The Politics of Stupid - Softcover

Losing Weight

Losing weight is easy. You've lost weight over and over again. At least one of those diets worked for a couple of days/weeks at most, and...?

You've lost weight...and gained it all back (and then some). According to the diet industry's own statistics, 98 percent of everybody who goes on a diet fails. Not good odds; not a table you would sit at in Vegas. Imagine a 98 percent chance that you are not going to win...would you throw your money down on that table? No, it wouldn't happen in Vegas, but it does happen with your body and your brain. The diet industry is a billion-dollar-a-year industry. Someone's buying what they are selling. Millions of people buying/believing that there is some system, formula, combination of foods, blood type, secret something that you still haven't found. But there isn't.

There isn't a diet on the planet Earth that works. I said it years ago -- not one. If there were there wouldn't be a fat person on the planet. I would have found it, you would have found it, a whole lot of women (the primary victims of the diet industry) would have found it. Nobody would be fat if there were a diet that worked because we would all simply do what works and get on with it. The industry's own stats make the insanity of dieting very clear: 98 percent of everyone who goes on a diet (that would be all diets) fail.

But millions do. A billion dollars a year's worth of dieting. One of the truly insane insanities I was talking about when I said "Stop the Insanity" is dieting. Diet-ing to lose weight is actually the very definition of the word insanity. Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A billion-dollar-a-year industry says that a whole lot of people are (continually) dieting -- that is to say, treating the symptoms and never solving the problems of overfat and unfit. Not a good way to do anything if solution is what you want. And if it's weight you want/need to lose, you can. Lose it and never find it again. Otherwise known as lose it forever, a permanent solution to overfat and unfit...there is such a thing and it's not achieved by dieting, ob-viously.

It's more than possible to solve the problems of overfat and unfit. It's common bloody sense. And solving the problems of overfat and unfit is also one of the most politically radical things any human body can do. "The most revolutionary thing anybody can do is internal wellness," by Susan Powter.

I say it because:

A. It's true.

B. I did it.

I lost over 133 pounds and I have never found it again. I look better and feel better at fifty than I did at twenty. It's true. Life isn't going anywhere (until it does) and waking up every day with a foundation of wellness to live from/in/with makes all the difference in everything. Life is easier when you're not schlepping around a ton of fat, when you have an ounce of energy to do the million things you do every day. I'm still doing it all...every woman I know is doing it all. What, has your life slowed down? Do you have the luxury of time? Three kids and a life later? Are you kidding? Life goes on, and when...

the back goes out, and it does...

the dental work needs doing, and it just did...surgery, thank you!

the broken bones of the past (and there are a few) ache on a cold, rainy day, and they do...

...it's crap loads easier being lean, strong, healthy, and a size two...argue with that. You can't. Nobody would. I've asked the question thousands and thousands of times (every seminar for how many years?). "If you could just wrinkle your nose...(à la Bewitched) and be lean, strong, healthy, and well, would you do so, or would you say "no, thank you." No need, I love the -- -- -- (fill in the blank) pounds overweight I'm living with, I'd like to keep it." I've never gotten a "No, thank you, I love my stomach hanging halfway down my thighs, wouldn't trade it in for anything." I haven't heard it and I'm never going to hear it except for the sake of argument (what the delete button is designed for) because nobody telling the truth would say no to living in a body that is well, healthy, lean, and strong. Wellness works. Good food works. Movement works. Oxygen works. Thinking works.

Wellness revolutionized ("izes," it's current) my life and it will revolutionize yours. All of it absolutely true...so why can't I say there is a permanent solution to losing as much weight as you want to lose, increasing as much strength and energy as you want to increase, and loving the way you look and the way you feel...forever? Because it's not allowed. The lawyers want something more banal than permanent. Standards and practices will stop you in a heartbeat from uttering such a claim, even though what they do allow is stunning. No TV-segment producer is even going to understand what I'm talking about...for starters, they are all under twenty-one -- everyone in TV is now, it's frightening...but the point is, it's not allowed. It's not allowed because once the simple truth is out, industries (a whole lot of them) will collapse. The Politics of Stupid is what's holding up more than you may have ever imagined possible, and understanding it has everything to do with the way you look and feel.

The minute you find out -- or by the end of this book -- how simple weight loss is, you'll have to take a moment, not an easy one, and admit you've been acting stupid. You are not stupid (or perhaps you are, but millions aren't), however; you absolutely have been acting stupid. Stupid as hell day after day after day for...years? Millions losing their lives, their health, their energy, their looks...go to an amusement park on any sunny day in any part of the country...some geographical regions are much worse than others...but have a look. I've met the smartest women -- I'm talking brilliant -- who don't have a clue. They've got no clue what to do. "How do I start? How, oh how, do I lose this weight?" I hear it a hundred times a day. It's stunning and real. There are a lot of reasons why you, women, are getting the megablasts in the war against an educated consumer...and believe me, you are -- but before that dot is connected there is another vital connection that must be made, consider it the infrastructure for of your lean, strong, healthy life. Understanding the politics behind what has (when you think about it) made you do some stupid shit to your body is vital. Like you don't know preserved, spongy cakes with fake, fluorescent-white cream in the middle isn't food? Spending years searching for the time in your life for your life? Having no clue how to get rid of the fat that is hanging from all over your body?

You making the political connections directly connected to how you look and feel every day has everything to do with you re-gaining your body, your brain, and a whole lot more. The politics of a lifestyle that isn't working for millions of people is as real as it gets. The politics of the incorrect expert advice being doled out to you, and your family, is real. Billions of dollars spent on advertising, glamorizing, and "socializing" a lifestyle that isn't working for millions of people is real, and it works -- the advertising, that is. The question is not "Why can't I (I stopped asking permission a long time ago) say there is a permanent solution to obesity?," the question is "Why aren't you hearing this simple, life-changing information, these absolute facts, everywhere you turn?" Being completely clear about the Politics of Stupid is the answer if you are:

fat

unfit

exhausted

diseased

hate the way you look and feel

desperately want to feel well

Any/all of the above is/are what the Politics of Stupid is about. Making this connection is as vital to weight loss as eat, breathe, move, and think is and, it all is. You are, certainly, not alone.

Obesity is epidemic. An epidemic. Millions of people suffering from the exact same thing? What? Suffering from what? Look, up in the sky, it's a gene, it's a virus, it's a...Lifestyle. It's a lifestyle "issue." A lifestyle that is affecting/infecting millions of people.

Epidemic numbers of people don't have a clue about what to put into their mouths. Millions of people with the same willpower "issues"? Millions of people suffering from the same "inner-child trauma"? Hundreds of thousands of weakhearted people? It's getting harder, by the second, to blame it on childhood trauma, genes, your mother being a horror, because the facts are:

• America is second in the world in heart disease.

• Obesity is epidemic.

• Childhood obesity has increased 54 percent in the last fifteen years.

• Cancers are epidemic.

All of the above are lifestyle matters or diseases, and lifestyle can (easily) be changed forever. Which changes the way you look and feel forever. Nothing complicated about that.

Wellness changed my life...in more ways than I ever dreamed possible, I mean that literally...and it will change yours. To be physically free from exhaustion is freedom. Having the lean muscle mass (metabolically the most active tissue in the human body) to stand, sit, bend, pick up, run around after...all the things you are doing now without the strength and energy to do them...is freedom. Activating your heart/lung systems, the oxygen-processing center of your body, is freedom. Igniting your metabolic rate and burning as much fat as you want to burn is freedom. And freedom is political.

Millions of people are dying (literally) for the information, inspiration, and motivation to get physically well enough to get through a day. There's no question that it's time to move forward. It's way past time that you got on with living your life in energy and strength in a lean, strong, beautiful, well body. And there's only one way on earth to do it.

You've got to eat.

You've got to breathe,

You've got to move. And...

You've got to think.

Eat, breathe, move, and think are solutions for the problems of overfat and unfit. Your understandin...