The Elevator Diet
Over the next seven days you can ride the elevator down to the next floor.
You can either stay in the elevator waiting for something to happen, or press the down button to descend. Imagine the lobby is your goal weight. It is a beautiful place to be, and once you have landed at your goal you are free to leave the elevator. If the scale starts to go back up, just return to the elevator and start your descent again.
How long will it take? Less time than it took for you to get to whatever floor you are on. How many pounds do you want to lose? One pound per floor... how many floors? Each floor takes seven days to descend going at a speed of minus 500 calories per day. Burn 200 of those calories with exercise. Thirty minutes of walking a day, broken into 3 ten minute walks can do this. Eat 300 calories less a day. Less than what? Less than you are currently eating. To make this work it would be really helpful if you knew what you were eating. If only there was a way you could know what you are eating... oh wait, you can. Great!
Since you are able to be aware and to observe what you are eating every day this isn't an impossible task. If you hate counting calories like I do, then shift to eating lower calorie foods like fruit and vegetables.
I am your elevator companion on this journey down to your goal weight. The music in the elevator is exactly what you want to hear, and I am with you the whole time.
Maintaining a healthy weight is easier than maintaining an unhealthy weight.
Every bite is a choice. I'd like you to start now by focusing on getting more pleasure out of every morsel you eat.
Depravation isn't going to get you to the ground floor. What you need is love and support, security, safety and abundant motivation. By setting your intention to see the scale go down and following the easy suggestions that make the most sense to you - you will achieve your goal.
If you don't know exactly what floor you are on - and you know you are up too high, then step inside and press the down button. The elevator door is open, step inside.
This particular elevator has mirrors that reveal your soul. In this elevator you weigh exactly what your soul weighs. You are weightless. You feel light as air. You feel free. Your body is strong and your desire for change is enough to make pushing the button easy. You are answering your heart's request to give yourself love.
If you weigh more than you'd like, you have been hearing your heart ask for you to give it more love. This desire is a good thing. If there was a vending machine in your office that you could plunk money into and it would give you a good feeling that was calorie free that flooded your body with good feelings and another vending machine that made you feel like crap; I know you'd pick the good one.
What brings anyone to a vending machine in the first place - at a base level it is a desire for a good feeling. If you were physically hungry - then the good feeling is your attempt to return to feeling satisfied. If you were emotionally hungry then the desire is to feel less stress, more good feeling. Is a Snicker's Bar something that feels good? It can be... in the moment. I can't read your mind. The good feeling content isn't stamped on the package like a nutritional panel... but it is emblazoned in your mind's eye. It is how you determine what you would rather have. If you were choosing between a bag of potato chips and a snickers bar; which would you prefer? Which one sounds better to you? The one you pick when you plunk your money in the machine and press the corresponding letter and number is the one you have identified as giving you the most good feeling. If it isn't the one that is your favorite - example you are picking the trail mix bar instead of the Twix in an effort to make a healthier choice - then that suggests you are at one starting point. If you are picking your favorite candy from all the ones available, then you are at a slightly different starting point. Which one is better? Well, they are both fine, but neither will help the elevator descend.
It is a little known secret that there is no such thing as a good vending machine choice. Every nickel you drop into a vending machine is like you are paying yourself not to lose weight. If you really want a good feeling then there is probably a much more decadent choice that isn't in the vending machine.
Some of these decadent choices are edible. Others, like getting a massage or buying a bouquet of flowers feed your body without getting stored as fat.
What is your favorite dessert? Not just your favorite junk food but your favorite dessert? Odds are slim that it is readily available in the vending machine. I like See's Chocolate Chip Truffles, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and warm chocolate croissants. None of which are to be found in any vending machine I have ever stumbled upon.
If you were choosing the healthier option - that is great, but a piece of fresh fruit or raw vegetable would make the elevator descend even faster.
If you eat food from the vending machine at your work, then imagine putting the vending machine money into something that could help you lose weight easily and effortlessly. Plunk your spare change into a jar that is called, "Love and Good Feelings".
Plan ahead by bringing really good choices. It doesn't take a lot of effort or planing to swing by the grocery store and pick up these 6 items:
1) Bag of organic apples - I love Pink Lady, Fuji, or Honey Crisp
2) Bunch of bananas
3) Bag of baby carrots
4) An orange
5) Bunch of grapes
6) Celery Stalks
Feel free to substitute any of the above with your favorite fruits or veggies.
Then, the next time you are feeling like you need something from the vending machine, grab your change, plunk it in your jar that you have secretly labeled "Paying myself to be thinner and happier" and enjoy whichever fruit or veggie sounds best to you. Does one make your mouth water?
Speaking of water, grab a glass. In order to speed your descent if you want to keep drinking whatever you are drinking now, for every four ounces of any of the following you are currently imbibing (soda, coffee, wine, beer, juice, protein shake - and whatever else you are currently drinking on a daily basis, drink 4 oz. of water before and drink another 4 oz after. A lot of the above mentioned beverages are dehydrating. You are doing something good for your body with every sip of water. Imagine you are pouring water on a dying plant and notice how the plant begins to perk back up once it has a little water. Your body needs water. It is good for you, and it should be enjoyable.
If you aren't a water drinker, then start slowly. If the idea of 4 oz of water makes your throat tighten up, try a teaspoon, or a tablespoon, or one ounce. As you sip it, think about how much your body loves water. Your body is about 70% water. The more you drink water when you are the thirsty, the lighter and cleaner you will feel inside. What you drink it out of makes a difference. The next time you are out shopping, satisfying your ancestral hunter gatherer instincts, go on a search for a beautiful water glass. My current water glass is hand blown glass. It is incredibly light weight and fragile. There are tiny blue and green fish etched into the glass, swimming in an arc around the glass. Just picking it up feels good. It is a pleasure to look at. I make an effort to "flood" myself with a good feeling every time I pick it up, with every sip I take.
What do I mean by "flood" myself with good feelings? Well, for me, I get this feeling when I yawn that tingles near my ears along my jaw. I imagine I am pouring that good feeling all over myself. It is the memory of the hug from someone who loves me, it is the feeling I had when I opened a gift I really wanted, but hadn't expected. it is the moment my husband kissed me after he proposed. The good feelings throughout my life are still alive in my memory. By remembering them, and feeling then now intentionally flooding myself with the memories, I am associating that good feeling with a think I didn't like to do.
Drinking water is becoming something enjoyable for me. I used to dread it. I had read a lot of weight loss books that recommended drinking lots of water to lose weight, and I came to associate drinking water with punishment, obligation, failure, deprivation and self loathing. I have had to put a lot of extra love and good feelings into reprogramming how I feel about drinking water.
Another thing I started to do is imagine the most beautiful images of water and connect it with the sound of a lovely voice singing softly, "Aahhh" like it has a ray of sunlight shining down on it and by drinking the water I am pouring that good beautiful sunlight into my body. It is healing me. It is quenching my hunger. It is giving me real calm steady energy. It is flushing any disease from my body gently and lovingly. I am telling my body, I love you and I will care for you a little better every day. Just thinking those thoughts makes my mouth water, so I will go grab a glass - care to join me?
The light is shining through the glass, "Aahhh" pure pleasure.
You are in the elevator. You have pressed the down button. You are going to buy apples, bananas, carrots, grapes, celery and your favorite fruit and veggies to replace any of the vending machine "good choices".
Oh! and for those of you who are picking your favorite food, check in with yourself. If there something you love even more than that Snicker's bar? If so, go buy a portion of that more desirable delight. I'd rather have a See's chocolate chip truffle than a Snicker's bar. If Snicker's bars are your ultimate favorite treat and you want to eat one every day? Well, add an apple to it. Before you eat whatever favorite treat you have selected; imagine the treat has been sitting out over night. Or it was dropped in some sand and you had to take it to the sink to rinse it off with some water.
Most confections don't look so good after they have sat in the water a few minutes. Was it a Snicker's Bar that cleared the pool when someone saw it floating in the water in "Caddy shack" and mistook it for poop. After an hour in water, an apple still looks lovely. If that image helps you enjoy real food more and helps add a little distance from that "treat". That treat is after all keeping you at your unhealthy undesired weight. Why not meditate on that a bit? Flip back and forth between thinking "Aahhh" for the piece of fruit and "Eeew/yucky" from the packaged treat.
It's not that I don't want you to get incredible joy out of whatever you are eating, I do.
I want the elevator to start to descend smoothly and rapidly. I want you to feel like you are in 100% control and are treating yourself like royalty. I can't imagine someone royal eating out of a vending machine. Find the best you can afford and treat yourself. In the interim, have a piece of fruit 100% guilt free. Imagine you are feeding your soul Your spirit is saying "yes", your body is in heaven. Your body knows exactly what the components are. There is no red dye to navigate, no unpronounceable chemicals. Just real wonderful food. The kind of delight that is good for you on every level.
At my heaviest, I weighed 254 pounds. I have lost over 100 pounds, and I am still riding the elevator down to the lobby. If the 125th floor is my lobby weight, then I have descended 101 floors, one hundred and one pounds, and I have 28 floors to go.
I used to think of the weight loss journey as trying to push a boulder up a mountain. It was hard work. Every day was another struggle, another mountain to climb. The world was full of temptations and it didn't feel like there was such a thing as a good choice.
Now, I am letting go of the extra weight, more and more easily every day.
I used to subscribe to the commonly held belief that the last 15 pounds are the hardest. Well, given that I have already lost more than the 80 pounds I originally dreamed of losing, I have surpassed the "last fifteen pounds" hurdle more than once.
You could think of this as the number on the scale. If you want to see the scale go down, see yourself standing on the scale. The pointer is pointing to a number (if you have an analog scale like I do, the old fashioned kind, not the digital. The pointer looks a lot like arc of numbers above the elevator that indicate what floor the elevator is currently on.
Even if you don't know what number you want to land on, you know which direction you want the scale to go -- down.
So, as they say, take it one pound at a time.
One pound is about a week. That week will pass and you will either be at the next floor(weight loss), standing in the elevator at the same floor (plateau), or on a higher floor (weight gain). One of those three things will happen. Which do you want?
Visualize the numbers on the scale going down. See your feet looking a little thinner than they were? The scale is pointing at a lighter weight. You have been that weight before. What will be different about you when you weigh this weight again? Hopefully you will be able to celebrate it and enjoy it in a way you didn't before.
If you are 190 lbs and you want to see 189, press the down button. If you really want to see 130 it's like a little kid has pressed every button on the elevator. As the elevator descends it will stop at every floor. At each new number on the scale, you need to push the button for the next floor. You can also press that little button to make the doors close faster. Then focus on your new short term goal.
It may not seem like it - I can't remember how old I was the last time I weighed 125 pounds, but chances are wen I did I was a young teenager, and I was probably dying to see 120.
I like knowing that every person on the planet that is over weight was once at their current dream weight. It has a nice symmetry to it, it feels hopeful.
Develop your dream to an attainable goal. Why do I bother suggesting this? The most important reason is, I want you to succeed. I know it sn't realistic or healthy to pick a number on the scale arbitrarily. I could say I want to weigh 120 lbs, but I have no idea what that would look like.
At 153 pounds, I am slender and healthy. I am in the "normal" range for my height on the BMI chart. I am 36 years old. I am a strong, lovely mother of two. I look better than I have ever looked in my life -- and part of that is a feeling I have. I am strong. I have lost one hundred pounds. I have achieved goals I wasn't even prepared to dream about at the beginning of my journey. I sat in weight watchers listening to stories of people who lost 100 pounds, thinking -- I'll never lose that much, if I could just lose 50 pounds that would be wonderful.
How long will it take? Less time than it took for you to get to whatever floor you are on. How many pounds do you want to lose? One pound per floor... how many floors? Each floor takes seven days to descend going at a speed of minus 500 calories per day. Burn 200 of those calories with exercise. Thirty minutes of walking a day, broken into 3 ten minute walks can do this. Eat 300 calories less a day. Less than what? Less than you are currently eating. To make this work it would be really helpful if you knew what you were eating. If only there was a way you could know what you are eating... oh wait, you can. Great!
Since you are able to be aware and to observe what you are eating every day this isn't an impossible task. If you hate counting calories like I do, then shift to eating lower calorie foods like fruit and vegetables.
I am your elevator companion on this journey down to your goal weight. The music in the elevator is exactly what you want to hear, and I am with you the whole time.
Maintaining a healthy weight is easier than maintaining an unhealthy weight.
Every bite is a choice. I'd like you to start now by focusing on getting more pleasure out of every morsel you eat.
Depravation isn't going to get you to the ground floor. What you need is love and support, security, safety and abundant motivation. By setting your intention to see the scale go down and following the easy suggestions that make the most sense to you - you will achieve your goal.
If you don't know exactly what floor you are on - and you know you are up too high, then step inside and press the down button. The elevator door is open, step inside.
Welcome To the Elevator
This particular elevator has mirrors that reveal your soul. In this elevator you weigh exactly what your soul weighs. You are weightless. You feel light as air. You feel free. Your body is strong and your desire for change is enough to make pushing the button easy. You are answering your heart's request to give yourself love.
If you weigh more than you'd like, you have been hearing your heart ask for you to give it more love. This desire is a good thing. If there was a vending machine in your office that you could plunk money into and it would give you a good feeling that was calorie free that flooded your body with good feelings and another vending machine that made you feel like crap; I know you'd pick the good one.
Vending Machine Choices
What brings anyone to a vending machine in the first place - at a base level it is a desire for a good feeling. If you were physically hungry - then the good feeling is your attempt to return to feeling satisfied. If you were emotionally hungry then the desire is to feel less stress, more good feeling. Is a Snicker's Bar something that feels good? It can be... in the moment. I can't read your mind. The good feeling content isn't stamped on the package like a nutritional panel... but it is emblazoned in your mind's eye. It is how you determine what you would rather have. If you were choosing between a bag of potato chips and a snickers bar; which would you prefer? Which one sounds better to you? The one you pick when you plunk your money in the machine and press the corresponding letter and number is the one you have identified as giving you the most good feeling. If it isn't the one that is your favorite - example you are picking the trail mix bar instead of the Twix in an effort to make a healthier choice - then that suggests you are at one starting point. If you are picking your favorite candy from all the ones available, then you are at a slightly different starting point. Which one is better? Well, they are both fine, but neither will help the elevator descend.
It is a little known secret that there is no such thing as a good vending machine choice. Every nickel you drop into a vending machine is like you are paying yourself not to lose weight. If you really want a good feeling then there is probably a much more decadent choice that isn't in the vending machine.
Some of these decadent choices are edible. Others, like getting a massage or buying a bouquet of flowers feed your body without getting stored as fat.
What is your favorite dessert? Not just your favorite junk food but your favorite dessert? Odds are slim that it is readily available in the vending machine. I like See's Chocolate Chip Truffles, freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and warm chocolate croissants. None of which are to be found in any vending machine I have ever stumbled upon.
If you were choosing the healthier option - that is great, but a piece of fresh fruit or raw vegetable would make the elevator descend even faster.
If you eat food from the vending machine at your work, then imagine putting the vending machine money into something that could help you lose weight easily and effortlessly. Plunk your spare change into a jar that is called, "Love and Good Feelings".
Foods To Make Losing Weight Easy
Plan ahead by bringing really good choices. It doesn't take a lot of effort or planing to swing by the grocery store and pick up these 6 items:
1) Bag of organic apples - I love Pink Lady, Fuji, or Honey Crisp
2) Bunch of bananas
3) Bag of baby carrots
4) An orange
5) Bunch of grapes
6) Celery Stalks
Feel free to substitute any of the above with your favorite fruits or veggies.
Then, the next time you are feeling like you need something from the vending machine, grab your change, plunk it in your jar that you have secretly labeled "Paying myself to be thinner and happier" and enjoy whichever fruit or veggie sounds best to you. Does one make your mouth water?
Why Drinking Water?
Speaking of water, grab a glass. In order to speed your descent if you want to keep drinking whatever you are drinking now, for every four ounces of any of the following you are currently imbibing (soda, coffee, wine, beer, juice, protein shake - and whatever else you are currently drinking on a daily basis, drink 4 oz. of water before and drink another 4 oz after. A lot of the above mentioned beverages are dehydrating. You are doing something good for your body with every sip of water. Imagine you are pouring water on a dying plant and notice how the plant begins to perk back up once it has a little water. Your body needs water. It is good for you, and it should be enjoyable.
If you aren't a water drinker, then start slowly. If the idea of 4 oz of water makes your throat tighten up, try a teaspoon, or a tablespoon, or one ounce. As you sip it, think about how much your body loves water. Your body is about 70% water. The more you drink water when you are the thirsty, the lighter and cleaner you will feel inside. What you drink it out of makes a difference. The next time you are out shopping, satisfying your ancestral hunter gatherer instincts, go on a search for a beautiful water glass. My current water glass is hand blown glass. It is incredibly light weight and fragile. There are tiny blue and green fish etched into the glass, swimming in an arc around the glass. Just picking it up feels good. It is a pleasure to look at. I make an effort to "flood" myself with a good feeling every time I pick it up, with every sip I take.
What do I mean by "flood" myself with good feelings? Well, for me, I get this feeling when I yawn that tingles near my ears along my jaw. I imagine I am pouring that good feeling all over myself. It is the memory of the hug from someone who loves me, it is the feeling I had when I opened a gift I really wanted, but hadn't expected. it is the moment my husband kissed me after he proposed. The good feelings throughout my life are still alive in my memory. By remembering them, and feeling then now intentionally flooding myself with the memories, I am associating that good feeling with a think I didn't like to do.
Drinking water is becoming something enjoyable for me. I used to dread it. I had read a lot of weight loss books that recommended drinking lots of water to lose weight, and I came to associate drinking water with punishment, obligation, failure, deprivation and self loathing. I have had to put a lot of extra love and good feelings into reprogramming how I feel about drinking water.
Another thing I started to do is imagine the most beautiful images of water and connect it with the sound of a lovely voice singing softly, "Aahhh" like it has a ray of sunlight shining down on it and by drinking the water I am pouring that good beautiful sunlight into my body. It is healing me. It is quenching my hunger. It is giving me real calm steady energy. It is flushing any disease from my body gently and lovingly. I am telling my body, I love you and I will care for you a little better every day. Just thinking those thoughts makes my mouth water, so I will go grab a glass - care to join me?
The light is shining through the glass, "Aahhh" pure pleasure.
Recap:
You are in the elevator. You have pressed the down button. You are going to buy apples, bananas, carrots, grapes, celery and your favorite fruit and veggies to replace any of the vending machine "good choices".
Oh! and for those of you who are picking your favorite food, check in with yourself. If there something you love even more than that Snicker's bar? If so, go buy a portion of that more desirable delight. I'd rather have a See's chocolate chip truffle than a Snicker's bar. If Snicker's bars are your ultimate favorite treat and you want to eat one every day? Well, add an apple to it. Before you eat whatever favorite treat you have selected; imagine the treat has been sitting out over night. Or it was dropped in some sand and you had to take it to the sink to rinse it off with some water.
Most confections don't look so good after they have sat in the water a few minutes. Was it a Snicker's Bar that cleared the pool when someone saw it floating in the water in "Caddy shack" and mistook it for poop. After an hour in water, an apple still looks lovely. If that image helps you enjoy real food more and helps add a little distance from that "treat". That treat is after all keeping you at your unhealthy undesired weight. Why not meditate on that a bit? Flip back and forth between thinking "Aahhh" for the piece of fruit and "Eeew/yucky" from the packaged treat.
It's not that I don't want you to get incredible joy out of whatever you are eating, I do.
I want the elevator to start to descend smoothly and rapidly. I want you to feel like you are in 100% control and are treating yourself like royalty. I can't imagine someone royal eating out of a vending machine. Find the best you can afford and treat yourself. In the interim, have a piece of fruit 100% guilt free. Imagine you are feeding your soul Your spirit is saying "yes", your body is in heaven. Your body knows exactly what the components are. There is no red dye to navigate, no unpronounceable chemicals. Just real wonderful food. The kind of delight that is good for you on every level.
View from the 129th Floor
At my heaviest, I weighed 254 pounds. I have lost over 100 pounds, and I am still riding the elevator down to the lobby. If the 125th floor is my lobby weight, then I have descended 101 floors, one hundred and one pounds, and I have 28 floors to go.
I used to think of the weight loss journey as trying to push a boulder up a mountain. It was hard work. Every day was another struggle, another mountain to climb. The world was full of temptations and it didn't feel like there was such a thing as a good choice.
Now, I am letting go of the extra weight, more and more easily every day.
I used to subscribe to the commonly held belief that the last 15 pounds are the hardest. Well, given that I have already lost more than the 80 pounds I originally dreamed of losing, I have surpassed the "last fifteen pounds" hurdle more than once.
What Floor Are You On?
You could think of this as the number on the scale. If you want to see the scale go down, see yourself standing on the scale. The pointer is pointing to a number (if you have an analog scale like I do, the old fashioned kind, not the digital. The pointer looks a lot like arc of numbers above the elevator that indicate what floor the elevator is currently on.
Even if you don't know what number you want to land on, you know which direction you want the scale to go -- down.
So, as they say, take it one pound at a time.
One pound is about a week. That week will pass and you will either be at the next floor(weight loss), standing in the elevator at the same floor (plateau), or on a higher floor (weight gain). One of those three things will happen. Which do you want?
Visualize the numbers on the scale going down. See your feet looking a little thinner than they were? The scale is pointing at a lighter weight. You have been that weight before. What will be different about you when you weigh this weight again? Hopefully you will be able to celebrate it and enjoy it in a way you didn't before.
Press the Button For the Next Floor
If you are 190 lbs and you want to see 189, press the down button. If you really want to see 130 it's like a little kid has pressed every button on the elevator. As the elevator descends it will stop at every floor. At each new number on the scale, you need to push the button for the next floor. You can also press that little button to make the doors close faster. Then focus on your new short term goal.
You Have Weighed Your Goal Weight Before...
It may not seem like it - I can't remember how old I was the last time I weighed 125 pounds, but chances are wen I did I was a young teenager, and I was probably dying to see 120.
I like knowing that every person on the planet that is over weight was once at their current dream weight. It has a nice symmetry to it, it feels hopeful.
Develop your dream to an attainable goal. Why do I bother suggesting this? The most important reason is, I want you to succeed. I know it sn't realistic or healthy to pick a number on the scale arbitrarily. I could say I want to weigh 120 lbs, but I have no idea what that would look like.
At 153 pounds, I am slender and healthy. I am in the "normal" range for my height on the BMI chart. I am 36 years old. I am a strong, lovely mother of two. I look better than I have ever looked in my life -- and part of that is a feeling I have. I am strong. I have lost one hundred pounds. I have achieved goals I wasn't even prepared to dream about at the beginning of my journey. I sat in weight watchers listening to stories of people who lost 100 pounds, thinking -- I'll never lose that much, if I could just lose 50 pounds that would be wonderful.
