These are a few changes that I believe need to happen to really help those struggling with obesity

1. Elimination of the words “health food” and “junk food” by people in authority and on food labels. I just want the FACTS. You know like, the fact that the guilt and shame from eating “bad food” like a donut are far worse for weight-loss success than the calories in a donut.

2. Health risk labels on all short-term diet fads that state “Surgeon General Warning: May cause depression, isolation, anxiety, shame, and OBESITY

3. In order to be called a “true” weight-loss expert, you need to have personal experience.

4. On second thought, let's just get rid of the term. There’s no such thing.  Especially NOT! those always-skinny "experts" who have NO CLUE of what it’s like to be obese. Besides, these “experts” can’t even agree on what causes obesity or what to do about. 

The fact they fight over a direct cause and then find some food group/company to demonize should open your eyes. A direct cause of obesity, really? I thought it was as simple as, “calories IN and calories out”. 

But it makes sense when you think about it, they need to talk out of both sides of their mouth in order to profit. They need a bad-guy, a demon, in order to sell us the cure. BUT! they also want us to remember that it’s ultimately our lack of willpower and our fault when we inevitably fail. 

You can also think of it this way. If there truly was an authoritative “weight-loss expert”, why the heck are we getting more and more overweight? Either they have no clue or they are purposely making us fatter. And, if it’s just as simple as calories in and calories out, why do we need diets or weight-loss experts? 

I’m not big on believing conspiracy theories but I do think it's quite interesting when you see the decade to decade obesity stats. The epidemic starts taking off in the 1980’s and then hit’s full throttle through the 1990’s. 

Most of the time people will then show you the stats of carb/sugar intake, as it also skyrocketed during the same time. This increase was mainly due to food processing AND B.S. public health warnings about eating animal and/or natural saturated fat.So good essential fat was replaced with non-essential processed carbs and sugar. The 1980’s is the epic beginning of why #1 on my list of changes is, for companies to stop labeling food non-essential food as healthy and for clueless authorities to stop telling us what we like to eat is “junk”

.. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not an anti-carb guy. I’ve personally lost weight on the 80’s low-fat diets. But carbs and fat are only the parts of the real issue which are too many calories. What really happened was calorie intake skyrocketed along with the carbs, which should have been pretty obvious.

Now, the part that I find “quite interesting” is that the 80’s & 90’s was also the takeoff of the diet industry as we know it today. 

Now, I can’t speak for you, but I didn’t go on my first diet after I was labeled obese by my doctor. I started when I was technically just overweight. Then, several years and about a dozen diets later, I was no longer labeled obese but now I had the distinction of morbidly obese.  

Now, I’m definitely going more correlation because no one can prove causation, but it makes you think right? 

Diets being a cause of obesity!? It’s downright scandalous!!

Do I really think that dieting made me obese? 

Well, from my own experience, diets created only short-term weight loss and a slowdown of my metabolism and my cravings increasing and I can definitely say that diet failure would often lead to an immense amount of depression, isolation, anxiety, and shame. 

But, I’m not answering the question.

Would I say that dieting caused me to become obese? 

You want answers? 

Well, let’s see if you can handle the truth?

The truth is, dieting did NOT make me obese. 

I made myself obese.

It was all me. 

I had to take full responsibility for my past and present to believe that I can create a new future. Blaming my situation on anything else is just telling myself that I never had and never will have control over my weight.

Let me tell you with full sincerity and love that, you can’t place the blame of your circumstances on anyone or anything. 

With full authority, YOU have to BE IN CONTROL if you want to kick obesity’s BIG stupid ass once and forever. 

I will also tell you with joy and excitement that,  YOU CAN DO IT! 

If I, a lazy, donut loving, and lifelong dieter can go from obese to a six-pack, why can’t you? 

Of course, you can do this!

Your new life starts with a dream, and then that dream becomes a vision and that vision combined with hope get’s you on your path. However, the path is never easy and you be forced to persevere. Each time you do, every small victory, your belief in yourself grows stronger. It’s in those tough moments that the tide begins to change to your side. 

If there is a “key” to long-term success, it is perseverance, your unwillingness to give up. And when you REFUSE to quit, your dream will start becoming your reality. 

Believe me when I say that, “this battle is NOT won at the dinner table nor is it won at the gym, This war is fought and victory is had inside your head.”

God Bless! 

 -- Russell Branjord
Author of Spike Diet and Obesityslayer

7 Tips to help you deal with hunger

When I was over 300lbs I literally had several months of stored calories in my body fat and I was baffled as to why I always felt hungry. 

It's important to understand that the hunger you and I feel has little to do with the amount of food we eat and more to do with the time's we normally eat. The hormone Ghrelin causes us to feel hungry and it's released just before we'd normally eat. So whenever we change the routine you can expect to feel extra hungry.  The good news is Ghrelin will adjust to your new plan and if ignored it generally goes away. 

It's also important to note that hunger is not the same as cravings and that's a topic that deserves its own space.

Hunger goes with weight loss like muscle soreness and going to the gym. It's more difficult at first but gets better the longer you go. *Cravings do the reverse as they tend to increase with time.

Here are 7 tips I used to battle hunger in my weight-loss journey:

1. Large glass of ice cold water with fiber powder

2. Strong mint gum! Ever eat after brushing your teeth? It makes ice cream taste like cigarettes. I always carry mint gum with me in case of an emergency so I can quickly pop one in my mouth when tempted.

3. Like #1 I'd chew ice chips

4. Sugar-free popsicles (Coolness is a trend)

5. Lots of protein, it helps me feel full and boost to TEF

6. Adding coconut oil, protein powder and fiber powder to almost everything

7. Last but most important. Accept who you are.

You are a beautiful person who loves to eat. After you lose weight, you are still a beautiful person who loves to eat just a smaller version. You can't fix who you are and there's nothing wrong with it. Food is meant to be enjoyed, it's a gift. All food can have a purpose which is why I despise calling foods "good" or "bad". If you eat something "bad" you feel "bad" and there's no place for guilt and shame on the journey to success.

The truth is if you are skinny but have to eliminate your favorite foods to get there you will still be miserable. And if you eliminate those foods to lose weight and bring them back after, there's a strong probability you'll just gain the weight back. 

You want a fun and healthy lifestyle, not a diet.

A successful lifestyle will allow who you are on the inside to coexist with how you want to look on the outside. This is extremely important and It took me half my life and many failed diets to finally figure that out.

True, a lifestyle takes longer to lose weight than extreme dieting but it will guarantee long-term success. Because if you're not miserable while losing weight you can follow it forever.

Cindy's Spiking Success Story

Spiking has released me from food bondage.

I was obese most of my adult life and I was weighing an all time high of 277 pounds and had a BMI of 43.1.

Then I discovered Spiking. Not only could I have a day to eat food I enjoyed but it broke my plateaus and kept the scale moving. I no longer live in food-bondage. I'm free to eat the foods I enjoy and lose weight. It's a win, win situation. So exactly one year later I am 112 pounds lighter. I've gone from squeezing into a size 24 to fitting easily into a size 10. I've got 10 to 15 more to go until I reach my goal and with spiking I'm going to get there. 

"Spiking has released me from food bondage. I no longer have to starve myself and get nowhere"

- Cindy lost 112lbs 

We are Insane! Diets Don’t Work

We are Insane! - Diets Don’t Work

They’re like a Band-Aid on a wound that needs stitches

Insanity is doing the same thing over
and over and expecting different results

I am not insane, but my desperation to lose weight and be fit caused me to act like I was insane. Albert Einstein defined insanity as, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.  When I felt motivated to lose weight I would exercise and diet and I would lose weight. Then for a number of reasons my motivation would drop and within a few months I’d gain the weight back. A few months later I would diet again and lose weight, and again gain it back. I did this over and over again. For some reason each time I dieted I expected that I would somehow keep the weight off for good. I was by his definition, acting insane. 

I was the typical “yo-yo dieter”. The problem wasn’t that I didn’t know how to lose weight. I just didn’t know how to keep it off. Perhaps you too have acted “insane” just like I did in the past.

Dieting doesn't work

Diets do NOT work for long-term weight loss according to UCLA researchers report in the April 2007 issue of American Psychologist, the journal of the American Psychological Association.

"You can initially lose 5 to 10 percent of your weight on any number of diets, but then the weight comes back," said Traci Mann, UCLA associate professor of psychology and lead author of the study. "We found that the majority of people regained all the weight, plus more. Sustained weight loss was found only in a small minority of participants, while complete weight regain was found in the majority. Diets do not lead to sustained weight loss or health benefits for the majority of people."

Mann and her co-authors conducted the most comprehensive and rigorous analysis of diet studies, analyzing 31 long-term studies.

Diets are a temporary solution to an everlasting problem.  

The truth is 95% of people who lose weight on a diet gain it all back or more within 2 years!  The problem is we view diets as a quick-fix. When we want to lose weight we look for the easiest way to lose as much weight in the shortest amount of time. It could be the latest low calorie fad diet that some big movie star or the future queen just did to lose 20lbs for a royal wedding. Sometimes it’s doing an insane exercise routine that requires us to sweat for hours a day. Or it’s a new miracle weight loss pill, patch, or powder we sprinkle on food. These fads do not work, and while we know better to fall for these schemes. We still do because our desperation to be thin makes us temporarily insane.

Insane things we do to lose weight

• Eliminate entire food groups
• Juice or liquid diets
• Don’t eat!
• Severely low calorie intake, less than 1,200 calories daily
• Extreme exercise-hours or more a day of intense exercise
• Drugs
• Pills
• Patches
• Powders

When we choose a fad diet we may reach our goal, but we don’t know what to do next. After we lose weight we slowly go back to our old habits. Sure we may attempt to carry over some of our new healthy choices, but most of us just can’t stick to it. We have been food deprived and working hard for so long that we’ve just had enough. Not to mention that our motivation is no longer the same as it was early on when we were working towards our goal.  Eventually it snowballs and we gain all the weight back. Then we repeat the cycle when we become motivated to lose weight once again. This is the life of a constant dieter. This was my life.

Can your “Diet” be your lifestyle?

I tell people all the time, that whether or not they choose my weight loss plan, they need to choose a plan that they could follow long term.  The plan you choose needs to become your new lifestyle. The reason why I was able to lose over 100lbs and maintain it for several years is my plan to lose weight is my long-term lifestyle.

Why can’t we stick to a diet?

• Deprived of our favorite foods
• Constantly hungry
• Losing control

Feeling deprived!

 There is a charm about the forbidden that makes it unspeakably desirable.  ~Mark Twain

TRUE LOVE

 When many of us diet we give up the foods we love. We blame our weight struggles on pizza, ice cream, and other high calorie foods. It makes sense that if we stop eating them then we'll lose weight, and we may. The problem is, it's nearly impossible to totally give up these foods. We have an emotional connection to food, it really is true love. Think about it, if it's true love then you can let it go and it will return to you. When we diet and let those foods go they do return, time and time again. One of the most important facts I discovered on my weight loss journey was I had to lose weight without letting go of the foods I love. They had to be part of my diet plan or I would fail in the end. If not,  feeling deprived mixed with temptation would be too much for me to over come. I would lose control and "fall of the wagon" like I have many times in the past. Being in control is extremely important for success. This is where spiking stands out from other diet plans. Instead of "falling of the wagon" Spikers choose to "jump of the wagon" and they get right back on the following day. By having a Spike Day you control when you have your favorite foods and temptation and deprivation will no longer hinder your progress. 

Stop the Insanity!
Dieting fails but a lifestyle change succeeds

If we approach diets as a “quick fix” then that is exactly what they will be. You may lose weight, but you will almost surely gain it back like most people do. To become one of the few who have not gained the weight back you need to find a weight loss plan that you can follow long-term, a lifestyle, not a diet. This why diets that eliminate an entire food group, like “no-carb” diets, or worse the extremely low calorie diets, also known as VLCD,  that restrict our daily calories to 800 or even 500 calories are doomed to fail us long term. 

The good news is you can lose weight without feeling deprived, and you can lose weight without having to exercise for hours a day. You can lose weight the spike way. 

“Spiking has allowed me to take control of my diet, my health and my life. I know that once a week I can eat anything I want, so it's that much easier to follow my nutrition plan for the rest of the week. This isn't a diet. It's a plan for a healthy lifestyle.”
-Bruce