Look. You want to get in shape. You have wanted to for years. If you are anything like the rest of us, I can only assume that you have tried to lose weight before by cutting out every bad thing out of your diet and just  trying to grit your teeth and stick with it. Unfortunately, for most of us…

Cold turkey does not work

I know you have that one friend who just decided to quit smoking one day and just did it – that is incredibly impressive and admirable. However, a lot of us simply cannot hack it.

Think about it this way: remember Flappy Bird? When I first played that game I could not get more than 3 points… 3 measly points. 10 points seemed like miles away. But, with time I slowly started to get better and better, and was able to stay focused and more concentrated, and was able to get a better score. Within a few days 10 point was a standard score for me, and after about 2 weeks I got up to 70 or so.

The same principle applies to losing weight: eating healthily and exercising right is the equivalent of scoring 70 points. If you try and do that straight away you will fail, as you have not trained yourself to be able to stay focused and consistent to achieve it. Sure, there may be the odd few you are able to get that score consistently straight away, however, it is rare.

What You Need To Do

Reduce the amount you eat by so little that it is literally a joke for you to not do it.

This is a method which works wonders; just pick one tiny bit of your diet which you can reduce/substitute. I wanted to drink coffee without sugar, and I used to put 3 spoons of sugar in. When I decided that this was too much I reduced it to 2.5 spoons; at first, the coffee tasted a tiny bit bitter, but within a few days it was completely normal. This is the equivalent of getting that 1 point on Flappy bird consistently.

Every few days I would decrease the amount of sugar I drank ever slowly and was comfortable with only 1 sugar in my coffee after about 2 weeks; this is me getting 10 points on Flappy Bird without a sweat. After about 3 weeks I was drinking black coffee – and loved the taste.

I know you are thinking that this took ages, but it is 6 months later and I feel no withdrawal symptoms whatsoever. In fact, I prefer the taste of black coffee now.

The gradual approach allows you to not get that craving to the food/drink, as you are not eliminating it out of your life, but simply controlling how much you have. The fact that it is such a small amount makes things so much easier; it would be shameful if I could not reduce the amount of sugar I have in my coffee by half a teaspoon…

I honestly urge you to take Flappy Bird as inspiration and focus on increasing your score by 1 point at a time, and not try and leap for 70 straight away; losing weight, and keeping it off, are long-term goals and requires you to be consistent – I have found no better way to effortlessly lose weight than to make it so subtle and slow that it is not even a challenge.

-Mike

Got any questions? Email me at mike@unigains.com