This quote is from a song by Cake, one of my favorite bands. I like to think of this line whenever I feel frustrated and ask myself if I'm making life tougher than it is.

Before I get into it, I want to let you know the video course deal I mentioned last week expires today. You can Weight Loss for Life with Mini Habits (6 hour video course) for 33% off right here, or read on for more about why.

Life is tough. I'm not claiming otherwise. But however tough your life situation is, you'll find that...

1. Your perspective amplifies your pleasure or pain. Choose wisely.
2. The way you approach your problems has a major impact on your experience and your success dealing with them.

Two Ways to Open a Restaurant

Two people want to open a restaurant. That's a tough thing to do, and I hear it can be very expensive. But instead of saying, "that's tough," look at how different that tough task can be.

Person A chooses to build their restaurant on a vacant lot in the middle of nowhere. It's expensive, exhausting, and after they build it, they realize it isn't going to get enough traffic to recoup the costs.

Person B chooses to start a franchise by renting out a building in a popular shopping area. It's not as expensive, and the benefit of franchising gives them specific instructions for how everything is handled. It's a winning blueprint and they do well.

Both people enter the restaurant business, but with wildly different approaches, the results are nothing alike. Person B has created a greater likelihood of success with a smaller investment of time and money. It's still a great challenge, but the challenge of running a successful restaurant is better than the challenge of dealing with a failing restaurant.

And to be clear, I'm not telling you that franchise restaurants are better. Do your own research for that. But they do follow a valuable principle which is to invest your problem-solving energy into solutions that are proven to work. Subway has over 40,000 locations in 104 countries, and they are independently owned.

The Obesity Epidemic

One of the biggest challenges in the world today is an increasingly overweight and obese population. There is nothing morally wrong with being overweight or obese. It doesn't make anyone less valuable. But excess weight is a health and quality of life risk. It presents numerous challenges to individuals, families, and the healthcare industry.

Interestingly, dieting remains the top approach to losing weight. Popular books and the never-ending carousel of fad diets confirm that. But the majority of diets are designed to be short-term, and the data says that not only does dieting not work, it actually makes the problem worse.

Studies Prove Dieting Futility

This excerpt is from Mini Habits for Weight Loss:

"A three-year study of almost 15,000 children aged 9-14 found that those who dieted were more prone to binge eating.¹ Those who dieted, male and female, frequent and infrequent, gained more weight across the board in the study’s duration. That is strike two against dieting (or are we at four yet?).

Another study compared twins, which is interesting, because it takes genetics out of the equation. Over 4,000 individual Finnish twins were monitored for 25 years. The twin halves who attempted intentional weight loss (dieting) gained more weight than their genetically identical siblings, and weight gain increased with subsequent dieting attempts.²"

The study on twins examined people with identical genes. Genetics are a factor for how much weight you carry, but they alone can't explain the rising obesity numbers we see, and this study excluded genetics.

This is why I wrote a weight loss book and made a video course about it. I saw very few viable, brain-first solutions to what is primarily a behavioral problem. And the fact that dieting makes people gain weight begs for alternatives!

Here's What I Know—Habit Change Works

If you change the habit, you create new behavioral preferences. This means not fighting yourself to do the right things, but preferring to do them.

Dieting focuses on end results. Do X, lose Y pounds. It fails to account for factors like...

1. Your current food preferences and habits
2. The metabolic effect of sudden caloric restriction (and yo-yoing)
3. The long-term viability and appeal of the diet plan (it should be for life, not 30 days or even a year)
4. How the brain drives behavior, and even more-so with eating and activity

Overweight people don't need a new cauliflower rice recipe, they need to know how to change their behavior in what is a stubborn-to-change area.

Modern Food is a Minefield of Pleasures

Modern processed and fast food delivers an exaggerated and unnatural brain reward, making it difficult to resist and easy to habituate. Did you know that sodas are designed to have a "nuanced" taste? That's because nuanced (combinations of) flavors don't trigger something called sensory specific satiety.

"Sensory specific satiety (SSS) describes the decline in pleasantness associated with a food as it is eaten relative to a food that has not been eaten (the ‘eaten’ and ‘uneaten’ foods, respectively)." (source)

SSS is why people like sauces. It's why we don't usually eat the same meal for lunch and dinner. The brain likes variety!

The other day, I ordered a chicken bowl from Panera Bread. It comes with about 10 ingredients mixed into a bowl. But something went wrong with the order, which was modified to "no chicken, no cheese, no tomatoes..." The only remaining food was rice. I was dumbfounded when they handed me a plain bowl of rice (as were they when they saw the order). The employees and I had a good laugh about it.

Eating a plain rice would trigger sensory specific satiety fairly quickly. Even a flavor-rich food like fudge triggers it. And when it is triggered, your desire to eat or drink more of it plummets. But if it's a nuanced drink, well, that's why we have big gulps now.

There are food chemists out there "designing" food to make it more addictive; they design food to avoid SSS and keep you craving more. It's a morally grey area at minimum. I think it's somewhat evil.

Mini Habits Offer a Different Approach

A mini habit is a small behavior you perform every day. Over time, the behavior and your brain develop a new relationship.

Why do some people hate healthy food? The most likely reason is that they never eat it. It's less familiar and less pleasurable to the brain than the food they currently eat.

Diets try to force people to eat food they don't like. The habitual approach to weight loss aims to change a person's underlying relationship with different foods.

There's a lot more to this puzzle, which is why I wrote a book and made a video course about it.

This Offer Expires Tomorrow! 👀

Weight Loss for Life with Mini Habits is a 6 hour HD video journey into this complex challenge of weight loss. We used professional equipment to make this course and I think you'll agree production quality is high. There's a lot of valuable research inside, and it's presented in a fun way (we have 10 different presentation styles).

Most importantly, this is the smartest way to approach weight loss and improving your health. This course is not a diet, it's a masterclass in how and why to change your brain first, which can then change your body.

Last week, I told you about the reducing the price from $59 to $39. You can still get this deal, but it ends tomorrow!

Click Here to Get the Deal!

Try the course at a discounted price, and you'll get access for life. There is a 30 day money back guarantee.

Thank you for reading! I'll talk to you next week.

Cheers,

Stephen Guise