hold on to the center

It should be obvious this is not medical advice and I have no qualifications to offer it. This is only based on my experience.

The Gabriel Method

Hacking has been embraced well beyond the realm of computer networks. In this post I’m using it to mean a process by which one takes a set procedure or solution and modifies it to fit their specific needs, or to make it more effective in certain ways. One thing about a weight loss program is that it is very risky to start messing with a proven method. In many cases, the originator of the recipe for success does not, or cannot, explain all the reasons behind the processes and rituals. This means it’s easy for a user of the process to cut out something that appears to be minor, only to stumble later on and not understand the reason why. A heavy dose of personal objectivity, observation, and understanding of the scientific method is crucial. Be very honest with yourself. If you have trouble with following procedures or being consistant in other areas of your life outside your health, please do not follow these suggestions without considering them carefully. Better yet, stop reading. Gabriel is a very smart and practical guy. There is a reason he has laid things out the way he has. He has done this so that it can be applied by anyone and acheive reasonable results.

1. Apply the behavioral modifcations in Chapter 18 all at once.

In other areas of my life, I’m able to adapt to new information and habits rather well. Eating is one area where I have trouble. Since this method does not put any focus on denying unhealthy foods, it gave me room to look at the 4 month plan of adopting new habits and see them as a group to begin immediately. This has been very effective. I didn’t have the early stage weight gain that some on this program have shared on the Gabriel Method Forums. To apply this hack, turn to p. 179 and that is your routine to use from the beginning.

2. Treat the supplements as the ONE discipline you need to enforce without exception.

Jon’s approach is fantastic because it focuses on changing your wants and cravings first. I have believed for over 10 years that this is a deep lesson that applies broadly across life. The change of eating more healthy foods and wanting to exercise follows naturally without discipline or beating yourself up. This hack of mine might seem obvious, but I suggest that going to great lengths to be sure you do it will greatly increase your results. Promise yourself that you will take your chosen supplements (multi, c, whatever) along with a Omega-3, probiotic, and dietary enzyme every day, at the same time without exception. This has caused me to walk back home from work several times, even when I didn’t really have time to do it. If you commute, take a bag of backups in to your desk or locker so that if you forget, you can still fulfill the obligation. Do whatever you have to, even go to extraordinary lengths, to follow this one rule of discipline in a no discipline method.

3. Avoid triggers and pass over unhealthy foods once. If your mind clings, enjoy without guilt.

This one is very tricky and walks a fine line. I suggest you only apply this after at least a month of successfully following the program. The method emphasizes a casual and non-judging method of approaching the unhealthy foods we often crave. This hack does not contradict it, but adds a trick to use when you are able, that allows for you to have what you want to eat without invoking a sense of scarcity. Remove foods that are unhealthy for overweight people from your kitchen. If you don’t know what these are, go to the bookstore and read some of early chapters in The South Beach Diet. Basically these are any kind of wheat or flour, starches, refined sugars and carbonhydrates, anything with a lot of sugar, and various carbonated beverages. Fast food especially. If these are not at home, you have to justify searching them out. It will setup more barriers to access, which is good. Also avoid routes that you walk or drive that take you by places that tempt you. If there is someplace at work that has free bagels or cookies out on the counter, don’t go there. Don’t even look at them.

The second part of this hack is not so obvious. I’ve heard of other people doing this, but this is my specific hack for the GM. If you get a craving or desire for an unhealthy food, pass it up once if you can and intentionally move yourself to another thought. If your mind returns to this craving, don’t punish yourself. Eat it and enjoy it’s flavor and the satisfaction it gives you. I sometimes will buy something or pick it up and have one or two bites then throw it away if the taste satisfies me. This can seem like a waste of money but it is very effective. If you can place it near you and just let it sit for 5 minutes it helps too. Sometimes just the taste will let your body know that there is abundance and there is no need to restrict or ration yourself.
The subtlety here is that you must not cross the line to the place where your brain thinks you are denying yourself. If that happens, whether you eat it or not, you have continued to trigger the FAT programs. When you pass the food over the first time, it MUST be casual and unattached. If you get an immediate emotional charge from the craving, just go ahead and eat it. Secondly, once your craving continues and you eat that food, make sure that you do not guilt yourself or engage in negative self-talk. Tricky huh?

4. Green Smoothies http://rawfamily.com/

Victoria Boutenko’s family went through some health issues that had her looking for her own solutions. This brought her to a modification of fruit smoothies that included raw greens in amounts that were flavorful to our modern western palettes. Bravo.

I’ve been drinking at least a quart of these daily and the benefits are numerous in 2 weeks. Improved sleep, better digestion, powerful sustained energy, and less cravings. There is too much important detail to explain it all here. Check out her book Green for Life about her discoveries. I tried to make these with my $80 blender and it just didn’t work. Even after chopping greens up to small pieces, regular blenders are simply not powerful enough to break up these leaves to a satisfying texture and evenness. I bought a Vita-Mix blender and it is worth the money. If you don’t have $500 to buy one now, I recommend you start saving immediately. This brand has a couple competitors and if you are super cheap you might save a few bills, but Vita-mix is a good family company and they make the Sherman tank of blenders.

Green smoothies are like fruit smoothies, but you include various green leaves (lettuces, collards, cale, spinach, wheatgrass, parsley, etc…) to get the vital enzymes and chlorophyll that is so good for us but our regular diets sorely lack. Our jaws are too weak for grinding them up and we don’t like the taste, but blending these and covering the taste with the fructose from fruit make them taste good.

5) In addition to Jon’s water on the hour, eat greens late in the day to kill evening munchies.

If you eat a salad at lunch, it is not likely to haven enough green leafy goodness to curb your appetite all the way into the evening when many of us have a real struggle with snacking. After experimenting closely with Green Smoothies, I believe that a late afternoon glass or a leafy spinach salad for dinner can help evening cravings tremendously. I drink a glass as a late afternoon snack around 3:30 and this has almost eliminated my stubborn evening snack cravings. Evening eating is a huge enemy of weightloss. If you can’t or won’t do the smoothie thing, experiment with having your evening dinner as a salad with as much lettuce or spinach as you can stand. It doesn’t need to be a filling meal, you just need enough greens to suppress cravings until bedtime.

6. When you get stuck on Set Points, do not change your behavior to bust through them.

A Set Point is the mind and body’s internal sense of where your weight should be. They shift over time with weight loss. You may lose steadily, then for no reason, you stay the same weight for a week or two. Obviously if you follow Jon’s good advice to NOT weigh yourself, this is not a problem. For hackers however, we may be checking in, so this is a cautionary tale. When you are stuck at a set point, this is the time to really focus on your consistency following your routines from the GM. You have to trust that the set point will move and your weight will start moving again. Assuming you are doing things right, resist the temptation to do something dramatic or different to get unstuck.

7. Share your experience and feelings with family and friends.

When I started the Gabriel Method, I was torn about whether I should keep it to myself or not. In the past I have enlisted family and friends to help prod and encourage me to stay on track. Of course these were diets that denied food that I wanted. Although they were willing and helpful, I found that they were often trying to give me disciple or check up on me. At least I took it that way. Other people’s advice did not help me and robbed me of the empowered feeling I would get when successful. What I needed was support, not advice.

I decided that I would post my progress everyday on Twitter and Facebook and tell my friends I needed their support and encouragement. I don’t recommend posting your weight every day like I do, but sharing your ups and downs is very helpful and you will be surprised at how supportive people are. Being overweight, especially when tied to emotional challenges (me! me!) is difficult enough without having to hear from everyone about how they lost 5lbs fasting or how someone they knew tried this diet once. I especially didn’t want to hear from life long slender folks about what they do. I did need support badly. To feel like others were pulling for me. Not the ones I’m close with that love me. They are a kind of unconditional support that can’t be taken lightly, but there is an added element when you know that people around you care. If you are a slender person supporting me, or know heavy people you would like to help. Give them unconditional acceptance and encouragement, not advice. Think of a time when you needed a loved one’s comfort and all they gave you was nuts and bolts suggestions for some kind of logical solution. It doesn’t feel gratifying and it doesn’t answer our desire to be comforted rather than just be understood in a strictly cognitive way.

8. Lose the fantasy of being a movie of the week success story or a stunning before and after picture.

The speed at which you shed weight is meaningless in the long run of good lifelong health and habits. Every fat person has dreamed of telling about how they had an epiphany at some tragic or uplifting point in their lives that triggered a dramatic weight loss that others would take in with awe. Jon’s own real story is one of these. How do I know this is a common fantasy among us? Because I know myself, that’s how. I’ve had this many times. You hear about someone (who’s genetics and body are different than yours) who dropped 20-30lbs in a month. We all have our own story that is just as meaningful even though the plot points sound less dramatic. Be attached to your own story, but building it up and clinging to this dream will only set you up for disappointment. Losing weight slowly and gradually over time is healthier. It also means you are more likely to keep it off for life. Jon lost 220lbs over two years. Yes, that’s right. An average of LESS THAN 10lbs per month. Don’t compare yourself to weigh loss gurus. Don’t compare yourself to former athletes who’s cells remember what being fit is like and can attenuate more quickly. The only sign of being stuck is when your progress stops over a period of weeks. I’m not saying you can’t shoot for the stars. What I’m saying is, don’t let your attachment or reaching for it become an obstacle.

Seattle Support Group
twitter: @burrhitchcock

Two months ago I got a needed push toward getting more deliberate in my approach to health. Over the last two years previous I had gradually moved from 340 to around 300lbs. Which is fine, but I was sticking there and things weren’t changing. I still had the same medical problems, just slightly less severe. These include high cholesterol, high blood sugars, pre-Diabetic and severe sleep apnea. It goes without saying, there are a myriad of other effects that slender people will not understand unless they’ve been pregnant or had a serious injury to their back. I’m not going to rehash the history of my struggle here, but I would like to share what I’ve observed over the last two months since I earnestly began applying what I’ve learned from many, many health and diet books mixed in with The Gabriel Method.

There are two differences about The Gabriel Method that immediately stand out in the opening chapters when compared with other so-called diet or weight-loss books. First, he states that emotional sticking points are a key part of our weight. He even says if they aren’t addressed, other measures may be minimally effective or futile. This had the ring of truth for me. I found an especially effective therapist 1.5 years ago and I have worked hard toward understanding my own sticking points. I felt I was in a good place to make yet another effort at weight loss. Second, he said that diets actually contribute to the problem of weight gain. I’ve been on blood type, zone, south beach, and others I can’t even remember. I gained the weight back with a vengeance on all of them.

Jon’s method focuses not on giving up foods, but adding the nutrients that are needed via simple foods or supplements. When you deny yourself something you crave, you are telling your body there is scarcity. Under these conditions we store fat and try to conserve energy (feeling stiff, tired). Another key part is using visualizations or short meditative sessions to send picture signals to your body to instruct it what to do. A lot of his approach is based on evolutionary biology, a favorite topic of mine the past 3 years.

Although I’ve been regularly meditating for years, I was skeptical about his approach. I began by posting my situation to Facebook and asking my friends for encouragement and started with The Gabriel Method right away. To my surprise, around the 4th day my appetite changed dramatically. The Omega-3, Probiotics, and dietary enzymes (along with regular supplements) had reversed the way my body wanted food.

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I had been eating one salad a day for a few days, and it was the normal “ho-hum I have to eat this.” Then things changed. I wasn’t experiencing the demands for immediate energy that usually result in craving sugar, carbs, or anything that gives a quick boost. If you think of the surface of the ocean, it swells and dips quite a bit. This was me without the nutrients, hungering for quick energy food (and a big insulin rush) and riding the waves in the middle afternoon and late evening. Now things had changed and my hunger and energy was more like the steady and powerful waters at the bottom of the ocean, sustained and consistent.

I realized what he was talking about. My eating habits were fuelling my body’s sense of scarcity because they lacked live nutrients and enzymes. I was processing plenty of food through my digestive system, but I was starving for nutrients. This is typical of an average american diet. Dieting and exercise would cause weight loss in the past, but since it still believed I was living in a time of scarcity, it waited me out until my discipline was weak, then brought me back to the weight that it believed was correct. This is why I always gained the weight back, and often very quickly.

My best effort lasted 2.5 months around 2005. 335 down to 290. BUT, my body’s set point was still 335 because I was using discipline and denying cravings. I was soon back to 330.

Here are some of the magic bullets I’m relying on:

- the one and only element of discipline- I must take my supplements everyday, no exception.

- If I see or think of an unhealthy food that I want, I pass it up once. If I obsess, I eat it guilt free.

A very helpful change was being able to receive and act on the signals from my body. I’m sure they were always there. In the past if I had too much sugar, ate too much, or was thirsty, it would be a faint whimper as though emanating from my closet trapped under some spare blankets. Now these signals are loud and clear as if riding on my shoulder. I noticed that after a 6 weeks of fruit smoothies, these were now too sweet for me. I was getting mild sugar headaches. I can now sense, though it’s rare, when I’m truly hungry and need some food. I get cravings for water. Never carbonated drinks or fruit juices, but only water. I also notice that in addition to being strongly spiced with the blunt weapons of sodium and sugar, restaurant meals are really large. Most often they become doggy bags for lunch and I don’t feel weighed down afterward.

My very favorite thing over the last 8 weeks is not the weight loss, but the change in my energy. Assuming I get the amount of time I need for sleep, I’ve felt a dramatic change in my focus and energy. I attribute this mostly to satisfying my cravings with raw, fresh food. The trick of the Gabriel Method is that you don’t deny yourself any food, because if you are getting your nutrients, this changes completely. You don’t try to give them up, you end up wanting to. This is a key difference.

The main challenges to staying with this have been minor, really. The first month I had trouble with evening eating. This is very hard because the body is shutting down for the day and old habits die hard. Another challenge was pain in my right knee from one of the few times I worked out. Now I’m doing Yoga every other day and hope to be able to get back to some other workouts eventually. I have done cardio for less than 20 minutes three times in the last two months. Based on all the new research being presented on this subject, it does not surprise me that exercise is not a key factor to long term weight loss. Another challenge is relying on caffeine for pick me ups or just a soothing, warm treat. Morning smoothies are one way to kick this and it really is working for me.

Although these concrete steps have been a big difference for me in my attempt at losing weight, there is another new factor at work that is just as powerful. For around 15 years I have avoided cameras, mirrors, and other reminders of my problems with food and health in general. I tried opening up to my friends and family to get their prodding support, but it didn’t work. I’m independent to a fault. When someone tells me what I should do, I react more strongly to a feeling they are trying to control me than I do to their actual advice.

Asking publicly for support and encouragement has helped me get past my shame about my weight and emotional eating. People telling me I look good is nice. However, that only comes after some weight loss. I was lucky to have lots of people on Facebook and Twitter chime in and let me know of their interest and support from the very beginning. For this, I am truly grateful.