RUSH: Damon in Silicon Valley as we go to the phones on Open Line Friday, great to have you, welcome to the EIB Network.
CALLER: Rush, greetings from a fellow golfer and entrepreneur and I just want to say thank you. I’ve been listening to you for 15 years. You’ve made a huge difference in my life. I just want to thank you for being as articulate as you are and helping me to get better at what I do.
RUSH: Thank you. I appreciate that.
CALLER: All right, so I’m in my early fifties and, you know, I’m about 15, 20 pounds overweight, and I have been so impressed listening to your journey that you’re doing there. How the heck are you getting that weight off?
RUSH: I’m just restricting what I eat. You know, one thing I’ve learned is I’ve done every diet there is, and they all work, and what they all end up doing, if they work, if you do it right, is they force you to end up eating less. Like the Atkins diet. I did that, too. The Atkins diet is the low-carb diet, the high protein, high fat diet. What actually happens is you go into a state of ketosis in that diet, and that kills your appetite. So you actually end up eating less, and all the other diets try to mix the nutrients in such a way that your appetite will shrink, not so much your stomach. I think that’s somewhat of a myth. It doesn’t take long to restretch it, I’ve found.
CALLER: (Chuckles.)
RUSH: But I’m just doing 1200 to 1400 calories a day, some days 800 if I’m not hungry at dinner.
CALLER: Wow.
RUSH: And if there’s one thing I’m trying to ride herd on, it would be fat. I’m not counting the carbs, although I don’t eat anything fried, no salted snacks or anything like that. The calories where they come from is important, but I’m not eating junk to put it that way and I’m not eating very much starch or potatoes and that sort of thing. Oh, and you can’t drink. You cannot consume adult beverages and lose weight, because what happens with that —
CALLER: (Groaning.)
RUSH — is the alcohol gets metabolized as pure sugar and then that triggers insulin, and the long and short of that is that insulin is bad for anybody who wants to lose weight because insulin is actually one of the first processes necessary to gain weight. So you can’t consume adult beverages.
CALLER: Okay, Rush. It’s a hard one for me because I enjoy my cocktails after work. (Laughing.)
RUSH: Well, I’ll tell you what. You know what? People say, ‘What are you doing?’ and I tell them, and they say, ‘Oh, I could never do that.’ Well, then why are you asking me?
CALLER: Oh, I’m challenged right now because of what you said.
RUSH: I don’t mean you. I’m not talking about you.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: I’m just saying people say, ‘Well, is the food that you’re eating good?’ I say, ‘It doesn’t matter. Food is not the focus when you go on a diet.’ You have to have the attitude. You’re not going to be able to do it ’til you want to. You’re not going to be able to accomplish anything until you want to. Desire is 80% of achievement, and until you get to that point, it isn’t going to happen, and there will be something, Damon, that will trigger it. You’ll get up one day feeling like garbage or your pants won’t fit and you’re going to be miserable. Something will trigger it, and then you’ll get the commitment. It could be something inside your head attitudinally that has nothing to do with how you feel that triggers it. It could be a visit to the doctor; you never know. Something will trigger it. Not until you want to, are you actually going to be able to start it and stick with it, because you need to be on it a week or ten days to show results — and the worst part of a diet is the first week, getting started, because you don’t see any results. ‘Oh, woe is me. This isn’t working.’ It’s easy to say, ‘I’ll get off this, and I’ll try it in a week or two,’ and it’s self-defeating. So, as a veteran of ten or 12 diets, I know what has to happen, and I don’t try one when I’m not motivated.
CALLER: Okay, here’s the trigger — it’s you — and I’m going to put down the adult beverages just for 30 days and see what happens.
RUSH: Well, in some cases, depending on how much you drink — some people, if they just drop the booze — lose weight.
CALLER: Yeah.
RUSH: The calories in that stuff are sky high. Remember, 3500 calories equal a pound. If you eat that or more, you’re going to maintain or gain weight. That reduces as you get older but it doesn’t take much to get to a thousand calories if you start drinking some wine or some distilled adult beverages, and calories are calories. It doesn’t matter whether they’re liquid. They’re just as hard to lose when you put ’em on. It doesn’t matter. So, that’s just something you have to commit to when you go on a diet. See, here’s what’s gonna happen. This is another thing. Oh, I’m gonna get flooded with phone calls: ‘Rush, I have a cocktail every night on my diet.’ Okay, fine. I’m just telling you. He asked me, not you, and I’m telling you, I’ve tried it, and I cannot lose weight doing anything, on whatever diet, if I also consume adult beverages. Besides, who wants one glass of wine? That’s silly. One glass of wine, one of anything? If you’re trying to lose weight, that’s not commitment. That’s trying to fudge.
Now, if you only want to lose ten pounds and you don’t care if it takes you a year, then you can do that. It all depends on what you want. I want to get this over with as quickly as possible. Something’s happening to me on this diet that’s never happened before, and that is I’m thinking of staying on this the rest of my life because I am not hungry. I don’t miss the food. I had a big bash last weekend. I went off the diet, and I thought, ‘All right, this is going to be cool,’ and it wasn’t that big a deal. I even lost a pound over that weekend. I didn’t have all that much, but what I did taste, it did not have the sense of nirvana to it that I thought it would. I haven’t felt this well in a long time, so why change it? Get in touch with yourself out there, Damon. You get started on this. You said you only gotta lose 15 or 20 pounds. Hell, I used to be able to do that going to the bathroom.