Shawn Phillips | Start Strong Monday

The Transformation of Al Roker

Next to water, food and companionship, the need and desire for weight loss may well be the next most common attribute of the homo sapiens species.

For some it’s a mere 5-10 pounds, for others 100 plus. For some it’s about vanity, others performance—to drop 10 to climb the hills stronger on my bike—and for others it’s nothing less than a matter of life.

While the challenge each of us confronts is as individual as you and I, and certainly amplified by the absolute pounds desired to lose, there are certain undeniable truths to weight loss that re-unite us.

These truths will not be overruled by a miracle pill, an extreme diet or even elective surgery. You can do any and or all of the above and more, but fail to “get” these, attempt to bend the rules, or skip over even one and you’ll continue to struggle with food, life, energy and your weight.

Big Al Less 136
On the list of things few people know about me is that I enjoy a little NBC’s Today Show in the A.M., one of my few T.V. indulgences.

You may know of Today Show’s colorful weatherman Al Roker. Al’s always been a big man—now he’s just a big man on air. Some years back, tipping the scales at 340 lbs, Al made a promise to his dying father that he’d make a change which led him to go under the knife for gastric bypass surgery.

Last week the Today Show chronicled Al’s journey; a lifelong struggle with weight, multiple failed attempts at dieting, his gastric bypass surgery (which he subsequently almost “ate through”) and how he’s found his place and space in this world as a smaller man.

It’s been 8 years since Al underwent the difficult surgery that—which he emphasizes was not the end, but simply “a means” to helping him gain some control over his weight. Since then he’s down a total of 136 lbs!

That’s impressive success. Congratulations to Al!

But what I found even more impressive was the timeless wisdom Al displayed in this interview.

Fact is I usually “pass” on celebrity weight loss stories but in his interview Al displayed an all too rare wisdom—the sort of insight that comes only through experience. One after another he shared the true keys, not just to weight loss, but to living lighter.

The “Universal Keys to Weight Loss” Al shared:

1. Kick Start Your Weight Loss with a Reboot

Al engages in a 2-week “cleanse and detox” phase, as he calls it. His description reveals it’s clearly a version of Base Camp “the 12-day Reboot” from Strength for LIFE. This reboot for your mind and body can transform an unresponsive, over-stressed, compromised body into a vibrant, fully loaded strong responder—eager to drop excess weight that it’s been holding to for years.

The Reboot phase eliminates wheat, dairy, sugar, alcohol and anything that can spike blood sugar and stress. While cutting excess you’re free to eat as much of the approved foods lean, clean and green food as you please.

2. You Can’t Out Exercise Lousy Eating Habits

Calories count. Al doesn’t lie to himself about exercise. He knows weight loss requires eating fewer calories than you burn and that’s where the exercise comes in. Exercise helps your burn more calories and allows you to eat more healthy food. It’s also essential for a stronger body that burns more all the time.

3. Change Your Relationship With Food and the Foods You Eat Change

Al says, “It’s about my relationship with food.” This is wisdom speaking for it takes time, experience and perspective to get that mastering weight loss is not about restriction or living in resistance to food and eating – aka dieting.

Re-framing your relationship with food is like programming yourself for success. In Strength for Life you’ll find a crystal clear explanation of what this means as well as a sure fire practice that will help set your free—to achieve what I call Nutritional Freedom: The freedom and desire to eat the foods that are the best for you, the most.

4. Don’t Just Get Smaller, Get Stronger

Like nearly all lasting success stories of Transformation, Al includes regular strength training in his workout regimen—even while he’s also training for a marathon. The importance of lean muscle mass in supporting weight loss through several mechanisms including burning more calories and muscles ability to support blood sugar levels is well documented, and perhaps nowhere more thoroughly than Chapter 4 of Strength for LIFE.

5. Indulge Only in the Exceptional

Al says, “I don’t put it in my mouth if it’s not spectacular!” I love this one for I know it so well in my own life. When you’re beyond eating things just to eat, when you get that every thing you eat has a price—and that price is calories and you have the freedom to choose, you just stop putting crap in your mouth that doesn’t belong.

I believe this is a natural progression that comes when you stop allowing anything mediocre to enter your body, mind or life—be it food, people, thoughts or whatever. If it’s not spectacular, if it’s not the best thing you’ve ever put in your mouth, don’t. It’s really that simple.

6. Change Your Relationship With Your Body And Your Body Changes

Al references the oft-used quote, “Nothing tastes as good as looking great feels.”

Until you’ve made enough progress to really get a true sense of feeling good, its all seems like willpower, dieting and deprivation. But once feeling better, beyond the looking better, a whole new level of enthusiasm is released.

You’ll start to connect with how foods elevate your energy or leave you feeling bad. In Strength for LIFE I explain these two states in “eating to live” vs. “living to eat.”

Feeling the quality of your energy is not accidental even in a vibrant body. We’re not trained to pay attention to the subtle energy, to how we’re feeling. We are conditioned to tune in to our bodies only when they hurt, when something’s wrong. Hence, the reactive nature we have with wellness.

Thus, tuning in to your energy, gaining the capacity to sense what’s serving you and what’s draining you requires your involvement. You must intentionally draw your mind, your attention in. It’s about mindfulness, awareness and focus. In Strength for LIFE I teach how to make your training, eating and your entire life a mindfulness practice—and how to anchor your positive energy and strength.

7. It’s Not a Diet, It’s a Lifestyle

Sustained and continued weight loss is not the result of a single event, or even repeated heroic efforts. It’s about integrating it in your life—making it a lifestyle. Al brings it home—and that’s sound wisdom. You can’t transcend those who you are around each day. The lone soldier doesn’t have the odds in his favor.

Beyond your immediate family there’s great strength to be had in tapping into the support of a charged, focused community like my bother’s living community, Transformation.com. Bill’s done a brilliant job of engaging the collective energy, focus and passion of an empowered group on results. I believe T.com, as it’s known, is the next BIG, BIG thing…

Remember no man is an island. Don’t be a Superman, just look like one.

8. Change the Game with Leverage

Leverage: “a mechanical advantage, to gain power over.”

When it comes time to take action, to drop some weight, our first move is nearly always to look for an edge, a boost or even better an “unfair advantage.” This is a wise first move, even though it opens one to the “miracle cure” scams.

You absolutely positively need and will be served by getting leverage.

Generating momentum from a standing start requires a lot of torque. Anything you can do that will give you a real, authentic advantage could be worth it’s weight in gold—if you it helps you to make progress with less brut force.

For Al, this is what gastric bypass surgery was; leverage. It gave him the strength, resources and reason to believe and fully embrace the journey. And even with this leverage, Al still got to learn the fundamentals, to change his lifestyle and develop his awareness. The bypass only enabled him to and through the these essentials steps.

That’s the other thing about leverage, it’s more than just a mechanical advantage it’s a mental one. For at the core we’re truly seeking a reason to believe as much as a kick in the ass.

Where You’ll Find Leverage
Leverage can be had in a well crafted program or plan. It needn’t be the “only way” just one you can lock into for a given duration. It need only be a place to focus your energies. It’s also tapped in strong, energizing vision and well crafted, compelling goals.

You can find a living leverage in an empowering community that’s at least as interested in your success as you are. Same goes for a great trainer, trainer partner or group. It’s having self motivated, driven people to ride with that I get myself on the bike.

In my opinion the most powerful, life changing leverage points you will ever find are in the seemingly small actions repeated daily. For just as a drop of water will cut through the hardest rock, quantum change is the result of these small daily actions.

Perhaps none more powerful than the powerful leverage of beginning your day with the supreme, complete nourishment of a Full Strength Shake. It’s clinically proven ability to affect significant change in your body and life is unparalleled in the world of supplements or nutrition.

Quicker, more satisfying and energizing than any known breakfasts, Full Strength’s proprietary Performance Balance Technology fuels body and mind, then keeps you soaring with energy for hours as it nourishes the strength of every cell in your body.

I share from experience for each day for me begin with a delicious Full Strength. It’s elevating, energizing and freeing experience is vital to my daily performance and energy. It’s ability to stabilize my energy and appetite all day long, while carrying more further and fewer calories than any food ever, is as good as leverage gets. It’s a true game changer.

I share this with reservation given that we both know that the Full Strength Shake is my creation and my product. I accept there is risk in you misinterpreting my enthusiasm, confusing the passion for a profit motive. But it’s a risk I must take for I created Full Strength with the express intent of changing lives—I built it to be the best—and thus have no reason to hide my passion and enthusiasm. In fact to do so would be a disservice to you and the world.

Clearly there are other ways to get your daily nutrition, to fuel your success that will suffice—and more. Still I invite you to take my endorsement of Full Strength for granted and discover the power of leverage yourself.

Looking for leverage that’s proven to work? I invite you to take The 14-Day Full Strength Challenge—if you don’t feel the renewed strength, energy and vitality, if you’re not completely elated by the way you’re feeling in just two short weeks, I will refund 100% of your purchase instantly. Zero risk. It’s that simple.

I do this because I know from experience that you have to experience the Full Strength to truly get how radically superior, how different and more complete it truly is.

Change Your Beliefs and Everything Changes
As much as we may secretly want to believe there’s a “Fairy-God pill” for weight-loss or a secret formula that’s as simple as 1-2-3 you know it’s just not so. On the comforting side, these sound universal truths are pillars you can rely on. And while they may not look like the magic you hoped for, apply these regularly and your results will.

Ultimately, what I see in Al is that he gets it. He’s come to understand there is no absolute right answer, there is no “the way” there’s only “a way.” And we must find our own. The ultimate effectiveness of any plan or diet is not that it works long enough to change your body, but that through it we are changed.

When you follow the right steps with awareness intention and intensity the reality of weight loss is done right, it changes you—not just into a thinner person but a more aware, stronger and freer version of you.

What else did you see Al share in this video that I haven’t shared? Please share with us below. Trust me, there is more here that I was forced to leave out.

To Your Life @ Full Strength,

Shawn
Follow Me: /Twitter/shawn_phillips

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About Gastric Bypass Surgery

I appreciate the articulate manner in which Al shares in the video about gastric bypass, making it very clear that it’s not a magic bullet and it’s not for everyone. It’s also a risky surgery, given 1 in 200 people don’t make it out alive. I agree with Al that gastric bypass is a last resort even for the small percentage who ultimately choose to go there.

Meet The Author, Shawn

Known as "The Fitness Philosopher," for his deep, clear approach to the cutting through the fitness conundrum, Shawn is a 20+ year veteran in the field of Lifestyle Fitness and Peak Performance. Author of several best-selling book, with one of the most photographed physiques in history, Shawn, with his brother, Bill Phillips (Body for LIFE) catapulted EAS sports nutrition into the world leader and Muscle Media magazine and the documentary movie, Body of Work. He created the first computerized training system in PowerBuilding and the popular Variable Split System for Muscle Mass. Now, in his 40's, a husband and father of two young children, Shawn is passionate about helping busy, high-achieving "men in the middle" enjoy vibrant, energized, amazing, Full Strength lives! He has recently created the World’s 1st and only true premium nutrition shake for men, Full Strength — clinically proven to build muscle, burn fat and boost energy. His most recent book, Strength for LIFE is the "how to" guide to a Lifestyle of Fitness Freedom.