Welcome to The Restaurant Diet, second edition, where my goal is to share my spiritual strength and hope and offer a lifeline to help countless people who are struggling with weight, dieting, self-esteem, codependency, and all the accompanying unpleasant feelings and emotions. Learning to live a spiritual life of service helps us rise above the worldly pervasive nonsense of the ego and negativity and fear so that we may rise above everything we thought we knew about life. This awareness helps us see everything from a “bird’s eye” perspective, and we are able to help guide ourselves and talk to ourselves, almost in the third person, like our higher consciousness is helping us move along this journey by reminding us who we really are, and stopping us from saying or doing things that are not in our best interests. This includes how to go about losing weight and getting healthier.
Living and doing things like losing weight from a higher perspective enables us to take the focus off things like a number on the scale or our outward appearance and helps us to embrace the journey as a lifelong process and a gift. Realizing we are so much more than our physical bodies, we will find it easier to want to live our lives to the fullest, as we discover new and amazing things about ourselves that no diet could ever teach us, such as our true passions, learning who we are on a much deeper level, and no longer sweating the small stuff. We often need reminding in this difficult physical world of deals, deadlines, and disappointments.
Remember, as long as you put your best foot forward and begin your journey, you are better off than you were before. Instead of typical diets that seem to be all about getting to your destination, here the journey is the destination. Working to become a better you is a lifelong process and is far more rewarding than simply losing weight. When you get to know yourself on a deeper level, you will feel good inside, and your insides will match your outsides. Just know that life is about progress, not perfection, and needs to be taken “one day at a time.” Losing the desired weight may seem like the answer to everything you ever wanted. It isn’t. Look inward, find your inner strength, and show the world who you really are! We are all so much more than our bodies or a number on the scale.
“When the Power of Love overcomes the Love of Power, the world will know peace.”
—Jimi Hendrix
The million dollar question I was asked at many of my events was, “Would you do it all again—lose the weight and write a book?”
Do It for the Right Reasons and Never Forget Where You Came From
Yes, losing 10, 20, 50, or 150 pounds, or more is a big challenge and a process, however it is certainly NOT the toughest thing I have ever done. For instance, I learned it is a lot more work and much more challenging for a virtually unknown, first-time author to write and get a first book published than it was to lose 150 pounds in a year. Not that this should discourage you if you are thinking about either writing a book or losing weight, or anything you believe in, for that matter.
As far as my book, it took me six years and several editors, three agents, and lots and lots of money to establish my platform, to produce a marketable title—now known as The Restaurant Diet—find a publisher, promote my book, and travel to book signings, which meant months of flying here, driving there, plus the stress of having events cancelled and rescheduled (three snowstorms interrupted some of my first events in the Northeast).
Despite the fact that I had written my first book from a spiritual place, my message and I had gotten bogged down in the minutiae—logistics, trademarks, lawyers, publicists, agents, press, reviews, astronomical bills, bill collectors, how many copies I sold, hotels, meals, planes, trains, and automobiles—that seemed important, but truly weren’t important in retrospect. I needed to take a step back, take a deep breath, and remember why I did it all, where I came from, and where I wanted to go. Ten years before I nearly died, I never thought I’d lose this much weight or share my story with anyone, or that anyone would want to hear what I had to say. Now, I looked and felt good and was helping people turn their lives around! I needed to show gratitude for the second chance I had been given by remembering where I came from and realizing it is my responsibility to pay it forward.
It would be easy to look back with regret, but that is pointless. Rather than regret, I asked myself: What can I learn from the experience and how can it benefit others?
Aside from sessions with my therapist complaining about the bills, the scheduling problems, and how tired I was of couch surfing and being away from home, and the few chats with my accountants, financial advisor, and publicity team—which frankly could have required a three-drink minimum—I tried to maintain a higher perspective. This was especially tough when I was trying to check into a hotel and the one last credit card I still had credit available on had a fraud alert because I had been in four states in the previous two days.
Instead of sweating what now was obviously “small stuff,” I had to look at what I had accomplished. I saved my own life, lost a ton of weight, totally changed my life, and got a book published! Did I know anyone who had done anything like this? No! I had a right to be proud of myself. I had read somewhere that out of one million books published worldwide every year in English, less than 1 percent sell more than a hundred copies, ever. So, not only did I get published, my book sold way more than a hundred copies, so yes, it was a success. Has my book made any bestseller list, and have I gotten rich? Not yet. Am I stressed over any of it? Not anymore.
I was still conflicted, starting with the fact that I was an attorney and had an MBA, but here I was, a writer, blogger, and “weight loss guru” who was going around talking to people and signing books. The only real credential I had for doing this was the fact that I had in fact lost all this weight and have been working for years to keep it off. At this point in my legal career, I would have likely been a partner in a large law firm and be sitting comfortably with a large retirement portfolio and the ability to jet off anywhere during the two weeks a year I might actually have for vacation. That’s nice, I thought, but there’s a lot more to life. Being true to yourself and rising to the challenge by going after your calling is far more valuable.
Instead of looking at what I didn’t have, I needed to look at what I had instead and be grateful for the unique opportunity I had been given. Sure, I was now also an author and entrepreneur who had not quite yet “made it,” or whatever the heck that means. Yeah, I was pissed off that I didn’t sell ten thousand books the first week—I mean, I hired a Park Avenue PR firm, spent a fortune, and poured nearly every ounce of blood, sweat, tears, and every last cent I had into getting this book published, promoting it, building my platform, and touring around signing book, so this is what I get in return? I haven’t come close to paying myself back yet.
There I was, traveling around and talking about learning to eat out in restaurants, how I made restaurant owners, chefs, and staff partners in my success, and about how my weight loss got started and how my lifestyle continues to evolve—when I began to realize I had gotten way off my spiritual, grateful track. This can happen easily in a crazy, stressful world where we need to find time to eat well, rest, exercise, make money, pay bills, and (hopefully!) find some pleasure. The most important thing I would do differently is to never forget why I started writing a book in the first place. It wasn’t to get rich or famous.
Still, somehow I managed to get caught up in our culture which tells us we need to do x, y, and z, in order to have a successful book launch or tour, and we need to sell x number of copies the first day, week, month, or year. This sounded a lot like my past self-message “I need to lose twenty pounds by Memorial Day,” which sets us up to be in competition with ourselves and with some made up or idealized standard, and we start doing it for the wrong reasons. I started my book project for the right reasons, but, along the way, some of the wrong reasons fed in. I made some mistakes during the process since I had never done anything like this before, and nobody I knew had, so I was learning on the fly, without any roadmap.
In the end, despite the fact that I would have done some