believe in, you let it go. Give it away. Let it float away.
And like seeds carried by the wind, they drift down and plant themselves in
the soil, sprouting up new life for you to discover on your path. Who knows
when you’ll first find them? I wonder how delighted you’ll be to discover that
in enjoying the present moment you find your future.
So come back now. Come back to be fully aware, awake and alert. I’ll count
from one to five. One, coming back, back into your body. Two, almost back.
That’s right, movement returns. Three, coming back even further. Four,
almost back now. And five, fully present here with me now, awake and aware
of life and your day.
Remember to continue to practice this exercise, the toggling between

grasping and wanting and letting go. That’s your homework.

CHAPTER 18
THE SUCCESS JOURNAL
In this chapter, I'll be sharing my all time favorite daily practice – the success
journal and how it turned around one woman’s depression, plus, a success
strategy from the head of the world’s largest charitable foundation.
So go ahead and set your intention for this episode. Drop inside for a moment
and become present with you. You've come to this program for a reason;
make the most of it by being present. This time is for you. So wherever you
are, whatever you're doing, open yourself up to get exactly what you need to
take the next positive step forward.
That’s what it's about, isn’t it, taking the next positive step forward. I read an
interview with Melinda Gates in Fortune the other day. What an inspiring
woman she is. Melinda, in case you don’t know, is the wife of Microsoft’s
founder Bill Gates and heads the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She's
been a high achiever her entire life, from valedictorian of her high school class
to earning a BA and an MBA in five years from Duke University, to climbing to
the level of division leader at Microsoft before she left to marry Bill. The Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest in the world, was her
inspiration. She set the direction for it by using the simple criteria of which
issues affect the greatest number of people and which can we have the most
impact and make the most difference with.
The article shares that her inspiration came from a conversation with her
mother before she died where she said to Melinda, “With gifts and with
blessings come obligations.”

Melinda decided that with the blessings that she had in her life, with the
tremendous amount of wealth that was available to her, that she would fulfill
her obligation. It's a concept that’s been called “noblesse oblige”, the
obligation of the noble, to give back. Melinda has
“Marrying the world’s richest done so in a rather big way because the Bill and
man could be seen as a success Melinda Gates Foundation is now the world’s largest
in and of itself. However, that’s charitable foundation.
not exactly a replicable skill for

What’s her secret to success? I know marrying the
all of the rest of us. Let's talk world’s richest man could be seen as a success in
about how she does it. What and of itself. However, that’s not exactly replicable
goes on in her mind? What I skill for all of the rest of us. So let's talk about how
she does it. What goes on in her mind? What I
discovered in the article is that
discovered in the article is that ever since she was in
ever since she was in high
high school, she would set herself a single goal every
school, she would set herself a day. It could be a small goal like completing her
single goal everyday.” work, mastering a problem or a big goal like her
recent goal of ending malaria in the world. That’s an
impressive goal. Yet, she does these things one step and one day at a time,
starting very simple with simple, small achievable goals.
Setting a goal as big as ending malaria is going to have to be a multi-step,

multi-year goal with many, many sub-goals. Yet, she would set herself one of
these sub-goals every single day as she consistently progressed up the
corporate ladder through all of the ranks at Microsoft to become a director,
and now as a successful leader of the world’s largest foundation.
Let's face it; all we have is today, this day. The future is uncertain; the past is
just a series of memories. So we have this day and this step that we take
today. What if you started every day by setting an achievable goal or intent
for yourself? You could say, “Today, I’ll center myself before eating. Today,
I'll practice gratitude. Today, I'll affirm love for myself or genuinely connect
with at least one other person. I'll find compassion and curiosity for one other
person. Today, I'll write a gratitude list. I'll forgive myself. I'll shop for healthy
food. One small goal today and every day.”

We were talking about intent, and I haven’t yet shared my intent for the
program with you. You know, my intent with this program is to end the
weight struggle and free as many people as possible to live their best lives.
Now clearly, this isn’t an intent I can accomplish in a single day, but I can do
my best with each chapter of Inside Out Weight Loss. I can, with each effort
that I put in to spreading my work to sharing with you the tools and the
strategies that will allow you to become peacefully and naturally slender.
My intent in this and all chapters of Inside Out Weight Loss is to enable you to
dissolve what's been holding you back and move clearly into living your
dream because I know that it's possible. I know that you deserve it and I
know that you can. How do I know this? How do I know that it doesn’t matter
what age you are? I don’t care if you're 22 or 72. I know that it's possible for
you to change. How do I know this? Well, for example, I have many clients
who are age 50, 60 and above.
I want to read an email to you from one of the listeners of my Podcast. She
writes,
“Renée, I just had to share this with you. I know that your program
was working for me by the number of small victories that I had and by
realizing that I was feeling more at peace with myself than I had for a
long while. But today, I decided to weigh. I would have been happy to
have maintained my previous weight instead of gaining, but much to
my delight, I found that I'd lost 3 or 4 pounds since I started the
program. This is huge for me. Renée, there aren’t words to express my
gratitude to you for giving me a program that not only allows me to
lose weight but enhances my life in general.”
I want to share with you the postscript. She has lost over 10 pounds in the
last 15 days doing nothing more than listening to this show and doing the
homework assignments. This kind of feedback is why I do what I do. I love to
hear it and thank you so much for sharing it with me. This is my life’s work
and I'm so blessed to be able to share it with you.

Let's review for a moment. In the last chapter, we shared the power of
relaxed intent. Remember the Brazilian bikini story and how we learned the
difference between healthy curvaceous and miserable curvaceous? Tyra
Banks knows all about that one. We talked about her wearing her weight, her
weight gain number emblazoned across her chest in big bold numbers on a
tight tee shirt. How about that for going bold?
Have you been practicing relaxed intent? Toggling between wanting and
releasing as we did in the guided journey?
I want to share a story with you. Sometime ago, I had a client who came to
me for only one session – which is odd because I don’t normally take one
session, but for some reason, I had one session with her. During that limited
amount of time, I shared with her this daily practice called “the success
journal”. I didn’t see her again for quite some time and she ended up taking
an Inside Out Weight Loss class that I taught.
““I thought that I'd never be able At the end of the class, she came up to me and she
said, “You know, Renée, I want to share something
to lose this extra 25 pounds that
with you. When I came to see you several months ago,
I've been carrying around, that I
I was so depressed. I thought that I'd never be able to
wasn't going anywhere with my lose these extra 25 pounds that I have been carrying
career, and that I'd never have a around. I thought I'd never be able to afford to buy a
boyfriend. Then I started that house in the Bay Area, that I wasn't going anywhere
with my career, and that I'd never have a boyfriend. I
daily practice that you
was thoroughly depressed and I was about to go on
recommended. I started keeping antidepressants. But I wanted to let you know that I
a success journal.” started doing that daily practice that you recommended.
I started keeping a success journal.”
And she said, “I want you to know now that my whole life has turned around.
I'm down 15 pounds so far, I'm feeling great. I'm feeling positive with my
body.” She was doing her favorite hobby which was – at the time it was about
Halloween – she was sewing a really fun Halloween costume.

She felt that her whole life had turned around and she said, “You know,
Renée, I'm a list maker and before I started doing this success journal, I
would go to bed thinking about my list and all of the many tasks that I hadn’t
accomplished on. Well, now, I go to bed and I think about all of the many
tasks that I did accomplish in the day and I feel great about that.”
Funnily enough, I bumped into her several months later around town and
there she was with her boyfriend. She came up to me and she said, “Renée, I
wanted to share with you that I'm training for a triathlon.” I was so excited
for her. It was simply the practice of the success journal that turned things
around for her.
So what is this secret tool to your success? When I was younger, when I was
a teenager and I suffered from depression, I had learned that journaling was
a good way to express emotions. Whenever I felt really down and miserable, I
would pull out my journal and I’d write about it. I’d write about how miserable
I felt. That made me feel a little bit better and it certainly made me realize all
the dimensions of my misery. I'd go back from time to time and I'd review
these journals and say, “Oh, my God! It's amazing I even survived it. It's so
depressing to read the pages of this thing.” So I stopped journaling because it
was a little bit too depressing. Until I learned about the success journal, until
I thought about using this tool.
Now, let me tell you exactly what it is and why the heck it's so darn powerful?
You see, there's a magical time of the day, when we are just on the cusp of
the conscious and subconscious minds. It is right before we go to sleep at
night, when we're ready to drift off, our conscious mind is shutting down and
our subconscious mind is taking over, leading us delightfully into dream time.
What is the input that goes in to your subconscious mind at that time? It
turns out that that time is a highly open and suggestible time to your
subconscious. I want you to be aware of what the input is into your
subconscious mind at that time of the day.

Do you have the TV on as you're going to sleep? If you have the TV on, my
guess is that you don’t have a lot of control over the nature of the content
that’s going in to your brain as you drift off to sleep. So let's take control of
that strategic moment of openness and suggestibility.
Let's do a little experiment right now. I want you to look around your
environment and I want you to notice everything that you see that’s black.
That’s right, everything that you see that’s black. Look around your
environment, check it out, and when you got a good idea of everything that’s
black, look back to this page and keep your eyes focused right here.
Without taking your eyes off the page count all those things that you saw that
were black. Close your eyes and picture the room in your head and count the
number of black things. Now, without taking your eyes off this page I want
you to count every thing that you saw in the room that was white this time –
no looking around! Close your eyes and picture the room in your head and
count the number of white things.
How did you do? Open your eyes and check your work. How’s your accuracy?
I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts – that’s an opportune expression for
me to use, isn’t it – that you were more accurate with the black than the
white. What does that teach us? We find what we seek. If you're looking for
the black in life, you will find it; and if you're looking for the white, you'll find
that, too.
We get so much input in every moment of the day and so many stimuli
coming at us that we have to filter. We have to filter or we won't be able to
survive. Autism is described an inability to effectively
“We get so much input in every
filter out all of the input. Let met give you an example.
moment of the day and so many While you've been reading this chapter, you really
stimuli coming at us that we haven’t been thinking about the feeling in your right
have to filter. We have to filter big toe until I just mentioned it, and yet the
information is there. It's there for you to be aware of
or we wouldn't be able to
and to notice, but you hadn’t noticed it.
survive.”

There's tons of information like that available to you especially in our media-
rich environment these days. We just can't process it all so we must have
filters. We put on filters that work for us and sometimes we put on filters out
of habit, maybe the kinds of filters that our parents or someone influential in
our lives used. We put on these filters to make our lives livable. If you've
been putting on the black filter, you're missing the white. If you've been
seeing the cup as half empty, you're missing the half fullness of it.
What does that have to do with the success journal? We’re going to teach
your subconscious mind how get into the habit of using a different filter, the
habit of positive thinking. Right before you go to bed – you know that
wonderful, rich, open time as you're beginning to get droopy eyes and drift
away – you're going to write at least two things that are good from the day in
your Inside Out Weight Loss success journal.
Ideally, if your focus is on being naturally slender or continuing to be

naturally slender then you'll write things that are related to that success. How
did I self-correct today? Did I do a re-do? How did I have a learning mind
today? That’s what you'll write down, at least two quick things. Now if that
seems a little challenging for you to come up with, just write anything that’s
positive. Make it easy on yourself. Anything at all, just make that first step. If
the best thing that happened today was that you remembered to brush your
teeth before you went out the door or your car started, that’s a good thing.
Recently here in California, we had a really rough storm and we lost electricity
from 8 o’clock in the morning one day to 9:30 at night. I take electricity for
granted, but boy, oh, boy, when the electricity came back on at 9:30 at night,
I wasn't taking it for granted. I was so grateful that we have electricity at the
touch of a light switch, at outlets wherever we go, and that we have heat in
our homes. These are things to be grateful for and to appreciate.
This is what you’re writing down in your success journal. Your writing down
your Inside Out Weight Loss successes and successes mean not that you were
perfect, remember? This isn’t about being perfect, this is about learning,
continuous improvement and self-correcting.

So that’s what you're going to write down. Now, if you want to overachieve, I
invite you to do so. Write down three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten
things, whatever you want to do. Go ahead and do that, I do that whenever I
can. But the bar is two, that’s all, just two, that’s all it takes. It's up to you if
you want to do it but no obligation.
You're going to write down these two positive things in this Inside Out Weight
Loss success journal that you keep by your bed with a pen. As you drift off
into dreamland, how do you think you're going to sleep having gone to sleep
on a positive note? How’s that going to affect the quality of your sleep? You're
going to sleep better. if you get a good night sleep having gone to sleep on a
positive note, how will that make you feel when you wake up in the morning?
It’s going to set you off on the right foot for your day and benefit you
throughout the day until the next evening comes along and you're writing in
your journal again to reinforce it.
I'm telling you that in 30 days and you're going to feel very different about
life than you used to feel because the cumulative power of this, the
reinforcement of making it a daily ritual and daily practice is so powerful.
Remember the story of my client – she went from almost going on
antidepressants to feeling great about her life, competing in a triathlon and
having a boyfriend. You can make positive changes, too. All you have to do is
adopt the practices that will get you there. You have got to learn to think like
a thin person, to be, live and think like the naturally slender and you will
achieve your dreams. I know that.
The success journal is a simple point of time at end of the day – how long you
think that’s going to take you? Time it. I bet you can do it in a minute or two,
maybe even less. Feel free to lounge and luxuriate over it if you want, but
you don’t need to. You can do it anytime. You know what? I can tell if my
clients have been writing their success journal. They're like, “I'm depressed”.
I ask, “Have you been writing your success journal?”
“No.”
“Oh, I could tell!”

So that’s what you want to do. Just do this simple daily practice. We want
daily practices to stabilize you, and to give you that foundation of stability
through your Inside Out Weight Loss journey.
I just want to remind you that it is the daily practices that make the person,
so success journal each and every day.


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I NSIDE O UT W EIGHT L OSS

COURSE NOTES AND WORKBOOK

A former food addict, Renée Stephens, PhD has come a long

© 2013 Renée Stephens

INSIDE OUT WEIGHT LOSS

Instead, we will be dedicating each precious minute of

is about turning the old model of

You may be wondering why I am so passionate about weight loss. I am

© 2013 Renée Stephens

As the binges grew worse, my diet became more extreme. I went on a

Fortunately, I eventually saw a nutritionist who asked me to keep a food diary.

Thanks to that nutritionist, I noticed I had a problem called compulsive

© 2013 Renée Stephens

Fortunately, I weaned myself off the anti-depressants by substituting regular

I eventually learned that my body was speaking to me. It was telling me I

That study led me to Neural Linguistic Programming, Hypnotherapy, Life

© 2013 Renée Stephens

THE INSIDE OUT WEIGHT LOSS STEPS

“If you have been up and down

© 2013 Renée Stephens

GET THE MOST OUT OF THIS PROGRAM

Take action, start a movement. We are turning traditional willpower and

Connect with me, start a conversation, ask me a question, or post a comment

© 2013 Renée Stephens

you are now, and how you know

Towards motivation is motivation toward what you want to create. For

© 2013 Renée Stephens

What is away from motivation? Away from motivation is obviously what

I have my own away from strategy and quite honestly it is a little

© 2013 Renée Stephens

So together we developed for her another motivation base. We developed her

© 2013 Renée Stephens

© 2013 Renée Stephens

Write your answers to the following questions. It is important to write them

What unwanted behaviors do you have?

© 2013 Renée Stephens

What unwanted symptoms do you have?

© 2013 Renée Stephens

I want you to make a conscious decision about the kind

you. Time passes quickly in the

© 2013 Renée Stephens

© 2013 Renée Stephens

What about professionally? Have you stayed in an unsatisfying job because

 What are the consequences of those behaviors and symptoms?

© 2013 Renée Stephens

I am often asked how to help overweight children and my answer is always

© 2013 Renée Stephens

What about 10 years from now? 20 years?

© 2013 Renée Stephens

If you haven’t already, form that group, document

© 2013 Renée Stephens

© 2013 Renée Stephens

© 2013 Renée Stephens

© 2013 Renée Stephens

How much time do we really spend thinking about what

and create.” time. So that’s what we are going to be doing today.

© 2013 Renée Stephens

© 2013 Renée Stephens