For reference, I have now spent approximately 2 years doing this diet, and will continue it <or something like it> for the rest of my life because it is a very usable "best practice", and without extraneous effort I have lost approximately 56 lbs this year {2015} and am over halfway to a normal size, without making a single sacrifice. I've had every cookie I've wanted in the last two years. I've just gotten smarter about how to want them.
Tim Ferriss, if you ever read this, this is a brief synopsis of why you have a permanent standing offer of equity <in the companies that will be formed to do this>, should you ever be interested.
A “Harajuku Moment” is the moment when something changes from being ‘nice to have’ and becomes 'necessary to survive’. {Edit 11/15: a better definition of "harajuku moment" might be "the moment when a decision can no longer be avoided", or "the moment that changes everything"}
For me, with weight specifically, I’ve had two of these.
The first was in Thailand, about 6-8 months ago {2012-13}. I was living in poverty in Thailand, stealing food to survive, and I had the good fortune to steal a couple of books. You can read more about this in the link I posted, but the gist of it is that I stole a handful of books, including the Song of Ice and Fire series by George Martin (every book except “A Dance With Dragons”), a book called “The Game” by Neil Strauss, and I got the 4 Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss.
I knew within 20 minutes of opening the 4HWW that this book would forever change the course of my life.
See, there are two important parts of the 4HWW. The first deals with something called “Fearsetting”, and the second is something called “Dreamlining”. The second is about setting goals you care about; and the first is about dealing with and mitigating all the things that make you give up on those goals.
So the dreamlining was something I was immediately drawn to. My life, at this point, had nothing but fantasy that was appealing about it. I was having panic attacks several times a week, and I was making half-hearted suicide attempts regularly, usually stopping myself in time to survive by reminding myself that my kids would be left uncared for, because their mother- who I was living with, who was crazy, and who hated/hates me and wanted/wants me to die, has HIV- and she’s an HIV denialist who thinks the whole thing is a conspiracy, and so she refuses to be treated for it.
So this was a situation I wanted no part of, but for a variety of reasons- my lack of legal status in the country, lack of financial independence, commitment to the kids- this was a situation I didn’t see a way out of.
When I first started dreamlining, two things happened. First, it took me out of my shitty existence and let me see, clearly, what the real possibilities were and are- much of the book covers practical tools and methods of achieving various goals. Second, it made continuing this existence even more unbearable, because now I could see what was outside it.
The fearsetting exercises were the nails in the coffin. Because of these, I methodically went through and identified the individual specific things I was afraid of and came up with strategies to avoid these and deal with them. I was afraid of my ex trying to hurt or even kill me: I developed strategies to deal with this. I was worried about the kids and keeping them away from her: this was dealt with. I was worried about her trying to sabotage my future efforts: I decided to be as open and honest as possible about what had happened, and it rapidly became clear to people that she was mentally unstable.
So this was the first “Harajuku snowball”. This led me to realize that I did want to lose 100 lbs. I did want to try doing stand-up comedy. I did want to start a tech startup and make millions of dollars on a piece of technology that would make the world a better place. and I did not want to continue this shitty life instead of reaching those goals.
And so I reached out to my family. They paid for my kids citizenship- in both countries- and their passports, also in both countries- and then they bought tickets for all of us (but the terrible ex) to come home.
My second Harajuku moment came 2 months later, over Christmas. I was gorging on sweets, guzzling eggnog, and getting drunk on cheap box wine every day. A couple times, I bought a giant bag of butterfinger bars and ate the whole bag in one sitting. When my mother made pies for a couple of friends who came over, I stole almost an entire pie. I was just going nuts, and I was watching my waistline explode.
And then, one day, I’d just had enough. I knew I needed to stop dicking around and get a plan of action or I was never going to escape from this- the situation I’m still in- and I had to admit that I needed to start doing *something*.
So I had just downloaded a lot of ebooks on various topics- I got some things on hypnosis, I got a copy of '50 shades of grey’, and I got a digital copy of 4hww. When I got that last one, I found a new book: the 4-hour body. Same author and everything- so I figured, “Why the fuck not?” and pirated that, too. I kind of played with the idea of the author being some kind of fucking schmexpert who’d had one successful book about one topic and figured he could do a book about anything else and that would by successful too, but I could at least read it for laughs before moving on to something more conventional and proven, like the body-for-life program or keto or whatever.
I should mention that I do have a somewhat extensive history of trying different diets. I did weight watchers as a teenager, and so I have some idea of what it means to control portions into manageable quantities, even without counting calories (at the time, the 'point’ system allotted a certain number of points per day, with points calculated by fat, carbohydrate, fiber, and sodium content, among other things). I did body for life a few years later- in my delusional attempt at becoming a navy SEAL, and under the guidance of one of my father’s good friends, who is a genius-level fitness nut and a high-ranking Jujitsu practitioner and so on- and I made some impressive gains (and losses) with that. I know that it’s possible to lose 10-20 lbs a week, because I did this on weight watchers. I know it’s possible to gain strength very quickly, because- at 320 lbs- I was doing sets of 6 pullups from a starting point of not even being able to hang onto the pullup bar for 10 seconds a year (or less?) earlier. When I first moved to Thailand, I lost approximately 60 lbs in the course of about 2 months, and kept it off for two years with no problem.
So when I opened 4hb and saw the same kinds of things I’d seen in myself, I wasn’t surprised by their claims, but by their compiled presence, and the presence (and claims) of things I hadn’t seen before.
And I knew: here was a way for me to go back to these kinds of results, with a cohesive set of described behaviors that would allow me to do different things to reach them.
And in that moment, I knew I no longer had an excuse to be as fat as I was, and so I began.
The first was in Thailand, about 6-8 months ago {2012-13}. I was living in poverty in Thailand, stealing food to survive, and I had the good fortune to steal a couple of books. You can read more about this in the link I posted, but the gist of it is that I stole a handful of books, including the Song of Ice and Fire series by George Martin (every book except “A Dance With Dragons”), a book called “The Game” by Neil Strauss, and I got the 4 Hour Work Week, by Tim Ferriss.
I knew within 20 minutes of opening the 4HWW that this book would forever change the course of my life.
See, there are two important parts of the 4HWW. The first deals with something called “Fearsetting”, and the second is something called “Dreamlining”. The second is about setting goals you care about; and the first is about dealing with and mitigating all the things that make you give up on those goals.
So the dreamlining was something I was immediately drawn to. My life, at this point, had nothing but fantasy that was appealing about it. I was having panic attacks several times a week, and I was making half-hearted suicide attempts regularly, usually stopping myself in time to survive by reminding myself that my kids would be left uncared for, because their mother- who I was living with, who was crazy, and who hated/hates me and wanted/wants me to die, has HIV- and she’s an HIV denialist who thinks the whole thing is a conspiracy, and so she refuses to be treated for it.
So this was a situation I wanted no part of, but for a variety of reasons- my lack of legal status in the country, lack of financial independence, commitment to the kids- this was a situation I didn’t see a way out of.
When I first started dreamlining, two things happened. First, it took me out of my shitty existence and let me see, clearly, what the real possibilities were and are- much of the book covers practical tools and methods of achieving various goals. Second, it made continuing this existence even more unbearable, because now I could see what was outside it.
The fearsetting exercises were the nails in the coffin. Because of these, I methodically went through and identified the individual specific things I was afraid of and came up with strategies to avoid these and deal with them. I was afraid of my ex trying to hurt or even kill me: I developed strategies to deal with this. I was worried about the kids and keeping them away from her: this was dealt with. I was worried about her trying to sabotage my future efforts: I decided to be as open and honest as possible about what had happened, and it rapidly became clear to people that she was mentally unstable.
So this was the first “Harajuku snowball”. This led me to realize that I did want to lose 100 lbs. I did want to try doing stand-up comedy. I did want to start a tech startup and make millions of dollars on a piece of technology that would make the world a better place. and I did not want to continue this shitty life instead of reaching those goals.
And so I reached out to my family. They paid for my kids citizenship- in both countries- and their passports, also in both countries- and then they bought tickets for all of us (but the terrible ex) to come home.
My second Harajuku moment came 2 months later, over Christmas. I was gorging on sweets, guzzling eggnog, and getting drunk on cheap box wine every day. A couple times, I bought a giant bag of butterfinger bars and ate the whole bag in one sitting. When my mother made pies for a couple of friends who came over, I stole almost an entire pie. I was just going nuts, and I was watching my waistline explode.
And then, one day, I’d just had enough. I knew I needed to stop dicking around and get a plan of action or I was never going to escape from this- the situation I’m still in- and I had to admit that I needed to start doing *something*.
So I had just downloaded a lot of ebooks on various topics- I got some things on hypnosis, I got a copy of '50 shades of grey’, and I got a digital copy of 4hww. When I got that last one, I found a new book: the 4-hour body. Same author and everything- so I figured, “Why the fuck not?” and pirated that, too. I kind of played with the idea of the author being some kind of fucking schmexpert who’d had one successful book about one topic and figured he could do a book about anything else and that would by successful too, but I could at least read it for laughs before moving on to something more conventional and proven, like the body-for-life program or keto or whatever.
I should mention that I do have a somewhat extensive history of trying different diets. I did weight watchers as a teenager, and so I have some idea of what it means to control portions into manageable quantities, even without counting calories (at the time, the 'point’ system allotted a certain number of points per day, with points calculated by fat, carbohydrate, fiber, and sodium content, among other things). I did body for life a few years later- in my delusional attempt at becoming a navy SEAL, and under the guidance of one of my father’s good friends, who is a genius-level fitness nut and a high-ranking Jujitsu practitioner and so on- and I made some impressive gains (and losses) with that. I know that it’s possible to lose 10-20 lbs a week, because I did this on weight watchers. I know it’s possible to gain strength very quickly, because- at 320 lbs- I was doing sets of 6 pullups from a starting point of not even being able to hang onto the pullup bar for 10 seconds a year (or less?) earlier. When I first moved to Thailand, I lost approximately 60 lbs in the course of about 2 months, and kept it off for two years with no problem.
So when I opened 4hb and saw the same kinds of things I’d seen in myself, I wasn’t surprised by their claims, but by their compiled presence, and the presence (and claims) of things I hadn’t seen before.
And I knew: here was a way for me to go back to these kinds of results, with a cohesive set of described behaviors that would allow me to do different things to reach them.
And in that moment, I knew I no longer had an excuse to be as fat as I was, and so I began.
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