← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Her Secret Method For Weight Loss Will Blow Your Mind | Liz Josefsberg (Replay)
00:53:15
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- [00:00]
A
When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER Click grainger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. When you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery so you can keep your facility stocked, safe, and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done.
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B
Hey, everybody. Welcome to Health Theory. Today's guest is Liz Josephsberg. She's a weight loss industry expert and celebrity diet coach who's probably most famous for the unbelievable transformation she helped Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson achieve and maintain. And her new book, Target 100, has been endorsed by such luminary former clients as Charles Barkley, Katie Couric, and Jessica Simpson. She's also appeared on a gaggle of media outlets including Good Morning America, the Dr. Oz show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, Katie and the Doctors. But what I find most interesting about your approach is that it's so mental that you're starting with getting people to interrupt their patterns to create new habits. Why are you so heavy on the mind?
- [01:49]
C
You know, I don't think that there's one person out there that doesn't know a better food choice. Right. You know, an apple is a smarter choice than a Snickers bar. There is a giant gap between intention and action. Worked for countless weight loss companies for years and years and watched as people were prescribed, you know, a food plan where they sort of just followed the food plan, but until something broke. And it just, it was the same for me. So I was like, I really want to understand what's happening in people's minds and why is it that they can stick to something for a certain amount of time, but then it ends? So as I kind of rotated in my career away from, you know, working in Weight Watchers and Lifetime Fitness and some of these larger brands into creating my own company and my own philosophy, my first step was to understand, understand why do we do what we do because it isn't that we don't know what the smart choice is. So I went about sort of really looking into the brain science behind, you know, why would, say, a woman come in and I'd weigh her at Weight Watchers, and she would, you know, the funny thing that happens before a woman weighs in is they start just spewing and, and almost like a confessional, they say, oh, I, I, I had a really good week until Friday when I had, you know, 37 points left, and I ate 39 points. And I felt so bad about it that I ate 275 points. And I was like, wait, you ate two points over, which wouldn't have made you gain weight. But the. Something's happening in the brain. So started to look into the research, and it turns out that anytime that we feel guilt or shame about a food choice or an action, it actually activates the, the reward center in the brain.
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B
Meaning it makes us want to feed the reward center or.
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C
Absolutely. So the one thing that you're trying craving is what?
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B
It's to have the emotional reward.
- [03:57]
C
Yeah. So when we look at the brain under an mri, when the feelings of guilt or shame, which so many diet programs, right, they, they create these boundaries at which once you cross that boundary, you are somehow bad. You have somehow broken a line. So this is sort of back to that woman. She, she felt like she had done something wrong. She felt guilty and shameful. So that drove her brain into the reward center lighting up, and then she goes for whatever it was that she was trying to avoid. So a gambler is going to gamble more as they're losing. Right. The, the shopaholic is going to spend more money and shop more as they feel more guilt and more shame over what it is that they're doing. So my entire philosophy and process was, how do I figure out how to move people away from these feelings of, you know, there's a specific program that if they don't stick to it perfectly, they therefore are bad. They therefore have. Have broken something and it's over. Right. Because that was the process that I found myself going through was I would lose weight. There was a finite ending to that. Maybe I reached a weight goal, or I, or I did something wrong where it broke down. And so I didn't just go back to sort of healthy eating. I went back to the most unhealthy eating there is in the world. Right. Binge eating and overeating and all of those things. So, and I was seeing this with so many people, so I really felt Like, I really wanted to start to make people understand how their brain is driving them and remove some of those feelings of guilt and shame and give them the tools and the worksheets and the exercises that would help them to unravel their thought process around this and where they picked up those ideas.
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B
It's really interesting to me and I think this is what I found so fascinating about Target 100, the way you open the book, like first with your story, which is amazing, and I definitely want to talk about that. And then to your point, like, once people understand that they've built this unhealthy relationship with food, then they can actually get to the cause and begin to unwind it.
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C
Yes.
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B
And I heard you say one time that, you know, I think oftentimes people are surprised because I have to come to them at the diet level because that's what they expect.
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C
That's exactly right.
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B
That's not where we're going to stay.
- [06:12]
C
No.
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B
I thought that was so interesting.
- [06:14]
C
That's exactly right. Right. It's so funny. I have to come at them with what resonates with what they can understand at this moment. But where I take them is so deep and so much further than what they've ever thought about their relationship with food. And I have sort of a tagline of, like, I say, I'm going to return you to a normal relationship with food. We have a really strange relationship with food in this country. I think we've lost our way in many ways. I think dieting and, you know, all of these sort of extremes that have come in and come out. You know, going into a process and sort of slavishly or following, you know, the rules that somebody else has set out, that worked for them. Right. I always say for my clients, I say, like, let's pretend we're going to a hat store. Right. If you were going to buy yourself a hat, you'd try on a whole bunch of hats and if they didn't look good, you'd take them off and you would pick up the pieces that kind of looked good about that hat and you'd go to the next one. So I'm always encouraging people to not turn themselves over. Use these programs, they're amazing. You'll learn something from doing them. But don't beat yourself up if it isn't your long term plan that you're going to stick to completely. Which that's where I think this thing gets set up for people is they do one of these things. You know, they go to Weight Watchers, they Stay on it for four weeks or so, and then when they can't sustain it, they feel like a failure, and those feelings drive them to overeat. So unraveling that is to try to look at this process from a whole new lens. And that's what Target 100 is about for me, right? So I had to lead them in with. I'm giving you a parameter, I'm giving you sort of a. A program to follow. But if you read the book, it's based on the image of me playing, doing archery with my sons. And I say, I want you to go into Target 100 and imagine, you know, when you go out to. To do archery, you aim for the bullseye, right? And I had never done it before. So here I am aiming, I'm hitting the house off to the left, you know, I mean, I'm. I'm not doing well at all, but I did hit a couple of circles, and it was one of those moments where I was like, oh, my gosh. This is. This is how I want people to approach their, Their. Their dieting or they're moving through a lifestyle, is that they wouldn't. If they. If they got near it near the bullseye, they would still get points. So that's sort of the entire ideology behind Target 100 is, you know, I ask you to kind of limit yourself to about 100 grams of carbs a day. And I always say about. Because if you got 93, it'd be fine, and if you did 107, you'd be fine. It. When you say, like, oh, gosh, I missed this perfect mark, so I may as well just go and eat and drink everything off on the face of the planet. So what drives unraveling this, which is the most important thing for people to hear, is that we are just a bundle of habit patterns. 50% of what we do in a day is simply habit. And habits are relegated to a back portion of the brain where, honestly, we aren't even present when we're doing them. And we do that for a really important reason, right? Because if I had to decide how to wash my hair every day, that would. That would. That would be exhausting my decisions for later in the day. So we have to love our habits. But if 50% of what we do in a day is habit, then 50% of the decisions we're making about how we feed ourselves when we do, are we eating in the car, are we eating on the go, Are we. How are we fueling our bodies? Then 50% of that is just kind of not. We're not even present for it. And we're just being driven to these sort of old easy patterns so we don't have to think.
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B
So in the book, you break down the anatomy of a habit, which I thought was really cool. Walk people through quickly that are watching now that might have a tenuous or unhealthy relationship with food. They have habits that aren't taking them where they want to go. Maybe blind to those habits, how do they become aware and then more importantly, how do they create that new pattern?
- [10:29]
C
Great. So the anatomy of a habit is simple, right? Habits are just very, very simple. They are made up of three distinct things that happen. There is a trigger or a cue of some sort that kicks that routine off, that kicks the habit off. That habit then gives you some sort of a reward. So you may know that it would be best for you to have a healthy breakfast, right? But your habit isn't that you don't know that perhaps having a healthy breakfast would be smart. It's that your bad habit is you wake up and use the snooze bar three times in a row, making you, you know, 15 to 20 minutes late every single day. So you get up, all of a sudden, you're running late. You then skip breakfast altogether. You're completely stressed out. You get in the car, you get to the office, and there's a coffee cart with donuts outside. You say, I'm just going to get coffee. But as humans, anytime we see food, smell food, or talk about food, we're triggered to eat it. So you see the donut, you don't have any resolve at that moment because you've been eating the donut habitually for days. But it also releases a big fat dose of serotonin. So you are getting a real feel good kind of thing. We back it up and we say like, so why is this happening? Okay, let's take that alarm clock. This trigger is. This triggers bad. This, this lateness is triggering this, this donut. Let's move this alarm clock across the room or stop using your phone as an alarm clock and get an actual alarm clock and put it across the room. So you have to get out of bed and let's stop being late because that extra 10, 15, 20 minutes allows you to to then go to the kitchen where we trigger other things, right where I put post it notes of like, okay, today's breakfast is X, Y and Z. So you don't have to think. You just have to start to create this new pattern. Once you do something about Three to five times, it begins to become this new fledgling habit. And it's not as painful, I think, in that anatomy of habits. I think no one ever has talked about the emotional difficulty that ensues from changing a habit as well. I just, I like to tell people to be aware that there will be so many emotions when you try to change something that's so comfortable and you don't have to think about. You will be mad, you'll want to stomp your feet, you'll feel angry, you'll feel sad, you'll feel, you know, all of this anxiety. It's just that your body wants so badly to not have to think about these sort of less than important decisions that it feels very painful. But if you will repeat those things, as I say, three to five times, they become this fledgling habit. And you just need to sort of fan the flames of that habit. Soon enough, that becomes the comfortable thing. And all of a sudden breakfast is knocked out. Like, all of a sudden you're like, oh, gosh, I've got the stuff in the house. I'm eating breakfast every day. I'm not getting over hungry, I'm not eating the donut. That starts to lead to actual weight loss. That change of moving the alarm clock across the room.
- [13:43]
B
One thing that I like that you talked about is refusing excuses. So I can hear people, they're hearing the story and it's like, yeah, yeah, I'm going to move the alarm clock across the room, no problem. And then something happens and they're up late and it's like, oh, I just need to, you know, snooze it a little bit. And they allow themselves the excuse of breaking the habit, which then immediately reverts them back to the way that they were behaving before. How do you get people to. Because you said you can train this, how do you get them to get better at refusing excuses?
- [14:13]
C
Yeah, well, I think probably, As I said, 50% of what we do in a day is, is habit. More importantly, they estimate that 80% of the thoughts we've had, we've had already. It's recycled thought that goes around and around and around, right. And it's never positive. We don't have like happy, good thoughts that go round and round and round, right. It's like, this is never going to work. You know, it's always the negative, right. So one of things I think is really important is beginning. And one of the pillars in the book is beginning to understand sort of stress relief and meditation to be able to sort of begin to clear those thoughts.
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B
I was shocked that you said that meditation is your number one weight loss tip.
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C
Yes, yes. Most of the eating and over drinking in the society that we live in now is due to literally being so stressed out and not having control over those thoughts that you were talking about. Right. And meditation allows us to be in the moment, to take the action, whereas when we're stuck in the 80% tornado, we can't do anything. I was always a person who would sneak eat, right? I didn't want anyone to see me eating and it was a really bad habit. And even when I got married, like, I would, like, be like, oh, I'll be right. Be right up, honey. And then end up in the pantry, like sneaking some little bit of food because I didn't want them to see me eating right. It's a bad pattern. I've worked on it. I've eradicated it to like 95%. Right? But every once in a while, I will just find myself in there because burned into my neural pathways is this old habit and behavior. They never fade away completely. They live there. And that's okay. It's okay. If I can eradicate it, you know, 80 to 95%, I'm really going to be able to live at a healthy weight. But when I understand that it's still there and it happens, I don't need to feel guilty or shameful, but I just need to immediately go back to right. So if you hit that snooze button, the one day, it's not over. You didn't do anything wrong, you didn't do anything bad. It's just that this pathway still lives there and you want to go over and reiterate the new pathway that you're working on.
- [16:25]
D
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- [16:55]
B
I'd really like to hear your story because it's super powerful. You open the book by saying the. I don't think anybody knew the words body shaming back in my elementary school when I was growing up in the 80s. And I think it's really interesting that you've been able to unwind that you said that you were bullied mercilessly for your weight. And as a child of the 80s, there weren't a lot of heavy kids. And so when there was one, they got targeted pretty fast. So what was that like? And how on earth were you able to unwind the narrative about being somebody who is overweight?
- [17:26]
C
Yeah, that is. Is such an important piece of this because, you know, whether we have been shamed like I was out by outside sources, most of the people that I work with are shaming themselves worse than anyone outwardly has ever done. I was just literally, again, habitually putting myself down based on what had been given to me externally. But what I was also coming up with internally, about me being less than and less worthy and ugly, fat, all the things that, that, that I came up with, that became my identity, that became just a running narrative, right. It was almost like if you had a radio on in the background and you just stopped noticing that you'd left it on. That was just always going on, and I didn't even realize it was on. I started this book by giving you a program, right, that you could understand, that you could study, stick to. That starts with looking at your environment, right? Starts with you being able to clear out your house of some of these foods and starts. So once you. Once you just do these things in your environment level, which it's really simple to kind of go through your environment, say, like, wow, those ice cream bars, they gotta go because I'm not gonna do well. For me, it's chardonnay. You can't have chardonnay in the house. Open bottle of chardonnay is not gonna make it through the night in my house. That's a trigger for me. So I clean up my environment and I start behaving differently, right? Once you change the environment, you begin to behave differently. Once you behave differently, you start to actually feel like maybe you are capable of this. You know, as long as I don't have the chardonnay, wow. I don't drink it. So I'm capable of keeping it out of the house. And that capability begins to make me believe in myself just a little bit. And I go, wow. So I. I believe I could lose this weight. I believe I could be different. Once you believe in yourself, the very final piece is the identity piece. It's at the kind of the core of that, that those levels of change, once you get to that identity piece, that's where the real work starts. That's the unraveling. And that for me, came through, you know, learning to meditate Learning to quiet my brain, learning to understand the voices that I was telling myself. And I lost weight so many times over the course of my life. First it was 30 pounds, about five different times. Then that escalated to 50, then that escalated to 65 when I realized my entire identity was, was a yo, yo, Dieter. I could lose the weight, but I couldn't keep it off is what I told myself. And once I heard myself telling myself that, then I could begin the work to say, like, ok, what is it that's that I want to see happen now? But until you do that sort of internal work at journaling, you know, meditating, talking to friends who've known you for a very long time, examining where you picked up these ideas about yourself, this is going to persist.
- [20:37]
B
No, that makes a lot of sense. So going back to, as you're beginning to build yourself out of this, you talk about people having the urge to quit, whether it's exercise or whether it's something more long term. How do we exercise that muscle? How do we begin to push farther, to not give in to that urge to quit? And maybe most importantly, how do we begin to earn that credibility that you talked about with ourselves?
- [21:01]
C
Well, I'm a huge proponent of baby steps. And everything in my teaching and in my philosophy is about going, you know, just the tiniest bit further than you did and then literally cheering yourself on. I think those two things are underrated in this process.
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B
How do you cheer yourself on? People ask me that question all the time, and I think it's so important.
- [21:24]
C
Well, I think it's this change over into one of the big principles, additionally to kind of quieting guilt and shame, is that we now know that gratitude, and just the practice of gratitude in when we look again at the brain under an MRI scan, gratitude releases serotonin and endorphins in the level of almost like a low level antidepressant. And so learning to kind of practice gratitude and learning to be proud of yourself and grateful, I make people laugh because it is always for me, Chardonnay. And, you know, there have been nights where I'm like, you know what? I'm just. It was New Year's Eve a couple years ago and I was like, you know what? I've had enough. This has been a December to remember. I need to like, cap it tonight. It's New Year's Eve. I'm just gonna wait at like 8. I'm gonna have a couple glasses of wine tonight, but it's just gonna be, it's going to be a low Key night. So friend invited us over for a brunch. We literally knock on the door and she opens the door and she's holding mimosas at noon. And I was like, well, this wasn't in the plan. And, you know, I made the conscious decision that I was going to enjoy the mimosa that she handed me. Number one. I was aware of it. I made the decision right. I was there. I enjoyed that. And then I ended up drinking probably four more drinks throughout the. The rest of the day. So I did not hit my target. The old me. When I opened my eyes that next morning, the old me would have literally been berating. How did you do? You said you weren't going to do that. You're a loser. You're this, you're that. Before I even open my eyes, I feel like there's a 4,000 pound weight on my chest because I'm now just a bad person. The new me, literally, I opened my eyes and I was like, at least it was five drinks and not six. Love you, girl. You did good. You drank some water too. You're awesome. Waking up like that versus waking up with that weight on, you allowed me to then sort of skyrocket into that next day. It's so counterintuitive in the diet world. It's all about beating yourself up and shaming yourself and you're not good enough and you didn't do well enough. I want you to literally be grateful and appreciative and nourish every good choice that you make and let go of the bad ones. Because when we focus on that negative, when we just keep berating ourselves, we can't go anywhere. We're stuck. I think people are afraid to do that because they think I've got to kick the horse harder to make it run faster. It's the absolute opposite. So it isn't that you didn't know that this was a healthier meal. You got to the restaurant, you're like, I don't know, cheeseburger or salad, I'm not sure which one. No. But can you be like, can you use these new skills of planning a little bit before you get there? Can you begin to understand that there will be urges? Like you were asking about this, this urge to quit, right? Urges, they. They happen for us all day long. Not just with food, with all sorts of things. What I think has happened in this really rough environment that we live in is we've stopped, you know, understanding how to reduce these urges towards food. And I think another thing I would love for people to hear is that just as human beings, every time we see food, smell food, or talk about food, we are driven to eat it. We have this sort of secondary hunger system that kicks in. And when we see it, even if we just ate a meal, our bodies are going to make us actually feel hunger symptoms. Mouth watering, stomach grumbling. You know, it's probably happened to every single person who's gone to a restaurant and overeaten a little bit and said, oh, can't eat another bite until they bring that dessert card around. And all of a sudden you're like, I got a second stomach. Where'd I get the second stomach? I love it. So we are prehistoric in that when we see food, smell food, or talk about food, we can eat more food. So understanding that and understanding the environment we live in. Right? So if you're gonna go now to any sort of clothing store, they didn't used to sell food in clothing stores, but they sell food in clothing stores now because they know that by making you walk through that maze as you wait to pay for your purchases and get more stressed out by your children asking you, can I have? Can I have. You're going to be driven to eat that food and they're going to make money off of you buying those foods at the checkout that they're not even making on the clothes. The margin's better on the food for them because that food can sit there till 20, 27 and the clothes are out of style in six months. So they, they know what they're doing. If you can start to navigate this very dangerous environment that we live in and say, like, okay, I understand that. I'm staring at a candy bar, so of course my mouth is going to water. That doesn't mean I eat it. Once you understand your physiology and your phys. Physical response to just the seeing of food, you can begin to navigate and control those urges a little bit more, I think. Urges as well. The one place and the chapter that seems to really just blow people away is that my. I'm a personal trainer. I've, you know, spent years exercising. I want you exercising because that's the one place where you finally practice. Day in and day out, you practice pushing through the urge to quit. Because there will be a moment in your exercise where you're like, there might be a moment before where you're putting on the shoes or like, I don't have time. You're going to have all this mental junk come up at some point, whether it's before, during or after. You're going to have to deal with some sort of urge to not do what you're doing.
- [27:20]
B
I love in the book how you talk about that exercise is really about exercising the mind even more than it is about exercising the body. I think that's so astute, and I think that people really miss that a lot. And going back to the notion of earning credibility with yourself, what does that process look like?
- [27:36]
C
Yeah, we are all day making promises to other people. Right. I have children and, you know, if I tell my child that we're going to, I'm going to show up for them. You have to believe I would literally walk across fire like I would walk across fire for that child. But. But what I realized was I wasn't ever doing the same loving thing back to myself. I had become completely disposable. I was, you know, making a promise and then breaking that promise to myself, which made me not trust or love myself. Because would you trust or love an external person who continually broke their promises to you? So establishing integrity with yourself becomes probably one of the greatest things you will ever do. You're going to gain life skills that, that make your work better and your family life better and your love life better. Because once you can look at yourself in the mirror and say, I do what I say I'm going to do for me in that vein, I think establishing integrity with self goes back to that baby steps principle. Right? I think really saying, okay, I want to establish I'm going to exercise more this year. I think that that's a giant statement that no one can even quantify. Right. What does that mean? I think you have to go to a very micro level with yourself and say, like, okay, I haven't exercised in two years. I don't even have a gym membership. I don't have shoes. I don't know where I would go. I think week one, you don't set foot in the gym. Week one, it's you. The only promise you make is that you're going to spend 30 minutes to an hour calling your friends to say, where do you go? What do you, like, put it out on Facebook, I don't know, put it on Instagram. I'm looking for ideas and whatever lands with you. Next week, you have to book a class and get your clothes for the following week. So it's just booking that class and getting the clothes. Week two, so you can, you can actually achieve this. Someone who just says, I'm going to work out and has to figure out where they're going, buy shoes do this, do. They're never going to do it. It's not realistic. It's never going to happen. So back it up, break it down into manageable chunks that you can keep the promise.
- [29:58]
B
So as people are going down this road, I know for a lot of people it can be very overwhelming, especially with diet. What should I eat? What shouldn't I eat? You have a pretty simple, straightforward way for people to begin to make good choices. Going back to that notion of it's better to be sort of directionally correct. You're still getting some, rather than, you know, just throwing it all to the wind, and I don't know what I'm doing. And so you just don't make any effort. How can people begin to plan out their meals?
- [30:23]
C
Yeah, What I discovered after working with so many thousands of people is we basically eat the same thing over and over and over again. And I have a worksheet in the nutrition chapter that literally is called the 5 5, 5 worksheet. And it's what I do with a client, a private client. I sit down on that first meeting, and we go through, like, five healthy breakfasts that they like. Not that I like, not that came from some other person, but that they would actually eat. You know, maybe they hate eggs, but I love eggs. So we're not gonna put eggs on your meal plan. So we go through and we designate five breakfasts, five lunches and five dinners and five snacks that we know are really good choices, but they also really like. So if you've designated these meals and you have things on hand that will, you know, get. Make making those meals easy, you always know you're kind of set. My program is meant to be the. A moderate, loving, gentle, expandable program, because I know about all of that junk that's going to happen in their head. I'm trying to get them to a place where it doesn't need to be so hard. Like, I don't want to count four numbers to divide by 10 to get another number. I think simplicity and understanding that we're very habitual creatures, understanding and leveraging the habit patterns that we were talking about. Leverage your hat. Don't. Don't hate your habits. Don't be mad at your habit. Create new ones and leverage it. So there's sort of a moat around your castle. Like, you just kind of wake up and you make one of these great five healthy breakfasts, and you don't even think about it anymore. I always call it the beginning of your healthy meal repertoire, because we're just going to add to it, right? So your friend calls and says, let's go out, out for Mexican. And you're like, oh, God, oh God, what am I going to do? How am I going to do this? And you kind of do a little bit of research and you realize, you know what, I'm going to get the fajitas. I'm just going to eat one tortilla and get the rest of it over salad. I'm going to try that, see if it works, right? Try on that hat, see if it works. It works great. Now I know every time I go to Mexican, I've got this sort of go to thick that's really yummy. And I like it and it works with my program. So it's like that understanding and doing things that are right for you in your life.
- [32:38]
B
Very important word that you used around that that I liked a lot was fluidity. And you talked about how part of what makes your program work so effectively is there's just a fluidity. And you were saying that I've never seen anyone ever stick to a diet where they had to give up their favorite food.
- [32:53]
C
Yeah.
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B
And I thought that was pretty interesting. How do you work with people to incorporate that when, you know, it's. You have a slight number system, but it's really pretty light.
- [33:01]
C
Very light. Very light. You know, coming out of the Weight Watchers world, right, which is a low fat, almost no fat diet. And I started to really disagree with it about five years ago. And I'm trying to help the Weight Watchers members who've been stuck in this mentality, sort of gently teach them about moving into high fat foods and not fearing them. Because, you know, I get to work with these people face to face. This is real. Like, people are stuck in the 80s, I'm not kidding. Like, they're stuck and they're like, where are my snack wells, man? Like, I'm like, you shouldn't be eating that. Like, how do I move you? So, yeah, this is a very gentle movement and fluidity. And in eating the things you love and learning to manage the things you love is the key. Like that is like, for me, I drink wine. Like, I drink wine. And yeah, I've definitely fallen on my face with that. Literally more than, you know, I've had my issues learning to manage it, but I came up with a personal system that really works, right? Like, I don't have it in the house. Before I can have a glass of wine, I have to have a glass of seltzer in between every glass of wine. I have to have a glass of seltzer that spreads out my drinks. Now, that's habitual. If pizza is your thing, if you make it taboo over here, it's now bad, right? What happens when something's bad and we feel guilty or shameful over eating it? We're gonna highlight that reward system. We're gonna go overboard with it. So I'm trying to get people to say, like, okay, I am gonna look at my week, and on Friday night, we are going out for pizza, and I'm going to have it, but I'm gonna have a salad first, right? I'm gonna do some behavior. I'm gonna shift some behavior around that food to see how that impacts me. I may still fail. Not fail. It's a terrible word. But I may still not do as well as I was hoping I would like my mimosa day. But I learned something, and I. I'm gonna keep chipping away at this thing that has become something bigger than food, right? That is now bigger, that pizza is now not just pizza. It's like, it means so much more. So you've got to kind of chip away at that and try different behavior around it.
- [35:15]
B
I love that you stopped yourself from saying the word fail.
- [35:19]
C
Yeah.
- [35:19]
B
I was like, oh, that's so strong, though, that words matter. They do talk a little bit about that. Like, how do you help people begin to change the language of how they refer to themselves or how they think about food and how important the actual words are?
- [35:34]
C
It's critical. I mean, I just think again, like, the way I would speak to my sister, for example, who I love dearly, if she came to me and said, like I did, I went out for pizza, and I wouldn't ever speak to her like, you're such a failure. Why'd you do that? You know, so it's a best friend, a sister, even a child. Like, how would you. I have this funny thing in the book of, like, you know, as your kids learn to walk, right, they, like, kind of pull themselves up on a coffee table and they take a tenuous step. That would be like me walking over and shoving that kid down and saying, well, you didn't walk across the room, so down with you, right? That's. That's the way we treat ourselves. And this is the other thing. Every action that we take has a positive intention, right? So even a drug addict taking heroin is just doing it because they want to feel better right, Than they do at that moment. Same thing with food. You know, you're beating yourself up all Day, you're getting a pretty powerful hit of serotonin every time you eat. So you're not. You're not dumb, you're pretty smart. You're making yourself feel better when you can look at yourself from that lens and say, like, oh, I'm so nice to me. I love me. Oh, I was all that time with those 65 pounds, I was trying to make myself better. I just was doing it in the wrong way. That kind of language towards yourself is a total change. You can actually progress from that spot of loving yourself enough to say, like, yeah, I don't like the result that I was getting going down this road. I think I want to try keto. Great, go ahead, try it. Let's work. Let's work through keto and see how that feels for you, see if that works for you. If it doesn't, let's see what pieces you picked up. Like, oh, I can add avocado to absolutely everything, and it's delicious.
- [37:27]
B
So you're very clear in the book that there's no one size fits all approach. But you have a couple sort of broad stroke things that you would say. I think most people, if not everybody, would benefit from. What are those sort of broad strokes?
- [37:40]
C
Strokes. So Target 100 is based around the number 100. It's sort of a metaphor for you being your 100% right. Like, not mine, yours. As I say, the book is filled with worksheets for you to kind of chisel down on a lot of what we've been talking about. But it's built on six pillars. So one would be nutrition. Number one would be that sort of looking at reducing carbohydrates. And again, it's a gentle movement away from processed foods into about 100 grams of carbs a day, which is by no means a low carb diet. It's, you know, Atkins is 50 keto's 2025. Like, you're not low carb, but it's giving you just enough of a push to say, let me look at this meal and see what I can do to judge it into higher protein, a little bit more healthy fat, and lots more vegetables. The. I think the pillar that blows people's minds the most is that hydration. I'm asking you to get a hundred ounces of water in in a day, which to me is nothing at this point. I'm like, oh, yeah, I blow through that, no problem. Most people, 75% of America is walking around critically dehydrated. Like, critically dehydrated. So none of their systems, we're 65% water with our brain and our heart being up to 78% water. Your brain and your heart are your two metabolic powerhouses. So if those are completely empty, low on gas, not functioning, you're not going to feel your best. You're going to mistake thirst for hunger. So hydration is huge. Movement. So I separate movement and exercise as two pillars. People are often like, I don't understand, right? I'm trying to get people to understand that we are hunter gatherers. We need regular just movement walking, doing, you know, the dishes, doing the laundry, gardening. Those kinds of things are essential for our bodies. So I'm trying to get people to add 100 minutes of movement to their week. So that could be, you know, five 20 minute walks with friends, walk breaks. I often counsel clients to get a headset and when they have calls, I have them trigger themselves to stand up until it becomes a habit where every time the phone rings, they stand up and they pace during their calls. Because we need to not be in this position for so many hours a day. When we have restricted blood flow to the legs, we have a lower heart rate, things that don't help us. So movement, exercise is just a hundred minutes of exercise. Again, I'm coming from a gentle move from maybe no exercise into 100 minutes in a week. Now that could be just three 30, 35 minute sessions during the week of, you know, getting that heart rate, pumping and starting to stress the muscle, you know, skeletal system, you know, gently starting that and then pressing further with that once that becomes your habit and stress. So a hundred minutes of stress relieving exercises. So that could be learning to meditate for 10, you know, 10, 15 min a day. That could be getting massage, that could be even yoga, some restorative yoga that relieves stress. It could be reading or knitting. People just don't understand the stress response in our body and we are in a horrible environment at this point, right? They estimate even just the lighting in most of the large big box stores is so stressful to our system that we are in a huge fight, like going to Costco fight or flight the entire time, like just that particular type of lighting. So in the fight or flight scenario, very simply, your body is grabbing a tiny bit of fat to power your run away from whatever danger is coming your way. Once your body grabs that tiny little bit of fat, your entire system says, oh boy, we're losing our body fat. We got to make her hungrier so she eats more so we can restore that body fat so that we're safe if the nuclear winter comes. Right. So your entire system, if we don't learn to, to kind of quell the stress response, we're going to keep being driven to overeat, driven to overeat, driven towards high fat, high salt, high sugar foods, because those are the ones that release the serotonin and get the stress down. So stress is a big piece. And sleep, which I think is again another place that most people, especially, you know, working one to one with people, we're like a mess. And that is when we detox, that is when our bodies kind of restore and get ready and renew. And if you miss sleep, you're going to be hungrier. You're going to have about a 30% gap between this ghrelin and leptin. Right. So ghrelin tells you to go eat, leptin tells you to stop eating. We got a big gap there. And ghrelin is winning when you haven't had enough sleep. So those are the pillars that I'm really trying to get people to think about. I was trying to expand the conversation, right? So all the other diet companies are really just talking food. That's all you hear. Here's your food system. Like, oh my God, like, that's like one little tiny piece.
- [43:02]
B
I find it really interesting that you're also super involved in like wearables and technology and stuff like that. What are things you think people should be tracking? What are wearables? Or I know you've got this really interesting scale that you got involved with, which is fascinating. Like what are some of the cutting edge technology things that people could do to further themselves in this journey?
- [43:22]
C
Yeah, I've become really passionate about technology because when you're trying to break habits, technology can be that great trigger, right? Your phone can trigger new habits. So at the very smallest level, you don't have to buy anything. Your phone is tracking your steps for you. As long as you have it on you. I think tracking your steps even for a short amount of time is so important. Right. So we go back to that movement pillar. The majority of people are walking between three and 5,000 steps in a day, which is unbelievably low. Unbelievably low, right? That's just like almost not moving at all. And I give like a whole outline of a woman in the, in the book of like her day. And she, she was like, no, I'm so busy. Like busy. I'm, oh my God, no, I'm on my feet all day. When we really tracked it, she she was on her feet for like 12 minutes because she's in the. Yeah, she's busy. She doesn't have five minutes to herself, but she's jumping from one thing to the train. She sits on the train, then she goes to the office, then she sits at the office and she comes home. She drives her kids for two and a half hours. So people are busy but they're not moving. So I think understanding that you're not moving even though you think you are,
- [44:30]
B
what's the number of steps you think people should aim for?
- [44:32]
C
For. We aim for 10,000 secretly. I'd love 12. I mean we are moo. We're meant to be moving. And there's so many, as I say, little ways that you can get this in. But again, creating habits around it. You know, I have so many people who just, you know, it's just their habit to jump in the car and drive to the train even though the train's only 0.5 of a mile. And so we, you know, kind of working on like that baby steps, right? We kind of start to leave the house 10 minutes early, you know, like getting you to think like, okay, this is a non negotiable, I'm going to do this or I'm going to get out one train stop early or whatever it is. So secretly about 12,000. I think tracking your sleep is fascinating. It's really important because I think again, people are like, no, I'm good. And then they realize like that these little things are getting in their way. They're getting on their phone right before they go to bed and they're getting wrapped up in social media and then they're getting stressed out because she's doing better than me at work and I'm falling apart and oh my God. And then they don't fall asleep or the quality of their sleep isn't good. So understanding that and changing, I would say like the two biggest places I work with people are their nighttime and their morning time habits, right? So we, we look at that and say we leave that phone downstairs at 10 and we go upstairs and there's just no more. Getting on to social media or something like that can be like this very impactful thing. Again, I didn't talk to you about food. We just moved your phone, you know, like, and that impacted the way you ate the next day. So tracking that, I think really interestingly, I think, you know, tracking your exercise and some of these new, these new programs that are emerging things like an orange theory where they're helping you to Understand and tracking, you know, how many times you're showing up there, you know, what is your heart rate and what is your max heart rate. And they're helping you in a really user friendly way to understand things like peloton. I mean changing the world to be able to gamify and make a community in your own home. I mean this is what I saw worked at Weight Watchers. This is community support and accountability. I think food tracking is completely unnecessary and is not realistic. I came from 12 years at weight Watchers where their number one thing is you have to track your food. There wasn't one person, barely one person did that because it's simply just not realistic. It's very difficult. It's very like how many beans were in that salad? I'm not sure. So there's a lot of guesstimating and I think guesstimating throws people off and makes them feel like they're not doing a good job so they quit it anyway. But just knowing what you're eating and looking at portions and changing your plate size for me, way more impactful than ever counting your calories in some way, shape or form. So I would say don't, don't worry about that. I encourage people to weigh themselves on a scale that's tracking more than just your weight weight. So body fat, lean mass, inflammation, any, you know, scale that will give you some more metrics so that as you're losing weight because there will become moments where the scale goes nowhere but you're dropping body fat right as we add exercise and things like that. I used to see this at Weight Watchers all the time. Someone would come in and they'd say, so excited I added exercise this week I'm going to really lose weight. And they would not lose weight because they're inflamed, of course, and, and that would throw them so badly that they would then quit because they're like, wow. So I did everything right plus added exercise. I guess this doesn't work. I need people to understand their physiological body a little bit better and that, you know, when you add exercise you're in, in an injury state and your body will rush fluid around those injuries and you will appear to have gained weight on a traditional scale. But you will see, begin to see, okay, oh, the inflammation of the water content in my body is high right now, but my lean mass is getting higher. So I'm doing something right. So you start to see new ways of just a scale is, is a really poor tool. I have people weigh in, I'LL do like a 30 day weigh in challenge. And we track that weight because I want them to see that, you know, you can do everything right in a week, but during the course of the week, you're going to be all over the place. We hope that by the end of the week we're somewhere in a downward trajectory, seeing a new low at some point during the week. It could be on Tuesday, it could be on Thursday. Don't know, Right? So you need to be understanding that day in and day out, fluctuations can't be your reason that this isn't working. Because this is a very complex machine. So really getting to know it. So I press people to, to get to know it really, really well. How does your body lose weight? Pretty much everyone I've ever worked with, they have their own pattern, right? I have one woman, she is awesome and she's just killing it. She's doing all these great behaviors and she's really doing. And she just holds tight and then all of a sudden, like two weeks later, she'll drop like £4 out of nowhere. But that's her pattern. That's the way her body lets go of weight. So everyone really has different patterns and, and styles in which their body becomes feeling safe enough to let go of some weight. You mentioned the scale. It's called the shape a scale. And I've been consulting for them because they have a scale that's, that doesn't have any numbers. You never see a number because those numbers, as I said before, can throw people. So now when you step on the scale, you simply are given a color in a gradation to let you know if you're moving in the right direction or if you're not moving in the right direction. And you're given a chronological age to let you know like what your health. And it's reading seven different indicators when you step on. So you can get over your fear of the scale and get into the habit of stepping on something every morning. Because what we now know is just the act of stepping on a square on the floor, it actually informs your behavior for the rest of the day. How crazy is that? It's because you said to yourself, I care enough to just, to just do this for me. And I think that that says, well, why don't I have a good breakfast? I got on the scale, why don't I have a good breakfast? So if those numbers make you crazy, this scale I think is a really lovely and gentle way to get into the habit of stepping on something. And then you have the opportunity to kind of flip over and see those numbers. If you become ready, you'll see your entire history and you'll be able to kind of like, loving, gentle again, loving and gentle move into this place that has a much better dialogue. Technology is going to be that thing that turns the tide on this, the between, you know, take a peloton type technology where you're creating community and you can do this right from your home. You can meet people across the world, you can see your stats. You can have all of this recorded. Between that and, you know, now, then you, if you want to, you can have your groceries delivered online so you don't have to go to the grocery store and get tempted by all the things in the aisles and you just have it, it, you know, all delivered to you. Technology is going to be a great, a great game changer as we continue to go forward and begin to kind of collate it into one place. Right now, it's very disparate, I think, but there's going to become this moment where it all comes together and that's where I want to be. So.
- [52:04]
B
I totally agree.
- [52:05]
C
Yeah.
- [52:06]
B
All right, before I ask my last question, tell these guys where they can find you online.
- [52:10]
C
Yes. So you can find me at Liz Josephsberg on all social platforms. And we have a great website for Target 100 as well, where, you know, my goal with Target 100 was not to keep this a secret. That's why the entire formula is on the COVID of this book. My goal in life is to help people. So I have a website designated where all of the rules to the program are there with videos from me and some of the worksheets are there where you can just kind of like go and check this out and see what it's all about. So target100program.com Liz Josephsberg on all of the social channels as well.
- [52:46]
B
Love it. All right, my last question. What's one change that people could make that would have the biggest impact on their health?
- [52:55]
C
Hydration. Yeah. If you just said, I'm going to start drinking more water today, the impact on your health would be incredible. As I say, that's the one that blows people's minds. You will feel better, you will have more energy. Your skin, hair, nails, everything will be better. So I would say trigger the behavior, though, right? It's not going to happen. From you listening to this podcast, it's not going to happen. You're going to have to intentionally set those triggers up and have that become a new habit for you.
- [53:28]
B
I love that. All Right, guys? I think that last answer really sums up what I think is so magical about her. Everything. She's coming from a very simplistic, very doable, day in and day out approach that's gonna have that impact on your health that you're looking for. I was refreshed in a thousand different ways with how accessible her information is, how relatable her story is, and how much she's really looking at what works. So whether it's approaching things mentally instead of just talking about food over and over and you get that sense of history that she's been through it, that she's gone on her own weight loss journey that started when she was a kid and really we didn't even talk about this. But starting as a receptionist at Weight Watchers and working her way all the way up to being an executive in the company, being a spokesperson, it's really pretty extraordinary. She worked in every element of that and stepped out on her own based on the things that she learned to really create something that has that breadth. And just reading the people on the back of the book that are vouching for it are some pretty extraordinary people saying some amazing things about her and the program. So if you have any interest in a new way of approaching weight loss, it has as much to do with the mind as it does to do with the body. I highly recommend this. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care.
- [54:46]
E
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C
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E
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C
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E
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C
And that it's one of those good
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A
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E
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