This Time I Mean It

Getting Past What Holds You Back with Baby Boomer Weight Loss Expert Scott 'Q' Marcus

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Who is YOU?

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Who is YOU?

(That’s not a grammatical error.)

When asked, “Who is (your name),” what do you say?

Do you reply with your name? Do you say “I’m a man (or woman).” Is your response, “mother, father, son, daughter”? Do you label yourself by what you do for a living or your religion or even where you live/

Again, who is YOU?

We are incredibly complex beings and we have many different labels.

For example, I can be “man” at the same time as I’m “happy.” I can be a “resident of northern California” while “native of Detroit” and both are equally true. I can be “a person of faith” and I can be “doubtful” in the same place. I can be “overweight” and I can be “proud” together.

Why does this matter?

[Read more…]

What Comes First, Happiness or Success?

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It’s kind of a chicken and the egg thing.


Of course, you’ll be happier when you succeed at your goal. That  is obvious. The sense of accomplishment, success, self-confidence, and happiness are the natural result of achieving a goal.

But when do they start?

For example too often, many people say, “When I lose those 30 pounds, I’ll be really happy.” That makes sense; after all, the sense of accomplishment, success, and achievement (let alone better health and more pride of appearance) will indeed generate a sense of happiness. But, does it happen the day you reach pound number 30? Maybe it’s at 20? How about 15? Dare I say it, is it one pound?

To be successful, it starts on day one.

[Read more…]

The Writer

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“I lost a whole lot of weight,” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

Depressed Overweight Woman

No eye contact was made; instead she seemly excessively absorbed in staring at her shoes. “But now, not only have I put it back on, but I’ve added 20 more pounds. I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been. I can’t stand to look in a mirror. I don’t know what to do.” The sadness she felt practically dripped from her pores.

“That’s got to be frustrating,” I replied.

“…and frightening too!” she added. “When’s it going to stop?”

“Good question,” I answered, “What seems to be the cause?”

“Well, I’m obviously eating too much.” She tried to make it sound like an “ain’t-it-obvious” joke but the pain was louder than her laugh.

“That’s what’s so embarrassing,” she continued. “I just don’t know. It seems like I start out every day with great intentions. The problem is I work near a little mom-and-pop bakery. They make the best cakes and pies. So, on my break, I’ll find myself buying just one small slice, saying I’ll control myself. The next thing I know, I’m like a machine that’s eats everything! Then my inner voice says, ‘Well as long as you blew it, you might as well really blow it. You can always start tomorrow’ and I really go crazy! Every day is just like the previous one; same broken promises, same result.”

She paused; the gold hoop earrings she wore swung slightly under her brown shoulder length hair as she collected her thoughts. Picking up her gaze, she asked, “What do you think I should do?”

I always find that a difficult question.

[Read more…]

The Road from “Never” to “Now”

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never-land-&-now-road

Changing a bad habit can be messy, frustrating, and unpleasant.

After all, if it was easy, we’d all be dropping bad habits willy-nilly, wouldn’t we?

It becomes easier if, instead of looking at it like, “One moment I’m here. The next minute I have to be all the way over there,” we understand it more as a series of stages.

I’ll assume one has left the initial stage of denial, and decided to — for example — lose a few pounds; accepting that either forever gaining weight or making a change are his only options.

He lands firmly in stage one: “Never.”

Here thoughts and feelings are extremely negative, perception being an excessive, laborious amount of work and discomfort for what appears to be a pipe dream result. Internal dialog is, “I will never be able to do that” with the obvious coda being, “…so why bother to try?”

In our example, the thought of sweaty, painful exercise; a starvation-level diet; anal-retentive tracking of calories; tasteless recipes; extensive shopping pattern adjustments; and – in general – being forever, always, never-ending conscious; triggers our synapses to scream, “No way! Can’t be done, ain’t gonna happen.” Crossing our arms, scowling, and firmly planting our feet, we refuse to budge.

Or so we think.

You see; the problem is that once consciousness has been raised it cannot never again be buried.

[Read more…]

Identify Your 20%

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There are two laws in the universe: Gravity, and the “80/20 Rule.”

newton-hit-on-head-by-apple

In case you’re not familiar with the 80/20 Rule, it states that “Eighty percent of all results will come from 20% of all the effort.” In other words, if you have ever worked on a committee with 10 people, 80% of the work was done by 2 of the people.

How does this apply to habit change?

Habits are triggered by events, such as we eat (habit) because we’re stressed (event). To change your habits, you need to change how you handle the event. To change how you handle the event, you need to identify your triggers.

Here’s the good news.

The 80/20 rule tells us that we do not need to identify every single triggering event in our lives. If we identify the 20% of triggers that cause us the most trouble, we’ll fix our habit 80% of the time.

Fix your habit 80% of the time and you’re moving forward at incredible speed!

If you’re serious about changing your habits… [Read more…]

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Scott "Q" Marcus
707 834.4090
scottq@thistimeimeanit.com
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