How I Lost 35 Pounds In Spite Of My Fat Genes

Igor: Hi, my name is Igor Kheifets and this is the List Building Lifestyle, the only podcast
which delivers cutting edge conversion strategies from the online trenches straight to
your earbuds. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
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List Builder’s Survival Guide” at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival and now
once again it’s time to claim your List Building Lifestyle.

Welcome back to another edition of The List Building Lifestyle with your host,
Igor Kheifets. I wasn’t born fat. I was actually a skinny kid growing up, all the
way until the age of about seven, but by the age of 12, I was already 35 pounds
overweight. I was basically a fat-ass. My parents always told me that it was
because I was big-boned, and because my dad was fat, and because his mom was fat,
and her mom was fat, so basically, I was born into a generation of fat bastards,
and so on and so forth. So basically, what they were telling me is that I was
supposed to accept the idea that it was okay for me to be fat just like my
dysfunctional siblings were. And over the years, this idea morphed into a powerful
belief that life dealt me a bad hand, and that I’m genetically designed to be fat.

Now, this is a really powerful belief for a kid that’s just 12 years old, because
that crap kind of sticks with you for the rest of your life. But you know what? At
least I was smart. I got straight As in school, and that was enough to carry my
self-esteem through my early adulthood, so I didn’t mind being fat most of the
time, until it was not enough, until I hit a tipping point, and the tipping point
became that sensitive time when I realized that being fat prevented me from
getting the approval of the species of the opposite sex. Being smart was no longer
enough; I had to be smart and look good, or at least look good enough to feel
comfortable in my own skin.

That’s when I started my on-and-off battle with my belly tires and my man-boobs,
and it took me about seven years to get in shape and stay there. And would you
like to know one of the biggest things I learned? It’s not the only reason I lost
a lot of weight and I’m able to easily keep it off, although it’s probably one of
the primary reasons why I was able to achieve that; It’s one of those 80/20
things. But it is important, and it is important that you know what it is, because
it will probably generate much better results for you in the long term, better
than the diet you’re on, or your fasting habits, and all kinds of crazy stuff like
that.

So if you’re someone who’s been taking supplements and they don’t work for you, or
if you’re someone who can’t stick to a diet, this one tip can quite literally make
all of these problems go away. Now, that’s the marketer in me talking, of course,
I’m dramatizing it a little bit, but what kind of marketer would I be if I didn’t,
right? But here’s the big secret: If you don’t want to eat cake, or if you know
that you have weakness when it comes to cakes, then don’t put cake in the fridge,
period. Create an environment where cakes are not a part of it. In other words,
make sure that you don’t rely on your willpower to not eat cake, even though it’s
right there and you know it’s right there. Make sure you create an environment
where cake doesn’t exist, in which case it will be so much easier for you to not
eat the cake, because to get it, you’ll have to put your clothes on, go to your
local Longo’s or whatever, Walmart, and to get all those sweets.

But what I see people do is they say they want to lose weight, they say they want
to get in shape, but somehow, they’re always in near proximity to sweets, candies,
sugars, sodas, and all that stuff. Like, seriously, if you know that if there’s a
cake near you, you will probably eat it, then just don’t be near cakes, as simple
as that. If you’re walking or commuting to your work, and you know you’re passing
a Tim Hortons or Starbucks or whatever, and you always go there to get a donut,
then guess what? Try to find another route to get to your job, right? I mean, it
just makes more sense to do it that way. I mean, for the longest time, I couldn’t
lose weight, and one of the reasons is because I lived in a house where, besides
myself, no one else was committed to the idea. Right? I lived in a home where both
my mom and my dad ate lots and lots of unhealthy foods, so it took me a long time
before I could structure a routine where I wasn’t coming across things that would
distract me, that put me off track off of my diet. So now, now that I live on my own
with my family, and I get to call the shots in my own home sometimes, when it comes
to food, we’re really careful about what food makes it to the house.

And I often notice — and this has been especially true since my wife got pregnant
with our second child — I often notice that sometimes, things appear in my house
that are not supposed to be here, like candy bars, and all kinds of different
Russian sweets, and stuff like that, that my wife really loves, and unless I’m
really adamant about throwing all these things away, somehow they end up in my
mouth, even though I like to think about myself as someone who has really strong
willpower. And if you talk to any of my friends, they will probably tell you that
I do have a strong willpower muscle, and it is like a muscle. The problem with
that is it is a muscle, it gets tired, and so unless you … Like, if you always
strain it, if it’s always strained to the max, and you always have to resist the
chocolate, you’re always passing that chocolate in the kitchen and you always have
to resist it, at some point, you’re having a bad day, you had a failure come up,
or you had a big challenge, or you just feel tired, you’ll eat that chocolate.
You’ll just eat it because it’s there.

So I highly recommend creating an environment that is productive,
that is helpful, that helps you achieve the goal rather than gets in the way of
that, and you trying to achieve your goal by quite literally fighting the
environment itself, which is the way I used to do it. I used to fight the
environment. I used to really feel that in order for me to feel good about
achieving an outcome, I have to be able to achieve it in spite of a really, really
poor environment around me, which … You know, I can honestly say that that was
the case when I was trying to get rich. That was the case when I was just trying
to build up my business. That is why a lot of times, it’s so difficult for people
with all the naysayers around them: the environment, because people are part of
that environment, and if you’re trying to get rich and everybody around you is
telling you that you can’t, or you shouldn’t, or that’s a bad idea, or you’re just
going to fail, then that environment is not supporting you in your outcome.

So that’s why, if you’re trying to get rich, try to spend more time with the
people who are rich. Try to spend more time in masterminds and groups that
encourage you to achieve this goal, that encourage you to achieve this dream. Try
to consume more content that tells you that you can and that you should, and how
to do it. Same thing with losing weight. Not only should you consume content that
tells you how to lose weight, not only should you become a mastermind and get an
accountability partner that helps you exercise and helps you stick to your food
regimen, but another thing you really have to do is that you have to ask yourself,
“Okay, what is the environment where I spend most of my time?” And if that
environment is your home office, or your home, or your friend’s home, or your job,
your office, do whatever you have to, but adjust that environment to serve you in
the achievement of your goal. Don’t try to achieve a goal within an environment
that is not supportive of that outcome.

I’ll give you another example. Right now, I’ve officially finished my new home
office, like it’s fully set up the way I want it. Now, all I have in this home office is just
a few things. First off, there’s, on the walls there’s — courtesy of Dennis Ray, thank you
very much — there’s a bunch of motivational posters, but not the kind of motivational
posters that say stuff like, you know, “Do what you love” and stuff like that; more so
about productivity and sales. So, for example, one of them, one poster says, “Likes don’t
pay the bills, sales do,” right? So that kind of to remind me that if I’m on Facebook and
browsing through my news feed, or posting, you know, want to post something on social
media, it’s like, “Okay, Igor, remember likes don’t pay the bills, sales do. Go write some
emails.” Or something to do with time or productivity, or high-income-generating
activities, whatever it needs to be for me to keep me on track.

Another thing that’s right here is a light box, one light box and one camera with
a wireless microphone so I can record my videos. There’s one desk that I got on
Amazon for 80 bucks, one chair that I got in a Home Depot or Staples for 150
bucks, there’s one shelf with a few books on it, and also my Alexa on it as well,
or Amazon Echo, courtesy of Dennis Ray, thank you very much. Seems like Dennis
Ray’s quite literally funding my entire setup over here.

And one last thing that’s here is — besides a bathroom, of course — is an espresso
machine. That is the only extra thing that I felt I was missing, because I would
always find myself around 11:00 or 12:00 p.m. start getting out, going to a coffee
shop just to get a shot of espresso, because homemade coffee kind of sucks. And so
I ended up fixing that problem by getting myself an espresso machine. It’s right
here in the office, increases my productivity. When I invite clients over, they
get to see it, I get to make them an espresso, they feel really special. It’s a
part of the thing, it’s a part of the whole environment for me, and it really,
really, really helps stay productive and on track, literally.

Another thing that I really like about this new environment is that I live in a
house that has two floors and a basement, so this is technically a basement,
although it doesn’t feel like one because I got spacious, big windows, and I got
lots of light here. But what I can do now is I can actually wake up at 6:00 a.m.,
I wake up at 6:02, I can go downstairs, and I can record videos before Anastasia
and Erica are up. Now, that is huge for me, because I used to need to go to a
coffee shop back in Israel, I used to find the right time, it needed to be between
9:00 and 11:00 a.m., I needed to bring in at least another person to hold the
camera, I needed … Like, I needed to do a bunch of things. Now, I can just wake
up, brush my teeth, put the espresso, brew some espresso, and then sit down and
record a damn video. That’s it. It’s very fast, very easy, very productive
environment to achieve the goal.

So, right now, wherever you are, what I want you to do is I want you to ask
yourself what is the environment where you’re spending most of your time, and what
that environment needs to look like ideally for you to be most productive about
achieving that ideal outcome that you would like to achieve. And this is going to
be one of the most important questions you could ask yourself, because if you’re
trying to lose weight, or if you’re trying to make money, if you’re trying to
create better relationships, whatever that is, you can always answer that question
and create a supportive environment that will increase the chances of success of
you achieving that goal by as much as 50% to 70% sometimes. Again, this is not
scientific data, but I just want it to sound impressive. For me, any time I invest
in my environment, any time I consciously create an environment that allows me to
better advance towards my goals, I always win, I always achieve those outcomes
faster.

Another great example of that is the decision to relocate to Canada. Obviously, a
big part of that is my business, and coming here, what became evident is that I
should have done it a long time ago, because first thing that really, really helps
is that being on the same time zone and on the same continent as many of my
business partners, because I used to either ask them to stay up late at night to
have a call with me, or I needed to stay up late at night to have a call with
them, because Israel is seven hours ahead of time than North America, some parts
of it, of course. It’s about 10 hours ahead of the West Coast, which is even
worse, because that’s why I don’t have any joint venture partners in California,
unfortunately; most of them are in Florida and New York. My point is that it is
much easier for me to advance my business, to get more joint venture partners, to
go to events, to host webinars, to do a lot of this stuff than it would have been
if I stayed in Israel, where the environment is not productive.

Another way the environment changed for me since I moved is now I’m surrounded by
people that have a lot of money. In other words, the town that I live in, I know
everybody’s driving BMWs and Mercedeses and Porches and Lamborghinis. Like,
there’s people just quite literally walking around with dollar bills taped to
their fucking faces, and what that does, it elevates my minimum to a new minimum,
right? So basically, what used to be a high for me is now the new low, and the new
high is much higher than the old high, because I’m surrounded by people that are
doing much better than I do, much better, which was different from Israel, because
in Israel, I was mostly surrounded by people who were way worse. Like, they were
making maybe one-tenth of what I was making in a month, but they were making that
in a year. That would seriously be the case for most of the time in the town that
I lived in.

So now, I’m surrounded by people who are doing really well, and I have to step up
my game, because automatically, being a social animal, I am forced into that sort
of environment. And so that was another conscious decision that I made when I
decided to move to this particular area, because I didn’t want to be surrounded by
people who are doing worse than me. I didn’t want to be surrounded by people who
are deadbeats, and people who are not trying to excel. I didn’t want to be
surrounded by people who are not driving nice cars, and who are not living in nice
houses, because I knew that if I’m going to stay in that environment, I’m going to
settle for a low lifestyle, for a lower-level lifestyle, and I didn’t want to do
that. I would like for my environment to automatically push me forward, and it
doesn’t even feel like I’m being pushed, it’s just automatic. That’s one of the
reasons why I believe I’m so relentless towards achievement and success, is
because it doesn’t really feel for me like an effort, just feels like a proper
daily conduct.

So ask yourself, what is your goal, be specific about it, and then create an
environment where you’re able to positively, positively progress towards that goal
because the environment supports you in doing so. And even if you’re someone who’s
… For example, I got this client who’s also now a friend, his name is Terence,
and we met at an event. Terence told me that he listens to my podcast a lot, so he
listens to the podcast a lot, and the reason he does is because he needs to drive
places, he needs to drive two, three hours in each direction because he works with
medical equipment, and he helps hospitals set medical equipment up. At least
that’s the way I remember that.

My point is that what Terence has done is that he uses this time to listen to
podcasts, and that is a good thing, but Terence can take it to the next level and
plan out the routes with certain stops, for example, where he can sit down and
write some emails. He can be setting appointments with marketers along the way;
maybe he’s driving to Arizona today, and he knows that on the way, he could set an
appointment with Chris Record or with some other guy, some other gal, right? Just
takes a little bit of research, but that still will create more positivity and
more positive reinforcement to the whole thing. So this is just another example of
how even if you are [inaudible 00:17:23] a victim of your circumstance, you can
still adjust the way you behave and the way you use the circumstance in order to
achieve your goal.

Anyway, I think I made the point. If you’d like to achieve a goal and you’re
struggling, there’s a good chance your environment is preventing you from doing
so, so sit down, ask yourself what the goal is, and then redefine your environment
to help you better achieve that goal. So, this concludes another episode of The
List Building Lifestyle. This is Igor Kheifets. Thank you so very much for joining
me today, and until next time we chat, have a good one.

Thank you for listening to The List Building Lifestyle. Make sure to subscribe on
iTunes or Google Play to never miss an episode, because who knows? Just one
conversion tactic we share on the show might double your list and double your
business. Download the transcript of today’s episode and all future episodes at
listbuildinglifestyleshow.com. And don’t forget to claim your complimentary copy
of The Wealthy List Builders Survival Guide at listbuildinglifestyleshow.com/survival .
This is Igor Kheifets, and until next time we talk, have a good one.