Your Habits Hold The Key To Good Health & Sustainable Weight Loss

A day does not go by without hearing about all the health problems the citizens of the western world are facing and despite all the billions of dollars we spend every year to solve those health problems, the health of the western world is getting worse.
The truth is that the solution to the health problems that we are facing, is very simple, but the solution does not make money for anyone, and therefore there are very few people out there promoting the real solution. 

Many people are waiting for the medical industry to solve the bad health epidemic.  What People need to realize, is that the medical industry is not into preventing bad health, they are into managing bad health because that is where they make their money.  Don't get me wrong, I am not against the medical industry.  The medical industry has made great contributions to human society but the fact remains that they are not into prevention.  Besides, the vast majority of the diseases that people are suffering from, are easily preventable by few changes in their habitual behaviors.  The medical industry is not going to help you change the habits that got you the disease, it will only give you a pill that will manage the disease.

The industry that is into preventing bad health is the fitness industry but they are not doing a very good job. Here is a very interesting fact.  Since 1992 in America alone we have more than doubled the amount of money we spend on weight loss products and services and yet the obesity rate went from 12.6% to over 36% today.  Isn't it obvious that whenever the weight loss industry is doing is not working?  Spending more money on solutions that don't work will not make them work any better.  One of the main reasons the weight loss industry if failing is because most fitness professionals, who create all those diet and weight loss programs to help people get in shape, they don't understand people who hate exercising and dieting, which is most people.  So, they create weight loss and diet programs that the average person can’t follow or can’t follow for a very long time.  This is why, only around 5% of the people who lose weight, are able to keep it off!

Our habitual behaviors hold the key to sustainable weight loss and better health.  If you want to lose weight get in shape, and more importantly stay in shape for the rest of your life, you must first identify the habitual behaviors responsible for your bad shape and replace them with healthy behaviors that will help you lose weight and improve your health.  There is no other way to achieve sustainable weight loss and better health.  

The reason we are losing the weight loss battle and our health is getting worse is because very few weight loss programs and fitness professionals focus on helping people make permanent changes in their habitual behavior.   Their focus, unfortunately, is to deliver what people want, fast results, which don't last. 

This is one of the biggest reasons why we are losing the weight loss and health battle and this is what I am trying to change through my sustainable weight loss project.

Click Here to learn about my sustainable weight loss project.

You Can't Target a Specific Area of the Body to Lose Fat

Sorry, but “spot reduction” is a myth.  As a matter of fact, it is one of the biggest myths that many fitness “experts” are helping spread.  Many people and companies in the weight loss industry would

Don’t fall victim to this. All you can do is create the environment where your body can lose weight, and genetics will determine where you are going to lose the fat from.  You have absolutely no control of where the fat will come off from.  Here are two studies that basically prove that spot reduction is not possible.  These studies were taken from the Lifestyle & Weight Management Consultant Manual of American Council on Exercise.

One classic study examined the muscle and fat mass in the right and left arms of high-caliber tennis players before the two-handed backhand became so popular.  At that time, the diameter and muscle mass of the dominant playing arm in professional tennis players was much greater than the non-dominant playing arm.  If spot reduction truly worked, we would expect to see less fat storage in the dominant playing arm.  However, no differences were found in the sum of multiple skin fold measures of either forearm.  Thus, sustained exercise in the playing arm did not result in a reduction of fat storage over the exercised muscle (Gwinup et al., 1971).

Another study done by Katch and colleagues (1984) examined the effects of a vigorous sit-up exercise program on adipose (fat cell) cell size and adiposity.  They had subjects perform more than 5,000 sit-ups over a period of 28 days.  Skinfold thickness, body composition, and circumference measures were taken before and after the exercise program.  They also took fat biopsies from the abdominal, buttocks and subscapular regions to assess the number and size of the cells in each area at baseline, and after the vigorous training program.  The extensive sit-up routine resulted in no changes in skinfold thickness, body composition or circumference.  Interestingly, the fat biopsy data did not find any selective differences in the preferential use or reduction in fat cell size or number in the abdominal region compared to the sub-scapular or buttocks regions.  Basically, what this means, in plain English, after all those sit-ups there was no fat loss in the midsection.

So, you see, it is not my opinion that spot reduction is not possible; it is a fact.  Just in case you are still not convinced that spot reduction is not possible, I will give you one more example to prove it to you.  As you know, everybody has a dominant and non-dominant side.  Especially for arms, the dominant arm does a lot more work than the non-dominant arm.  If spot reduction was possible, the dominant arms should have less fat on it then the other arm.  In many cases, the dominant arm might have more muscle, but the fat is always the same on both arms.  It is a good thing that spot reduction is not possible because then most people would end up with a fat side and a lean side.

 The question many people raise after they learn that spot reduction is not possible is “How can those ab machines you see on the infomercials guarantee you will lose one to two inches in the first two weeks if spot reduction is not possible?”  The answer is very simple.  When you don’t do any form of midsection exercise, the midsection muscles, like the rectus abdominus muscles, are relaxed and the organs push them slightly outwards.  As soon as you do any form of crunches, the first thing that happens is your midsection muscles pull in a straight line, so they are no longer pushed outwards by the internal organs.  Just by the midsection muscles tightening up and pulling in at a straight line, most people will lose one to two inches off their waistline.  That is how those ab machine infomercials can promise that you will lose one to two inches off your waist in the first one to two weeks.  The problem is, although they don’t say it, they make you think that you lost fat off of your waist, but in reality, all you did was pull your ab muscles in a straight line.  What they don’t want you to know is that any decent midsection exercise will do that for you; you don’t need to spend money to buy their ab machine.  Like the study proved, you will not lose fat off your waist by doing midsection exercises.  To get in shape and lose body fat, all you can do is create the environment in which your body can lose weight in, and your genetic make-up will determine where you are going to lose the fat from first, but eventually you will lose it from all over the body.  The 3 things you need to do, in order to create the right environment for weight loss and better health, is some form of resistance training, some form of aerobics, and proper nutrition. 

hate me for revealing to the public one of the biggest lies in the weight loss industry.  The sales of a
lot of fitness equipment are based on the promise of spot reduction.  How many times have you seen commercials and infomercials on TV that advertise specially designed abdominal toning equipment, that guarantee you will get washboard abs? There are hundreds of exercise videos on the market today, designed to tone and shape “problem areas” on your body.  Many health clubs have fallen into the trap too, and have added “ab, butt and thigh” toning classes which have become very popular.  All these classes and exercise machines claim that exercising the muscle beneath the fat in the “problem areas” will help you lose that fat.  To be able to spot reduce sounds great and it is easy to sell, especially to people who don’t know any better.  Many companies and fitness experts take advantage of the ignorance and the desperation of people to tone problem areas and sell them equipment and exercise programs that will not fulfill their promise.

The Right Mindset for Sustainable Weight Loss

Right Mindset

The best weight loss program in the world will not help you if you don't have the right mindset.

So what is the right mindset?  The right mindset is keeping your focus on what really matters when it comes to sustainable weight loss, and not on the gimmicks and half-truths that are abundant in the weight loss field.  

To have the right mindset you must realize the following 6 things:

Yes, You Can Lose Weight!

First, you must realize that You can definitely lose weight!  There is absolutely no reason why you can't lose weight.  Are there going to be obstacles that get in your way of your efforts to lose weight? Absolutely, but you can overcome any obstacles that get in your way if you simply believe that you can.  I am a firm believer that the person with a problem is also the person with a solution.  If you want something bad enough, solutions will come.

Weight Gain Is a Symptom

Without the right mindset sustainable weight loss is imposible!

Secondly, you must realize that Weight gain is not the problem, it is only a symptom. The problem is your habits.  So when you try to lose weight, don't focus on the weight you want to lose but on the habits, you need to change or develop in order to lose the weight you want.

Permanent Changes In Your Habits

The third thing you must realize is that the only way you can lose weight and keep it off for life is to make permanent changes in your lifestyle habits and there is no way around it.  Temporary changes in your diet or activity habits will only yield temporary results. This is a fact.  Unfortunately, most diet and weight loss programs, in their rush to help people get fast results, don't help people make permanent changes in their eating and activity habits. That is why the vast majority of people who lose weight gain the weight back.  An easy way to evaluate if the results from a diet or weight loss program will be sustainable is to ask yourself this simple question:  “Can I see myself doing whatever the diet or weight loss program is asking me to do, for the rest of my life to in order to lose the weight”?  If the answer is yes, then most likely you will be able to keep the weight off after you lose it with that program. If the answer is no, then you definitely will not be able to keep the weight off.  For example, most diets have you count calories in order to lose weight.  Can you see yourself counting calories for the rest of your life?  I don't know about you but I know I can't and I know most people can't either. That is why most diets fail long term.

Change One Habit at a time

The fourth thing you must realize is the only way to make permanent changes in your lifestyle habits is to introduce new habits slowly and one at a time.  Very few people can make big changes in their lifestyle habits all at once and be able to sustain them for life. For the rest of us, the only way to make permanent changes in our lifestyle habits is to keep the changes small and introduce them slowly over time.  Again, that is not exactly how most diet and exercise programs do it.  They have you make all the necessary dietary and activity changes all at once. 

That is the perfect recipe for burning out.  None of the popular diet and exercise programs have given any thought to the fact that people can't change overnight.   They wrongly believe that once people see results they would be motivated to keep doing what they did to lose the weight.  That is why they push people hard to lose weight fast.  If that theory was correct then how is it that  the vast majority of people who lose weight gain it back? The fact is the best results in the world will not keep you motivated if you achieved the results through a method that overwhelmed you. 

Fast Results Impossible to maintain

The fifth thing you need to realize is that fast results are impossible to maintain for the vast majority of people. Why?  In order to lose weight fast you must make big changes in your eating habits and in your activity habits all at once and, as I just explained, that leads to burnout.  The fact is the more changes you make in your life all at once, the further outside your comfort zone you get.  The further outside your comfort zone you get, the more uncomfortable you get, the greater the chances of burning out.  I do realize that people want fast results, but sometimes in life, what we want and what we need are two different things.  Believing that you can lose weight fast and keep it off is the wrong mindset that will get you into trouble.  Unfortunately, the weight loss industry has focused on delivering what people want because after all, that's what sells. They don't realize or simply don't care that it's not what people need. This is how we have ended up spending over $60 billion per year on weight loss products and services and still gaining weight as a nation.  The question I have for people who want to lose weight fast is this,”What is the point of losing weight fast if you are going to regain the weight back?”  Wouldn't you rather take an extra few months and lose weight the right way so the weight loss would be sustainable?

I got into the weight loss business not to help people lose weight temporarily. There are plenty of weight loss experts that can help people do that.  I got into the weight loss business to help people lose weight and keep it off. That is why my focus is on telling people what they need to hear and not what they want to hear.

Can't Rely on Motivation

The final thing you need to realize is that you can't rely on motivation to remain consistent with your workouts and your diet.  Of course, you need the motivation to get started but you can't rely on motivation to keep going forever because motivation is something that comes and goes.  Sometimes you are motivated to do the right thing and sometimes you are not.  If you only ate right or worked out when you were motivated, you would be very inconsistent in your efforts and most likely you would not see any results, or if you did, they would be temporary.  So if you can't rely on motivation to get your workouts done, or to eat right what can you rely on?  The answer is simple, routine! We all have routines that we go through every day, like when we first get up in the morning, you might take a shower, brush your teeth, comb your hair and so on.  Do you love combing your hair or brushing your teeth?  Do you debate whether or not you are going to comb your hair or brush your teeth?  No, you just do it. You don't love it, you don't hate it. It's just something that you deemed important and you make it part of your daily routine which you do without much thought.  Do you go to bed the night before thinking, “oh I hate having to comb my hair or brush my teeth every morning?”  Of course not. As a matter of fact, you probably don't spend any time thinking about it.

Well, that is how exercising and eating right has to become if you want to have a lean and healthy body that will last you a lifetime it has to become routine.

Having the right mindset for sustainable weight loss is the first thing you should make sure you have before starting any weight loss program.  The first thing I teach my clients, at my facility, Live Your Way Thin and with my online sustainable weight loss program, Live Thin Stay Thin, is how to develop the right mindset for sustainable weight loss.  Without the right mindset, sustainable weight loss is almost impossible to achieve. 

You Must Believe Before You Can Achieve!

The Importance of Belief with Certainty When it Comes to Losing Weight.
I love Henry Ford's quote, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't... you're right”  This quote is true in anything you try to do, including losing weight.  If you don't believe with certainty that you can lose weight and you have doubts, you won't put as much effort in the development of all the necessary habits for losing weight because you think you might be wasting your time and effort. 

If you don't put forth the effort in the development of all the necessary habits, it would be likely that you are not going to develop them and thus not lose the weight you want, which will reaffirm your belief that you can't lose weight.  Do you see the vicious cycle? 

You must believe that you can lose weight in order to lose weight. If you don't truly believe you can lose weight, you make it almost impossible to lose weight.  I can tell you with certainty that for 99.999% of the population there is absolutely no reason why they can't lose weight if they truly want to.  The only thing that is holding you back from losing weight is you and nothing else. 

Chances are there is absolutely no reason why you can't lose weight.  I have been in the weight loss industry for over 20 years and believe me when I tell you that everybody can lose weight if they believe it and have a strong desire to lose weight.

How much effort we are willing to put into anything is determined by how much we believe that whatever we are putting our efforts in will yield the desirable results.  If somebody you know and trust gave you an action plan that requires a lots of effort to complete and told you if you took all the actions in this plan you will end up with $10 million dollars guaranteed,  how much effort would you put into this action plan and how hard would you work to get around any obstacles that got in your way?  I am willing to bet most people would not let anything get in their way of completing that action plan so they can get the money.  

You have to look at weight loss the same way.  You must believe that you absolutely can lose weight. All you have to do is figure out what habits you need to develop or change in order to lose weight and then get to work on developing those habit.  That is how I help my clients lose weight and keep it off at my facility Live Your Way Thin and also online at LiveThinStayThin.com

The Sustainable Weight Loss Project

It's time to learn the truth about losing weight!

From the very beginning, when I first got into the weight loss field, 24 years ago, I noticed how most people lost weight only to regaining the weight back.  I don’t know about other fitness professionals but I did not get into the weight loss field to help people lose weight temporarily. I got into the weight loss field to help people lose weight and keep it off.  For that reason, I refused to follow the current methods of weight loss because they only lead to unsustainable weight loss.  Early in my fitness career I got to work trying to answer the questions, “why do most people end up regaining the weight back and how can I help people achieve sustainable weight loss?”  Finding the answer to these two questions was a long hard journey.  As I was working behind the scenes trying to answer this questions on sustainable weight loss,  I would watch new weight loss fads come and go, month after month, year after year, promising people whatever they  wanted to hear but producing no real results.  The only results these fad weight loss program produced was enriching the pockets of their creators.  Think about this, since 1992, the year I got into the weight loss field, we have increased the amount of money we spend on weight loss products and services from $30 billion per year to over $60 billion today, and the obesity rate during the same time has gone from 12.6% to over 35% today.  Don’t you find something wrong with this picture?  I did. I knew there was something seriously wrong with the way we approached weight loss for years, but I did not know exactly what was wrong. So I kept quiet and diligently worked at looking for answers.

Finally, after around 15 years in the weight loss industry, I found I had my answers on how to attain sustainable weight loss. But  I had not tested my answers to sustainable weight loss on a large enough number of people or for a long enough period of time to make sure it worked on most people. I lacked the confidence that my answers were 100% correct.  I kept my information to myself and my clients and continued testing my approach.

It has been almost 10 years since I came up with what I thought was the answer to sustainable weight loss and today I can say, with certainty, that I have the answer.  The success that I have seen in my clients who followed my method to sustainable weight loss is the most definitive evidence that I have seen in all my years in the weight loss field.  Now that I have the answer to sustainable weight loss it  is time to get ready for my next quest and for this quest I need everyone's help. 

I realize that the best weight loss solution will not make any difference in anyone’s life if they don’t know about it.  I have been watching people lose weight only to regain the weight back, long enough.  It is time to put a stop to it. The future is not looking too good for our health.   According to NHANES (The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey), if we continue at the current rate of weight gain, 50% of the US population will be obese by the year 2030.  This awful fate does not have to happen and to make sure it does not, I have started The Sustainable Weight Loss Project.

It’s an educational movement to inform the public on facts they need to know about sustainable weight loss and better health, that unfortunately, the mainstream nutritionists and fitness professionals are not teaching them.

The goal of this project is to increase the number of people who are able to keep the weight off from 5% to over 70% and reverse the weight gain trend.   I believe we can achieve this goal by getting the word out on how sustainable weight loss is possible. By the way, it is not that hard.   Unfortunately, it will be an uphill battle because my message will be competing with well-funded misinformation on weight loss and better health, which is the main reason why we are losing the weight loss battle in the first place.  By myself, I will not be able to reach enough people to make a difference, that is why I am asking for everyone's help to spread the word by sharing this information with all your friends and family.  If everyone pitches in and help spread the word, we can reach enough people to make a difference and reverse the weight gain trend and we can make our country lean and healthy again.

I will be getting the truth out on sustainable weight loss through online and offline vehicles like my Live Your Way Thin YouTube channel, my Live Your Way Thin Facebook page, my blog, and public speaking.

I also hope to attract other like-minded fitness professionals that will join my quest to reverse the weight gain trend that the western world is experiencing today.  

If you would like to help, please visit my YouTube channel and share the videos with your friends, read my blog, my Facebook posts and share them with your friends.  I am also making myself available, for free, to speak to any groups and companies in the Greater Danbury area on the subject of sustainable weight loss and how it can be achieved.  If you know of any groups or companies that are looking for a speaker, please forward my information to them or contact me directly.

Through a collective effort, I truly believe we can reverse the trend and avoid the awful fate that awaits us if we don’t start making changes now.

Thank you

Stavros Mastrogiannis

Why Weight Gain is a Blessing

Yes you read correctly, weight gain is a blessing and here is why.  Just because someone is thin, that does not make him or her healthy.  I know plenty of thin people who had heart attacks and strokes. 
The problem is that many times thin people or people who don't have a weight problem, wrongly believe that they are healthy so they don’t watch their diet and don’t exercise.  All of a sadden they get a stroke or a heart attack and that is when they realize that they are not as healthy as they thought.   If they survive the stroke or the heart attack, then is when they start taking care of their health.   
Weight gain is a clear signal from your body that you are engaging in habitual behaviors that are bad for your health.  This is why you should look at weight gain as a blessing because your body is giving you a heads up that you are doing something wrong and that you should change course.  A thin person, unfortunately, does not get that message from their body until is too late.  Personally I would prefer if my body gave me a heads up by gaining weight when I engage in unhealthy behaviors!


If you would like to learn more about my approach to sustainable weight loss visit my website LiveYourWayThin.com

Please leave your comments below.

Before and After Pictures Don't Always Tell The Truth!

Sometimes pictures do lie, especially weight loss before-and-after pictures.  There are many ways you can manipulate picture to make someone look better and more fit.

Whenever I see a commercial for a weight loss product with before and after pictures, I always check out the fine print that usually reads, “Results not typical”.  I have nothing against before-and-after pictures, but that point I am trying to make is that you shouldn't just go by before-and-after pictures when you considering a weight loss product.  Pictures don’t always tell the truth.

Here is an interesting article by Stephanie Lee about Before-and-After pictures.  Read it, I think you will find it very interesting.  Click the link below to get to the article.

How to Fake 'Before and After' Fitness Photos

The Best Diet or Exercise Program will not help you if you can't follow it!

  You can ask 10 weight loss experts what is the best way to lose weight and you will get 10 different answers.  So who should you believe and why?  The unfortunate truth is that most likely all 10 are wrong and here is why.  Most weight loss experts have focused so much on creating the perfect diet or the best exercise program that would deliver the fastest results, they forgot that a diet that no one can follow long term, or an exercise program that no one can stick with is not very effective.  Just look at all the weight loss programs on the market today.  For example, look at the P90X.  Is P90X an effective workout program?  Absolutely!  The problem is that very few people can actually stick with it.  I personally know over 50 people that have bought the P90X but out of those 50 people only one was able to go through the whole program, everyone else burned out within the first few weeks. 

So my question is, how effective is a workout program that most people can't do?  Same thing with all the diets.  Can you see yourself counting calories or point for the rest of your life?  Can you see yourself constantly being vigilant of everything you put in your mount?  If you are like most people, the answer is no.  But that is exactly what all popular diet programs ask you to do.   No wonder we are losing the weight loss battle.

The best weight loss program is that one you can live with for life!  A good way to tell if, with a particular weight loss program, you will be able to achieve sustainable weight loss is to ask yourself this question.  "Can I see myself doing everything the weight loss program is asking me to do for life?"  If the answer is no, don't even bother starting because any weight loss results you will achieve with that program will be temporary. 

Sustainable weight loss is only possible through permanent changes in your daily habitual behaviors.