Testimonials

Okay. I want to take Helen, my next caller. Helen are you there?

Hi Jon. I’m here.

Hi how are you?

I’m good. How are you?

For those of you who don’t know Helen; Helen is a true saint and a superstar in weight loss. She’s lost 55 kilos which is about 120 pounds, and Helen’s been working with me at the — she comes to some of the different seminars and she helps make my Johnny Child, which is a breakfast that I make for everyone at the seminars, and she’s been an incredible inspiration for people in the forum, and she wanted to just call in today and talk about some of the things that have been happening with her. So Helen, how’s everything going?

Jon, it’s fabulous. I’ve just have had a lovely week. I mean the forum is wonderful and I think it’s really exciting that I must tell you, in Brisbane we are getting a group together and meeting on the first of November, and Sydney will be the week after that, and there’s people from WA talking in a little group so that’s all wonderful.

But I’ve had a lovely week, and I’ve spoken to a few people from the forum, and I hope Carolyn’s still listening because this might help her. But it’s just these lovely people that have rung and then I rang them and spoke to them and I just think that there’s so many people that they’re underestimating just how — nothing has to be big. It can be something really small that may have affected you somewhere back there, but it doesn’t have to be huge. It can be a little incident and I spoke with a lady who, in talking to her, she said to me —

What’s that?

I spoke with a lady who, in talking to her, it came out and she sort of continually said to me that as she was growing up she was told she was stupid. And I said, “Well that is huge. I mean to you it might be nothing,” and it doesn’t have to be huge, but I said that is huge. And it just made me think of that sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me, but she had grown up with that. And I said, “That is such a huge thing.” You know, if you look at that and deal with it, we can’t change any of that and she accepted that. We can’t change it, but she can realize that she’s special and it’s her time. And we talked for a little while and I thought that that was really lovely.

But a lot of people are looking for something really big or major, or that’s the way I sort of said to people I’m talking to, and I just wanted to share with people that maybe it doesn’t always have to be something really huge that has affected them at some time. If they can just identify some little thing and acknowledge it and accept that’s how it was and think, “Well okay this is my time now.” Well, I hope that’s the right advice I’m giving people.

But she sort of left being quite happy after we had that conversation, and I said I’d get back to her. And then your words stresses, I think that’s the biggest gain that I’ve had from the Gabriel Method. And Carolyn might be able to look at her stress.

I spoke to another lady this week. She told me, in talking to me, that lots of little things had happened. And I said that was all wonderful and they're all positive things, and then she told me that she had a very stressful job, and she went away on holidays and she lost three and-a-half kilos, and she’s come back to work and she’s put that weight on. And I said, maybe it’s just telling you that your job is very stressful, and I mean we can’t always just jump out and find a new job, but what I did in my story with all the stresses in my life and with my diabetes, I learnt to try to deal with those stresses. I picked them up — well, I think I learned what they were, and then I realized that for things that happened I had to deal with those stresses and I did that.

I went — well, I mean apart from listening to the CD and walking and other things, I started and I went to a meditation class just one morning a week for three quarters of an hour —

Did you?

Yeah, I did.

I didn't know you started doing that. When did you start doing that?

Sorry, Jon, I didn’t hear you.

When did you start going to the meditation class?

In about February this year. So I’ve been on the program for what, eight months, and I still thought that there was more that I could do. And I mean, in that time I’d had stresses and I mean — and last Monday night I had my first yoga class. I went to yoga on Monday night and that was excellent. But I just — I just seem to read through the forum that it’s got to happen, and I mean, life still goes on, doesn't it? And I mean, I’ve had a few stresses this week, and the most important thing is that I’ve identified with them and I’m trying to deal with it and nothing’s going to stop me from going backwards.

Helen, we’re talking a lot about stress and Carolyn was also talking about stress, and let me just take a moment to explain to the listeners why it’s so crucial to understand and address the stresses in your life and deal with them. The reason is, because all stress, whether it’s physical, mental or emotional, cause chemistry in your body. That is, they cause certain chemical changes. Certain hormones get elevated, certain hormones decrease, certain cells stop listening to certain hormones. Chemical changes, all stress.

Now not all stress causes the same chemistry, but sometimes, for some people, the stresses in their life cause the exact same chemical changes in their body as if they were in a famine, as if they were starving to death. And when that happens, your body actually gets tricked into thinking that you’re starving even though you could be eating to your hearts content, your body gets tricked into thinking you’re in starvation mode and it goes into — it activates these FAT programs which are a survival adaptation that we inherited from our ancestors, to survive famines. And when that happens, your metabolism slows down, your body gets very efficient at storing fat, it does that thing where it stops listening to insulin so it shuts off your ability to burn fat, puts you in fat storage mode, makes you hungry all the time, it stops listening to your stomach when it’s full. When your stomach’s full, normally your brain gets the message that your stomach’s food, it stops listening to that.

So all of these things conspire to cause us to be tired, to eat more, and we get to upset at ourselves and our bodies, and we think our bodies are trying to sabotage us. All that’s happening is, the stress in our lives has activated our FAT programs. And that same stress then can cause Type 2 Diabetes because your body’s not listening to insulin and that’s part of the FAT program is to get your body to stop listening to insulin so it can’t regulate blood sugar and then you get Type 2 Diabetes. But it’s all based on stress.

That stress could be some kind of traumatic experience that happened when you were younger or it could be just the daily stress of making — of the daily grind which we’re hearing so much about. But those stresses have to be addressed because if your body’s being tricked into thinking that you’re in a famine because of some stress in your life and then you go on a diet, it only makes it worse because now you really are in a famine and that activates the FAT programs even more, and that puts you even further into this kind of starvation mode.

So dealing with the real issue, which is the stress in your life, is so incredibly crucial for really addressing and eliminating the true problem with weight, and that’s why so many people that we’ve talked to are finally able to lose weight for the first time and keep it off when they’ve had so many problems through dieting. Dieting doesn’t address the stresses in your life. So I just wanted to take a moment to talk about that, Helen, while you’re talking about stress so people really understand why it’s so crucial to deal with stress.

Well, Jon that’s why I’m —

You there Helen?

Yeah, I’m here and that’s why I thought oh, I wanted to say that because I’m seeing that that’s such an important thing for people to realize, and I’m really lucky because I think I now identify with it when maybe I’m having a bit of a stressful time, and I identify and so I know that I have to deal with it. So to me that’s just the wonderful thing that I’ve learned along the way, that my body will easily decide well yes, it’ll do that, but if I can deal with that stress and identify with it, deal with it, then I can move on and it’s wonderful.

So why don’t you share with people how you, personally — how you’re dealing with stress. Like what are the stresses that you’re experiencing now and how are you able to deal with that?/p>

Well, okay. So what are the stresses now? I think mainly just — okay, so I’ve changed a job, but that’s fine but, once again it came to a Tuesday and it wasn’t payday and I thought, “Oh gosh,” and even though it was so silly because I’m fine and I will be all right and I know all of that, it was just this thing with I suppose what is it coming to, a lack of. I’ve gotten lack of nothing, but to me it came a lack of something and I had to just take that on board and, of course, I have tried meditation.

But first of all, I acknowledged it and I accepted that it’s not a problem at all. But my mind was wanting to think, well for a little while it did, even though I know that it isn’t a problem, that it isn’t a lack of anything. But I’ve just had to wait where — and I felt that yes, the body has this feeling of there isn’t enough, but there is more than enough and I think I’ve dealt with it and, of course, I’ve listened to the CD and I’ve listened to the Goddess and I’ve done some other little meditations and just to get rid of that stress.

Let me just talk about that a little bit. I’m going to give you another visualization, Helen, that could be really, really useful. What you’re talking about is just so common with people when you’re worried about finances. It’s something in the book I talk about what I call mental starvation, and what that is is just the feeling of lack. That there’s not enough resources. If you're just worried all the time about how to make ends meet and that’s causing you stress all the time, your body’s actually trying to interpret that stress and understand it and actually try to protect you from the stress, and this is really the root of all of our problems, is that every time you have stress, your body is going to think it’s some sort of physical danger that you’re in and it’s going to try to protect you from that physical danger. If it thinks that the stress is a famine, it’s going to try to protect you by getting you to eat more, slowing your metabolism and causing you to gain weight because that will protect you from starvation in a famine.

Now if you’re worried about making ends meet, it’s sort of like you’re sending a message all the time, there’s not enough, there’s not enough, we need to save, we need to save. Your body’s actually trying to interpret that stress and this is really the main problem that we all have, is that our bodies are always trying to interpret our stresses and try to protect it from us and it. It really can’t protect us, but it will still try and interpret. So if you’re worried all the time about how to make ends meet and that you need to save, you need to save, your body’s going to try to protect you and the only way it can protect you, the only resource your body can save, is fat.

So if your body’s trying to save you from not enough resources, your body’s going to try to conserve resources and it’s going to try to conserve fat. So if you’re always sending a message that there’s not enough, your body’s actually going to activate its FAT programs in an effort to protect you and they’ve done a lot of studies with people that people that are in really, really high stress jobs are more likely to gain weight and people that are in economically challenged situations are more likely to be overweight, and it’s actually our bodies trying to help us save, help us conserve.

And if you think about it, worrying about making ends meet is sort of very similar to a famine because if, God forbid, there wasn’t enough money and you couldn’t make ends meet, you might not be able to buy food, you might not be able to afford your rent, and then all of a sudden you could be out on the street and you could be starving. So your mind’s really right in a sense that when you’re worried about finances, the correct way to protect you is to hold on to weight.

But what you can do is you can try to communicate to your body that you’re not in lack. And visualization is such a powerful way to communicate with your body. So I have a really good visualization that I’d like to share with you, Helen, and our listeners for just abundance. And any time you’re worried about making ends meet, and I do this one any time I’m ever stressed about finances, I do this visualization. It takes two seconds and I just don’t feel stressed anymore.

What it is, is I’d like you to just imagine that you’re in this infinite ocean of abundance and it looks like a large, infinite ocean of water and one drop in this ocean is like more abundance than you could ever want in three lifetimes, just one drop, and you’re in this infinite ocean. Can you imagine that, Helen?

I can.

Okay. So you’re in this infinite — yeah, I just want you to imagine that as you’re sitting in this ocean all of the pores of your body open up of your skin, and the water just comes rushing in. And as it comes rushing in, whatever abundance you want to create, car, money, house, security, it just comes rushing in, just creates it. And any time you need resources, all you have to do is open up the pores of your skin and allow it to rush in.

Now some people will make the argument that our minds are very powerful and that will actually help attract abundance to us, but even if that’s not true, one thing it will do is it will help you lose weight because it will help you communicate to your body that you’re not in a famine, that you don’t need to save, that abundance isn't limited. It will help you feel safer, and when it comes to losing weight, the important thing is how safe you feel.

So this is a really powerful visualization for making you feel safer, making you feel supported, making you feel abundant, so at the very least you’re not causing weight gain because you’re worried about making ends meet. That make sense?

It certainly does and thank you so much. But I mean, I know those visualizations from the book and I have used them, and I just want to say I am okay and I know all of that, but I did want to share, and you actually even said then that there are times when you're stressed and sometimes I just get the little feeling on the forum and whatever, that because it’s worked for you and it’s worked for me and everything else that it eliminates everything, and maybe I was just wanting to share with people who are listening that it doesn’t mean that there still aren’t stresses in life. And I just feel that I’m so lucky now that I’ve learned to identify those stresses and then I know what to do to avoid them, and maybe that was sort of what I tried to share with people who speak to me, that as long as you’re identifying it, it’s all good, and then try and work out a way to deal with them and I just feel —

Yeah, I think that’s a really —

We still have stresses; I just know how to deal with them.

Yeah, that’s a really important point.

So that might someone else, I don’t know, but I hope it does, and I know that my diabetes improved when my stresses were dealt with. And to Carolyn, please try and get some flax seeds, forget the actual capsule, but once I increased the number of omega-3s in my diet, then that was when I really noticed the change in my sugar levels coming down and my diabetes. So I hope that she can just get the flax seed and I think you’ve just got to trust and believe that it’s all going to happen because it will.

I just think the important thing you bring up, Helen, about the stresses are going to be there and learning how to deal with it is really crucial, because the issue is not so much the outside reality of your situation. The issue is just the way you internalize stress or how stressed will you feel or how unsafe you feel or how safe you feel. Those are the issues, and it’s not necessarily related to your outside circumstances. There’s millionaires out there that are worried about making ends meet and then there’s penniless people out there that could care less about money. So it’s not the object reality of the finances, it’s just how safe you feel.

So feeling safe, feeling secure, feeling protected, from a weight loss perspective, is crucial. There’s nothing more important and that’s what the CD's geared to do and I’ve do much work recently in seminars with visualizations for people just to take the situations of their life and help them feel more safe. So I think you really bring up an excellent point about the fact that the stresses aren’t going to go away, but it’s how safe you feel. I remember I was talking to a lady yesterday about her problems, and she was telling me how traumatic her life is. And I was listening to her situation and she was telling me how her mother’s not happy with the things she does and her boss is always criticizing her and her kids are angry at her and all these things, and I’m listening to it and I’m saying to her, “Okay well, if you just took the equation out of — if you all of a sudden weren’t so bothered about what your mother thought,” I mean she’s living a certain path and her mother doesn’t approve, okay that’s fair enough, that happens, but it’s really a question of how much stress that causes you.

So I said, “If you just imagine for a second that you’re living your life and your mother was not happy with it but that was just her problem,” I said, “Just put yourself in a state for a second where you just didn’t care what anyone thought and you were going to live your life exactly the way you thought it was the right life and it didn’t matter.” I said, “Just imagine that for a second.” I said, “If you take out that one part of the equation out that you’re so stressed out about what everybody thinks, your life becomes a lot less traumatic and it becomes a lot less stressful and then you have much more clarity.” So the issue, for her, was just how much stress it caused her that people didn’t approve of her, not necessarily anything else about it. So if you can live your life — what’s that?

I was going to say, I couldn’t agree more, and people sort of talk to me along that line — I’ve cut in now, but I often say to them, “Well maybe look, this is your time now. Doesn’t mean you’ve become selfish or you don’t care, but yeah, it’s your time to get your life as stress-free as you can,” so sorry for cutting in.

Yeah, yeah, no. I mean that’s exactly right, is that you have to live your life according to what makes sense to you and if people don’t approve, well that’s their prerogative, but that doesn’t mean that it necessarily has to cause you stress. For some people it’s going to cause traumatic stress, for other people they’re going to say, “Well that’s just the way it is,” and I know that some of the most successful people I’ve ever met, they lived their life according to exactly what their dream is, exactly what their hearts telling them and people are going to like them or not like them.