Read an Excerpt
Mind Over Body
The Key to Lasting Weight Loss Is All In Your Head
By Nordine Zouareg Back Bay Books
Copyright © 2007 Nordine Zouareg
All right reserved. ISBN: 978-0-446-58077-9
Introduction
The Path to Fitness - Mine and Yours Your body is the servant of your mind and has no choice but to obey your thoughts.
I don't believe that anyone who claims to be a leader can ask people to follow him-whether the journey takes them from New York to Chicago or from self-doubt and poor health to confidence and fitness-unless he's traveled that path himself. I've traveled every inch of the journey you'll be making with me in this book. And my path, like many of yours, has been strewn with stumbling blocks and disrupted by detours. In fact, it's because I was able to surmount those obstacles to arrive at the place where I am now that I know I can lead you, too, to a place where your body, mind, and spirit will work together to give you a healthier, happier life.
The beginning of my life was not auspicious. In fact, my mother used to tell me that I "died" three times as an infant. It was only because of her perseverance (and some inborn luck or stubbornness within me) that I survived to celebrate my first birthday. I was born on July 1, 1962, to illiterate Bedouin parents in the back of a French army truck in Algeria. My mother was just fifteen years old, and my father was twenty-nine. Algeria wasa French colony at the time, and the truck was part of a convoy taking Bedouins to vote on the question of Algerian independence.
As they were traveling through the desert, my mother went into labor, and the driver finally had to stop the truck so that she could deliver her baby by the side of the road with the help of the elder women of the tribe. I weighed just over two pounds at birth, and my mother later told me that all she could see of me were my eyes and my stomach. I was literally nothing but skin and bones, and to this day it amazes me that I survived that journey, much less all that was to come after. My mother-young and ignorant but determined-managed to keep me alive.
We lived in a small town called El Houamed, which was the last oasis before entering the Sahara. To my mother, living a difficult life in the desert, I presented a terrible dilemma. No more than a child herself, she was burdened with a sickly baby who no one-including she-believed would survive. Finally, after about six months, the elder women held a "wisdom meeting," which would, to put it bluntly, decide my fate. The problem, as they saw it, was essentially this: We don't think this baby will survive, but we can't kill him, so what are we going to do? In their "wisdom," they decided that my mother should make sure I was fed and happy, then leave me on a tombstone in the cemetery and walk away. But if she heard me cry, the elder women cautioned, she would have to take me back.
My mother did what the women said. She fed me and left me on a tombstone. She has said that I seemed content. But the minute she turned her back to walk away, I began to cry. Of course, she went back for me.
A few weeks later, my parents decided to take me to M'Sila, a larger town about three hours north of where we lived, to get me proper medical care. They took me to the main hospital in the center of M'Sila and left me with the doctors overnight for observation. When my mother went back to the hospital the next day, the doctor who had been treating me told her I was dead. My mother asked to see my body, but the doctor refused.
In fact, I was not dead, but my vital signs were at such a dangerous level that the doctor and his colleagues honestly believed they wouldn't be able to save me. To them, I was as good as dead. On the one hand, they believed that keeping me alive would only cause my mother more pain when I ultimately died-as they were sure I would. On the other hand, they understood that if she knew I was still alive, she would continue trying to save me. And so, when my mother asked to see my body, the doctor believed he had no choice but to refuse.
My mother, however, wouldn't leave M'Sila without seeing me, so she went to the police for assistance. An officer returned with her to the hospital and told the doctor that she had every right to claim her baby's body and give him a proper burial. At that point, there was nothing for the doctor to do but to confess that I was not dead-yet. He apologized profusely but said that he truly believed he had done the right thing. As he saw it, my mother was very young-she could have more children-and letting me die in what he considered a "proper" place would be easier for her than watching me die in the desert.
So once more my mother took me back home, but both my parents knew I was in critical need of immediate medical attention. Their last resort, they felt, was to take me to France. All Algerians were at that time still French citizens. But my parents spoke only Berber, and they didn't have any money for the trip. Still, they managed to collect what they needed from their fellow tribespeople and, speaking not a word of French, set out to build a new life for themselves and me in France.
There I was promptly diagnosed with rickets. The French doctors treated me in the hospital and then sent me home. But my health problems continued for the next several years.
My father worked whatever jobs he could find to support our family, which grew to a total of thirteen children-me, three brothers, and nine sisters-all living in a small two-bedroom apartment. In addition to economic difficulties, we also had to deal with extreme prejudice against all North Africans. In school I was beaten up regularly and had my lunch and clothing stolen. Thinking back on it now, I realize that I was a skinny runt of a kid with absolutely no self-esteem. In some terrible way, the negative energy I was putting out was almost certainly exacerbating the treatment I received. That insight, however, was a long time in coming; at the time all I knew was that I was miserable.
The turning point came when I arrived home from high school one day to find my entire family gathered around the television. They were watching a gymnastics competition, including one guy performing the iron cross on the still rings-a pair of rings suspended from the ceiling about eight feet above the floor. The iron cross requires the gymnast to hold on to the rings with his arms straight out at his sides while both his body and the rings remain absolutely still. The amount of upper body strength required to hold this position is enormous. The guy who was doing it wasn't big, but he was "ripped" and symmetrical. At that moment, I knew I wanted to be that gymnast.
Although I didn't realize it then, I'd stumbled upon the single most powerful tool for any athlete-or anyone trying to get healthy and lose weight: visualization. Normally, if you visualize yourself in a particular situation, it takes a while for that visualization to become internalized and move from your conscious to your subconscious mind. But that afternoon, I claimed that image on the TV screen for myself. The picture of me as strong and powerful immediately became anchored in my subconscious, and I knew I would one day make it a reality.
An anchor is a specific stimulus that calls forth particular thoughts and emotions. When you anchor something, it's like falling in love. It doesn't happen on a conscious, rational level; rather, your heart speaks to your mind, and you know it is right. Once the anchor is in place, it will always be there for you to call upon to reinforce your commitment if and when you feel yourself wavering. In that moment, I fell in love with the concept of being and feeling like that young man on the still rings. Doing that became my core desire, and having that desire unleashed a magic within me that I couldn't possibly have known I had.
You must understand that I was then nineteen years old. I weighed 108 pounds. My younger sisters were bigger than I was. But once I had identified my core desire, I became unstoppable. I saw myself having the body of that gymnast on TV, and that image allowed me to use the power of my intention, which was to learn whatever I needed to learn in order to fulfill my desire. At that point, I took what I believed to be an appropriate action: I went to a gym to learn gymnastics.
I joined a local gym that had a gymnastics team, of which three of my friends were already members. Because my friends were good gymnasts, I was allowed to join the team as a favor to them. For a while, I was just too skinny. While my teammates were performing more and more difficult moves, I was doing bench presses in a corner with an empty bar because that was all I could lift.
Eventually, however, the coach took me aside and told me that if I ever hoped to succeed at gymnastics or any other sport, I needed to put on some weight. And so I went in search of a weight lifting gym. I remember walking in and seeing the owner/instructor coming toward me. He looked like a mountain that was growing bigger with each step he took in my direction. I turned and walked out. But my true core desire was still there.
My parents had always been very supportive of whatever I wanted to do, but they had also always made it clear that getting an education was going to be my key to a better life. I never gave up on education-in fact, I later earned a master's degree in physical education-but I also knew that if I didn't achieve my core desire, my education wasn't going to help me. I applied my resolve and returned to the gym.
I worked out six days a week for about an hour each day, and I asked a lot of questions. Whenever I saw someone in the gym who was more bulked up and muscular than I was, I asked him what he had done to get that way. I learned the proper ways to eat and work out, and slowly my core desire began to shift. I no longer wanted to be that gymnast; I wanted to be a competitive bodybuilder, and the image I now held in my mind was that of the bodybuilder I saw myself becoming. I began building my body and, at the same time, became more resolved than ever to succeed. The more successful I became, the better I felt about myself. My successes were continually fueling my desire.
Three years later, in 1986, I won four bodybuilding titles-Mr. France, Mr. Europe, Mr. World, and Mr. Universe. But my initial success actually derailed me. My original goal had been to get out of my misery and find happiness through bodybuilding, but I now became miserably obsessed with my body.
I was constantly driven by the fear that I wouldn't be good enough, that I wouldn't win, that my fans would desert me. Truthfully, if you spend all day staring at your body and measuring your body fat, you don't have much time left over to devote to your mental and emotional well-being. And if you're afraid all the time, there's no way you can be happy. Since that time, I've come to understand that unhappiness is something we create for ourselves when we stop trusting what comes from within and lose touch with our true core desire. For a while, I lost track of that, and I needed to rediscover my inner truth.
In 1995 I came to the United States and settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico. There I met Dr. Dharma Singh Khalsa, a medical doctor, yogi, and author. Dr. Khalsa is the president and medical director of the Alzheimer's Prevention Foundation, and I credit him with turning my life around for the second time.
I began to work with Dr. Khalsa as his personal trainer; it was a wonderful experience for both of us. As I coached him to make his body stronger, he taught me yoga and meditation, through which I was finally able to get out of my body-obsessed mind-set.
In 1998 Dr. Khalsa invited me to join his company, Khalsa International, and become fitness director at the facility in Tucson, Arizona, where he treats his patients. He also introduced me to Joseph DeNucci, then the general manager at Miraval resort, whose "life in balance" philosophy was-and is-so in tune with my own. While I was working at Khalsa International, Mr. DeNucci, who had been a yoga teacher and is a very spiritual person, invited me to come to Miraval for a couple of days to see if I would like to create a fitness program for the spa. After those two days, my energy was flowing, and I knew in my heart that it was a place I'd be staying for a very long time.
My journey has taught me many things: that harnessing the power of a true core desire can change your entire life; that being physically fit and healthy must go hand in hand with being mentally and emotionally healthy; that if you want other people to love you, you first have to love yourself; and finally that loving what you're doing creates a positive flow of energy that's contagious. If you're passionate about your life, other people will share that passion.
A New Approach to Fitness
In the pages that follow, I will lead you on your own journey so that you, too, can arrive at a place where your mind and emotions are driving your desire to lose weight and become fit on both a conscious and a subconscious level. You will be using your mind to direct your body and working toward fitness from the inside out. As a result, I can promise that you will become thin, trim, fit, and as beautiful on the outside as you are on the inside.
There are many books on many subjects, including physical fitness, that tell people what to do. In my opinion, that is a lot like writing on someone else's blackboard with your own chalk. What I mean is that the authors of these books want you to see things from their perspective. In contrast, I will be asking you to consider your own perspective and to decide whether shifting the way you see yourself in relation to the world might serve you better. I believe that most of us already know what we should be doing to lose weight and improve fitness. In fact, with all the information on exercise and nutrition coming at us from the media every day, it would be almost impossible not to know. The problem is that for most people, there's a large disconnect between knowledge and action. My goal is to teach you how to shift your thoughts so that you are able to go from knowing to doing.
In this book, I will take you through the very same steps I followed to arrive at where I am today mentally, emotionally, and physically. I will provide all the information you need about what kinds of foods to eat and what kinds of exercise programs will work for you to achieve your individual goal and level of fitness. But that's part two of the plan. First I'm going to provide you with the information and understanding you need to be able to follow through with my program and actually achieve what you want.
The bottom line is that goals are achieved when the right information is loaded into the subconscious part of your brain. I will teach you how to harness the power of your subconscious mind to build the fit and fabulous body you want but have never been able to achieve. It's a question of mind over body!
Before we begin, I want to point out that my professional expertise lies in helping people to achieve health and fitness, which is, of course, the focus of this book. Personally, however, I know that all the information I'll be giving you can be used to achieve whatever you truly desire in every aspect of your life. All of these techniques are designed to create the right balance of body, mind, and spirit, which is all anyone needs to banish stress, defeat fear, overcome failure, and bring more happiness into his or her life.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Mind Over Body by Nordine Zouareg Copyright © 2007 by Nordine Zouareg . Excerpted by permission.
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