How An Overweight 46 Year Old Grandfather Of 4… Lost Over 50 Pounds, Did His First Chin-Up and Was Able To Run 5 Miles For The First Time In 30 Years…and so can you.

Here’s the interview Jim and I did about how he, well, you read the headline. I’m Ray, and here’s the interview.

Ray: Hello. I’m Ray Burton and today I’m here with Jim Edwards. Jim Edwards has done something that a lot of people set out to do and actually seldom achieve. He has lost 50 pounds and, like the title says, without going on a diet, taking a diet supplement, or going to the gym.

I thought it would be fantastic if we could maybe pick his brain a little bit and figure out why he succeeded at losing weight, where others have failed.

So, hi, Jim. How’re you doing?

Jim:     Hey, Ray. I’m doing great. How are you?

Ray: Awesome.Very happy to be here with you today talking about this sort of stuff. I think it’s going to be super helpful.

Jim: Cool. Why don’t you tell everybody a little bit about you first and why you’re here talking to me because they’re going to hear a lot about me, but they’re probably wondering who is Ray Burton and why is he interviewing this formerly fat man.

Ray: Well, I’m Ray Burton and I own the website RaymondBurton.com

I’m a fitness trainer and live in Calgary, Alberta. I was always into fitness and ended up going into the Army and did quite well with it there. After I got out of the Army, I thought, you know what, I really like this fitness thing. Let’s see if I can show other people how to do it, and that’s where I’m at today.

Jim: Cool. Excellent. He’s being modest. But go ahead.

Ray: It’s all up on the internet for people to find if they want. But anyway, if you want to get fit, I can help you with that.

Jim: Cool.

Ray: Let’s just jump right into it because there are a couple of different areas I want to cover and I think the important areas are mindset; then nutrition and then activity levels and some actual systems to really make sure that you have a guideline to take you through the whole process knowing that it’s going to work kind of like on auto pilot.

The first thing we want to cover is how did you get your mind straight? I know that you’ve tried to lose weight before and you had a trainer and were hitting the gym off and on and you were getting pretty good results, too.

Then everything kind of went off the rails. Can you talk about that a little bit?

Jim: I had some health issues as a lot of people do when you hit your 40’s. By the way at the time of this interview, I’m 45 years old. It’s interesting because I just kind of went to pot, literally, as far as I had some real bad sinus issues, I found out later I’d had, basically, a chronic sinus infection for three years, didn’t know it, felt like crap all the time, no energy, just felt terrible, had a heart condition where I’d been taking medicine for 14 years for atrial fibrillation.

Everything just kind of sucked. It was harder and harder and harder to get out and move around and do anything. One day I guess I kind of gave up. I gave up from the standpoint of I just feel like crap, I’ve got lots of work to do, I’ve got all these responsibilities, I’ve got all these things I’ve got to do. I need to concentrate on that.

That’s really when the downward spiral happened.

Then I would have these fits, kind of like with people with quitting smoking. It’s like something happens and you get motivated, “Okay, I’m going to quit smoking.”

You try it for a few days and then something else happens and you say, “Well, I need a cigarette.”

What would happen is I tried to get exercise going and then something would happen and it would stop. Then finally I was just like, “To hell with it, I’m not doing it.”

Anybody who’s tried to quit smoking, you know that every time you quit and then don’t succeed, it’s harder to try again next time.

I made another effort and I actually hired a trainer and was working with the trainer and started to get decent results and the big motivation, I was telling everybody, the reason I’m going to the gym or what really gets me to go to the gym is I know that this guy’s going to charge me if I don’t show up and so that was my short-term motivation.

One day I went to the gym and after I—I was actually almost over the top—and the guy had quit.

I was like, crap, what do I do now. I tried to get another trainer, and it just … I ended up quitting. I was like well, I know enough now, I’ll just train myself.

Then I would drag myself up to the gym and I’d try to remember what he’d taught me to do and there was all this complicated stuff we were doing and one day I was like, “You know, I feel like crap. I’m not going.”

Then not going this week turned into not going for a month, turned into not going for six months and before you know it my weight had ballooned up to between 252 and 256, depending on who’s scale you wanted to believe or not.

A year ago this week, I was in Florida getting ready to go on a cruise and I got real sick, sinus problems and stuff and was basically sick the whole week, like deathly ill sick, and I said,

“You know, I’ve got to make a change and I’ve got to make a permanent change. I’ve got to do something completely different than what I’ve tried in the past because what I’ve been trying is not working. But if I don’t make a change I’m going to die. I’m going to die early and I’m going to die in pain and I’m just not going to have a very good quality of life, and I’m (at the time) 44 years old. I mean, come on. You’ve got to do something different.”

That’s kind of where I was and I know we’re going to talk about how I got to where I am right now.

I had fallen off the train, run off the tracks, got run over by the train, then the conductor had jumped out of the train and kicked me and started insulting me. It was not good.

Ray: What you’re saying is it wasn’t just a quick fix?

Jim: No. And part of the problem is I was looking for someone else to fix it for me. You’ve been training me, but it was a different mindset on my part and actually using personal training.

You never even trained me in person. We trained over the phone and over the Internet.

That’s kind of where I was. It kind of sucked.

Ray: Wow. Okay.That’s pretty impactful. From there … I got such visual kind of movie following everything you just said there and it kind of makes me understand just how important, for lack of a better description, getting that fixed was. Especially when you’ve got family and all.

Jim: I decided that this was the year it was going to be fixed. I knew it wasn’t going to happen overnight so literally, I decided, that was one of the mental milestones that I had was this year is fix Jim physically year, whatever it takes.

Ray: I think that’s really important.

When you started gaining all that weight, was there something that triggered that? Like why did you get so far off track because I know from talking to you, you’ve had a history with the military where you were pretty on point there for a while and then kind of lost it.

Jim: I think what happened was and I’m not going to get too much into the psychoanalysis but I was when I was really young. I was very sickly, had really bad sinus problems and a bunch of operations and stuff.

Once I got past that, decided that I wanted to go into the Marine Corps, was able after building up and building up and building up, was able to max the Marine Corps physical fitness test, which is rough.

…Then for whatever reason, that didn’t work out. I didn’t go in, budget cuts, all that stuff.

Then life just kind of got in the way. I didn’t make keeping in good physical shape a part of my life. Again, it was because it was external. It’s easy to get in shape when there’s someone yelling at you to do that next pushup, there’s somebody counting off, one, TWO. Oh, my God, my triceps are going to fall off.

That’s easy when you just have to show up and someone else is responsible for making you do what you should do. Once that’s removed, that’s why you see all guys get out of the military and go to crap.

I think that what happened was, I had to make money and there was a time in my life where I wasn’t really good at making money. I remember one time I had $20 to buy food for the whole month of February.

In a way, food started to represent comfort. Food started to represent financial success. Food also represented security.

I think there were some things where I linked up that food and security and other stuff, plus it’s fun to sit your ass on the couch and eat stuff you shouldn’t and I think that that’s … there were a lot of things going on where it was just easier to sit there and eat a couple, three or four sandwiches and a bag of chips while watching a movie and to let that make me feel good physically. And not really think about the destructive stuff that was going on.

I think just a lot of things happened, but the No. 1 thing is that I did not take control of being the motivation for myself to actually exercise. It was always external. I think also putting emphasis on food for comfort and food for feeling good and feeling secure and warm and that was a mistake.

But it was real easy to do.

I think that’s what happened.

Ray: Okay. So that’s where you were, but I think what everybody wants to hear is why was this time different. You actually … you DID this, so now you’ve set a goal there, and you accomplished it. And I know you’re the author of “How To Overcome Procrastination: The 5-Minute Road Block Buster Solution” and procrastination is a huge obstacle to exercise, right?

What made this time different? Did you use any of the tips or methods from your book to make this work?

Jim: Sure. I just to want to say there were a few things that changed. We could spend hours on this, but I’m just going to tell you what changed.

No. 1 is I stopped thinking about “I’m really in crap shape” and I started focusing on the actions I could take to change that.

No. 2, I took my mind off the timing of it. In other words, people who are overweight think about, “I’m 256 pounds. I want to be 190.”

Well, I can’t be 190 next week, so that sucks. You can’t think that way. What you have to do – or what I did, was I said “Okay, I can’t control my weight as it is right now, but I can control my actions and I can control the actions I take. Everything from the actions I take to actually exercising, to putting food in my mouth and everything in between.

So, I decided that I didn’t how I was going to lose all that weight, but I did know that I could go for a walk every single day no matter what.

I didn’t say, okay, I’m going to go join a gym because one of the things that pissed me off about the personal trainer was the gym was about 20 minutes away, which isn’t that far, but it’s 20 minutes both ways so that’s 40 minutes; 10 minutes you get there and you’re jerking around finding a locker, putting your crap down, getting warmed, talking bullshit to people.

Then you’re waiting for the trainer to get their act together and all of a sudden, before you actually even start exercising there’s an hour to an hour and 15 minutes is getting wasted, just getting to the exercise.

But if I looked at the gym, at the world, as if it were my gym, then as soon as I walked out my front door and started going for a walk, I could take that time I was driving to the gym, and use that as my exercise.

Ray: That kind of segues into … you were talking about that you kind of had three stages of exercise, and you just talked about that you could get outside and you could walk every day. There was no scientific mumbo jumbo. It was just getting out there and walking every day.

You mentioned three stages. Can you mention exactly what those were for you?

Jim: Right. The first stage was just I’m going to walk every day. I made the commitment that I was going to walk every day for the next year. I did not keep that commitment, but that’s not a bad thing. But I resolved that I was going to walk every single day.

Because I knew I could walk.

I just resolved. I’m going to walk every single day for next year. That was the first phase.

I went out and started walking and I walked at the same time every morning. I got up an hour early and I went for a walk.

I wasn’t walking that far. I really wasn’t. But I said, okay, I’m going to walk here, I’m going to walk back.

Then I just did that. I developed a habit of walking every single day. Not every other day because if you do it every other day, then you’ll skip a day and then all of sudden, whoops I wasn’t going to do it today, so if you skip a day and it’s every other day, then you won’t exercise but every five days.

Don’t be a wimp.

Here’s the thing. You’ve got to do it every single day. Consult your doctor, your results may vary. This is not medical advice, all that big disclaimer.

But what happened was I lost 10 pounds in about a month and a half just walking every single day. I wasn’t walking fast. I wasn’t doing speed walking or anything like that.

But what happened was I started feeling better. I could cover the distance that used to take me 45 minutes in 30 minutes. I was feeling better but then my results of losing weight slowed down because I wasn’t carrying as much …

Ray: I just have to say to one thing because I think it’s so profound, it’s that you said, you didn’t walk very far. I think that’s important. The fact is you fulfilled the action. You just got out. It didn’t matter how far, how long, but you did something.

Jim: Correct. I focused on the action I could take, not on how far, not on how fast. In the beginning. I was getting in the habit of doing it every single day.

But then my results slowed down. So then I said, okay, let me think about this. I’m walking, and I’m walking actually further and faster than I was before, but I’m not losing weight at the rate that I was. Because I was losing weight, about 2 pounds a week. I could see those results.

Then what happened was I said, okay, I’ve got to do something different.

If I’m losing this weight because I was carrying this weight because obviously, you’re working harder carrying that fat ass around. If I offend you by saying fat ass, I’m talking about my fat ass. Talk about yourself however you want.

But what I did was I said, okay, if I was carrying that weight before, let me keep carrying it.

So I got myself a backpack and every pound I lost, I started putting that pound in the backpack and kept carrying that.

And my weight loss picked up again.

In about another month and a half, I’d lost another 10 pounds.

That’s kind of where it was. I was walking every day and I was walking with my backpack and then my weight loss … the rate started to slow down. But I was feeling better. I even went and bought some new clothes and my waist size went down from a 42 to a 38 and I was thinking, hey, I’m pretty studly here.

Ray: You were correct.

Jim: Relatively speaking. And then everything plateaued and in that time, though, I also had my sinuses rebuilt. I had to have my sinuses ripped out and deviated septum, turbinates, all kinds of stuff. Within two days of when I had my operation, I was back out walking again. When I told the doctor, he said, “Hey, I commend you.”

All this time I’m doing this, taking medicines. I’m taking my heart medication, too, but it was like, I have to do this. I had this overwhelming sense of purpose.

Around about April/May, you and I started talking and I said I’ve hit a plateau and I really need to start doing some other stuff and you started teaching me about doing body weight exercises through video and our phone calls.

Which I had known about because obviously in the military and stuff you don’t do anything with weights.

That was the other thing with working with a personal trainer and the weights and all that stuff, I was having these little nagging injuries that kept coming up. It wasn’t just I’m working out, no pain, no gain, bullshit, it was I’m getting hurt doing this.

But I remember when I was really training hardcore doing pushups and situps and Burpees and mountain climbers and pull-ups and all this other stuff, I never had those kind of injuries. The only injuries I ever had was to my knees from running. From not wearing the right shoes and not knowing how to stretch and stuff.

But you helped me to develop a real simple little routine—well simple but evil at the same time—but using my own body weight again. But knowing that the weight of my body, which was my “problem” also again turned into my gym. It’s like I can use that weight to lose the weight and if you adopt that mindset, it’s like, whoa, okay, I can play a game here and let the weight be the reason that I’m losing the weight and building the muscle.

What happens is, it’s like a geometric progression where you’re actually having changes happen but you can’t really see them. And I had a couple of periods, a couple of plateaus where the muscle was forming and fat was disappearing, but it was like two ships passing in the night so there was no change on the scale.

Ray: That is great. I love that visual. Yeah.

Jim: No change on the scale, but I could see a change. But most people, and myself included in the past, would have given up because it was like this crap doesn’t work.

But I had made that commitment that no matter what, I was going to exercise every single day. That’s where building that habit of just doing that walking every day had built it up to where mentally I’d really formed that habit. If I didn’t do it or if I was tempted not to do it, it was like let’s just go do it and get it over with and then I can feel good the rest of the day.

Ray: There you go.

Jim: So the bottom line is that was the second phase and then the third phase was where we got into more advanced stuff once I was able to handle that, and then I hit another plateau. Then we got into some more advanced things and even to the point where I started doing something, I guess about a month ago, that I told you a year ago I would never be able to do.

And that was to start jogging.

I had some really, really bad knee problems as a kid. In my teens and early 20’s and stuff when I was doing all that running.

But nobody ever showed me how to stretch and … yeah, we would do basic stretching for about 2 minutes and then they’d start yelling at you to get your ass out the door.

The other day, about a month ago, I was out walking and I said, “Man, it’s cold, let me just jog a little bit and try and warm up.”

So I just started jogging, just real easy, and I’m like, “Hey, this doesn’t feel bad, let me see if I can make it down to the street sign. Well, hell, let me see if I can make it to the corner. Well, hell, let me see if I can make it down to the 1-mile mark.”

Anyway, I jogged 5 miles and I’m like, holy crap, I just jogged 5 miles. My time wasn’t like awesome or anything like that. It was like 55 minutes, 55:39…

Ray: That’s the new Jim talking there. The new Jim’s like, oh, I didn’t time it. The old Jim would be like, I just jogged.

Jim: Right. But now, I jogged it yesterday, and my time for… I don’t want to get into the whole routine and stuff, but the bottom line is nine weeks ago my time for covering that 5 miles was 62 minutes and 45 seconds. I was just walking it because I don’t do it with my rucksack on Thursdays.

Yesterday, it was 49 minutes and 52 seconds.

That’s a big difference. But it’s just the every day thing.

Now, I don’t run every day. I’ve actually started running three days a week, but not five miles.

But the point is, that building up, it’s a daily thing. It becomes part of who you are and once it becomes part of who you are—see, nobody can take it away from me now. Because I’m not dependent on a trainer, I’m not dependent on anyone else. I’m not dependent on equipment, I’m not dependent on a gym, I’m not dependent on being somewhere at a specific time other than where I am at 5:00 in the morning and I just … that’s my time that I know I can do it.

Other people have got to do it after they put the kids on the bus. Other people have got to do when the spouse gets home and they can watch the little ones for 30 minutes.

But what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to find your time that you can do what you can do with what you have where you are right now.

For me, it started out just walking. Just walking. Then once that commitment was made, and trying to keep free of anything that could sabotage me, whether it’s people, places or things, and also the weather. Don’t be a wuss. I was in 33-degree weather this morning, wiping the frost off my chin-up bar that I built in my yard and…

Ray: That’s not 33 Canadian either folks.

Jim: It was one degree above freezing.

And again, I’m out there in shorts but I know that I’m going to warm up real quick.

The point is … the big take away … is that you’re not going to do it all at once.  Realize … and I’m going to do this for a year … every single day.

When I got into the more advanced stuff … I can tell you … I’ll just tell you my exercise routine real quick. Again, if I had said a year ago that I would be doing this, I would have told you I was crazy to tell you this. There’s no way in hell I’d be able to do what I can do now.

Maybe it’s not even worth telling people what I can do now because it might freak you out.

Ray: No. I want you to mention two things and I think we’ll be super cool because, one, I want you to brag and then second I want to cover the time issue because you said that sometimes you’ve got to get it done after you put the kids on the bus or once everybody goes to bed or super early in the morning because you don’t have the time.

Well, I know one of the routines you’re doing from my “How To Burn Fat And Build Muscle Using Only Your Bodyweight…Without Leaving Your House” program, how quick does it take you to bust that out?

Jim: This morning when I did it, it took me 17 minutes and 40 seconds. Eight weeks ago, the first time I did it all the way, it took be 28 minutes and 11 seconds. So, in two months, I’ve knocked it down by a third, over a third, I don’t know, I can’t do the math.

Ray: You cut it back by awesomeness.

Jim: But the point is that by committing to do it … if all I did was that I could maintain this level of fitness for the rest of my life. Really. In less than 20 minutes. and it’s like one of those bullshit TV ads, but they don’t tell you what it takes to get to that point.

But what I’m telling you if you would just walk 30 minutes a day … that was the other thing. I made the commitment; I’m going to walk 30 minutes a day. As far as I can go.

I went as far as I could go for 15 minutes and then I came back.

Once I’d just developed the habit, then stuff went from there.

I’m sorry if we kind of went down the rabbit hole. You asked me about overcoming procrastination and stuff. Two of the biggest things I would tell you to overcome the procrastination of doing it or not – well I’ll tell you a few things.

One, commit to doing it every single day.

Two, commit to dong it at a specific time every single day. That time may not be the same every day depending on your schedule and yes, I understand about kids, I understand about business, I understand about spouses, I understand about commitments, I understand about all that bullshit.

What I understand, though, is that where there’s a will there’s a way and you can find 30 minutes every day to do.

Another thing is the best time to do it is first thing in the morning. Don’t be a wuss. If you’ve got to get up 30 minutes earlier, then get up. As soon as you get out of the bed, rip off all your clothes, before you even go to take your morning whatever, rip off all your clothes and put on your workout clothes. And put on your shoes. Go pee, go poop, go do whatever you’ve got to do, get yourself a drink of water and walk out the door.

All of this should take about 10 minutes. You just start doing it. Once you’re out in the active, walking and doing it, then it becomes easier just to do it and to just get it done so you can move on with the rest of your day.

Ray: Thinking about what you’re supposed to do, that screws you up. Stop thinking and start doing.

Jim: Exactly. Because otherwise, you’re just going to do the stuff that isn’t making you feel better and do better.

Ray: Or, should I be doing this exercise, should I be making out in the AM vs PM, or should I be doing weight training or cardio, should I be doing long and slow or fast and hard, I don’t know, I’m just not going to do anything.

Jim: Exactly.

Ray: Get out the door. Do something. It’s always better than nothing.

Jim: Get yourself a way to have accountability and then a way to share successes. One great way is with Facebook. As soon as you are done with your workout, come back in, jump on your Facebook and say, hey, I just walked, I just did my thing. I did it again today.

And you want to keep that string. That’s a string, it’s an unbroken string of 18 days walking. Ain’t I great?

Or to have a friend that you call and say hey …

Actually, I don’t really recommend that. Because if your friend poops out on you, then you’re screwed.

I do have a friend that I talk to Monday through Friday, but we talk for business reasons. So I know that I have to be done with what I’m doing by a quarter to seven in order to be able to go get a shower, get dressed and then get on the phone and start doing business.

So having that deadline, also, has helped me, I will admit.

Ray: I know that you’re saying that accountability is super important there, and it was for you and your systems for your accountability because after we cover this, I want to ask you a couple of quick questions on your success and then some quick thoughts about your nutrition, but for right now, let’s just handle that accountability that you set up.

Jim: The thing is, though, that accountability can actually backfire on you.

My No. 1 accountability partner is my frickin’ self because if I don’t do it, I beat myself up. Yes, everyone, I’m not the liberal, nurturing, wussy, it’s okay, hand holding tree hugger type. If I don’t exercise I yell at myself. I give myself shit. I don’t allow myself to feel okay about the fact that I didn’t exercise.

And the few times that I haven’t done it and tried to justify it, I gave myself so much crap I went out in the yard and banged it out. I’m just telling you the truth.

Now the person I talk to at 7:00, it’s more like just proving to him that I’ll never not do it. If that makes any sense.

But your No. 1 accountability partner is yourself. As soon as you make anyone else, or anything else, an integral part of your success with exercising, you’re screwed, because eventually that person will die, move away, not answer, not respond, give up, wuss out, whatever. It’s done. It’s over. You’re screwed.

Ray: You know what’s funny about that is I’m the fitness guy and you’re the internet business guy and you just talked to me about the interdependency, falling apart sort of thing in fitness terms and I’m thinking yeah, I know it’s true with business because if you set up your success of your business based on someone else’s system and they pull out on you, you’re screwed.

Jim: Yep. You’re hosed!

Ray: You’ve got to be it now. It’s all you.

Jim: So that’s it. I know that sounds like “man, this guy’s hard core.” Yeah. You’ve got to be hard core.

But what’s the alternative?

The alternative is that you’re fat, you’re in nasty shape, all you do is make excuses and you feel like crap. So which one do you want?

And you’re like, man, I want to feel good.

Then feel good. Get your ass out and do some exercise. I’m not telling you to do what I do now. I’m telling you to start at the beginning and starting at the beginning is just doing something every single day.

The easiest thing you can do is to go out and go for a walk.

I remember the first day I walked. I covered not very much ground and the next day I covered that ground and more in the same amount of time and I was like “Holy crap, I must be in really shit shape.”

And I was starting. I was like an old man, walking.

You’ve just got to do it and walking is the easiest thing that you can do. You do it already. It exercises the biggest muscles in your body to help you get that process going.

Of course, you want to talk to your doctor, and blah, blah, blah and I’m not giving you medical advice and you can’t sue me because I’m telling you what I did.

I’m just telling you, you’ve got to do it. You don’t have a choice.

Ray: Got it. We’ve got the exercise covered. Everybody’s wondering low carb, high carb, Mediterranean, whatever, green algae. What did you do?

Jim: Bullshit.nAll that stuff is bullshit. You want to know what you should eat? Eat less. Eat less, Tubby. That is all you’ve got to do. You can eat 2500 calories of pure lard, you could go get a spoon and eat straight from a Crisco can and as long as you burned more than 2500 calories a day, you will lose weight.

Now, there’s good stuff you can eat and there’s bad stuff you can eat. If you’re eating Hostess Ho Ho’s and Twinkies, hell, I think that the obesity problem in this country is going to go way down just because Hostess is going out of business and Twinkies are going away.

But, —-

Ray: I feel like I’m at a church service. Preach it, bro.

Jim: I’m just saying. But the thing is, what did I do?

I ate less. Instead of having three plates of food, I had 1 or 1 1/2. Instead of eating as much as I could, and then more, I ate some and then sat there and said, “Am I still hungry?”

I started drinking a lot more water. Not drowning myself, but I made sure I was drinking water. When I felt like I was hungry, the first thing I would do, and I still do, is to drink a glass of water. Because oftentimes when you feel hungry you’re actually dehydrated.

So that’s something you can do. Just start drinking more water. Just eat less. Just eat less.

The other thing I started doing is trying to eat a salad every single day.

Not slathered in all kinds of crazy dressing and stuff like that. When I have a salad, I have some meat on it, I have some cheese on it, I have some dressing, but not half the frickin’ bottle. Instead of eating 12 pieces of garlic bread, I eat three. Just less. Just eat less. That’s all it is. Just eat less, Tubby.

Don’t belly up to the frickin’ buffet and say yes. Don’t look at the menu and say, ymmmm, sure, I’ll take it all. Just less. That’s it.

The other thing is, I started eating breakfast. But breakfast is not eight frickin’ fried eggs and a half a loaf of toast. Breakfast for me normally is a little bowl of oatmeal, a hard-boiled egg and a banana or something like that.

This morning for breakfast I had two hard boiled eggs and a glass of water.

Limit your caffeine. I have two half cups of coffee every day in the morning and the rest it’s nothing but water. I might have a single cup of tea in the afternoon.

Have a little snack in the afternoon, but instead of your snack being a damn Hostess Cupcake … I will say that once you start doing the less, less pizza is not as good as less with maybe one piece of pizza and a salad.

I used to be able to polish off an entire large pizza by myself. When we would have pizza night, we would each, my wife and I, would each get a large pizza and eat the whole damn thing.

Now if I have pizza, I have a couple, three pieces.

So just less. Just less. Your stomach will tighten up pretty quickly.

Ray: Basically, what you’re saying, is nothing freakish, just, you know what, eat what you need to eat, don’t eat in excess, drink more water, stay away from the stimulants, and you don’t really need to get into more analysis paralysis than that.

Jim: Dude, I’ve never … the one thing that I will say, one major change in my diet that has been very beneficial and that is getting away from red meat.

I still love a steak. I used to have red meat three to four days a week. Now I have red meat, maybe two times a month. That is one big change that I made.

I love spaghetti so one thing that we started doing, my wife, God bless her, she lost 50 pounds, too. All she did was switch from regular beer to lite beer, but we’ll leave that alone. Just some stuff. Started investigating different recipes. One of my favorite meals now is spaghetti, but instead of noodles, we use that spaghetti squash, and instead of ground beef, we use ground chicken. It tastes just like spaghetti. It’s awesome.

Ray: There’s a good, real point, if I can chirp in as like a “trainer,” is that when you eat three pieces of pizza, that is so many calories, but if you wanted to eat that in healthy food, you could eat so much more volume in normal food vs. process food. Right? Like for the sense of feeling full.

Jim: Yes. You can hog out on vegetables. When I’m eating vegetables, or I’m eating salad or anything like that, I eat until I’m full. Don’t even think about it. Not even an issue. I like fish as well. I guess I will nod that those were some dietary changes, other than my thing of saying less, less, less, but that was definitely a mantra going over and over in my mind. Less, less, less, less, less.

Ray: It’s like whatever you’ve got to hold on to get the initial momentum going, right?

Jim: Exactly. I was taking in a breath.

Ray: Breathing? That’s for wimps.

Lastly, Mr. Success. How does it feel being, as you’ve achieved your goal now? Tell me a little bit about how that feels. Basically, for lack of a better term, you felt like shit, and now you don’t.

Jim: Some days I feel like shit and I still go exercise. For real. It’s not like this is magical transformation.

For example, yesterday. I’ve done some stuff. We were seeing how many pullups I could do on Monday and I think I overdid it a little bit. I would have told you a year ago I’d never be able to do a pull-up again even though there was a point in my life when I could do 20 pull-ups without stopping. And Monday I did five.

When I could do 20, that was 25 years ago, so I did five pullups on Monday, I was like, “Holy crap I just did five pull-ups.”

I mean, when you’re 45, you can have some aches and pains. So yesterday when I was running—this was very interesting. I didn’t tell you this. But yesterday when I was running, I ran that five miles faster than I’ve run it in 25 years. But I never looked at my watch until the very end. And I was like “Holy crap.”

But I was having pains while I was running. Some pretty good ones but they worked themselves out. It was like the pain moved all around my body but by the time I was done, I felt really loose, especially in my upper body. I just worked it out.

But in the last year, year and a half, two years, especially in the last year, it’s no secret that we’ve had some real challenges in the world as far as economy and business and a lot of people going out of business, people losing their jobs, struggling and stuff.

Ours has been no different. It’s been a real struggle to keep everything going.

But the one thing that I have been able to feel really good about is every day I know that I can have success immediately just by going and exercising. So I have linked my personal success to my exercise because when I do that I’ve already started the day successfully, and some days when I’m working out, I will tell my wife when I walk back in, “Well, that’s the hardest thing I’ll do today. The rest of its going to be real easy.”

That’s one of the biggest things is just feeling good about myself for the accomplishment as much for physically.

So physically, I feel much better just more energy, more loose, stuff that used to wear me out, like unloading groceries from the car. I mean, I’d be in a sweat, unloading the car. Not it’s like, bum, bum, bum, bum. Running up the steps with the stuff, “Hey, I got the stuff to do.”

The other day my wife had a bunch of boxes that I had to take up to the second floor and I whipped them out like nothing. And every once in a while, I think, you know a year ago, I would have been panting at the bottom of the steps after the first box.

I think physically you just feel better, mentally, a lot more confident, feel better about myself for doing it, but I think right now with the state of the world, also, everybody could use a little shot of just feeling successful at doing this. Every day having some success to build on instead of starting the day in a shit mood because emails driving you nuts, there’s crap on the news, there’s just a lot of reasons to feel bad but this gives you a reason to feel really good about yourself, especially if you exercise in the morning to just get started and to build from success rather than build from negativity that can come from you from a whole bunch of different angles.

Ray: Okay, cool.

Before, I mentioned that you were the author of “How to Overcome Procrastinations, the 5-Minute Roadblock Buster Solution” which I think is an awesome book, which is actually on Kindle right now, but the reason I first found out about you was really your five steps to get everything you want and that is now kind of in a 12-part series of Kindle books. Correct?

Jim: Partially. I’m actually redoing 5 steps to getting you wanted. At some point, I’ll have it out in the new year.

Ray: The reason I mention it is because I’m like the fitness pro guy guru, but you are like, I want to say business, which you are, but I think with the motivation, like I’ve listened to that audio so many times and it’s so helpful I think it’s amazing, and I want to somehow, if you can let me know how to do it, share that link so that other people can listen to it.

Sometimes when you’re just not feeling your oats, maybe you don’t even want to read, but it’s as passive as you want to get to listen to someone make you feel a little better about your future, and like you said, operate from a feeling of success.

I think your audios are amazing. So we’ll hook that up and figure out a link that we can let people know where that is or how to find it or something.

Jim: Okay.

Ray: But before we go I want to know from you if you have any last words, maybe something that you haven’t covered, but you thought might have been important, how you exceeded your expectations of yourself and all that. I don’t know. Anything you want to share before we go.

Jim: I think that one of the things that people think is that when you’re losing weight, there’s a destination that you’re going to arrive at. It’s like, okay, I’m here. Am I done?

That’s not how it works. This is a journey just like anything else you do in life. The bottom line with it is that when you fully commit to this, you’re going to grow and you’re going to learn and you’re going to change. In good ways.

You have to, though, set new goals for yourself as you go. Because, as I said at the beginning, my commitment was that I was going to walk every day for the next year, but I didn’t keep that commitment because now I work out Monday through Friday, but with such intensity that I need Saturday and Sunday off. I mean, I really do. To recover.

And it’s not because I’m 40 some-odd years old. It’s because that’s the human body type stuff.

Ray: I know what you’re doing now and it’s pretty intense.

Jim: So the thing that I would tell you to do is just to commit to building that habit, commit to growing physically as a person and mentally as a person and link it to more than just hey, I’m fat and I need to lose weight. Link it to your business success, link it to your love life, link it to the being around for your kids and your grandkids

I can chase my grandkids around as well or better than their parents. I can do a lot of things now and I know, and I’ve linked all of those to these various areas of my life, so I know when I’m working out I’m doing it more than just to lose weight.

Because as soon as you lose the weight, if that’s your whole reason for doing it, your motivation’s gone. That’s, I think, one of the reasons why people yo-yo so badly.

I would just encourage you to put systems in place that force you to do it. That jumping out of bed, getting dressed and going for a walk. That’s the best thing you can do to develop that habit, make it part of who you are.

The other thing that I would encourage you to do is once you’re doing that, is definitely you want to check out what Ray’s doing. Ray has really helped me in the area of defining and developing and evolving my own personal exercise routines, but he doesn’t do it for me. He helps me know what I should be doing.

And also in the area of stretching and other things that have become really important. You don’t really need to stretch that much if you’re going for a walk. Honestly.

But when you start doing more stuff, then you will need to learn how to stretch. You’ll need to learn how to do some things. That’s really been a big help for me.

So make the commitment, do it, every single day. Link it to a lot of different areas of your life to feel success and definitely, you want to check out what Ray’s doing because he’s got a lot of articles and a lot of videos and a lot of ways to help you.

Also, I would encourage you to hire him to coach you through emails and over the phone. He has really …

I will tell you when I was first getting started, I was almost resistant to any input from anybody, and maybe that was good because I knew that I just needed to develop the habit.

But then I think I waited a little bit too long to start getting some help and direction moving forward. And help and direction moving forward is a lot different than being dependent on someone and them being able to sabotage you if they fall off the face of the earth or get hit by a beer truck.

That would be what I would share with you guys.

Ray: That’s important what you just said and I want to say that as a trainer. Because as much as I’d like to be able to wave a magic wand and help the world and people would come to me in whatever state and I’d be able to say, “POOF! You’re now motivated.” It doesn’t work that way. It happens with the person. There’s a decision made and they come to see a trainer for the knowledge because I can’t do anything for your motivation if it’s not there. That’s it. You’ve got to have the decision and be willing to go and then I can help you make it happen.

If you’re interested in any of my online coaching, one-on-one personal training, books or programs, jump on my Newsletter at RaymondBurton.com. You’ll find all the ways I can help you there as well as get free nutrition and training short cuts, tips and tricks that will save you tons of wasted time and effort.

Jim, this has been awesome. I really appreciate it and I’m sure that everybody else appreciates you sharing just how doable this is. Like a massive achievement of 50 pounds, starting from a place where you’re all hooked up to meds and having your nose pulled out and all this sort of good stuff. Anybody can do it once they make the decision. Yes?

Jim: Absolutely. And I want to thank you, Ray. Because I would not be where I am right now if it wasn’t for your help so thank you.

Ray: My pleasure.

That’s it. Bye everybody.

Jim: Bye bye everybody.

Where To Find More On Jim Edwards Or Ray Burton

Learn more about being faster, leaner and stronger from Ray Burton @ RaymondBurton.com

Learn more about internet marketing from Jim Edwards @ https://thejimedwardsmethod.com