Stress & Weight Gain

I wanted to talk about – we’ll take callers in a little while, we do have some callers, and we’ll take them in a little while – but I just wanted to do a little bit of a review of the different types of stresses, mental, physical, and emotional stresses that can activate the FAT programs.

Now, the FAT programs, again, are an ancient survival adaptation that we all carry around with us to protect us against famine and stresses like cold weather. And, we no longer have famines that we have to deal with, but thousands of years ago, when we lived outdoors, maybe to survive a winter we might go weeks without eating, because it’s cold and there’s no fruit growing, and the lake's frozen over. Whatever it is, we had to deal with this and that was a stress. Having that type of cold weather, that type of famine, is a stress that causes chemistry in your body. It alerts your body to the fact that there’s not enough food. Your body adapts, by actually shifting its set point, that is, wanting to be fatter. Maybe you’re not going to get fatter in a famine, because you’re not eating, but at the same time, your body’s going to want to be fatter. So that the next time –

Can I just ask you a question?

Yes, sure Kelly.

The sentence you just said, because some people will ask me about this, and I ask me about this. I mean, you know, there are people who have gone through health issues, I certainly have, and you’ll be there with just like an IV getting the most minimal things that you need, and yet, you know, here comes 50 pounds from nowhere.

Yes, and I know you’ve experienced that.

Is that what you’re talking about?

Well, that wasn’t exactly what I’m talking about, but yes and no. I do have people tell me a lot of times that they’re eating nothing, almost next to nothing, and they’re not losing weight, and sometimes even gaining weight. And they go to the doctor and the doctor says, “Oh well what are really eating?” As if they don’t believe in them.

That’s a different issue than this one, the one about, you know, the one about your whole body going into that frightening mode of there’s not enough, and –

Believe it or not, it’s the same issue. Because whether it’s from a surgery, like you experienced, your FAT program is being activated from a surgery and from the stress of surgery, and we’ll talk about all the different things that can activate the FAT program. So, from a surgery it can be activated, from chronic dieting it can be activated, from mental and emotional issues, it can be activated. And then, once it’s activated, what happens is, your body kind of loses the ability to burn fat efficiently.

But, the point I wanted to make though, Kelly, is that, if you were in a famine – going back to this whole analogy – you might lose weight in the famine, and just like you would lose weight if you were in a diet, but that stress is actually going to make your body want to be fatter. Because, your body is going to say, “This is a risk to our life. We could starve to death. So, the next time there’s food available, I want to keep an extra five or ten pounds on me so that I can survive a famine. So, the next time there’s food around, I’m going to eat, and eat, and eat, and eat, to gain the weight.” And your body slows its metabolism, and all these things happen.

So, the question you always want to ask yourself when losing weight, is not so much what are the things that are going to force my body to lose weight, but what are the things that are going to make my body want to be thinner. Because the things that force you to lose weight are not the things that make your body want to be thinner. In fact, it’s usually the exact opposite.

So, if you were in a famine, that would force your body to lose weight, but it would make your body want to be fatter so that the next time there's food, you would eat, and eat, and eat. And that’s what happens in a diet, you force yourself to lose weight, but your body wants to be fatter, so that you end up having this binge. And people think, “Oh, it’s self sabotage.” And I know we had a caller that’s called, that’s waiting that we’ll take later that wants to talk about self sabotage.

I say, it’s not self sabotage. What it is, it’s a misunderstanding of your body’s basic programming, and it’s your body actually thinking that it needs to be fatter, and it’s forcing you to gain weight. And you can control how much you eat, in the short term, but you can’t control how hungry you are, and you can’t control the types of foods you crave. And when your FAT programs are on, it will make you hungry for junk food, and it will make you hungry all the time. And that’s what I used to experience. For me now, it’s been five years since I lost the weight, and I don’t get junk food cravings.

For people that don’t know your story from before, would you be kind enough just for a minute to tell us just a little bit, because I have about 115 new people tonight that are listening. And they know your story, but from you, it’s amazing to hear it from you.

Ok, I mean, I had gained, and I’ll just say this quickly, but I had gained over a hundred kilos, or 220 pounds when I lived in New York in a high stress job, and I was trying every diet that I could, and I wasn’t able to lose weight. And it wasn’t until I stopped dieting and started to understand why my body wanted to be fat, that I did lose the weight. I lost the weight over a two and-a-half year period without dieting, but over time I was craving less food, I was craving healthier food, my metabolism was speeding up. I was doing a lot of research and understanding what the real causes of weight are, and then I wrote this book.

And that was five years ago, and I’ve been the same weight now for five years. And I haven’t dieted, and I don’t diet. I do eat much healthier, and the point I want to make is that when my FAT programs were on, when my body wanted to be fat, I was always craving.

I know, that’s the part that’s astounding to me, because here I’m somebody who’s kept a huge amount of weight off, I think 15, 17 years, and then all of a sudden with this health thing, all I want to do is eat things that would never be in my head ever to eat, ever.

What happened is your FAT programs got activated from stress of a surgery that you had.

Can I turn them off? Can I turn them off?

You absolutely can turn them off. It’s going to take a little bit of work, but your body’s going to have to start to feel safe again. You see, surgery is a very invasive, I mean literally, it’s a very, very invasive experience, and a traumatic experience. And, your body’s going to react one way or the other from that trauma, it’s either going to want to hold on to weight, or it’s going to want to lose weight. And some people get really, really thin after surgery, some people gain weight. It depends on how your body feels –

But, it’s a painful thing, because if you lose weight, people sort of can go with that. You know, they’re always saying like, “You’ve lost weight, we’ve got to help you out.” But, you know, when you gain weight, no one ever says, “Hey, you look great, you’ve gained 40 pounds.” Nobody ever says that.

Nobody does, that's true.

So, it’s just a whole different way in the way we look at it, and I just want to thank you on behalf of us, whether we are in our fat suit or not at the moment. You just have such a heart for it, I mean, you just really have been there yourself and your story’s astounding and amazing.

And what you want to do, and what I love and why I wanted so much to be part of the show, is because you just want to have this to be not an issue in people’s lives anymore. And this is what I love about your approach. You’re all about, this is not an issue anymore, not battling it, not keeping one toe in the water of it, but you want it to be a non-issue with people. And I love this.

I appreciate that.

It’s very important.

I appreciate it. There’s a common stereotype that overweight people are lazy, or just should eat less.

I assure you, I put more in a day than –

Yes, see, I lived through this. If I have one message, it’s not about discipline, it’s not about willpower, it’s about understanding what activates these FAT programs, and how to turn them on, because for me — and doctors and healthcare professionals are all very well intentioned and their advice makes sense on a logical level. Eat less, calories in, calories out, all makes sense on a logical level, but, unless you’ve lived through a body that’s forcing you to gain weight, you cannot possibly imagine what it’s like. And I have been through both sides of it. I’ve had a body that was forcing me to be fat, and now I have a body that’s very happy to be thin, so it’s not an effort now.

So, it’s not about willpower and discipline. And the problem is, when you do use willpower and discipline to force yourself to eat less, it causes chemistry in the body that activates these FAT programs, because then you’re mimicking a famine. And, so the same chemistry —

I was thinking that.

We all have done that, we all have lived through that. So, we get advice that is very logical, eat less. And that’s logical advice, and I can’t dispute it, and you will lose weight. But what will happen is, your body will want to be fatter, and that will make your body want to eat more. It will make your body —

That’s what’s so terrible. I did it, I did the whole thing, and I was like underweight for almost 16 years, and then as soon as whatever happened in my life with the surgery, it all came back. All the behaviors, all the FAT programs, all the ways of thinking, all the way of craving, all that just crawls back in. I just love your approach of, let’s make this a non-issue for people, I just think that’s so benevolent, and so right.

But, the way to make that a non-issue is, first of all, realize that it’s not about willpower or discipline.

And we blame ourselves, over and over.

That’s right. Society blames us, and society — I can tell you, I’m not weak, I’m not undisciplined, but when my body wanted to be fat, believe me, I wanted to eat all the time. So, and the point I want to make is, you can control how much you eat, in the short-term, but you can’t control how hungry you are, when your body’s hungry —

Right. I’m only saying this because you’ve said this on your show a hundred times, you said, “You really couldn’t get to sleep until you went to 7-11 and got your stuff.” Which now, I would imagine, that’s not even in your day

That’s not an issue. No, it would be like at night, I would have to have some sort of pizza, some sort of doughnuts, something, and I don’t anymore. And it’s been five years. So, it’s not willpower, you can’t fight for five years. And the same part of your brain that controls how hungry you are, is the part of your brain, the hypothalamus, it controls how much sleep you need and how much breathing you need, how much oxygen you need. It controls all these unconscious processes.

So, you can control, for example, if you went to your doctor and your doctor told you that your problem is you sleep too much. You can control how much you sleep in the short-term. You could just sleep two hours a night. And imagine if everybody judged you because you slept six hours a night, and they said, “Oh, you should just sleep two hours.”

And the funny thing is, naturally thin people, there’s no discipline in there. You see people that are naturally thin, and they eat whatever they want and they’re thin, and they’re looking at someone that’s overweight and saying, “Oh, well they should just eat less.” Well no, there’s never a time, like, if you’re a naturally thin person, there’s never a time when you go, “Oh, I should eat less.” You eat whatever you want because your body wants to be thin, it’s not an issue.

And so, people think that overweight people are undisciplined, they have more discipline than naturally thin people because every day they’re trying to fight cravings, but it’s the exact same as trying to fight sleep every day. Like, if you were trying to fight sleep every day, sooner or later, your body would force you to sleep, it’s the exact same with weight. If your body wants to have weight on it, sooner or later, it’s going to force you to eat. I’ve lived through this, and unless you’ve lived through it –

What an awful –

It’s a nightmare, and the reason it’s a nightmare, the biggest reason, is because the approach that you use, of dieting, just makes it all worse. Because, if these FAT programs get activated, and there’s a whole list of things that can activate these FAT programs in today’s modern world –

Go right away, get the book.

If these FAT programs are activated, then it’s like your body is being tricked into activating this famine response. And then you go on a diet, and it just makes the whole thing worse.

Because, let’s make the example of surgery, okay. Surgery is a stress for some people, or chemotherapy, it can be any type. These are stresses that, for some people, can actually activate the FAT programs. And why do they activate the FAT programs? It’s simple, because they cause the same chemistry in your body as a famine. So, if you were in a famine, and you didn’t have enough to eat, certain things would happen. Your triglycerides would go up, your cortisone levels would go up, your body would become resistant to insulin, resistant to the hormone leptin. These are stress responses. Your pro-inflammatory cytokines would elevate, these are hormones. These are a response to the stress of famine.

Now, you have a surgery, and it causes the same type of chemistry, where if you were to artificially induce that chemistry in someone, for example, if you take the hormone cortisol, if you were to give that hormone cortisol to anybody, they would gain weight over time. No matter who it was, they would gain weight. Why? It’s simply because it’s activating the FAT programs.

So, in your case, you had a stress, the stress was surgery, the chemistry for you elevated certain hormones in your body, and you might want to talk with Dr. Liebowitz about what hormones, but elevated certain hormones in your body that activated the FAT programs, and so your body thinks it’s starving.

It’s basically your body is being tricked, into flipping a switch, and the switch is, get fatter. It’s a get fatter switch, and the chemistry will trick it. It doesn’t matter what you’re eating, if there’s another stress that’s causing that chemistry.

So, you had a stress, which was surgery, that caused the chemistry and then what happened is, now your body’s in fat storage mode, in get fat mode. Now, if you were to go on a diet now, that’s going to cause that — that’s going to elevate that chemistry and make it even worse, because now you really are in a famine. And this is what people suffer from all the time. Some sort of stress is activating their FAT programs, and it could be any number of stresses, mental, physical or emotional, and these are the types of things I want to talk about today. Hopefully we’ll have time for that.

Those stresses are activating the FAT programs, and then you go on a diet, and you’ve made the whole thing worse, because you really are now in a famine. Your body is being tricked into activating a famine response, but now you’re artificially inducing a famine, and that’s why diets don’t work. Diets will always work in the short-term, but, they will make the problem worse because you are creating a famine response. So, you have to create an approach that takes this into consideration.

Now, the types of stresses that can activate the FAT programs, and I’ve listed them in my book, are, for example, dieting. We’ll talk about physical stresses, mental stresses, and emotional stresses. Physical stresses, dieting, dieting activates the FAT programs, as we’ve just discussed because it causes a famine response in your body. That makes your body want to be fatter, makes your body say, “Hold on, there's famines out there, we need to always carry extra weight on us because we don’t know when our next meals coming from.” So, dieting.

Then there’s something that I call a nutritional famine, and this is common for almost anybody eating a modern day diet. A nutritional famine is when you can be eating to your heart’s content, but you’re not getting the specific nutrients your body’s starving for. That’s called a nutritional famine. That causes the same chemistry as a famine in your body, or similar chemistry, that activates the FAT program. So, as long as you’re not getting the nutrients your body’s starving for, in a way your body can digest and assimilate, in an uncorrupted form that can get into the cells of your body and actually nourish you, and that’s a challenge.

So, there’s really these three hurdles. One, the nourishment has to be there. Two, it has to be uncorrupted. And three, it has to be able to be digested, assimilated, and enter the cells of your body. Once it enters the cells of your body, you’ve been nourished. That’s tricky in today’s modern world, when the food has no uncorrupted nutrients. It’s just dead chemicals in packaged, processed foods, and the foods we’re eating are just so radically different from the real nutritious foods that we ate hundreds of years ago.

So, Dr. Liebowitz always talks about, because he has, sort of, a special way of eating, which is really easy, and I always ask him about it, because people love to hear about it. And he says, “Look, if it wasn’t invented seven thousand years ago, don’t eat it.”

Well, all I would say is, if it wasn’t invented, you can eat it, because —

Well, you know what I mean.

No, it’s the same thing.

If you can’t recognize it, you know, it’s not an apple, if it’s not a thing that came from a tree, or bush, or underground, don’t eat it.

Now, I never say, my approach is a little different, I never say, “Don’t eat it”, because than you’re on a diet. But, what I do say is, it’s not nourishing your body. All it’s doing is adding to your fat storage, and you just need to know that. So, if we invented it, unless it’s a super food or something like that for health purposes, but if we invented it for taste or convenience, it’s not nourishing your body. It’s just adding to your fat supplies. You can eat it if you want, but be aware of the fact that it’s not nourishing your body, and add the foods that are nourishing. Always add, add, add.

So, if this is a thing where you’re on the Gabriel Method or not on the Gabriel Method, the only way you can be not on the Gabriel Method, on any given day, is if you didn’t add the foods your body is starving for. And I talk about that in —

That’s what makes you so different. You’re all about adding and not about taking away.

There’s two things that are very different and very counter-intuitive about my approach. One is that I say obesity is caused by starvation. And, that is very counter-intuitive. But, what I mean by that is that obesity is caused by activating the starvation response. The famine response, or the FAT programs. Their actually being tricked into being activated by some type of stress in your life.

So, obesity is caused by starvation, and the solution is not to diet, but to add foods. That’s very counter-intuitive, but you have to add the foods your body’s starving for, if the cause of the problem is a nutritional famine, which we were just talking about, the nutritional starvation. You’ve got to add the foods your body’s starving for.

Over time, what happens, you may not lose weight instantly, but what will happen is you’ll be less hungry, and you will crave healthier foods because your FAT programs will get turned off, that stress will go away. You will actually be nourishing yourself, and over time, you’ll become more efficient at burning fat, your metabolism will speed up, and you’ll crave much more healthy foods, and you will lose weight. And, the best part is, you’ll be able to keep it off, because you’re not dieting. You’re working with your body rather than fighting it.

So, nutritional famine is another type of stress that can activate the FAT programs, and the solution is to —

There’s a great doctor I met, and I’ll just say this one thing, because it’s the name of this book and because it’s so aligned with what you do. Your body will always have the last word.

That’s true, and I agree 100 percent.

When I was speaking with him, I thought of you immediately.

And, I agree 100 percent, you’ve got to give your body its due. And, what I usually say that’s very similar is that, when you’re at war with your body – and what I mean by that is you’re forcing yourself not to eat foods that your body’s craving, and your forcing yourself not to eat amounts that your body’s craving, you’re at war with your body, and that’s a war that is next to impossible to win in a sustainable way, because your body can fight you 24/7. You understand? You can fight for an hour a day, and people live their whole lives as if it’s like a battle.

Every single day, at any minute, a good day can turn into a bad day. You know what that’s like? Where, like, every single day — I remember, I used to live through this where, you start every day thinking it’s going to be a good day, and maybe by 11 o’clock you start getting junk food cravings, maybe you make it past the first junk food cravings and get to lunch. Than at 4 o’clock you get more junk food cravings, and maybe you make it past, maybe you don’t. And if you don’t make it past, it’s 5 o’clock, you’re exhausted, you end up in the convenience store, and you’re like, “Okay, now it’s going to be a bad day.” And boy, once it’s a bad day, then before you know it, it’s 4 o’clock in the morning and there’s pizza wrappers all over the floor, and cupcake wrappers, and your fingers are orange from cheese twists, and then it’s a bad day. And then you start again the next day to try to make it a good day.

So, it’s like every day is a bad day or a good day, and I can tell you that there’s people that go through their whole life and never had this issue of good day or bad day. I can tell you for me now, and for thousands of people now that are able to solve the problem, it’s not an issue. There’s no more good days and there’s no more bad days.

But, back in the day, you had, no matter what you would have done, and I know you to have a heart as big as the sun, no matter what you did, or whatever, if you had not eaten the way you were programming yourself to eat, it was a bad day. If you went to 7-11, and it was —

It was like every day was a battle for me. Every day, you know. I was exhausted all the time, so what I —

What a miracle you are.

Well, thank you, I appreciate that.

No, no, it’s a miracle.

Yes, okay.

Now, we’re talking about a human being that you lost, I mean really, it was a whole other person. And you didn’t have the benefit of the Jon Gabriel, you didn’t have a book.

Well, I had to plow the way, but, you know, now the path is there. But, this idea that what I learned, and this was a real turning point for me, as I talk about it in the book, is that I came to a place where I realized my body wanted to be fat, and I decided that as long as it wanted to be fat, I was never going to diet again. And, that was the big turning point for me, because I realized that your body can fight you 24/7.

But, the limbic system is always going to win, you’re right, and there have been books written, dieting doesn’t work, blah, blah, blah, but yours takes it light years ahead of that. We’re past all that. You’re like, all about, it not being an issue.

Yes, well that’s how we hope to see it.

So, you’ve got this nutritional famine, and the way to solve that is add foods. Now you’ve got other stresses, physical stresses, that can activate these FAT programs. Dehydration can activate the FAT programs. So, you’ve got to drink a lot of water. Sleep apnea, which I talk about all the time, which is like starving for sleep, and starving for oxygen, you’ve got to get sleep. It’s so crucial to get sleep apnea taken care of. Sleep apnea activates the FAT programs. And, there’s a vicious cycle that happens with people when they gain weight, where once they gain a certain amount of weight, their neck and chest become so heavy that it cuts off their windpipe while their sleeping, and so they develop this sleep apnea. And what happens —

And there’s photos of you, having one of the worst cases of sleep apnea.

Yes, yes, yes, at the sleep study test where I’m all wired up with electrodes — where did you see those photos, are they up on the internet? There’s a picture of me, yes, like all wired up —

Yes, I saw that picture, I saw that picture, yes.

Yes, when you get your sleep study test, but what happens when you have sleep apnea, is your cortisol levels go up. And remember, we talked about cortisol, if you were in a famine, your cortisol levels would go up, it would be a signal that you’re starving.

So, you gain a certain amount of weight, you get sleep apnea, and then your cortisol levels go up, and your body wants to be even fatter. It’s a vicious, vicious cycle. You’ve got to get sleep apnea taken care of. That’s a stress, a physical stress that can activate the FAT programs. And I don’t care, you can fight, and fight, and fight all you want, but when you get sleep apnea, you’re tired all the time because you’re not getting good sleep, and you’re craving junk food because you’re tired, and you’ve got these FAT programs being activated even more, so your body wants to be even fatter. Until you get your sleep apnea taken care of, it’s a vicious, vicious cycle. So, sleep apnea has got to be taken care of.

Toxins, if you’re taking in too many toxins, which most of us do in a modern day diet because a modern day diet has hundreds of different toxins in it, then your body’s not going to want to lose weight because it’s going to want to store those toxins in your fat cells, and if you’re taking in too many toxins, if you were to actually burn fat, you’d be releasing those toxins back into your bloodstream. And your body’s only going to do that if — it’s not going to create an undue toxic burden on your system. And so, if you’re taking in too many toxins, your body’s not going to want to burn weight.

So, adding organic food as much as possible is really crucial. And people say organic food is more expensive, and I don’t deny that, but organic food will nourish your body, and will help you lose weight, and when it nourishes your body and helps you lose weight, what’s going to happen is it’s going to turn off the FAT programs, because you’ve got less toxins and you’ve got more nourishment. It’s going to make you less hungry, so you’re going to save money in junk food.

Or you pay for it later in your health issues, you’re going to pay for it.

So, what happens is, you’re going to eat less over time, and it’s not going to be in an instant, but this is a solve the problem forever thing, not a lose 20 pounds in 20 days sort of thing. So it’s not going to be instant, but you will become less hungry, so you’ll save a fortune in junk food, you’ll save a fortune in health bills because you’re going to be much healthier, because you’re not going to be carrying toxins around, and —

What about the person tonight that has those FAT programs going, that you just mentioned, a lot of them do, what would be the first step? Is it the Omega 3’s, is it the, what? What’s the nuts and bolts of it?

Well, okay, let me finish with the different stresses, because each one has a different approach to it.

Oh, I’m so sorry.

Yes, that’s okay. You’ve got, as I’ve mentioned, if it’s a nutritional famine, than, you’ve got to add certain nutrients in a way that you can digest and assimilate.

But people are emailing me, and they’re going, “What is he talking about? What nutrients? I don’t care — what does he mean?”

Yes, well, in the book I talked about three things that our body’s starving for. Omega 3 fatty acids, live food that’s like real, live, salady, lettucy type, green food, organic foods, and protein that’s not corrupted. And, you can go to my website and check recipes if you want, that have those three ingredients. You’ve got to add those three ingredients, and I talk about in the book, different strategies for adding them into your diet.

That solves the nutritional aspect, but Kelly, the nutritional thing is maybe 10 percent of the overall picture. If you’ve got sleep apnea, you’ve got to get the sleep apnea taken care of. The dehydration has to be taken care of by drinking more water. Toxins has to be taken care of by buying more organic. So, each issue has to be addressed.

So, those are some of the physical issues. Other physical issues like the ones you had were surgery, or an accident, a physical accident, or chemotherapy, or all these things, traumas, that needs to be taken care of with more type of emotional work, body work with like, a healer that knows how to do energetic work and body work. And those are things I talk about also in the book.

But, these are all physical stresses that can activate the FAT programs. Then you’ve got mental and emotional stress.

Now you’ve hit on one that everyone’s going through with the economy, with all that. What if they're real? What if the —

What if what’s real?

Well, the one’s you just mentioned, the emotional, what’s happening in people’s daily life. Those won’t go away, right?

Well, they may or may not go away, but what you can do is, you can communicate to your body that even if they’re there, they shouldn’t turn the FAT programs on.

That’s what I want to know, for people, but how?

Okay, so let me explain what the issues are, and then we can get into the how. So, whenever you have mental and emotional stress, it causes chemistry in your body, and your body actually thinks it has to do something to keep you safe. So, you’re driving to work and you’re late, and you’re worried about getting to work on time and your boss is going to be mad, and that’s causing chemistry in your body. And, sometimes, for some people, that chemistry is the exact same chemistry as the FAT programs. It actually causes the same chemical changes, the same hormonal changes in your body.

So, your body actually thinks that it needs to be fat to to protect you from being late for work. It’s a mistake and a miscommunication between our modern day, mental and emotional stressful world, and a physical body that’s always trying to protect us from stress, and keep us safe

.

So, our body actually thinks that fat will keep us safe from the economy for some people. And, I’ve thought about this, if you’re worried about making ends meet, if you’re worried that you have to save money all the time, and all the time you’re going “I’ve got to save money, I’ve got to save money, money’s tight, there’s a scarcity. There’s not enough, there’s not enough, there’s not enough,“ and that’s causing stress. Our bodies are programmed to adapt to stress to protect us from stress.

So, our body’s actually programmed to try to protect you from the stress that there’s not enough money. That’s just a fact, we have this programming. So, your body doesn’t know how to protect you from not enough money, but it doesn’t understand the stressors of our modern day world. But, it’s still going to do something, because you’re causing chemistry.

So, when you activate this chemistry, what’s happening is, it’s almost as if your body’s interpreting an economic hardship is a type of famine, and so it actually activates the FAT program to protect you from the economy, to protect you from not having enough money. And, if you think about it, Kelly, it really is very similar, because if you don’t have enough money, and you can’t make ends meet, and you lose your job, and all these horrible things, then you can’t pay your mortgage, or your rent, and then you’re out on the street, and you know what, you really are in a famine then. Then you don’t have enough money to eat, and you really are starving.

So, it’s really true that if you’re worried about these things, it’s like a famine once removed, it’s a mental and emotional famine. So, when you’re worried about lack all the time, you’re actually communicating to your body that there’s a famine out there. And, there’s been a lot of studies that have been done on people that are really worried about finances, that they’re much more likely to gain weight. And people that are economically challenging situations are more likely to be overweight, which makes you wonder. Why is that? They don’t have as much money to buy food. Well, the fact of the matter is, they’re activating their body’s FAT programs, and their body’s actually trying to protect them from the economy.

And we, you know, we get so mad at our body, like it’s out to get us, and all it is, it’s just programmed to keep us safe. It just doesn’t know how to do it. And so, it’s up to us to try to communicate to our body that it doesn’t need to protect us.

So, there’s a couple of ways to do that. One is, if you can just learn how to cultivate the feeling of safety, that you are safe. If you can communicate to your body that you’re safe, then you’re living a much less stressful life. And that’s going to help you in so many ways, but it’s also going to turn off the FAT programs. Whether or not there’s all this stuff going on is one thing, how stressful you feel about it is another thing. So, you could be a millionaire, and still be worried about money, or you could have no money at all and not worry about it. I’m not saying ones right and ones wrong, but I am saying that the worrying is what’s making you fat. Not the reality of the situation. So, if you can cultivate a feeling of safety, than that takes care of the problem.

It’s like I talk about in the book, different visualizations. It's just getting into a state where your mind and body can communicate with each other. That state I call smart mode, which we’ve talked about before, and then just communicating to all the cells of your body that you're safe, just by saying, “I am safe, I am safe, I am safe,” having all the cells of your body saying that at the same time. And then I talk about visualizations for how to feel more abundant, and how to create more abundance, so that solves the problem too.

So, we’ve got mental stress that can activate the FAT programs. You’ve got emotional stress that can activate the FAT program, something I call emotional obesity, which makes you feel — emotional obesity is when you actually feel safer being fatter. And I had this. And that has to be addressed, and what I’ve found with people that have a lifetime of overweight issues, that more than