Winning the Fit
and Slim Game
by
L. Michael Hall, Ph.D

Winning at the Game of Being Fit & Slim

Are you ready for a new Game to play with Food and Activity -- with Eating and Exercising?  Are you ready for a Game that will give you the payoffs that you want-- a fit and slim body, lots of energy and vitality?  Are you ready to stubbornly refuse to be recruited by the old Games that do not work?  Great, then you will find Games Slim People Play the coaching book you need.

When you open this book, Slim and Fit Games will take you on a journey into the higher frames of your mind to find and extract the "fat" in your head that has kept you from succeeding.  It will lead you right to the very Games you need to play to win at Vitality, Energy, Fitness, and Looking Great.  You will learn how to identify the Rules of the Game and to set up the Frame Games that will support you to take charge of your eating, exercising, weight, etc.

This work is based on the revolutionary Frame Games model-- the user friendly version of Meta-States.  As an application of the Levels of your Mind model, this work will take you into the Matrices of your Mind so that you can wake up from "the world that's been pulled down over your eyes."  Are you ready for freedom, power over your own mind, management of your own states and behaviors?  Then get Games Slim People Play.  Also, see our schedule of trainings for the Workshop by the same
title.

PREFACE

The Games you play with food (eating) and movement (exercising) determines the Wins and/or Loses that you'll experience.

• So what Games have you been playing?
• What Games will you play today?

We all play Games because of the way our minds-and-bodies work. There's an old saying, "As we think, so we are." Here we apply that using more modern language and understanding.

As we frame (or set frames), so we experience, that is, so we play out the Games set forth in those frames.

I don't know what Games you have been playing with food. I only know that you have been playing "Games." These Games constitute the regular and dependable set of actions, feelings, and thoughts you use as you engage and relate to food, eating, and exercising. Such are your Food Games and your Exercise Games.

What Food Games have you been playing? Perhaps:

"I Eat to Feel Loved and Rewarded" Game.

The "Eating is so Relaxing and Fun" Game.

"To Say 'No" to Certain Food is Deprivation" Game.

I also do not I know if you've been playing healthy and vitalizing Games, Games that give you such payoffs as looking and feeling good or whether you've been playing foolish Games that undermine your best efforts to take control of your eating and exercising. I don't know if the Games you've been playing actually work for energy and vitality or whether they leave you feeling bloated, heavy, and de-energized. To know that, I would have to ask some other questions:

• Do you like the Games that you've been playing with food, eating, or exercising?
• Have those Games provided you the payoff of the kind of body, energy, and vitality that you want?
• Would you like to play some new Games?
• Would you be willing to learn to play new Games?
• Would you like to refine and exchange some of the old eating and exercising Games for some that will put you in charge of yourself?
• Would you like to become willing to tell some of the old food Games to go to hell?

Why the Dieting Game Does Not Work

Let me tell you about Jenny.

Jenny was one of the fifteen people who "tried out" this book to see if the model worked. When she told me about her situation, she said that she had been trying to lose weight and keep it off for years. She described how she had tried numerous programs, TOPS, Weight Watchers, Jenny Craig, and others. It wasn't that she didn't know what to do, how to eat right or know what behavioral changes to make. She knew. And she knew it well.

A few years back, she had given up dieting because of the yo_yo effect that she had begun to suffer.

"I suddenly realized that nine months after any new program, I was heavier. A light came on. I realized that dieting itself was the problem!" she said.

It was certainly part of the problem. Above and beyond the activity of dieting were all of the frames of mind she used to have about dieting. These included such frames as:

• The problem is food.
• The problem is eating too much.
• The problem is eating the wrong things.
• the problem is me.
• Etc.

The problem actually was the very way she was thinking about eating and dieting. Her mental frames were contributing to her ineffectiveness.

Food Games

Jenny's story explains why this book is about Games--the Frame Games that we play. What in the world is a Frame Game? This phrase describes the two key facets of every experience:

• Games: The actual set of actions and behaviors that we engage in. What we actually do. What we say, even what we feel. Looked at from the outside, these are our Games. Some people eat everything in sight. That's their Game. Others have to clean their plate. That's their Game.
• Frames: The ideas in our heads, our beliefs, values, understandings, etc. that establish the Rules of the Games, the Game Set-up. Some of the mental Frames in our heads that set up a Game are simple and direct, "Clean your plate; there are starving children in.... India, Africa, China ..." Other Frames are more subtle and covert. For example, eating a sweet after a meal seems like and feels like a reward. Perhaps sweets were connected to "being a good boy or girl" during childhood and we still have this as our frame of reference.

Now while it may seem like the problems we have with weight, body size and shape, over_eating, obesity, lack of fitness, etc. are strictly behavioral problems, they are not. The Games we play are but the expressions of our mental Frames. We play the Games that we do because of the Rules and Understandings that we have in our heads. That's why we trying to change things at the behavioral level without changing the Rules of the Game in our minds seldom works. As long as we think the way we do about Food and Exercise, as long as we use the frames of references that we do, we will find it hard to not play those Games. At the level of our everyday experience, it seems (feels) that we are destined for those Games.

But that's the lie. That's the deception. We are not destined for those Games, or any particular Games for that matter. We play those Games because we know how to play those Games and because we have played those Games for many years. We're familiar with them. Those Games make sense to us, even though they might be destructive in terms of long-term health.

Jenny learned something new in Games Slim People Play. She mainly learned a new way to think about food and exercise. When she came upon Games, she had already quit the Dieting Game. But she had not learned how to play the Life-Style Game. She didn't have the necessary Frames to set that Game up. Also, she had not learned how to stop playing the Blame Game and to recognize that paradoxically, the Acceptance Game, the Sensory Eating Game, and the Food for Fuel Game would give her a new handle on things.

Those were some of the new Games she had to learn. And learn it she did. In a 3 month period, she lost 20 pounds and then maintained her new weight. But she did more. She began playing the exercise games so that she has been tightening her muscles and raising her metabolism. It's a whole new lifestyle and she doesn't think in terms of how little to eat, she thinks in terms of what to eat that supports her vitality.

"It's like an entirely different way to live. I used to be so conscious of food. Food was always on my mind, I was always thinking about what not to eat, what I should not eat. I don't even think that way anymore. Now I focus on what will give me energy and vitality."

This explains one of my primary purposes in this book. Namely, I hope to give you an entirely new way to think about, and then relate to, eating, exercising, food, weight control, etc. In the vein of the current writings about dieting no more and about changing your whole orientation toward the subject of being fit and slim, this book will put into your hands all of the pieces you need to totally take control of fitness and weight control, namely:

• A new map about how to effectively think about the Game of eating and exercising--new Frames of Mind.
• The motivation to play a new Game, to take charge of these areas of life.
• The patterns or processes that will allow you to play a whole new Game and maintain that Game so that it becomes truly lifestyle eating and exercising.

Why have I have written with an emphasis on Food Games and Exercise Games? There are several reasons and central among those reasons is this

The Games We Play
Determine the Way We Live Our Lives
and the Quality of our Lives.

The very quality of your life: your health, your energy level, your vitality, your stamina, your fitness, your looks, your emotions, your thinking, etc., is determined by the quality of your Games. So if you want to improve the quality of your life, learn to play more Quality Games. And to do that, you'll need some Quality Frames of Mind.

Warning: The New Games are no Panacea

Several of the 15 people I sent the original manuscript did not succeed. Why not? Some of them did not even finish reading the first chapter. One person told me that she was looking for a "magical ah_ha!" and when she didn't find it in the first few pages, she lost interest.

Now that's a Frame of Mind that will kill any new interest and undermine long term persistence, commitment, and resilience. Entertain that frame of mind and it will set up the Impatient Game, the Failure to Follow-Through Game, the Jumping Around Dabbling in Lots of Things, but Mastering Nothing Game.

That's why this book is not for everyone. If you want to play some of the same old Games with food and refuse to give up those Games, then this book will not work for you. Actually, no book will work for you, we are the ones who have to use a book, a model, a way of understanding to change our lives.

There's no magical panacea here. Unlike the promises you see in the tabloids, you will not lose weight while you sleep with no effort. It's those kinds of frames that force you to play the Games that you do--the Games that will keep you over-weight, unfit, stressed, distracted, etc. Thumb through Chapter 8 if you want to know about the Games that will absolutely sabotage your health, fitness, and slimness. Do not buy this book if you want to play those Games, or if you want to play the Whining Victim Game, which says,

"But I tried... I even tried this latest thing on Frame Games and it didn't work either!"

Save your money.

Save your money also if you still operate from the childish magical thinking that motivates the game that so many people wish to play, which says,

"There ought to be some quick, easy, and effortless way to have great fitness, marvelous energy level, and look marvelous!"

Your body doesn't work that way. It never has; it never will. If you are of that frame of mind, it will only make matters worse. It will put you on the now famous dieting "yo-yo." It will undermine your best efforts and add fat in all the spots you don't want or need more fat.

You can master the Frame Games for fitness and weight management described in this book if, and only if, you will do the following:

• Assume ownership for all of your mental frames and behavioral Games.
• Devote the time and energy to read and practice the processes. Yes, the book will not read itself, you have to do that, and you have to apply what you read.
• Give yourself permission to learn entirely new Games.
• Be kind and gentle with yourself regarding your current condition (playing the Judgment Game will not only hurt, it will sabotage your best efforts.
• Be willing to learn how to say "No!" to some of the old Games and to refuse those seductive calls.
• Be willing to allow yourself to look great, feel good, and enjoy the energy and vitality that can be yours (this means putting a stop to the "But do I really deserve it?" Game).

Throughout the first part of the book I have focused on food and eating. That is not because merely playing a new food Game is sufficient in itself. It is not. Every successful long-term program for weight loss involves exercise as well. You have to incorporate more activity into your daily life to increase your cardio-vascular fitness and to raise your metabolic rate for fat-burning.

Oh yes, one last thing. You will have to use your intelligence as you read this book. I have no plans to patronize you or to spoon-feed you the ideas here.

Why not? Why not simplify it and write it for a seventh-grade reading level? I have a reason for this, and I will share it with you, but that's yet to come and if you have the courage to follow your dream about being fit and thin... come with me and we'll play a brand new Game. And it will be a fun one. Unless, of course, you like being fat and out-of-shape.

Reviews:

"I read Games Slim People Play, used it to maintain the 14 pounds I had lost and as I have established New Games with Food and exercise, I have lost another 50 pounds and am now at my ideal weight."

Tom Carroll
Performance Consultant
Austin Texas

"I was surprised that I not only lost weight, but I developed new ways for handling stress and taking on conflict. I found it amazing that Frame Games would have that kind of effect."

Pr. John LaMunyon
Holy Trinity Lutheran Church

Table of Contents

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