Sick to Fit: 3 Simple Techniques that Got Me from 420 Pounds to the Cover of Runner's World, Good Morning America, and The Today Show

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A Giant Promise That Will Make You Want to Smack Us

You can lose a hundred or more pounds in the next 12 months and keep it off forever.

Even if you’re genetically predisposed to obesity.

Even if you have the world’s strongest sweet tooth.

Even if you think you have no discipline, self-control, or willpower.

Even if your weight has been yo-yoing since middle school, you’ve heroically taken up a new diet and pushed yourself at the gym until you reached your goal weight, only to see your progress all go down the drain as you let up or celebrated your way back to obesity.

And you can lose that weight permanently, more or less by accident.

We know, this is such a huge claim, that you may want to smack us in the mouth right now. We get it. When I (Josh) weighed 420 pounds, I would have felt the same way.

Because by the time I maxed out at 420 pounds, and dealt with all the problems fat people deal with that skinny people can’t even imagine (seat belt extenders, fear of restaurants with booth seating, breaking out in a sweat while trying to put on socks, industrial-sized tubs of Preparation H), I had been burned and disappointed so many times that I was sure every weight-loss technique and program in the world was utter and complete BS.

Previously, I had lost — and regained — 90 to 100 pounds at least three times. I knew all the diet hacks that worked, and I knew that none of them worked for long.

And when I was losing weight successfully, it felt like a full-time job. Like all I could think about was the food I couldn’t eat, and the couch I could have been sitting on while I was lifting weights.

If you had told me:

that by making a modest set of changes in my life I could become a happy, vibrant, passionate, in-love-with-myself person…

that as my transformation took place, I would naturally and effortlessly shed the 230 excess pounds I was carrying around…

that living at my ideal weight was a hell of a lot more fun and pleasurable and rewarding than eating all my favorite foods…

I probably would have taken a swing at you.

Don’t get my hopes up!

We don’t expect to convince you that you can achieve the same outcome. So we’re not asking you to believe us.

Instead, we’re asking you to suspend your disbelief long enough to hear us out, and give our methods a try in your own life.

Your results are the only proof worth having, after all. Who cares whether someone else can lose weight, become an athlete, or stop trying to drown out his self-loathing with Little Debbie Nutty Bars, whiskey, and cocaine (as Josh did for years)?

We can stand up and say, Look, this can be done.

We can offer you hope, a roadmap, a compass, and support along the way.

We can even introduce you to dozens of other people who’ve made this same journey, and who generously credit us with being influential role models and guides.

But ultimately, you’re the one who has to DO the thing.

We’re not going to change your life — you are.

Howard is not going to chew the food at the end of your fork — you are.

Josh is not going to start walking around the block in your flip flops or running shoes — you are.

But don’t worry, you’ve got us here to guide you, and to help make the journey just a tad less rocky than it was for us. And we believe in you. So if you believe in you, we are ready to begin!

The Good News

No matter where you are right now, you’re in a really good place to begin your Big Change.

You know how we know that? Because you’re here. You’re reading this book.

Right now, you’re motivated to get free from the pain, the shame, the guilt, the addiction, the embarrassment, and the discomfort.

You’re fed up with what feels like a total lack of willpower and self-control.

You’re tired of donning the jolly mask every day to put a brave face on your out-of-control existence.

Feel that energy. It’s your purest and most powerful rocket fuel for this first stage of your Big Change journey.

You won’t need it for long, as we’ll see.

Which is a good thing, because we’re willing to bet that your previous attempts to lose weight ended up crashing and burning because you ran out of that intense, high-octane motivation.

We won’t let you make that mistake this time. We’re going to toss the word motivation into the compost pile real soon. But for now, as long as it keeps you reading and starts you DOing, let’s use those feelings of dissatisfaction and frustration for all they’re worth.

Why Capitalize DO?

You may have already noticed that almost every time we use the word DO or DOing, it looks like our caps lock is stuck.

That’s on purpose. Because the only thing separating those who succeed in losing weight and keeping it off, and those who never start, or yo-yo up and down, or lose a bunch of weight only to put it all back on as soon as the honeymoon is over, is that simple two-letter word: DO.

If you DO, you succeed.

As long as you pay attention to the results you get, and tweak your DOing until it gives you the results you want, you will get there.

Once you find your magic formula of the three big strategies you’ll meet in this book — Menu, Movement, and Mindset — the fat will fall off.

You might be thinking: What is it with you clowns? Another hyped-up claim?

Not at all. Here’s why:

That first thirty to one hundred pounds really doesn’t want to be there. It may not feel like it, but you’re actually working really hard to keep it on. Once you discover the principle of Naturally Attainable Quantities (NAQ) for the Human Animal (in Chapter 5), and you start working with your body instead of against it, you’ll be shocked at how quickly you can drop inches off your waist and pounds on the scale.

We hope you’re eager to dive in. Before you do, let’s take a quick tour of where we’re going, and why.

What’s in This Book

In the next chapter, we’re going to tell you the abbreviated version of our personal stories: how Josh went from 420 pounds to the cover of Runner’s World magazine, and Howard’s less dramatic but still hugely gratifying change from unfit and unhappy chubby hubby to lean and joyful endurance athlete. We want to prove that you can apply these principles and methods and use them to change your life, no matter who you are or how dire or OK your current situation.

After that, we get into the Big Change methodology. We’ll inoculate you against early-stage self-sabotage in Chapter 3. In Chapter 4, you’ll get an overview of the three engines of Big Change: Menu, Movement, and Mindset. Chapter 5 covers the big idea that resolves all your confusion about diet: Naturally Attainable Quantities. We’ll show you how this applies to food, and by extension to physical activity and beyond – and how filtering your questions and challenges through this one big idea simplifies the journey immensely. You won’t need calorie charts or intricate training plans once you master the NAQ of living.

Armed with NAQ, you’ll master the three big elements of Big Change: Menu, Movement, and Mindset.

In Chapter 6, you’ll discover how and what to eat for rapid and effortless weight loss, and how to change tastes and habits to make your new way of eating your new default.

Chapter 7 will show you how to get moving, even if you’re like Josh when he started, jiggle jogging at one mile an hour in the early mornings so no one would see him. And you’ll learn how to gradually ramp up the intensity and duration until you see yourself — stay with us here — as an actual athlete.

Again, this may be the furthest thing from your mind right now, and you may be spluttering BS! as you read this, but we’ve seen it so many times it’s just predictable to us now.

You’re going to not only lose mass, but discover your biological essence, and we promise you it isn’t couch potato. Think about it: how could our species have survived if we couldn’t have roused ourselves to vigorous activity when the need arose?

And — in arguably the most crucial part of the book (Chapter 8)— you’ll discover the mental patterns and habits that fuel long-term success.

The thought patterns that turn weight loss into an afterthought rather than an obsession.

The beliefs that empower us to be truly happy with who we are, so we no longer have to constantly rely on the pleasure hits of junk food to boost our sagging morale.

And you’ll discover how to cultivate those mindsets in yourself.

In Chapter 9, we’ll put it all together into a personalized plan that you can start following today to start seeing and feeling results tomorrow.

Before we dive in, though, we want to invite you to join us in the most important element for making and sustaining a change: community.

Think about it — didn’t it take community to get you overweight and unhealthy?

To supply you with unnatural quantities of hyper-delicious, hyper-fattening foods, and then pat you on the back as you consumed it?

To make you feel bad about yourself, in subtle and not-so-subtle ways?

If you’re as obese as I was, to pigeonhole you into fat person roles, like supportive best friend or life of the party?

To break out of your unhealthy patterns, you need to find a new community.

People who will support you and challenge you.

People who care about you but don’t buy your excuses because they recognize them from their own lives.

People who are five steps ahead of you, who will encourage and inspire you, and people who are five steps behind you, who will call forth your own greatness as you become a role model for others.

And people who will walk/run/jog/swim/bike next to you on your journey and become close allies and friends.

We’ve created such a community, which you can join on Facebook:

Facebook.com/groups/sicktofit

It’s a closed group, which means we and our network of Big Change admins and alumni volunteers approve each and every member. This lets us keep it real and positive and evidence-based and helpful, and avoid the negativity that plagues too many online groups.

READER BONUSES

We want this book to be much more than just information; we want you to use it as a gym to strengthen your own Menu/Movement/Mindset muscles. Like a gym, we can give you the keycard and the towel and the water bottle, but you’ve got to lift the weights.

We’ve included lots of bonus material – think of it as your own personal trainer – to help you get the most out of the concepts and exercises in The Big Change Bible. Audio and video interviews, Menu and Movement demonstrations, in-depth discussions of concepts we introduce here – all designed to help you DO sooner, better, and more sustainably.

You can access all these bonuses at Sickto.Fit.

The bonuses for this chapter are an audio and video about NAQ, and how the concept of Naturally Attainable Quantities can simplify your life and help you make good decisions.

Once you’ve joined and introduced yourself, it’s time to get started on your own Big Change journey.

As your guides, let us introduce ourselves, and explain why you’re in good hands.

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Why You Might Want to Listen to Us

Josh’s Story

Josh LaJaunie here.

I am an unabashed Who Dat (Saints fan) with a last name that has Cajun South Louisiana written all over it.

I grew up on Bayou Lafourche in Thibodaux, Louisiana.

Growing up on the bayou has contributed to a lot of things in my life of which I’m immensely proud:

My relationship with nature, which guides me now more than ever as I consider the right way to live a human life.

The famous bayou can-do, make-do attitude and skill set, born from many trips to our hunting camp far from the nearest store, which allows us to transform an old rowboat, a roll of duct tape, and a can of Flex Seal into a Cajun submarine, and a sack of muddy potatoes into a sauce patot (potato stew).

My love of music, movement, and joyful communal celebration.

The fierce love and loyalty of family.

My coonass (that’s what some of us rural Cajuns proudly call ourselves) heritage also bred into me a relationship with food that was as intense as my love for family, nature, and music. We’re famous for our food: our jambalayas, crawfish boils, étouffées (indescribably rich stews), beignets (deep-fried donuts), and of course our beloved po’ boys (baguettes crammed with strips of the cheapest meat or fish you can find). I was in love with all of it, ate it all the time, the more the better.

Even as I ballooned to north of 400 pounds. Even as I quit football, dropped out of college, started dealing drugs to pay for my growing cocaine habit — food was always my favorite pacifier, helping me ignore my values and ambitions along with my snowballing misery and shame.

Not that you could have picked me out of a crowd of my kin in those days. My bayou brothers and sisters are a hefty lot, celebrating our love of rich, sweet, salty, fatty, and highly processed foods three times a day, if not more.

My grandfather, Bam Bam, my role model in everything, weighed 380 pounds. My brother Dustin tipped the scales at 430 pounds. My mom and dad combined weight was 700 pounds. If normal is what you see when you look around, then my morbidly obese 49.9 body mass index (BMI) was well within acceptable range. I was just a good eater in a culture where consumption is idolized, and every problem can be soothed with food.

Of course, I was never happy with my weight. Being a big guy may have been an asset on the high school football team, but it was always the quarterback and running backs who garnered the adoration of the girls. I tried to compensate by being the larger-than-life funny guy, the best friend, the guy who could score beer or weed, who could put together the wildest party, and who knew the best fishing spots and deer camps.

During my high school senior beach trip to Cancun, I was so self-conscious about my 300-pound body that I was a total stick in the mud. I wouldn’t go to the beach or the pool. I told my