Have you ever decided to go on a diet? 

You’re sitting in front of the television set on a Saturday evening, watching an action movie, awed by the lead actors body and the way it looks, you think to yourself I wouldn’t mind looking like that!

You’re eating a sandwich, and munching on a packet of crisps, it’s the second snack you’ve had since you sat down to watch the movie an hour ago!

You’re feeling sluggish in the face of all the action on the screen when, suddenly, somebody wakes up in you and says…“WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING? JUST LOOK AT YOURSELF, YOU’RE FAT AND OUT OF SHAPE!”

The final icing on the cake is when you become aware of the tummy role which overhangs your tracksuit bottoms, you give it a little squeeze, and within the blink of an eye you start to feel depressed.

The voice inside your head shouts…“YOU’VE GOT TO DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!”

Sound familiar? 

Well, It’s happened to all of us! Somebody wakes up inside us with a totally different picture of who we should be and what we should be doing. In this case, let’s call him The Skinny Guy.

Who’s The Skinny Guy? 

The Skinny Guy is the one who uses words like: discipline, hard-work, exercise, organisation. He wants the best for us, takes no prisoners, is self righteous, and a compulsive tyrant!

The Skinny Guy hates fat people, despises laziness and can’t stand sitting around. Instead he needs to be on the move and taking positive action.

ALERT! The Skinny Guy has just taken over. Watch out…. things are about to change!

Before you know it, your at the shopping mall buying new gym gear (trainers, shorts, tracksuit bottoms, you name it!), you’ve signed up to the gym, cleared out all the junk food from your cupboards and replaced it with healthy, wholesome foods!

Suddenly you’re feeling empowered… “LET’S DO THIS SH*T!”. Things are going to be very different around here. You have a new lease on life. You hire a personal trainer, and plan your new regime: up at 6am, run 4 miles, down a protein shake, take a cold shower, cycle to work, home by 6pm, go to the gym for personal training, eat a chicken salad, then bed at 10pm… your worlds already a different place!

A New Person Emerges… 

You’ve actually pulled it off! After a couple of days, you’ve lost 3 pounds! High five! You go to sleep dreaming of your new body, imagining what that suit or dress is going to look like when you’ve lost all the extra timber from your love handles. Why not? The way things are going, it’s only a matter of time.

After a week in your new found identity, you’re feeling ‘frickin’ awesome, people are starting to notice… “are you working out? what’s your secret?”. You hop on the scales and you’ve lost 8 pounds! Incredible. You look great, your a ‘lean, mean, fat burning machine!’

The next week you work even harder. You workout an extra 30 minutes each morning and the same in the evening. After another productive week as the new you…

You’re itching to hop on the scales. You strip down, shivering in the bathroom, filled with excitement, what are they going to say this week… ‘-1lb? -10lbs? -20lbs?’

You lightly step on the scale, look down, you look at the numbers…nothing. You haven’t lost a pound! WTF? Your exactly the same as you were last week.

Hijacked…

You feel like shit! You begin to feel resentment.. “after all that work?”. All that sweat and effort, the money I spent on healthy foods, the early get ups, and then…nothing? This isn’t fair. But you shrug it off and say to yourself “tomorrows another day!”.

Although you feel dejected you still have some determination, You go to bed, vowing to work harder tomorrow. But somehow something has changed within.

You don’t know what’s changed until Monday morning.

The weather is bleak, It’s raining.

The room is cold.

Something feels different.

What is it?

For a minute or two you can’t quite put your finger on it.

And then you get it: somebody else has hijacked your body.

It’s THE FAT GUY!

He’s back in FULL FORCE!

And he doesn’t want to get up early, go for a run or eat eggs for breakfast!

“Run? Are you kidding me?” The Fat Guy doesn’t want anything to do with that. He want’s the extra hr in bed and the only exercise he’s interested in is “Mars bar bicep curls!’

All of a sudden you wake up an hour before work.. “Holy crap i’m going to be late!” there’s no time to cycle or make breakfast, you’ve got to take the car again. You put your bike in the shed, and stop of at the petrol station for a coffee and something to pick your low mood up… a cake!

The image of you looking ‘amazeballs’ in your suit or dress has gone; the sweats, barbells, running shoes are gone, and your bike is now in the shed accumulating dust.

The Fat Guy is back. He’s running the show again.

It happens to us all! Time and time again. Because we’ve been deluded into thinking we’re really one person. When in reality we have two personalities ingrained within.

The Skinny Guy and The Fat Guy are two totally different personalities, with different needs, different interests, and different lifestyles.

That’s why they don’t like each other. They each want totally different things. One want’s instant gratification (The Fat guy) and the other wants to prosper in the long run (The Skinny guy)

The problem is that when you’re The Skinny Guy, you’re totally consumed by his needs, his interests, his lifestyle.

And then something happens—- the scale disappoints you, the weather turns cold, somebody offers you a cake or sandwich.

At that moment, The Fat Guy, who’s been waiting in the wings all this time, grabs your attention. Grabs control.

You’re him again.

In other words, when you’re The Skinny Guy you’re always making promises for The Fat Guy to keep.

And when you’re The Fat Guy, you’re always making promises for The Skinny Guy to keep.

Is it any wonder we have such a tough time keeping our commitments to ourselves?

It’s not that we’re indecisive or unreliable; it’s that each and everyone of us is a whole set of different personalities, each with his own interests and way of doing things. Asking any one of them to defer to any of the others is inviting a battle or even a full-scale war.

Anyone who has ever experienced the conflict between The Fat Guy and The Skinny Guy (and haven’t we all?) knows what I mean. You can’t be both; one of them has to lose. And they both know it.

Helping the Skinny Guy Within you…

Over the forthcoming weeks and months i’m going to be blogging, and writing about ways to stay as the Skinny Guy. I’m going to be sharing tips on motivation and mindset. I’ll be doing this on my Facebook page, and blog.

I’m not doing this for any money, i’m doing this for free. My mission in life is to “Make the World a Healthier, Happier place” and nothing will stop me in my quest.

If you’re on a mission to ‘become the best version of yourself’ – then I’d strongly encourage you to follow me over the next few months.

If you haven’t already… Hit ‘LIKE’ on the Facebook page & head over to my blog page – there’s over 300 FREE articles and growing!

Nick 🙂