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Losing Weight

Losing weight is easy. You've lost weight over and over again. At least one of those diets worked for a couple of days/weeks at most, and...?

You've lost weight...and gained it all back (and then some). According to the diet industry's own statistics, 98 percent of everybody who goes on a diet fails. Not good odds; not a table you would sit at in Vegas. Imagine a 98 percent chance that you are not going to win...would you throw your money down on that table? No, it wouldn't happen in Vegas, but it does happen with your body and your brain. The diet industry is a billion-dollar-a-year industry. Someone's buying what they are selling. Millions of people buying/believing that there is some system, formula, combination of foods, blood type, secret something that you still haven't found. But there isn't.

There isn't a diet on the planet Earth that works. I said it years ago -- not one. If there were there wouldn't be a fat person on the planet. I would have found it, you would have found it, a whole lot of women (the primary victims of the diet industry) would have found it. Nobody would be fat if there were a diet that worked because we would all simply do what works and get on with it. The industry's own stats make the insanity of dieting very clear: 98 percent of everyone who goes on a diet (that would bealldiets) fail.

But millions do. A billion dollars a year's worth of dieting. One of the truly insane insanities I was talking about when I said "Stop the Insanity" is dieting. Diet-ing to lose weight is actually the very definition of the wordinsanity.Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. A billion-dollar-a-year industry says that a whole lot of people are (continually) dieting -- that is to say, treating the symptoms and never solving the problems of overfat and unfit. Not a good way to do anything if solution is what you want. And if it's weight you want/need to lose, youcan.Lose it and never find it again. Otherwise known as lose it forever, a permanent solution to overfat and unfit...there is such a thing and it's not achieved by dieting, ob-viously.

It's more than possible to solve the problems of overfat and unfit. It's common bloody sense. And solving the problems of overfat and unfit is also one of the most politically radical things any human body can do. "The most revolutionary thing anybody can do is internal wellness," by Susan Powter.

I say it because:

A. It's true.

B. I did it.

I lost over 133 pounds and I have never found it again. I look better and feel better at fifty than I did at twenty. It's true. Life isn't going anywhere (until it does) and waking up every day with a foundation of wellness to live from/in/with makes all the difference in everything. Life is easier when you're not schlepping around a ton of fat, when you have an ounce of energy to do the million things you do every day. I'm still doing it all...every woman I know is doing it all. What, has your life slowed down? Do you have the luxury of time? Three kids and a life later? Are you kidding? Life goes on, and when...

the back goes out, and it does...

the dental work needs doing, and it just did...surgery, thank you!

the broken bones of the past (and there are a few) ache on a cold, rainy day, and they do...

...it's crap loads easier being lean, strong, healthy, and a size two...argue with that. You can't. Nobody would. I've asked the question thousands and thousands of times (every seminar for how many years?). "If you could just wrinkle your nose...(à laBewitched)and be lean, strong, healthy, and well, would you do so, or would you say "no, thank you." No need, I love the -- -- -- (fill in the blank) pounds overweight I'm living with, I'd like to keep it." I've never gotten a "No, thank you, I love my stomach hanging halfway down my thighs, wouldn't trade it in for anything." I haven't heard it and I'm never going to hear it except for the sake of argument (what the delete button is designed for) because nobody telling the truth would say no to living in a body that is well, healthy, lean, and strong. Wellness works. Good food works. Movement works. Oxygen works. Thinking works.

Wellness revolutionized ("izes," it's current) my life and it will revolutionize yours. All of it absolutely true...so why can't I say there is a permanent solution to losing as much weight as you want to lose, increasing as much strength and energy as you want to increase, and loving the way you look and the way you feel...forever? Because it's not allowed. The lawyers want something more banal than permanent. Standards and practices will stop you in a heartbeat from uttering such a claim, even though what they do allow is stunning. No TV-segment producer is even going to understand what I'm talking about...for starters, they are all under twenty-one -- everyone in TV is now, it's frightening...but the point is, it's not allowed. It's not allowed because once the simple truth is out, industries (a whole lot of them) will collapse. The Politics of Stupid is what's holding up more than you may have ever imagined possible, and understanding it has everything to do with the way you look and feel.

The minute you find out -- or by the end of this book -- how simple weight loss is, you'll have to take a moment, not an easy one, and admit you've been acting stupid. You are not stupid (or perhaps you are, but millions aren't), however; you absolutely have beenactingstupid. Stupid as hell day after day after day for...years? Millions losing their lives, their health, their energy, their looks...go to an amusement park on any sunny day in any part of the country...some geographical regions are much worse than others...but have a look. I've met the smartest women -- I'm talking brilliant -- who don't have a clue. They've got no clue what to do. "How do I start? How, oh how, do I lose this weight?" I hear it a hundred times a day. It's stunning and real. There are a lot of reasons why you, women, are getting the megablasts in the war against an educated consumer...and believe me, you are -- but before that dot is connected there is another vital connection that must be made, consider it the infrastructure for of your lean, strong, healthy life. Understanding the politics behind what has (when you think about it) made you do some stupid shit to your body is vital. Like you don't know preserved, spongy cakes with fake, fluorescent-white cream in the middle isn't food? Spending years searching for the time in your life for your life? Having no clue how to get rid of the fat that is hanging from all over your body?

You making the political connections directly connected to how you look and feel every day has everything to do with you re-gaining your body, your brain, and a whole lot more. The politics of a lifestyle that isn't working for millions of people is as real as it gets. The politics of the incorrect expert advice being doled out to you, and your family, is real. Billions of dollars spent on advertising, glamorizing, and "socializing" a lifestyle that isn't working for millions of people is real, and it works -- the advertising, that is. The question is not "Why can't I (I stopped asking permission a long time ago) say there is a permanent solution to obesity?," the question is "Why aren't you hearing this simple, life-changing information, these absolute facts, everywhere you turn?" Being completely clear about the Politics of Stupid is the answer if you are:

fat

unfit

exhausted

diseased

hate the way you look and feel

desperately want to feel well

Any/all of the above is/are what the Politics of Stupid is about. Making this connection is as vital to weight loss as eat, breathe, move, and think is and, it all is. You are, certainly, not alone.

Obesity is epidemic. An epidemic. Millions of people suffering from the exact same thing? What? Suffering from what? Look, up in the sky, it's a gene, it's a virus, it's a...Lifestyle.It's a lifestyle "issue." A lifestyle that is affecting/infecting millions of people.

Epidemic numbers of people don't have a clue about what to put into their mouths. Millions of people with the same willpower "issues"? Millions of people suffering from the same "inner-child trauma"? Hundreds of thousands of weakhearted people? It's getting harder, by the second, to blame it on childhood trauma, genes, your mother being a horror, because the facts are:

• America is second in the world in heart disease.

• Obesity is epidemic.

• Childhood obesity has increased 54 percent in the last fifteen years.

• Cancers are epidemic.

All of the above are lifestyle matters or diseases, and lifestyle can (easily) be changed forever. Which changes the way you look and feel forever. Nothing complicated about that.

Wellness changed my life...in more ways than I ever dreamed possible, I mean that literally...and it will change yours. To be physically free from exhaustion is freedom. Having the lean muscle mass (metabolically the most active tissue in the human body) to stand, sit, bend, pick up, run around after...all the things you are doing now without the strength and energy to do them...is freedom. Activating your heart/lung systems, the oxygen-processing center of your body, is freedom. Igniting your metabolic rate and burning as much fat as you want to burn is freedom. And freedom is political.

Millions of people are dying (literally) for the information, inspiration, and motivation to get physically well enough to get through a day. There's no question that it's time to move forward. It's way past time that you got on with living your life in energy and strength in a lean, strong, beautiful, well body. And there's only one way on earth to do it.

You've got to eat.

You've got to breathe,

You've got to move. And...

You've got to think.

Eat, breathe, move, and think are solutions for the problems of overfat and unfit. Your understanding the politics of a lifestyle that affects/infects you and your family, daily, and knowing how to avoid it like the plague that it is, is a permanent solution. There's no question that politics has to be a part of any/all discussions connected to getting lean, strong, healthy, and well, and certainly is (i.e., the title) but, most important and quite simple, is you having everything you need to change what isn't working in your life. "I've been fat and I've been fit, fit is better," and it is.

Movement Forward

It may be way past time that you took care of this "little weight problem" of yours, but it's never too late. And, O mighty female consumer, you are exactly the person who's going to change...well, everything, but for now, it's all about your body. There has been a massive change in consumer consciousness in the land while I've been girding the last loin of my loins for battle. I've watched it happen. It's all about Women.

Women stronger at forty than we were at twenty. Hundreds and thousands of women over forty having babies, never before in history, a massive "cultural" change that ripples out beyond our wildest dreams. Menopause couldn't be mentioned just one generation ago; not something my mother was allowed to mention...certainly not the surgically induced menopause she barely made it through. Well, one generation later, this menopausal mother -- and I am one -- and millions of other mothers are making very, very different decisions about:

the foods they eat

the healing they are choosing

the medicines they are not choosing anymore and why they're not choosing them.

Professions are being changed, forever, by what we are, and are no longer, accepting. Women are pirating back what is and always was ours; everything from physical strength and energy to birth, healing, our bodies, our brains, our voices. And one hell of a good place to start reclaiming more than you may have ever imagined possible is wellness, which is now included under a much bigger umbrella than just weight loss, and is the only way weight gets lost. Internally activating or, as I like to think of it, resurrection from the walking dead millions are "waking up" in daily. That's where I come in, and getting more obvious by the second, that's where the politics of it all comes in and, it does.

There's a whole lot more available today -- when it comes to you reclaiming your body, your brain, and your life -- than there was back in the day.Holisticmean anything to anybody? Naturopathy, homeopathy, craniopathy, herbs, alternative, Mother Nature and all her gifts...these are not such freaky ideas anymore. And the reason is that a very powerful consumer market demanded alternatives to what had been happening for far too long. You, mother, tired of the same old, same old prescription for the same old, same old ear infection, given to you by the same old, same old pediatrician. Mothers intuitively questioning so-called experts about such things as autism, vaccinations, baby formulas -- not just the junk the doctors insisted, for years, was far more convenient and better for baby than breast-feeding, the tried-and-true formulas that we no longer believe in. Alternative...to what? Mention St.-John's-wort back in the day, people thought I was talking about a skin condition. Suggest ginkgo ten years ago and you could pretty much expect to be accused of witchcraft. Homeopathy, until very recently, was thought to be a sexual preference, but not anymore.

Your solving the problems of overfat and unfit in your life has everything to do with you dusting off the "tiara" and acting like the powerful consumer you are and being very clear about how politically powerful you are every time you walk down the aisles of your grocery store. It's true...you don't have to go any farther than your local grocery store to know exactly what I'm talking about. Food is connected to how you look and feel...you'd agree with that because nobody wouldn't at this point. Yes, what you put into your mouth, into your body, has everything to do with how you look and feel on the outside. The Zen of food is simple. I'll give you a few bumper stickers.

Junk in, junk out.

Eat dough, look like dough.

Eat shit, look and feel like shit.

By, Susan Powter.

Food is directly connected to the top four killers in the United States and directly connected to obesity...there is no question about that anymore. And the food industry is a big one. A $276-billion-dollar-a-year in-dustry...that's averybig one. And here's an absolute fact about the all-American lifestyle that explains much: 85 percent of the consumer market for the $276-billion-dollar food industry is...?Who's doing the grocery shopping in your house. No need to send me an e-mail if you are one of the(veryfew) men doing the weekly grocery shopping; I'm not interested and I'm not talking about you. I'm talking to the majority (in more ways than one) walking the aisles week after week after week for years.

Women.

Queens of the aisles, you are. Millions of Women roaming the aisles of the grocery stores have everything to do with a whole lot of very political issues, and certainly everything to do with obesity. And it's not coincidental that Women are also the primary victims of the diet industry. A couple of ways to control the masses are:

• starvation, otherwise known as dieting -- it works brilliantly

• poison them...they will be too tired and toxic to

• confuse the hell out of them, completely and absolutely, about the most basic things like what to put into their mouth.

Spin them in circles so they spend all their energy on "vital" questions like "carbs vs. protein?" The truth is that you, the most powerful consumer market in the country today, are too tired, toxic, overfat, and unfit to even think about -- (fill in the blank). Buried alive in your own life even though everywhere you turn "convenient," "value," "bargain," "instant," "easy," "the very best for you and your family," "all for the low, low price of" is being blasted at you at the speed of light. Maybe you haven't been able to put your finger on exactly what it is, but you've known for a long time that something is wrong. Terribly wrong...and you really don't have a clue about what to do, or where to start. And it's not because you are stupid. Thestupidin the title of this book doesn't imply that you are. Millions of women are not stupid, but stupid millions of women are acting.

You are overworked, underpaid (not paid at all), buried alive in your life, overfat, unfit, exhausted, and acting stupid. So, yep...it works. Numb them and dumb them and they'll be numbed and dumbed. Heavily funded campaigns ("campaigns" -- note the wording, ladies, the wording) designed to sell you, and they work. Your life and its style, or lack of it, is directly connected to the way you look and feel and to thousands of symptoms that millions don't have to suffer from. Lifestyle is the connection. Lifestyle, and looking and feeling like hell, are directly connected no matter how many millions of dollars are spent trying to convince you otherwise. Eighty-five percent of all diseases can be directly attributed to lifestyle. The organization that says this, the American Medical Association, is not acting as if lifestyle could (and it can) fix 85 percent of the problems millions of people are suffering from, are they? Not at all.

This book and everything I'm doing now is based on an idea I had years ago. The concept of exchanging stuff that you made a mistake in buying. Yeah, if you don't like it you exchange it, don't you? I've seen women drive bloody miles to exchange a piece of clothing that, once home, was wrong. You spend money on it and it doesn't work, you exchange it. You'd sure as hell exchange anything if it affected every waking moment of your life. If it could literally save your life, and it can, would you exchange what you are doing right now for it? There's no chance you would just "oh well" it to the grave; no way. That would be stupid. Exactly. But millions are doing just that when it comes to the most important of important, the one thing all the other stuff is based on, because without your health, you ain't got nothing by, Me.

My mother died at fifty-two. Money in the bank, a Jaguar in the garage, everything most people want...and it was lifestyle that killed her. A 1950s housewife, never knew anyone but the man she was married to for thirty-three years (don't start glorifying that number; it was hell), she listened to everything her doctor, priest, and husband said. Ate like they told her. Lived like they told her. Had all the surgeries they told her to have. Never questioned any of them, well...

Well, well, well, a whole lot has changed just one generation later, and the very least of it is the difference between what my mother and I eat, breathe, move, and think. Now I'm fifty years old, and lifestyle's got a much harder job of killing me than it did her. It wouldn't have been considered ladylike if my mother did the yoga pelvic moves I did this morning...take it from there. The point is, if you look in the mirror today and don't like what you see, if you don't like the end results of the lifestyle you are living, you can change it. My mother didn't have a choice. We do.

Exchange the lifestyle you are living, which in my brain turned into an obvious yet brilliant weight-loss program. A lifestyle X-change program that quite simply (and it all is) means you are going to X-change one lifestyle habit at a time, and very soon, before you know it you've X-changed the lifestyle that doesn't work for you...for the millions of you.

Change is what you are about to do. Change what you are putting in and you will change what is on the outside. Change inactive for active and you change much, much more than just burning fat. Change weak for strong, tired for energized...I can and will go on, but for now let's stick with the conception of your program by, me. What happened in my brain was a lifestyle "X-change" program.

X-change a lifestyle that isn't working for a style of life that does. Sometimes as corny as it is, it has to be. X-ing out what isn't working for what does work is the bottom-line truth of weight loss...and literally what you are going to do. That's what the Politics of Stupid is...you understanding that if millions are doing the same wrong thing, their mistake must be based on something more than you not being able to "figure it out." Connecting the dots and the only way on the planet Earth to lose weight. A weight-loss program that takes everything to a new level by using everything available in this day and age to "every-body" who wants it.

The Internet changed everything for me. Very little will ever come between me and "every-body" who wants to be well again. Private training will never be the same...and it's about time. I've watched, waited, and worked very hard for the last fifteen years in order to be exactly where I am right now. "Direct" from me to you is the only way to go, and now we can. The book you are holding in your hands, my face, my voice, my life on www.susanpowteronline.com...these are "directly" connected to you losing as much weight as you want to lose via space. There was no chance in hell any of this could have happened just five short years ago. But the biz of getting the simple truth about wellness and life-changing information to you is far more complicated than most will ever understand unless you've been an infomercial queen or king.

Who is Ron Popeel? The "king" to my "queen," you could say. Back in the day, you couldn't imagine what it took to get the truth out. Me sandwiched between publishers, video houses, syndicators, lawyers, agents, production horror everywhere I turned. To hell with artistic integrity...that's not why I left; it was just impossible to get anything done properly, honestly, and without getting screwed to the wall, and I was.

Here are the facts. I do wellness. I do it every day: eat, breathe, move, and think. Translating that life-changing information to you (all the millions of you) should be simple, and, at long last, it is. For the first time in history, you can, and will essentially, come live with me. That's what we are going to be doing. Reality...actual reality. Bowing to the Queen of Everything, Madonna, what I'm saying is beyond Truth or Dare. It would have happened earlier, but the "experts" wouldn't listen to me, so I kept going and going and going until someone did. Now that the mediums (all of them) of communication have changed so dramatically and the TV networks (all of them) have lost their monopoly, it's possible. Since those young Internet pranksters that the stiff white corporate boys laughed at just a few short years ago have taken over the world, you and I have much much more opportunity. This program is one of the biggest things that got me off the farm and back into the world...I'm talking about your lifestyle X-change program, delivered to your life via book, audios, videos, and by me, "directly" transported into your life via www.susanpowteronline.com! Retirement over...she's back, folks.

Never before has getting vitally important information been so easy, and never before has it been more important. Oh, it's global, people, and it's political. As a matter of absolute fact, wellness is the only hope this planet has of surviving, by, Susan Powter. Becoming a thinking consumer. An educated consumer. Awareness abounding. Internal wellness...you getting your body lean, strong, healthy, and well...this is as green as it gets, and it's about damn time the connection was made. I'm beginning to resent being shoved off to the side of all the green discussions as simply a fitness expert. First, the wordexpertoffends the hell out of me, and second, there isn't anything more green "any-body" can do than wellness.

Imagine how pissed all the experts of the past would be at the idea of Women sharing the truth...our experiences, our expertise, and changing how we live. "I'm just a housewife who figured it out and started talking to other housewives"...that is exactly whatStop the Insanitywas about and always will be about. Women, networking and connecting the dots to the truth when they hear it, and now we can do it globally with far fewer anythings in between me and you. The program is simple. Take back what you don't like and are no longer going to live with. X-change a lifestyle, one life-changing habit at a time, that isn't working, and before you know it (literally), you have changed everything. Change a choice, change your life -- this is real...your body and your brain are directly connected, Dr. Dr. The way to change is by creating a style of life that fits you, that gets you the end results you want...a daily life that works for you and your family. Overfat doesn't suit you. Lean will. Unfit doesn't work. Fit does. Unwell doesn't look or feel good. This lifestyle X-change program will revolutionize your life. I've waited years to say that because it's the only way to do it and it's the truth.

Excerpted from The Politics of Stupid: The Cure for Obesity by Susan Powter
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.