What to do when you don’t see results right away

Transcript

Chef AJ:

How can I practice patience when it comes to weight loss? If I don't see results right away, I lose interest.

John Pierre:
Well, just remember when you take a look at a pound of body fat, so let's pretend you're holding a pound of body fat. That's about 3,500 calories. If you and I work out together really hard for an hour, we would be lucky to burn 200 calories. So, you know, it takes time to lose body weight. You're not going to do it just… unless you're doing chronic exercise, it’s not going to come off quickly because chronic exercise is unhealthy.

And if you're doing a program that we recommend, you know like Ultimate Weight Loss, it still takes time because you're reducing some of your calorie load but particularly the fat grams. And so your body takes time. Now, if you're a female, you're kind of designed as a fat-storing human being. You're designed for that. And if you're over 40, then it's going to be even harder. And if you have a physical malady and you can't walk as well or you've had some other complications on endocrine system, it takes time.

But remember this, that eating healthy and moving your body, even if you are overweight and you could never lose weight again, you still want to eat healthy and move your body because it's healthy for you. And I get these calls constantly… just the other day, somebody said that there's their school reunion was coming up and they need to get in shape and lose weight. And I was like, well, when is that? And they're like three weeks. I was like, three weeks? I mean, that's kind of crazy. I mean, that's how people get hurt, you know? Cause then they start restricting their calories so much and they go on exercise binges. This stuff takes time and patience.

And part of what I've explained to people before is, in my opinion, I've been doing this for 35 years and I train a lot of psychologists… so a lot of psychologists are my clients and I work a lot with people with trauma. And so one of the things that you have to look at when you see body weight on you, those are some issues going on. What was causing you to do all this extra eating, right? I mean, why are you doing all this eating? Why are you not able to fill up just on vegetables and fruits and whole grains and beans? What are these dopamine blasts that you constantly need all day long? You know, on my JohnPierre.com site, I have a program called the Pillars of Health. And the first video I did on that was all on food addictions.

And one of the things I tell people is I'd like you to have three dopamine blasts a day, okay? And you can get three dopamine blasts a day from food. And that's it. The rest of your 20, 30 dopamine blasts have to come from life. So you can have three from food. You can have your breakfast, lunch, and dinner or lunch, snack and dinner, whatever you want. But the rest of the fun game has got to come from life. And you just can't keep getting it from food, because I'm going to tell you for most of us, maybe AJ you might be an exception or Dr. Goldhammer, but most of us don't get dopamine blasts from eating salad. No, most of us don't.

So we're looking for higher caloric food. So your body says, hey yeah, that's what you need. You keep doing it. Just like you take your finger and you stick it in a hot stove. Your body says, if you don't pull it out, you're going to die of an infection or burn your hand. So it forces you to pull it out. Well, it's the same thing with pleasure. If there's something that sustains life, your body releases the dopamine, it gives you the bell, like a slot machine goes off and says, keep doing it, keep doing it, keep doing it.

But the thing is, we're not living in a famine anymore. Every block you go, there's a store. Most of us have 20, 30 pounds of body weight that could sustain us for a long time. And our refrigerator and our cupboards are full. So nature doesn't understand that. So it's still ringing the dopamine blast when you taste something that's kind of fatty or salty or sugary.

So my suggestion, to make a long story short, is you have to be patient unless you're willing to suffer heavily. When people come to me and they say, I want to lose weight fast. I say, beautiful. How much can you suffer? And they're like, what? I don't want to suffer. And I said, oh, I'm sorry. I thought you said you wanted to lose weight quickly. That's how you lose it quickly. You just suffer like, oh, heck you're restricting calories. And you’re not getting off your treadmill. But that's not healthy and it's not realistic.

Chef AJ:
Well, even people that water fast only lose… really, when they're losing a pound a day, it's not fat because you know, maybe a half a pound a day of fat. And then they gain once they refeed. They're gaining half of that back. People don't realize how long it really takes to lose a pound of fat. Dr. Lisle says you lose about two ounces a day — even if you're perfect.

John Pierre:
Think of it this way. If you had a pound of fat, at the end of the day you did a great day. It was like taking two pats of butter off that pound of fat or a little baby teaspoon, little spoon. That's it. Your body just chips away slowly. It's not quickly.

Chef AJ:
People do not want to wait for these results, but you know when you talked about your client, that had to lose weight in six weeks, a lot of people come to us for like a wedding or whatever. And I said, you should've come a year ago. If this is what you want to lose by this time, it’s completely unrealistic, number one. But number two, I have found that the people that lose weight the quickest gained it back the fastest, because they're generally doing it in a way that's unsustainable.

So, you know, I don't know about you but most of my private clients that I get come to me from doing a weighing and measuring program and they've done it successfully for the time that they were willing to do it. But the minute they stopped weighing and measuring their food, the weight came on with a vengeance, either all or some of it. And sometimes even more because they didn't learn a way to sustainably eat. And it's the same thing with people that have gastric bypass but don't change their diet. The weight may come off quickly, but it doesn't stay off.

And so what we're teaching is a way to eat. And you eat this way, you don't have weight problems. You don't have food addictions. You might eat a little bit more of the high fat food, but you don't need all the fake foods or anything like that.