5 Skinny Habits You Can Start Right Now

In this week's episode of Your Best Life, Karl interviews David Zulberg, who is an ACE fitness specialist, health coach, and author of the bestselling book The 5 Skinny Habits. David studied timeless health principles pioneered by leading ancient physicians after his own personal struggle with weight gain and health issues. He became one of the first to apply these time-tested ancient methods to modern fitness and nutrition practices. This podcast covers the importance of habits, perception, and the 5 Skinny Habits.

Main Questions Asked:

• What's fundamentally different about the ancient wisdom approach?
• What is an example of the right pace for change?
• What is a practical before and after example of one of those habits?
• How do you get people to stay engaged?
• What kinds of results, successes, and challenges are you having?
• What is an outer habit? How can you leverage outer habits for success?

Key Lessons Learned:

• The training experience for doctors diminishes the physician's power for compassion by exhausting them.
• Living your best life is completely within your control if you are prepared to invest the energy to focus on what you want, and change the association with things you don't.
• To succeed with any health program, one needs to take into account the mind and human nature.
• Will power is limited and not effective over any period of time. The key is conditioning habits to have long term results.

Weight Loss & Diets

• Weight loss and being healthy is more about your eating habits.
• The ancient wisdom approach ties losing weight / getting healthy to habit formation.
• Before thinking about to lose the weight, learn how to maintain a healthy lifestyle.
• Diets fail because they don't take into account that we are creatures of habit.
• We need to break away from the fad diet mentality of needing to see instant results.

Eating

• Eating seems like a menial task we do every day, but people don't realize how our eating habits tie into the deepest aspects of our subconscious mind.
• Almost everything we do is a habitual activity, yet when it comes to eating most people fail to realize it is also something we do so many times a day.
• How you eat and your eating habits are more important than what you eat.

Habits

• When we start to understand how habits form then we can start talking about how we can reprogram our minds. This ties into perception and mindfulness.
• The key is to get into good habits, and the only way to do that is to make small habits at the right pace.
• When one makes too many changes at once it works against human nature, and you inevitably spring back to where you were before.
• There is only so long we can fight against human nature before you slip back to your own habits.

Perception

• Once you have a full understanding of how certain foods affect you, it starts to change your perception of the food.
• The main focus is about making simple habit changes, which alter the subconscious mind and eventually change the way we perceive everything.
• People have the ability to self-program and create new perceptions that drive behavior that is good for them.
• Every time we repeat the same act, it leaves an impression on our subconscious mind. All the impressions accumulate so there are significant changes in the mind without us realizing.
• In order to have an affect on perception change, we have to change the way we view food and also correct habits on the outside.

The 5 Skinny Habits

• By making just one change a week you can continue with your regular schedule
• We are trying to recondition the mind and habits. The weight loss will take longer but you don't really feel the change in your life.
• The way you view food changes when you change your habits.

Breakfast (Week 1 Change)

• Choose any meal that is less than 250 calories.
• Keep this a light meal or have a fruit or salad meal.

Dinner (Week 2 Change)

• Choose any protein instead of starch.
• As a side dish choose vegetables.

Lunch (Week 3 Change)

• Have your meal as you normally would.
• Take a second serving of vegetables.

Exercise (Week 4 Change)

• 10 minutes of cardio exercise three times a week.
• The key is to build a foundation of exercise.
• After that add 2 minutes per week, and within a few weeks you'll be at the optimal amount of exercise per week.

Habits

• When we start to understand how habits form then we can start talking about how we can reprogram our minds. This ties into perception and mindfulness.
• The key is to get into good habits, and the only way to do that is to make small habits at the right pace.
• When one makes too many changes at once it works against human nature, and you inevitably spring back to where you were before.
• There is only so long we can fight against human nature before you slip back to your own habits.

Snacking (Week 5 Change)

• There are certain types of food you can eat between the meals that satisfy cravings.
• Instead of giving into cravings, we learn how to choose particular foods that will satisfy us and prevent cravings.
• Concentrate on drinking the right fluids in between meals (often we confuse hunger with thirst).

Thank you for listening!

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Links to Resources Mentioned

The 5 Skinny Habits
The 5 Skinny Habits: How Ancient Wisdom Can Help You Lose Weight and Change Your Life FOREVER (book)