Jonathan’s Story
Choice Weight Analysis
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Shut Up And Choose Book
Hey everybody. Welcome to episode two of my podcast. Shut Up and Choose. I’m Jonathan Ressler your host with the most. Not really sure what that means, but it just kind of sounded good. So today is April 24th, 2024. It’s two things. Number one is it’s my 60th birthday, so happy birthday to me. And holy shit, am I old?
I can’t believe I’m at level six. And the second thing is, it marks actually one year, exactly one year since I started my weight loss journey. And uh, as of today, I’ve lost officially 131 pounds. In 12 months. Exactly. That is pretty fucking amazing. Um, I have to say, I have never felt better. Physically, mentally, emotionally.
I’m just amazed at the difference one year makes this time last year. Literally couldn’t walk a hundred feet. I had all kinds of medical issues. I was taking all kinds of medications. My life was truly a shit show and I look at what happened over the course of one year. And I’m just absolutely amazed.
Of course, I’m thrilled. I’m excited. And like I said, 25 years. It’s incredible what you can accomplish with the power of choice. If you read my book. To me, it’s all about making small, smart choices every day. And by the way, all those small, smart choices aren’t going to be the right choice, but the good news is when you make a bad choice, you have the ability to make the next choice, a good choice.
And I’m today, I’m going to talk a little bit about choices and. And how that’s all played out for me over the last year. Before I talk more specifically about some of the choices I made, I want to reiterate that I am not on a diet. I’ve been doing this for a year and I have not dieted for one minute.
over the last year. I just changed the way I looked at food and the choices that I made. Diets to me are just not sustainable. I’ve been on every diet under the sun. As you probably know, I’ve been on paleo. I’ve been a nutritionist and you name it. I’ve been on a diet and I lost weight on every single one of them.
That’s not the issue. The issue is when you go off the diet and you start to put the food back into your life that you Basically had to cut out to be on the diet. And sooner or later we all do it. I’m sure if you’re listening to this, you probably have been on a diet before and you know that you lose weight.
There’s no question about it. You definitely lose weight. But once you try to add those few things back in, I’ll add up one thing here. I’ll meet, I’m on paleo. I’ll have a little bread. I’m not going to balloon up if I eat a piece of bread. It’s not like I’m going to put all the weight back on, but sooner or The choices that you make to add, for me, it was adding in bread on paleo.
And then I said, well, I could have a couple of French fries here and there. And then I was somewhat paleo. And I said, oh, that’s gotta be better than what I was doing. I’m not eating candy. And then I have a little piece of candy or I have a dessert before you know it. All that work that I did was gone, and I put more weight back on, so I’m not anti diet.
I, I get it. People go on diets every day. The weight loss industry is humongous. What I do believe, however, is that those diets are just a band aid. Like, if you’re on one of the miracle weight loss drugs, that’s great. You’re going to lose weight. There’s no question about it.
They work. The problem is when you go off those drugs, you have to make choices. And the choices that you’re used to making are probably not great choices. And that is completely on you. The reality is you make the choices you make and you’re overweight or you need to lose weight because of the choices you make.
It’s not, you’re not a victim of circumstance. It’s not your special illness. It’s none of that bullshit. It’s none of those excuses that you’ve been using for years. It’s that you choose the wrong things, the wrong times, the wrong places. You just make the choices. bad choices. Hey, I’m blaming you, but I blame myself.
I have 59 years of making bad choices about my lifestyle. And I came to the realization that I’m responsible for where I am in terms of weight and pretty much everything else in my life. Everything that is negative or fucked up or bad in my life, it’s because of the choices I made. And the great news is because I am in complete control of my choices.
I’m not I am in complete control of changing those choices or making better choices. I’m in control of my weight. It’s not my circumstance or my special disease or any of that bullshit. It’s I make choices. And a lot of times, to be honest, those choices were unconscious for me because it was just the way I did shit.
You know what I mean? Like I, if I could have one hell, I might as well have two of whatever it was. But. Or I finish everything on my plate because that’s the way I was programmed to think or at least that’s what I used to tell myself Then one day I had this epiphany and I was like, holy shit.
You know what? I really am in control of my choices. And if I chose all these things to eat, I can choose not to eat them. And, or I can choose to eat them in moderation. So basically what I did is I went from mindless eating to mindful eating. It really is that simple. And I know that sounds shocking and crazy.
And you think that there’s no way it could be that simple, but the reality is. It is that simple. If you stop just grazing and eating without thinking about it, you’ll be amazed at how quickly and how easy it is to lose the weight. So for me, it’s all about making choices. And what does that really mean?
Making choices? I would. say that, I was definitely a grazer. I would eat, pretty much every waking hour. I was eating something and not really thinking about it. Just yeah, okay, I’ll have some pretzels now or I’ll eat some. Yeah, I’ll have a nice feature. You want to go out for ice cream?
Let’s go out for ice cream. And I would just eat all day. Granted, when I was eating my meals, I was eating too much. But I would just Yeah. Just go through life and not really think about what I was putting in my mouth and just eat it. And what I learned was if you actually stop and think about what you’re putting in your mouth, like really be present before you open your mouth and put food and think, is this really what I want or what I need?
Am I really hungry or am I just eating to eat? Now, if I’m eating to eat, I have to think about, is this what I want? You have to know if you want to lose weight, that eating grilled chicken. Is better for you than eating fried chicken? I mean it’s that simple and i’m not saying you can’t eat fried chicken because you can because When I did it and what i’m doing now is there is absolutely positively no food that’s off limit You can eat anything you fucking want to put in your mouth You just have to think about what it is.
You’re putting in your mouth and does it Line up with your goals. And my goal was to lose weight. So I know if I eat fried chicken or I eat something, eat ice cream, that’s not really in line with my goal. So I have to make that choice. And I’m telling you with absolute certainty that there were times when I ate things that certainly would not be considered diet food, but I made the next choice, a smart choice.
It wasn’t like I limited what I could eat, but when I really stopped and thought about it, when I was present, when I was there, when I was aware, when I thought about what I was putting in my mouth, I made different choices because they were in line with my goal, which was to lose weight. I never had.
Well, my goal really was to be around because I was, at 411 pounds. I was one big fat motherfucker who really had no quality of life. I mean, zero, the only quality of life, or at least what I convinced myself of was the only pleasure that I got was from eating. So fuck that. I’m not going to limit that.
And then I realized, well, it’s that thought process that like the only pleasure I get is eating. That’s keeping me from having any quality of life. So I started thinking about what I was putting in my mouth every single time and every choice for me Was not a good choice I mean I ate some things that I discuss this or I talk about it in the book rather is There were nights when my choice for dinner was two costco hot dogs that is those things are like fucking lead bombs going into your stomach.
They taste good and they’re, I’m sure terrible for you. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is a Costco hotdog is not high on the nutrition chart, but that’s what I felt like eating. And I thought about it and said, no, that’s what I’m going to eat tonight. That’s what I’m going to have for dinner tonight.
And the reality is the next choice that I made was I had a Costco hot dog last night. So, you know what? I want to make sure that my next choices are better choices because I wanted to be around. I wanted to live. And you may not be in that situation where you’re so overweight that your quality of life is shit, but I’m guessing that you want to lose weight or you probably wouldn’t be listening to this podcast.
The amazing thing is over time I stopped eating the Costco hot dogs and I’m not saying I haven’t had them since and I’m not saying that I haven’t had a donut or five or ten, but just not all the time. It’s amazing to me to in looking back over the past year how The things that I want to eat, and again I have to say nothing is off limits.
I could eat anything I want, but it’s amazing to me how once I started to make these small, smart choices, how the things that I wanted to eat changed. I didn’t want to eat donuts for breakfast. I didn’t want to eat sweetss and all kinds of things that were bad for me because yes, I might’ve liked the way they tasted, but.
When I really was present and I thought about it, I knew those things were not going to get me to the place that I wanted to be, which was healthier and having a better quality of life, being able to walk. Literally I couldn’t walk. So those things, those choices that I made, and again, they weren’t all good, but those choices I made were the absolute key to my weight loss.
Because I knew where I wanted to go. I knew what I wanted to accomplish. And when I really thought about it, like I keep saying, when I was present, when I thought about what I was putting in my mouth, it really helped me to, align my eating with my longterm goal, which was never a weight number. It was never to do a certain thing by a certain time.
I, I want to be healthy. lose 25 pounds by, I never thought that way. I thought I need to just make smart choices, small, smart choices. You know what? I’m not going to eat this cake for now. I’m not going to eat this as dessert for now. Maybe tomorrow I want to eat that. And I’ll maybe tomorrow I’ll make the choice to eat that.
But for right now, My choice my small smart choices i’m gonna eat something that’s better for me today I’m gonna eat we all know what’s good for us We all know eating fast food at 10 o’clock at night Is not a smart choice if you’re trying to lose weight if you’re trying to get healthier We all know that eating a pint of ben and jerry’s cherry garcia ice cream at two o’clock in the morning Is not a smart choice.
I mean they’re I always say look we all got the same Handbook, we all got the same guide. Some of us chose not to follow that guide I mean we all know people who seem like they can eat anything they want whenever they want and they never put on a pound And you know for us it’s oh my metabolism is slower, because I have this disease or that I have this condition or that condition or I’m too old or, oh, eating healthy costs too much.
Those are all bullshit excuses. Those are you, validating or justifying a choice in your mind. But at the end of the day, you are in complete control. You make the choices that you make for the reasons that you make them. And when you start to think about what you’re putting in your mouth, when you start to think about the choices that you’re making, and I know that sounds so simple and so silly, But when you start to think about those choices, it’s amazing how quickly the weight comes off because once you start making those small choices and you start to see the results.
Those smart choices build on each other and they, you see that you can succeed. You see that you can do this thing. Look, I was 411 pounds and that’s, like not even fucking human, but I would say that I lost 50 pounds in the first three months. And that was, again, I had a lot of weight to lose, so it comes off fast.
But. Once I started seeing the results, even losing a couple pounds, I was like, wow this might work. So I was really motivated to keep making those smart choices. And I’ve said this a hundred times, I’ll probably say it a hundred more times. Every choice I made wasn’t a good one. I really worked hard to make good choices.
And in the first few months, I would say that I made, 70 percent good choices and 30 percent bad choices. But as time went on, I started to make more and more and more good choices and, like compound interest in a bank account, it’s compound small choices deliver huge results and, In the diet, every time I’ve been on a diet, when you go off the diet or when you cheat, have a cheat day or whatever it is, you you say, ah, fuck it.
I blew the diet. You know what? So I’m going to eat this or I’m gonna eat that with the way I did it. If I made a bad choice, I said, okay, I made a bad choice, but the good news is. Tomorrow I can make or you know later today. I can make a good choice and you know what I didn’t blow it I didn’t my good choice meter didn’t go back to zero.
I’m making good choices and I’m losing weight. Yeah, okay So fuck it. I ate a donut, I mean shit happens, but the next choice I made was like well You know what? I ate a donut before so I better eat some something healthier For the next, five, 10, 50, whatever, however many choices it is. But I made good choices more often than making bad choices.
And prior to that, I made only bad choices in my opinion. I never really thought about what I was putting in my mouth. I just put it in my mouth goes, Hey, it tasted good. It felt good. It was something that everyone was eating and I didn’t want to deprive myself. And once I started making these small.
Choices these smart choices. I basically never felt like I was deprived of myself. I never felt If you’re eating doughnuts, I should eat doughnuts, too Or if you’re eating ice cream, I should eat ice cream, too. I chose no, you know what? I’m not gonna eat that ice cream tonight, but you go ahead by all means eat the ice cream and i’m gonna reap the benefits of not eating that ice cream.
Because for me, if I eat that ice cream, then it’s not in line with my goals. And once again, once I started making those small, smart choices, it’s incredible how quickly that compounds. I always say that. I love to eat sweets and I love to eat all that stuff. But once I started to not eat those things, it’s amazing how my choices and my mind changed because I didn’t want to eat those things.
I knew I could, nothing’s off limits on this thing that I did. Whether I don’t really have a name for it. I guess the closest thing would be mindful eating, but once I started to think about what I put in my mouth. It’s amazing how my taste profile changed and in I don’t mean like I didn’t like sweets anymore Of course, I like sweets.
I like all the bad shit that you can eat But my mind was telling me hey, you don’t need to eat that right now You can eat it next month or next week or tomorrow but for today for right now just for now Don’t eat that. And it was incredible how those small, smart choices really built up. I know that sounds so simple and so ridiculous, but it couldn’t be more true.
Once you start making these small, smart choices about what you put in your mouth, You’ll be amazed at the results and you’ll be amazed at how you start to think differently and how you really start to make choices that make sense for you. That makes sense for what you’re trying to accomplish, whether it be losing that 10 pounds at 50 pounds of that 200 pounds, whatever it is, it all comes down to making smart choices.
The reality is you’re in complete control. The second reality is nothing. And I mean, nothing is off limits if that’s what you choose to eat. I’ll give you a real life example. So as you know, today’s my birthday. So for the past couple of days, I was on vacation, celebrating my 60th birthday. I was in Las Vegas and.
As you probably know, there’s some great restaurants there with some unbelievable food and I didn’t want to deprive myself of eating that food, so I ate whatever I wanted to eat and did I eat things like steak and I had some unbelievable Peking duck, I even had probably the best dessert I’ve ever eaten in my life, it was in a restaurant called Komodo and I had, there was some banana, crazy banana ice cream and all kind of cheesecake, it was an amazing dessert and I Yes, I know it was loaded with sugar and loaded with all that stuff, but I chose to eat that and I’m okay with that.
I’m good with that. I feel no guilt about eating that because the next day or the next morning or whatever, I decided to eat to make smart choices again. So I allowed myself. I had no guilt. I didn’t feel like I went off my diet because I’m not on a diet. I just chose to eat that. And you can do that. You can choose to eat things.
If you don’t. Make choices that make you happy. Then you won’t be able to do this thing, right? You have to keep yourself happy. I’m not, you can’t not go out to eat with your friends and you can’t never have a sweet because that’s basically dieting and dieting doesn’t work aside from not working. It fucking sucks.
You don’t want to deprive yourself of those things. So you have to make choices. If you make a bad choice tonight, or maybe not a smart choice tonight, tomorrow morning, you start making good choices again. And you know what? I went away and I ate like a fucking King for four days. And I didn’t put on a pound because I made sure that everything I ate, I was completely aware of what I was putting in my mouth and I thought about it.
And that’s what I wanted. That’s what I chose to eat. And I knew that the next choice I make would be a smarter choice. I ate things that would be quote unquote bad foods. And that thought process alone of thinking that foods are bad is a recipe for failure. There’s no food that’s bad.
There’s choices that you make. And if you choose to eat something that’s quote unquote bad or loaded with sugar, or, you eat steak and that’s terrible. I don’t think so. But You can follow those up with better choices with smarter choices. This is I guess about Building or changing your lifestyle changing your really your relationship with food.
There’s no food That’s bad, and there’s no food that is good. People would say oh well kale is very good I think kale tastes like shit, And so for me, that’s not a good choice because if I’m eating things that I don’t like to lose weight Yeah I can’t continue to do that. So I have to eat the things that I like.
And again, I know people are thinking now, oh, that I like fried chicken. Well, that’s great. Eat the fucking fried chicken, but just don’t eat it all the time. We have to live. You can’t diet your whole life. Diets don’t work. You know how I feel about diets. They do work. They help. They’re a band aid, a short term band aid to help you lose weight.
But as soon as you start eating like a normal human being again, that means eating what you like. You’re going to put the weight back on. So with making small, smart choices, with being aware of what you’re putting in your mouth, it really helps you to eat well, to eat the food that you like and to be conscious about it and say, okay I’m allowed to have a dessert.
I’m allowed to eat, things that are quote unquote bad. But the next choices I make are going to be better choices and I’m going to continue to make smart choices as Many times that I can I’m gonna make a bad choice here there I’ve never met a single person who’s never made a bad choice in their life we’ve all made bad choices and I’m not even you know, I’m not talking about just food related We’ve all made bad choices and we’ve all made choices that we regret my Kind of thought process in all this is that I don’t regret the food choices that I make if that’s what I feel like eating at that moment, because I know that tomorrow I didn’t like I said, I didn’t blow my quote unquote diet because I’m not on a diet.
I didn’t blow my weight loss journey. I just made a bad choice and tomorrow or my next choices will be better choices and that will help me or that has helped me to really stay focused on making good choices and keeping it completely effortless. I really never feel like I’m depriving myself of anything.
The proof is in the pudding. I lost 131 pounds in a year and I never decided that I couldn’t eat something. There was nothing that I couldn’t eat. There were things that I wouldn’t eat because that was the choice that I made at that time. But there was never anything that was off limits and I never felt like I was dieting and I consistently thought about what I was putting in my mouth.
So I’ve rambled on for the last 20 minutes about making smart choices and what that means. So let me just wrap it all up with a couple key points. Number one is be present when you’re eating. Really think about what you’re putting in your mouth because that will help you to make those smart choices and let those smart choices compound.
Number two is absolutely no food is off limits. You have a choice to eat whatever you want in whatever quantity you want. You just have to make the choices, the smart choices, That makes sense in helping you meet your ultimate goal. Number three is if you make a bad choice, you didn’t blow it. Your meter doesn’t go back to zero.
You made a bad choice, big fucking deal. Just make the next one a better choice. There’s no way to blow it on this plan. In this, whatever you call it it’s all up to you. Make the choices you make. And the last, the fourth key point is. You can do this. It’s not hard. It’s not fast.
Depending on how much weight you have to lose, don’t expect a miracle overnight, but hell, I lost 131 fucking pounds in a year. That’s insane. You would have never, never been able to convince me that I could do that. If I had, if I started this out and said, geez, I got to lose 130, 150 pounds, I would have said, ah, fuck it.
I’m not even doing this thing because there’s no way I can meet that goal. But you know what? When I made smart choices, I was able to do it and you can do this too. I promise you if you just start making smart choices every day, you will be amazed at the results that you get. It really is simple and it really doesn’t take a lot of effort.
It takes being present. That’s it. Be aware of what you put in your mouth. All right. So now for a little self promotion, if you will, you can buy my book, shut up and choose on Amazon. Uh, it’s available now and i’m pretty fucking excited about that. I’m not gonna lie. Um Definitely subscribe to my podcast.
Like it, review it. Um, tell me what you like, even tell me what you don’t like, not that it’ll change the way I think, but what the fuck, you know, you have a right to choose, choose to listen, choose not to listen at any rate, that’s about all I got for today and thanks for tuning in and I’ll see you next week.
You’ve been listening to Shut Up and Choose. Jonathan’s passion is to share his journey of shedding 130 pounds in less than a year. Without any of the usual gimmicks. No diets, no pills, and we’ll let you in on a little secret. No fuckin gym. And guess what? You can do it too. We hope you enjoyed the show.
We had a fucking blast. If you did, make sure to like, rate, and review. We’ll be back soon, but in the meantime, find Jonathan on Instagram. Until next time, shut up and choose.