Turning Points

Weight Loss: Turning Points
Video class with Jon Gabriel

 

Join Jon Gabriel as he talks about:

• The major turning points that made him lose weight
• How he came to accept himself as he was
• What made his body finally want to be thin

OR

Read The Lecture Transcripts Here

So I had a turning point – really two turning points actually. The first one was that I really came to a place where I accepted myself exactly the way I was, and this was when I was over 400 pounds. You’ve got to understand I had been – from the time I was 200 pounds up to 400 pounds I really never accepted myself. When I was 220 pounds I said oh my God I’ve got to lose weight; I’m 220 pounds. So I go on a diet, maybe I get down to 215 and then I’d rebound up to 230, and then I’d say I wish I was 220 again but now I’m 230. So I just – and then what happened again I’d go oh I can’t believe you’re 230, you’ve got to lose weight. I’d lose a little and then I’d be 240 and I’d wish I could be 230. And this went all the way up, up, up until I was 400 pounds and I said you know what I don’t care if I have to spend the rest of my life like this; I just don’t want to gain anymore weight. Once you’re 500 pounds there’s just too many things you can’t do for yourself. So I just said all right, if I have to live the rest of my life at 400 pounds I accept that. I just don’t want to gain anymore weight. And that was a really important, pivotal turning point for me.

And then just shortly after that I had another important experience where I was driving home from a movie, I was on route 4 near Paramus River edge in New Jersey and I had just come back from a movie and going to Fudruckers, which is a big fast food type of dinner place. I’m going through in my head just everything that’s happened over the last ten years and all the diets I’ve tried and all the weight I’ve gained, and this thought just kind of hits me that for whatever reason my body wants to be fat. And as long as it wants to be fat, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. And that thought really stung me. And I knew it was true. I knew it was true because I had worked so hard to try to lose weight and my body just kept gaining weight.

When I had that realization I just pulled over and I sat by the side of the road and just not another thought came into my head for maybe 20 minutes. I decided at that point that I was never going to diet again. Rather than diet, I was going to try to figure out why my body wanted to be fat in the first place and what I could do to get it to want to be thin.