WEIGHT LOSS CONFUSION IN AMERICA

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO BEAT THE CONFUSION, LOSE THE WEIGHT, AND KEEP IT

MIKE STARKS CEO, PERSONAL TRAINER FOOD™

WEIGHT LOSS CONFUSION IN AMERICA

What you need to know to beat the confusion, lose the weight, and keep it off forever.

Mike StarksCEO and Founder, Personal Trainer Food™

Personal Trainer FoodFort Worth, Texas

www.PersonalTrainerFood.com

DISCLAIMER: NO MEDICAL ADVICE PROVIDED.

The content in this book and any information (including but not limited to: newsletters, social media, images, emails, online chats, and telephone calls, herein referred to as ‘information’) provided by Personal Trainer Food, it’s agents, employees, attorneys, or representatives, is provided for informational purposes only, and is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice.

This dietary program is not sold for use by children under the age of 18. The dietary needs of minor children are different than adults. You should consult your physician or other qualified health provider before beginning this or any other dietary program. At any time you have questions regarding a medical condition, you should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health care provider.

None of the contents of this book or any other information provided by Personal Trainer Food are intended to be relied upon for medical advice, treatment or diagnosis. Any opinions expressed in this book or any information provided by Personal Trainer Food, are solely the opinions of the authors. Neither Personal Trainer Food, nor their affiliated companies, nor any of their employees assumes any liability for the contents of any materials provided in this book or any information provided by Personal Trainer Food. Reliance upon any opinion or advice provided in this book, on the website, via telephone, online chat, or email is at your own risk.

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Publisher: Personal Trainer Food350 Garden Acres DriveFort Worth, TX 75140

For my wife, my daughters, and anybody who seeks to live a healthy, happy life.

CHAPTER 1 CONTENTSHow One Dumb Question Can Change Your Life ........................................................................................................... 5My Journey To The Dark Side Of Obesity (And Weirdness) ........................................................................................... 6Coffee Cans And The Beginning Of Obesity In America ................................................................................................. 7Occam’s Razor: How And Why America Got Fat ........................................................................................................... 8What Do Sugar And Cigarettes Have In Common? ...................................................................................................... 10Call Me Crazy But Read This Anyways ......................................................................................................................... 11The Truth Bomb About Calories .................................................................................................................................. 12Egyptian Mummies And Vegetarian Diets ................................................................................................................... 13From Fittest To Fattest— The Fastest Way Possible ................................................................................................... 14Confusion Vs. Clarity In The Weight Loss World .......................................................................................................... 15Personal Trainer Food is not your typical weight loss plan. ........................................................................................ 17More About Mike Starks .............................................................................................................................................. 18

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HOW ONE DUMB QUESTION CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFEThere are moments in a man’s life when the look from a woman can stop the rotation of the earth itself.

And I’ll never forget that day.I was sitting on our bed watching college football when my wife Lara ran

into the bedroom. She was beyond excited to meet some girlfriends that evening. As she was changing her shirt I glanced over and noticed she had on her $300 designer maternity pants.

I asked “Honey it’s been six months since you had the baby, why are you still wearing your maternity pants?” And then it occurred. The Look.

My lips had really wanted to say “You are the prettiest woman I have ever seen.” Yet those other words fumbled out instead.

Time stood still. The game ball spun infinitely in mid-pass on the TV. Lara just stared at me.

She sighed (finally), and deliberately replied “I can’t lose weight like I used to… it’s getting harder and harder.” …there was no anger, but I could detect her frustration and resign.

She finished buttoning her top, which covered the elastic portion of her maternity pants, and left to meet her girlfriends.

While Lara was gone, I thought about how she felt.That’s when it struck me: God gave Lara such a big heart that she was

always putting her family and friends in front of herself.I realized that she was struggling because she had no time to take care

of herself. So she would skip meals and then graze on low-fat, low-calorie stuff throughout the day. Eating a raisin here, some trail mix there, a cup of yogurt or a sandwich with organic honey and peanut butter with whole wheat crackers, and so on.

At night, she would add up the calories and determine how many she had left for dinner. But, starving and exhausted from the day’s work, she would head into the kitchen and within the blink of an eye find leftovers like pizza, cake, and anything else that was easily available. And maybe even a glass of wine, too.

That’s when the perfect game plan came to me.When she came home that night, I proposed this to her: “Lara, every

Sunday, I will cook up a bunch of meats and vegetables, put them in bags,

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and freeze them for you. All you have to do is grab a meat and vegetable, nuke it for a minute and get on with your day. And let’s just walk for exer-cise— 20 minutes every day. I will walk with you.”

She’s smart enough to know that I had just volunteered to do all the cooking and cleaning. But little did she know that was part of my plan!

5 months later and 55lbs lighter, I watched my wife happily put her ma-ternity pants on eBay and strut around with confidence in her pre-baby pants and outfits. Her self-esteem was through the roof.

We were both amazed that by simply eating basic foods like meats, veg-etables and eggs that she could lose so much weight without killing herself in the gym. Could it really be this simple?

At that time, I was just a curious guy, not the CEO of a weight loss com-pany. I had nothing to gain or lose. But now I was on a mission. I simply had to know why something I thought was so obvious was being overlooked.

I decided to test out my theory of weight loss simplicity on another group of incredibly busy women: teachers. 15 teachers at a school volun-teered to take the challenge and eat this way for 6 weeks if I provided the food for free.

The results?In 6 weeks, all 15 teachers lost between 13 and 24 pounds eating the

way Lara did.Why is it that America is doing the exact opposite of what worked so

easily for my wife and this group of teachers? Doctors, the media, and fad diets tell us instead to eat low-cal, restrict fat, exercise hard, and above all: be mentally tough.

Actually, it’s pretty easy to see why none of that works— who wants to lose weight when it’s that hard?!

MY JOURNEY TO THE DARK SIDE OF OBESITY (AND WEIRDNESS)If you know me at all, you know that I cannot stand studies. That’s because there are many so-called studies that support just about anything you can think of.

So it should come as no surprise that I was not satisfied with my own study. Could it be that I was wrong? I HAD to know more.

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I dove into the depths of Google and into the dark side of obesity in America and began to see a disturbing pattern.

Before I share what I found, let me say I believe that some of the best assessments we have today on obesity are not based on the bulk of the studies, clinics, or experiments you find on the Internet.

There’s a ton of bias out there that we’ll cover a bit later on.However, we do have some data we can look at— such as the incidence

of disease that occurs over time in a population, or between different pop-ulations. This amounts to the cumulative data we can observe from millions of people over decades, hundreds, and even thousands of years of histori-cal civilizations.

It’s a mountain of information. But I am a huge believer in Occam’s ra-zor—that the simplest path is often the best path. It’s very useful in cutting the BS.

Weirdly in America, this principle has been ignored.As I asked previously, how (and why) are all the experts missing the

mark so badly? We have made a mess of weight loss and fitness theory, it’s all too complex, convoluted, and confusing. America is the most nutritional-ly educated country in the world and oddly enough, our obesity rates have not dropped.

Well, we’ve done this before… Remember when everyone smoked? Yep. Me too.

My parents smoked when I was younger. Most of their friends and neighbors smoked too.

If you are somewhere around my age, you’ll also recall how TV shows from the 1950s frequently showed doctors dragging away on a cancer stick in hospitals, the exam room, or while reviewing their patient’s chart.

It’s funny today, but our doctors really did smoke like that in real life, too. At that time, the entire medical community agreed that smoking was harmless. And why should they think any differently? There were plenty of studies that ‘proved’ that smoking had no serious effects on health.

Yet lung cancer and heart disease were soaring in America.But we ignored the signs because the experts and the government had

convinced us that smoking was safe. It was one of the grossest misdiagnos-es ever.

And this led to an even bigger misdiagnoses that has put everyone at risk today.

…even if you have never smoked a single cigarette.

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COFFEE CANS AND THE BEGINNING OF OBESITY IN AMERICAWith smoking ruled out of the equation, the experts had to find some other diagnosis for heart disease, the number one killer in America.

To do so, they took extreme measures— and went after our coffee cans.No, no, no, you don’t need freak to out! Your coffee is safe, trust me.But— if you are around my age or older, you too will recall how when you

were a kid, there was a Folgers can that sat on everyone’s kitchen counter, right next to the stove. It didn’t contain any coffee at all. Instead, it was full of rendered lard and grease from cooking meats.

My mom used it to keep foods from sticking to the pan, and to add flavor to our meals. This was back before vegetable oils such as Crisco, and canola oil were widely available. And even if she could have bought those things, why would Mom waste money on that when the more economical thing to do was to save the fats from meats?

I can still see my Mom digging a big spoon into the stiff animal fat and slapping it in the skillet. Every household in America ate this way.

As a matter of fact, for as far back as we can remember, humans have used animal fat for cooking food.

Despite this, animal fat consumption had been on the decline in the U.S. since about 1946.1 But in the 60’s, the experts started inexplicably pointing at fat consumption as the cause of heart disease.

And fat became America’s public health enemy #1.What were they on to?After observing how southern Italy had the highest concentration of

100 year olds, American scientist Ancel Keys determined that their pas-ta-rich Mediterranean diet must be offering some form of protection from heart disease.2 His Seven Countries Study further seemed to show that high cholesterol was strongly related to heart disease.3

In 1955, Keys proposed this hypothesis to the World Health Organiza-

1 http://www.usda.gov/factbook/chapter2.pdf2 Interestingly, Ancel Keys also noted that the high consumption of carbohydrates from pasta made the ‘Italian working class women fat.’ But a huge flaw here: this study was conducted post-war during lent, when meat was scarce. The diet Ancel observed was not the typical Italian diet! 3 Ironically, the 1968, 1993, and 1998 follow up studies of the landmark Seven Countries Study, (the same study that triggered our fat-phobia) confirmed with increasing levels of confidence that it is smoking, not fat that directly causes heart disease.

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tion: that eating fat gives you heart disease.This was the start of the hysteria as the American Heart Association

leapt at Key’s claims and told people that butter, lard, eggs, and beef lead to heart disease.

It wasn’t long before all the experts believed people were having heart attacks because they were eating too much fat and cholesterol.

But they had a problem with this hypothesis. Scientists were failing mis-erably to prove that big juicy steaks increase cholesterol levels.4,5 And further-more, they neglected to explain how our fat consumption had been declin-ing while heart disease was increasing.

Nonetheless, our problems seemed to be solved as the death rate from heart disease started declining from the 60’s on. But this trend is better explained by the invention of CPR, improvements in emergency care, and long-term treatment of coronary heart disease.

The prevalence of heart disease was still soaring.6

As we abandoned fat in 1960, only 13.4% of the population was obese.⁷ Within a few short decades 38% of Americans became obese.

With the supposed success in decreasing deaths from heart disease, our belief system about fat was shaped. Fat was indicted, given a life sentence, and exiled from our diets.

OCCAM’S RAZOR: HOW AND WHY AMERICA GOT FATLet’s round up a few undeniable facts. For the past 50 or so years:

Animal fat consumption has declined.Calorie consumption has only slightly increased by about 5%.So if fat consumption and total caloric intake has not made us fat, what

has?To arrive at the answer, we might want to ask ‘what is it that we are

4 The Framingham Study found only a weak link for fat consumption and heart disease, but in 1992, William Castelli, head of the Framingham operation cast doubt on even that—he said that those in the study who ate the most fat and calories weighed the least and were the most active.5 The 1972 MRFIT study did show that those who ate a low fat diet had a marginal reduction in heart disease. But they left out the part of the study that also said, death from ALL CAUSES is higher for those who eat a low-fat diet.6 http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/documents/factbook/2012/chapter47 http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/hestat/obesity_adult_13_14/obesity_adult_13_14.htm

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doing differently today than we did 50 years ago?’Now, before you spit out the ‘we are less active’ answer, I want to re-

spectfully challenge you.Ready?55.3 million Americans have gym memberships, logging more than 5

billion visits in 2015.8 Back in the 50’s and 60’s, going to the gym and doing a bunch of sweaty exercise wasn’t the stylish thing to do. In fact, it was considered bad for you! As I’ve already mentioned, nobody was particularly fat.9

With fat consumption, total calories, and exercise ruled out of the equa-tion, what do we look at next?

Back to Occam’s razor. Among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected…

A few years ago, I took a helicopter tour of Hawaii. As I gazed out the window, the pilot pointed to all the sugar cane lazily swaying in the breeze below. It struck me—just how much sugar we are bombarding our bodies with since the industrialization of agriculture in 1940.

And sure enough, if you pull the data, you see an unmistakable spike:

Image credit: http://www.indiana.edu/~oso/Fructose/History.html

As you can see on the chart, processed foods and sugars have simply not been present for 99.99% of human history.

Before agriculture, our ancestors were lucky to consume 20 teaspoons

8 http://www.ihrsa.org/about-the-industry/9 Now, don’t get me wrong, I do think that moderate exercise is good for your health. But how much exercise we do (or don’t do) is not the reason we get fat. In fact, it may be making us fatter. I’ll show you how that works in later chapters.

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of sugar in an entire year. Today, Americans knock back 32 teaspoons of sugar a day!

That incredible shift has happened in just the last 70 years:

Image credit: Image credit: http://www.indiana.edu/~oso/Fructose/History.html

Let’s put these facts together:The manufacturing process of sugar and flour has improved tremen-

dously.The consumption of sugar has skyrocketed.The consumption of flour has skyrocketed.To see the effect of increased consumption of sugar, flour, and pro-

cessed foods, let’s take a look at different populations:Those that consume predominantly natural foods (like meats, vegeta-

bles, nuts, and dairy) have very low disease and obesity rates.Those that consume animal fats (yes, even saturated fats) tend to weigh

less, are more active, and live longer.Those that consume excessive sugar and processed carbohydrates see

an increase in obesity, heart disease, hypertension, syndrome X, and type 2 diabetes.

How obesity started in our country seems pretty clear. It’s related to our massive spike in consumption of sugar and refined grains like flour.

But when we want to lose weight, what do we do? The exact thing that causes weight gain— we cut fat and do little to reduce sugar and processed carbohydrates.

Why we do this is not particularly clear until you pore over some old industry meeting notes.

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WHAT DO SUGAR AND CIGARETTES HAVE IN COMMON?Recall, we believed smoking was okay from 1900 to 1960. Today we know that as far back as 1953 tobacco companies knew about the health hazards of smoking. To keep selling cigarettes, they covered up those adverse health effects and misled the public with deceptive marketing, and lies.

It was the crime of the century, right?What we didn’t know is that before tobacco, another industry was do-

ing the same thing...In 1943, the Sugar Association was formed with a mission to undermine

any research that said we should reduce sugar consumption. As a matter of fact, they set out to destroy the idea that sugar makes you fat by running ads that promoted sugar as a ‘sensible approach to weight control’ in 1947.

Before this time, everybody knew that if you had some weight to lose, all you had to do was to cut back on potatoes, pasta, corn, sugars, and flour. This amounted to a diet that was 40% fat calories, and it kept Americans naturally lean. But our conventional wisdom was countered with sugar ads asking “Are you getting enough sugar to keep your weight down?”

In 1954, the Sugar Research Foundation’s (SRF) president Henry Haas outlined how the heart disease scare could be used to increase sugar’s mar-ket share—if they could get Americans to eat a diet that was only 20% fat, they could sell more ‘low-fat’ sugar. They went into high gear to influence and sponsor studies that encouraged us to ditch our high-fat diets in favor of low-fat ones.

And here’s where things get really interesting…As early as 1960 John Yudkin, a leading UK nutritionist was already

blowing the whistle on sugar, stating that it was sugar, and not fat that was promoting heart disease.

The sugar industry called him a quack.By 1975, just when biochemist Walter Pover was uncovering how sugar

causes high cholesterol, the SRF responded by spending millions of dollars to fund studies that linked heart disease to fat consumption instead.

Just like the tobacco companies, sugar companies have misled us.Like smoking, sugar is known to increase your risk of dying from heart

disease—even if you aren’t obese or have never smoked in your life. But compared to smoking, sugar seems to have a more direct effect on heart

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disease risk.When we stopped eating fat, we put our health at greater risk by replac-

ing those calories with sugar. As sugar and flour consumption increased, our waistlines started growing— and heart disease is still the #1 killer in the U.S.

The data is hard to ignore or cover up anymore.

CALL ME CRAZY BUT READ THIS ANYWAYSWhat I am about to tell you is difficult for most people in America to believe because it has been drilled into our heads for the past 40 years. But you must understand this or you will not be able to lose weight, ever.

Are you ready for this?Eating fat does not create body fat.There I said it.Classify me as another quack. Post or tweet that Mike Starks is a rule

breaker who hates authority. Go ahead and say that the CEO of Personal Trainer Food has no clue what he is talking about10

…or you can read on to see why I am making this crazy claim.Interestingly enough, in the 70’s, many biochemistry experiments

proved that consumption of fat cannot create fat cells. It simply cannot happen.

Yet those biochemistry experiments were overlooked because at that time, fat was our dietary villain. The experiments surely must be wrong! So in the late 70’s, Americans continued decreasing their consumption of fat while obesity continued its assault on America.

I’m here to tell you that those biochemists weren’t wrong.Go ahead and eat the fat on bacon, it won’t create fat on your body. It’s

like saying if you drink a coke, your skin will turn brown. Meat fat cannot create fat.

I know what you’re thinking. “But FAT is fattening because it has more CALORIES!”

My answer to you is going to be outrageous…

10Favor: If you choose to post crazy things about me, all I ask is that you put a picture of Brad Pitt by my name. People may dislike the things I say but at least they will have a good mental image of me!

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Calories don’t make you fat.Look, calories are simply the measurement of heat exchange. It was

Nicolas Clement who between 1819 and 1824 introduced the concept of calories in lectures about steam engines. The word ‘calorie’ jumped over to nutrition science in 1879 as a way to discuss human energy needs.

To measure food calories, you use a bomb calorimeter. It’s a metal con-tainer that has the purpose of isolating the food from the rest of the uni-verse. First, you seal the food in the calorimeter and submerge it in water. Then burn the food up inside the container. As you do this, you measure the temperature change of the water surrounding the container— and voila! Now you can calculate how many calories are in your food.11

Now, caloric theory goes something like this: eat more than you exert and you gain weight, eat less than you exert and you lose weight. People who tout this theory say you can’t argue with them because IT’S THE LAW OF THERMODYNAMICS.

I disagree.

THE TRUTH BOMB ABOUT CALORIESLet’s start with the obvious. Are you a machine? Is it your body’s function to produce steam like Clement’s engines? No?

Okay, so it’s probably also safe to assume that you aren’t a sealed metal container that is perfectly isolated from the universe either. So when food comes into contact with your body, it is dissolved in acids, interacts with cells, triggers hormones, builds tissues, grows hair, comes out of your pores, is eliminated as waste, and does all sorts of very interesting things besides producing heat.

It should make sense then that if we are talking about a bunch of bio-chemical reactions that the outcome of a reaction is dependent on the different chemicals reacting. Sugar has a well-documented outcome of in-creasing insulin. Fat doesn’t increase insulin, but it does have an outcome of building things like brain cells.

What doesn’t make sense is assigning 4 calories per gram to sugar and

11 Today, those values are captured in USDA and industry tables. When food manufacturers make an item for market, they use those tables to indirectly calculate calories according to the content of the food.

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9 calories per gram to fat and saying that even with entirely different out-comes, the only things they do in your body is to strictly create energy for heat and motion or get stored on your belly and thighs as fat.

The tired saying that Calories in = Calories out simply isn’t true for your body.

But that’s not what the nutritional world would have you believe. Why? Because calories make money. Companies build and brand entire lines of food based on your belief in low-calorie labels.

Their formula works like this: Low-Fat + Low-Calorie = Lots of Money. Don’t believe me? Look at Nabisco’s 100 Calorie pack (like the ones my wife was eating before she lost weight). Did you pay more for that cute little green label? How small is the serving size?

Why do we buy this low-fat, low-calorie theory?Close your eyes and think about eating a large steak with some fat on

it. See the meat and fat going into your stomach then being converted into fat on your butt or thighs? Or see the fat going into your blood stream and making big greasy streaks in your arteries?

It’s very easy to conceptualize therefore its believable and an easy sale. But just because it sounds biologically plausible does not mean it’s a fact.

Now that we are over these beliefs about fat and calories, there’s one other misconception we need to tackle in order to understand weight loss and good nutrition.

EGYPTIAN MUMMIES AND VEGETARIAN DIETSSugar is not the only food that triggers fat storage. We touched on flour before, so by now it’s not too hard to imagine that flour can make you fat.

But you already know that because back in the 70s and 80s you and/or your parents switched to whole wheat bread and started eating more fruit.

Uh huh… go ahead and say it. “Wait... Mike, what’s wrong with THOSE? So where do fruits and whole grains fit in?”

I was afraid you were going to ask that.On the fertile banks of the Nile, Egyptians grew and ate an abundance

of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Meat was rarely eaten as animals

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were valued more for doing work than as food. Aside from some dates and honey, there were few sweeteners used in their food.

Even as you compare the Pharaohs to the poorest slaves, their diets were pretty much the same. They ate a low-fat, whole grain, and near veg-etarian diet— a modern-day (politically correct) dietician’s dream come true.

Except for one thing.Despite the absence of refined sugar and flour, Egyptian mummies

show that they suffered from obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and tooth decay similar to more modern civilizations who eat sugar!

That means that carbs—even when they aren’t refined can have a very negative impact on your health.

By comparison, low-carb, high-fat meat-eating civilizations and Paleo-lithic ancestors did not exhibit these diseases.

There’s a lot of hype today about how meat consumption can kill you. It’s just not true; the risk is negligible when you look at the basis of these claims.

You are far more likely to die from the effects of sugar consumption than meat consumption. And when meats and animal fats are present in your diet, you are less likely to be overweight or suffer from poor health.

FROM FITTEST TO FATTEST— THE FASTEST WAY POSSIBLEWould you be surprised if I told you that the United States is NOT the fat-test nation on the planet?

Let’s zoom in on the tiny islands that dot the Pacific Ocean to learn how rapidly eating the wrong foods can damage your health.

With their native diet of fish, island animals, vegetables, and limited fruit, the Pacific Islanders were some of the fittest, healthiest people in the world.

That is until they were visited or colonized by Western countries and taught how to eat ‘healthier.’ The islanders quickly developed a taste (and dependence) on sugar, flour, white rice, canned fruits, soft drinks, and beer.

Since World War Two, they have ditched their native diet entirely. If they do catch fish today, it isn’t eaten. They trade it away for processed

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foods.It takes only twenty years for obesity and diabetes to become prevalent

in a population that consumes a diet high in sugar and flour. It’s an expo-nential increase from there. The number of overweight or obese people in those islands is now as high as 94.5%! And— 40% of them have cardiovas-cular disease, diabetes, and hypertension.

Here’s the worst part: children as young as 8 are regularly being diag-nosed with type two diabetes. To be clear, you are not born with type two diabetes; it’s induced by your diet. These young kids have spiked their blood sugars so many times already that they have worn their bodies out!

It isn’t too hard to imagine that with their fast-track dietary change, these people can be wiped out by sugar in a matter of just a few more de-cades. Globesity (the rapid expansion of our global waistline) is happening everywhere high-carb, sugar-laden diets have been adopted.

While we are not the fattest (yet), we are on the same disastrous trend as the Pacific Islanders. With obesity driving the risk, 37% of Americans today have pre-diabetes. Diabetes costs America $322 billion a year, with type two diabetes representing much of the dollars spent. That’s costing every American $1,000 a year, whether you have diabetes or not.

This is entirely preventable, and it must be stopped.The good news is that you can get your weight and type two diabetes

under control in a matter of a few months.12

All you need is a good game plan.

CONFUSION VS. CLARITY IN THE WEIGHT LOSS WORLDWhen I began my research, I didn’t believe that there was a hidden corpo-rate or government agenda out there conspiring to ‘make America fat’ or to mislead Americans. Honestly, I’d still like to believe that.

But as the studies and data piled up high on my desk, it became undeni-able how a few large (and financially persuasive) industries along with their biased studies have swayed our conventional wisdom.

12 That said, you could theoretically return an entire population like the Pacific Islanders to health in less than a generation, couldn’t you? (Yes, I do like to think big.)

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Because of how I grew up, I hadn’t forgotten those simple old fashioned rules. As I said, my wife is a smart woman, but she was utterly confused about eating right. She’s a little bit younger than I am so unlike me, her ideas about weight loss were formed by the low-fat craze.

Even major diet companies are contributing to this confusion by selling expensive processed foods high in sugars and starchy carbs as a weight loss method.

A sad result is that like Lara, so many have lost faith in their ability to lose weight. I mean, if you can’t slim down and get healthy with Weight Watchers, Nutrisystem, or Jenny Craig, you must be destined to be over-weight for the rest of your life, right?

Not true!This is why I started Personal Trainer Food. My mission is to help Amer-

icans get back to the basics of eating well.Weight loss isn’t rocket science. It’s a matter of ignoring all the noise

and confusion out there and eating in a way that your body was designed to be fed. When you eat the right foods, the weight will come off quickly and naturally— without starvation, killer workouts, or worrying about calories.

When I started making meals for Lara and my group of teachers, I learned some very simple and practical rules for success in dieting.

When it comes to the food:a. It has to taste good DELICIOUS.b. There has to be variety in the menu.c. Meals must be satisfying and filling.d. Meals should only take minutes to prepare, eat, and clean up.e. There should be no processed fillers like rice, pasta, and gravies.f. It has to be convenient and affordable.

Today my company ships out millions of pounds of delectable break-fasts, mouthwatering meats, top-grade vegetables, and savory natural snacks to our customers. I know, right? But if you hear the feedback from my customers, our foods really do taste that good.

Everything is minimally processed, generously portioned, and flash-fro-zen for ultimate convenience and affordability. Like Lara, all anyone has to do is heat the entrées for a few minutes in the microwave in order to enjoy a convenient, healthy, and satisfying meal.

What I have also found is that people fail at weight loss because they

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try to follow devilishly difficult programs. Once you learn all the rules and points, the rest of your free time is spent shopping, prepping, cooking, mea-suring, planning, logging, sweating …and stressing over every pound.

Most programs are so complicated and time-consuming that people just give up. If they’ve made any progress at all, they gain the weight back …and then some.

In order for any plan to be successful (weight loss or otherwise), you must be able to do it, even if you are the busiest person on earth.

My game plan to lose weight is very different:a. The plan must not require any thinking so healthy choices become

a lifetime habit.b. The whole concept must be easy to understand, implement and

manage.c. Accountability increases odds of success.d. Starvation and will power cannot be part of the plan.e. Exercise must be simple enough to do so it can

seamlessly be incorporated in your daily routine.

I have tested my food and game plan out with more (yes, MORE) stud-ies, and with thousands upon thousands of my customers. All very busy people, like you and me.

The result is always the same: lasting success and clarity about healthy eating.

After learning how to lose weight, Lara still follows my plan to stay slim and energetic to this day. I too eat this way and easily maintain a 6-7% body fat. And by the way, our lovely daughters eat the same foods we do. This is simply how we live.

My wife and my customers are living proof, and I’m here to say that nothing could be easier or more natural than the Personal Trainer Food Way.

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PERSONAL TRAINER FOOD IS NOT YOUR TYPICAL WEIGHT LOSS PLAN.

Here’s why…

Great Tasting, Full Portions of FoodPersonal Trainer Food offers great tasting food high in protein, good carbs and healthy fats with no heav-ily processed food products. Our food is cooked and flash frozen to preserve freshness and flavor. No fill-ers, hidden sugars, bad carbs or trans fats and low or no gluten.

Fast, Healthy Weight LossThe right foods combined with good routines can lead to quick and healthy weight loss. The proven Personal Trainer food program is designed to help you quickly lose weight the right way and give you a system to keep it off.

A Winning PlanGood habits are the keystone to losing weight. Per-sonal Trainer Food combines great food with daily routines to build healthy habits that help you achieve your goals and maintain your results. No complex points or counting systems involved.

Your Best ValueMany weight loss meal plans can cost over $600 a month! Hidden fees, contracts, support costs and ad-ditional food are commonly required. With Personal Trainer Food, you get better food, free support and free shipping with no hidden fees.

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If you are reading this excerpt and want to learn more about my company or how to lose weight, I invite you to explore the following:www.PersonalTrainerFood.comwww.PersonalTrainerFoodBlog.com

Or chat with one of my Weight Loss Coaches: 1-800-273-1686WeightLossCoach@PersonalTrainerFood.com

MORE ABOUT MIKE STARKSA successful entrepreneur, Mike is the founder and CEO of Fort Worth based Personal Trainer Food, the fastest growing weight loss meal home delivery plan in America.

Mike has a big heart that goes beyond his passion for helping Americans lose weight. In 2015 alone, Personal Trainer Food donated food to Chil-dren's shelters across the country, fed single mothers in need for Mother's Day and gave free food to obese Texas police officers to help them lose weight.