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TEDx Talks
Published: 2014-03-16
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4yUlJV31Rk
my little brother was very good at a few things from a very young age the first thing he was really good that was making everybody laughed when they're trying like the one time I told me just a little bit of protein after work at they got all excited because he thought I said putting the second thing he was good at was eating large quantities of food
come dinner time it was not uncommon for him to eat most of the adults at the table now as you may have guessed as a five foot nothing little boy there is in fact a downside to regularly and eating full grown men I just eleven years old I can already see that if nothing else changed my little brother was headed for an adolescent life littered with
using an unhealthy eating as his older brother wanted to do something about it as in nutrition dar a kinesiology student with an intense interest in nutrition I knew that I had to do something about it and Nestle I wasn't sure how but I was determined to find a way now in March of two thousand thirteen I broke my leg allows walking to class and I slipped
on some ice yes that is the whole story I was walking there were some mice proof broken leg no lives saved no purses returned no cool story to tell well little did I know as I laid there and I quickly melting puddle of vice waiting for the ambulance to arrive that this moment would forever change life of my little brother after I had a surgery to
attach a small titanium plate and a few screws on my fibula I was given two crutches and told not to put any weight on my leg for two months suppose a unique problem as there is still plenty of snow and ice on the ground I saw two months left of class spread over one the largest campuses in the country so with that in mind I made
one of the decision that any other hardworking student my position would do and I obviously decided to stop going classes now with all this free time from studying at home I've finally figured out how is going to help my little brother I knew that what you needed to do was very simple and very very difficult in practice what he needed to do was change his eating
habits from experience I knew the things that you need to change and the things that you didn't the problem was the communicating Mister somebody also most likely just end up like a childhood game of telephone the message gets passed along but with little miss on understandings and misinterpretations along the way there's not much left of the original message and everybody's just left confused and my little
brother is eating habits are left unchanged so keeping that in mind I made one of the best decisions of my life and I decided to move back home for the next two weeks and make every single male that my little brother would you educating them about proper nutrition along the way while I was at home in the kitchen I often found myself awkwardly trying to maneuver
holding on to two crutches hot pans and sharp knives it was a very busy I also had to make sure to take little breaks every few minutes to make sure the swelling in my ankle wouldn't become unbearable now after just two weeks not only were the results phenomenal but there were other result of a strategy that anybody can use the reason we're able to see such
dramatic and positive results which I'm very excited to share with you later is that we change his environment to match his goal we made is environment work for him instead of against them I simply meant replacing all of the bad options with healthy ones making this transformation making this uncomplicated adjustment enabled us to easily transform his nutrition from the standard American diet ironically referred to from
its acronym sad too wholesome and nutritious without a hitch because of the planning this wasn't the least bit difficult to do when you remove the on healthy options wholesome nutritious food becomes both plan a and planned the beauty of this solution is that it takes will power almost completely out of the equation quite simply if it's not there you can't eat it an added bonus to
this strategy love there's no chips on the counter calling your name it's likely that you just forget about them and completely avoid the feeling of deprivation all at once little bit of a brain black this may sound a little bit too simple to be true but I assure you it's not when you remove the barriers to your success and my little brother's case unhealthy food and
you replaced are you pave the way barrier free the road to success becomes a much smoother ride so set up your environment so that works for you instead of against you the sort to offer any goal for my little brother I was the environment I made all of us food given the right snacks and answered all of us questions but what would that have looked like
if I wasn't there and how can you make this work for you but to be successful you have to minimize the difficult decisions being made say for example you walk out into the lobby and on the left of those tables as delicious chocolate chip cookies squares and everything like on the right side is fresh fruit and vegetables vibrant colors chopped up nicely they're crunchy and you
see now you've been sitting here for two hours so you're starving you have a choice to make should you choose option a on the left or should you choose the wholesome nutritious broccoli on the right I given this given this the %HESITATION scenario I think it would be very hard for most of us to resist the temptation of option a now this is a real life
situation and it's one that happens all the time it's very important because of that reason so when you remove the various your success it will just become a little bit easier for you to not have to make the hard decision in the first place here's how you can make a strategy work for yourself start off by finding out what your personal trigger foods are and make
a promise to not give them in your house anymore so that when the time comes the decision has already been made for you now that's not to say you can never have this was again if you really want one you can always go to the store and buy one or you can keep it so they only having them especially bands such as this don't keep a
stash underneath the cover if you know that they're going to be an issue for you that's how you make your environment work for you instead of against you that's how you make healthy eating the default and not the exception so if you have a personal goal of eating better go home find all your junk food and a neighbor that you're not particularly fond of and give
it all to them the basis of the strategy worked for my little eleven year old brother and I can certainly work for you to let me just finish off by sharing the final results of my little brothers lifestyle change let me also just point though that one main role that I wanted to follow with the change at no point did I want my eleven year old
brother to feel hungry or deprived yourself at work there after the first seven days he lost five pounds after the second week it was eight pounds but it didn't just stop there I went back to write exams and he kept going after twenty days it was ten pounds and by thirty six days he had averaged half a pound a day to top it off at eighteen
