shape shift foreward and introduction

8/9/2019 Shape Shift Foreward and Introduction

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Health Coach Publishing Co.3225 McLeod Dr., Suite 110

Las Vegas, NV 891211.888.888.8565

Copyright Gregory KellyAll rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced inany form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmittedin any form by any meanselectronic, mechanical,photocopy, recording, or otherwisewithout priorwritten permission of the publisher, except as providedby United States of America copyright law.

ISBN 978-0-9845374-0-2

Printed in the United States of America.First Edition10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed on recycled paper

Book Design by Cheri PercivalCover Design by Eric Blais

Neither the publisher nor the authors are engaged in

rendering professional advice or services to theindividual reader. The ideas, assessments, andsuggestions in this book are not intended as a


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substitute for consulting with your physician. Allmatters regarding your health require appropriatemedical supervision. Neither the publisher nor the

authors shall be liable or responsible for any loss ordamage allegedly arising from any information orsuggestion in this book.

While the authors have made every effort to provide accurate telephonenumbers and Internet addresses at the time of publication, neither the

publisher nor the authors assume any responsibility for errors or for changesthat occur after publication.

This book is dedicated to our two wonderfulmothers,Joanne Kelly and Betty Percival.


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Acknowledgements

More than a decade ago, we became frustrated withthe conventional wisdom of weight sciences. Thisboiled to a head when a prominent health expert


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wrote on their website words to the effect of; if youwant to lose weight, Ill give you the advice I give allmy patients, eat less and exercise more. In our work

with people with shape challenges, we knew itwasnt this easy. We wanted to find out why, and wewanted to find ways to make it easier. This book isthe end result of our investigation. Along the way,there have been many people who have helpeddirectly and indirectly. We want to thank them all.

First, we owe a considerable debt to those authorsand experts whose research and ideas were used as

elements of this book. Without the efforts of theseindividuals, whose specific works are mentioned inthe notes and references section, this book wouldnot have been possible. As the saying goes, we arestanding on the shoulders of giants.

We want to thank all of our patients, clients andstudents, past and present: Without you to workwith, teach, and learn from, we would never have

seen what did and didnt work, especially over longperiods of time. You have also been instrumental inhelping us find new ways to convey important pointswith a simplicity and directness that you readilyunderstand (which is often very different from theways we, as doctors, communicate with each other).

We want to acknowledge all of the healthprofessionals who have taken our courses on shape.

One of the biggest leaps forward we had in ourinvestigation was when we committed to teaching acourse on shape improvement to other doctors. Ourthanks go out to all of you who were willing to take acourse that diverged substantially from theconventional wisdom around weight gain and loss.We especially want to acknowledge those of youwho stuck with this work and became core membersof the health scene investigation team. In

alphabetical order these persons are: KatherineAckland, N.D., Shannon Bell, Steven Bircher, D.C.,Kim Clarke, Mark deDubovay, D.C., Kenneth Gilman,


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D.C., David H. Haase, M.D., Janet Haase, TimothyHoulton, D.C., Donald Huml, D.C., Debbie MartinBelleville, N.D., Todd Norton, D.C., Richard

Perryman, D.C., Richard Powers, D.C., Russel Sher,D.C. and Daniel Therrien, D.C.

We want to acknowledge and thank Eric Blais fordesigning our cover. We want to thank Janet andDavid Haase, Richard Powers, and Natasha Efross forreading rough drafts of this book. Your feedback andeditorial assistance are tremendously appreciated.We want to acknowledge the support, enthusiasm,

and occasional expertise of our family and friends,among them Sepi Day, William Fenton, BettyPercival, Joanne Kelly (and all the Kelly clan). Thanksfor your encouragement and patience. We want tospecifically mention Aspen and Lexi Percival (Marksdaughters). Thanks for helping with our HSI teamevents, for being willing guinea pigs for some of ourefforts into self-experimentation, and for helping usto see some of this information through your eyes.

And, lastly, and most importantly, we want toacknowledge and thank Cheri Percival. Thank youfor hosting our HSI events, for preparing nutritiousfood and showing the doctors and their staff thathealthy eating can be fun and easy, for all of yourassistance with the different teaching aids we haveused over the past decade, and lastly, for all yourefforts on this manuscript and in the publishingprocess.


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Contents

Foreword by David H. Haase, M.D. ...

...

xi

Introduction

.

xvii

PART 1: EVIDENCE

1. The Sherlock Holmes Way and the Mystery of

Shape ...

1

2. Extraordinary Powers of Observation

...

9

3. Understanding Advances in Science

..

19

4. Gathering and Analyzing Evidence

...

31

5. Avoiding Obvious Facts

...

43

6. Set Points and Self-Regulation

..

59

7. Logical Reasoning.

75

PART 2: ANALYSIS

8. Shape Assessment

.....

93

9. Body Composition Analysis

..

105

10. The Details of Body Fat

..

117

PART 3: SOLUTIONS

11. Sleep and Shape

...

131

12. Lighting and Shape

..

15

313. Meal Patterns and Shape.

175


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14. Stress and Shape

..

195

15. Chemicals and Shape

..

21

716. Medications and Shape

241

17. Movement and Shape

..

261

18. Resistance (Weight) Training and Shape

..

281

19. Cases of Diet-Induced Fatness and Leanness

...

305

20. The Mystery of Food Instincts 357

Appendix A: Resources and Tools

391

Appendix B: HSI Health Professional Support

.

395

Notes and References

...

397

Index 447


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Foreword

The aim of medicine is to prevent disease andprolong life; the ideal of medicine is to eliminate theneed of a physician.

William J.Mayo

What three year old has not played the Whygame? Why do I have to go to bed? Because youneed your sleep. Why do I need my sleep? Sothat your body can grow big and strong. Why doesmy body need to grow big and strong? So that youcan play with your friends and have fun. Whyshould I play with my friends and have fun? and onand on and on. Parents usually surrender with Justbecause, or Everybody knows that. As aphysician, even though I am over forty years old, Istill find myself playing this game and asking lots ofWhy questions. And in the same way it causedfrustration to my parents, I and other Why gamers


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(maybe you) are frustrating the health care expertswith simple questions leading to answers thatusually lead to more questions. Why cant I lose

weight anymore? Why does disease occur? Whycan two people with nearly identical lifestyles havesuch different shape and weight results? Why isour healthcare system focused on treating diseaserather than creating health? Why do we see somepeople get fatter after a diet? and so on.

Why is a powerful question. It is the essence ofroot-cause analysis, and the best route to find

meaningful solutions to the most persistentproblems of today. Sadly, the cop-out answers heardtoo often in reply to Why? questions, often bornemore out of frustration than understanding, areBecause I said so, or It just does, or Everybodyknows that. Those kinds of answers will not providethe results we desire for our health. You will not findany such cop-out answers in this book. Doctors Kellyand Percival have created a very thoughtful and

exceedingly well referenced work that gives uscontext for understanding the issue of shape andweight in a way never presented before. They boldlyask Why, and, by examining the scientificliterature with careful eyes, come up with answersthat are not only surprising, but as I have found inmy clinical practice, notably effective when it comesto improving shape and weight.

I have personally struggled with my shape andweight. So, with deep empathy for the pain of beingoverweight, I studied weight loss diligently overthe years, determined to help others who, like me,struggled with their shape and weight. I put what Ilearned into practice, and operated a standardweight loss program within my medical practicecomplete with the use of appetite suppressing drugsand strict, very low-calorie diets. But about the time

I passed the board exam for the specialty ofBariatric (obesity) Medicine, two things happened inmy life that shifted my perspective on shape and


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weight. The first of these was that patients who hadappeared to be successful, having lost largeamounts of weight by severely restricting calories

and in many cases taking weight loss drugs, startedto come back. They werent coming back becausethey wanted to fine-tune their results or show mehow great they were doing. They were returningbecause, they had not only regained the twenty toone hundred pounds they had lost under myprevious care but, in some cases, they hadsurpassed their previous all-time-high weight. Therebound effect, of this conventional approach to

weight loss, was leaving many of them fatter thanever. While repeat customers are the foundation ofevery great business model, I found this outcomewholly unsatisfying. It ran counter to my deeply heldpassion for improving the long-term (lasting) healthand well-being of my patients. I began to questionwhat I had learned, and had been practicing.Without better answers, and disillusioned with theseresults, I shut down this part of my practice.

The second event, the one that ultimately got me re-excited, and changed my approach to shape andweight, was being introduced to Dr. Kelly and Dr.Percival. Within a very short period of time ofworking together, I came to realize I had beenapproaching the problem of obesity in a way thatwas contrary to how the body functions and heals.As I was learning this new way of viewing shape, I

found one thing truly remarkable. I had been usingmany of these concepts, or similar ones, in myefforts to find and treat the underlying causes ofother disease states. But I had a huge blind spotwhen it came to the subject of fat. If someone cameto me with auto-immune disease, allergy, heartdisease, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, oranything else for that matter, I would always seek tofind the cause(s), and focus treatment in that

direction to bring about healing. But with obesity, I(like much of society at the present time) wasblinded by what I thought I knew: I had been


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convinced that weight was an issue of controllinghow many calories we take in and how many weuse. Eating less, exercising more, and using

medications to do things like suppress appetite andboost metabolism, were the sensible solutions tothis issue. While these approaches will producetemporary weight loss, they generally dont producethe kinds of sustained results we want, and are moreakin to trying to manage a problem, than actuallysolving it. In other areas of my practice, I had beendedicated to solving health issues. What you willlearn in this book is this solution-based approach to

shape and weight. You wont be told how to manageshape issues, or given tips on how to make quick,but temporary changes. Instead, you will be givensomething even better. You will be given answers toWhy; answers that will help you find and makechanges in the underlying, and often hidden, areasthat really make a difference when it comes toproducing lasting changes in shape and weight.

Please allow me tell you about Susan (not her realname), and how this approach affected her. She hadbeen through three other weight loss programsduring the last five years, and had gained and lostas much as forty pounds in between each of theseweight loss adventures. She was tired, discouraged,depressed, and said she felt like a failure. Susancame to me shortly after my Great ShapeAwakening, so when she asked me to help her to

lose weight, we had a very different discussion thanshe had previously experienced. We dove into whatcould be the cause(s) of her increased fat mass, whyshe gained weight when she did, why her body couldactually want to hold on to fat given her current andpast circumstances, and why changing her approachcould change her results. We worked together for sixmonths, doing what we call at the MaxWell Clinic forProactive Medicine Peeling the Onion, which is

systematically finding and addressing the manylayered barriers to health creationbe that removalof excess stressors of body, mind, or biology, or the


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replenishment of the ingredients needed for healing.What were Susans results? Over six months time,she shed sixteen pounds of fat and gained four lbs of

muscle mass. This was a significant shape change.The rest of the story is even better. Her depressioncleared, her energy went through the roof, her sexdrive returned, she started the business she haddreamt of for years, she slept through the nightwithout the use of sleeping aids: All that and achange of two dress sizes! But Susans storycontinued to get even better. Susan left my practicebecause her husband was transferred to another

city. Five years after our last meeting, she appearedon my schedule once again. When she walked in, Ididnt recognize her. It wasnt because of thepassing years; it was because she was now fifty-twopounds lighter than when I had first met her. Theoverall shift in her shape was even bigger than thisloss in pounds. She had added an additional tenpounds of muscle since our last meeting, making hershape change even more dramatic, healthy, and

transformative. She was once again wearing a size4; a dress size she hadnt been able to wear sinceshe was a teenager. Her business was thriving, aswas her marriage. When I asked her how she hadaccomplished what she had, she replied, I just keptasking why? and running better experiments onmyself. It brought tears to my eyes, because itconfirmed, in such a beautiful way, the truth thathealth creation is a process that comes from the

inside out. It is not something that some doctor cando to you from outside in. It is something we eachdo for ourselves. The quote by Dr. Mayo, at thebeginning of this forward, is one of my favoritetakeaways from my time practicing at the MayoClinic. It is my hope that approaches based upon itbecome the standard for whatever comes next inthe realm of health-care delivery. Excellence inhealth-care is not defined by more medical

treatment, it is defined by producing better andlasting results; results which provide greater qualityand quantity of life.


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Youre probably curious what Susan did. I will refrainfrom giving you her recipe, because I fear it would

only distract you from finding your own. Everyperson is unique because of their genetics, theenvironment in which they live, and more. Thisbeing the case, everything we do in the realm ofmedical treatment or health creation must beindividualized; it is, in other words, an experiment ofone. My goal is to help my patients produceexceptional and lasting results, by guiding them tofind the biggest opportunities for improvement in

their lives, and then to run increasingly wholesomeexperiments in these areas of opportunity. This isthe miracle of the Health Scene Investigationapproach; an approach founded on helping youinvestigate your own Health Scene, and whichintimately involvesyou in the process of bothdiscovering these areas of opportunity, andchanging them.

Our medical system is technologically moreadvanced than at any point in human history. Wealso spend more on healthcare than at any previoustime. And, while the current medical system does atremendous job in many areas, it has arrived at acrossroads of sorts. We are in the midst of epidemicsof obesity, cancer, heart disease, and the list goeson and on. Just to pay for our current obligations tofund Medicaid and Medicare, each family in the

United States would need to pay $400,000.00 intothe United States Treasury today. By the year 2030,the cost to pay the interest on the money borrowedto fund health care in the United States will exceedour entire nations Gross Domestic Product,effectively making us financially insolvent due tomedical treatment costs alone. Treatment ofpreventable chronic illness accounts for 70 to 85percent of our total yearly health care expenditures.

Please, read that last sentence again and let it sinkin. Obesity is related to many of the preventablechronic illnesses that are producing this runaway


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train when it comes to both the downward health ofour society, and funding its treatment. Obesity isoften blamed as the cause in this relationship. Its

more complicated than that: Youll find out why inthis book. Improving shape, both our individualshape and our societys shape, is imperative for ourpersonal and national well-being. How do we do this;how do we get in shape?

We have to make a shift in how we view things andin what we do about them. There is really no otherchoice. We can wait until an issue with health is so

advanced that it becomes a medically recognizedproblem, or we can take pro-active steps to changethe direction our health is taking. We can hope thatsomeday medicine will be able to fix people in spiteof themselves (which, trust me, is unlikely), or wecan strive to turn the hope of Dr. Mayo into a realitywe can, because of our individual choices, helpprevent disease and prolong our own lives,drastically reducing the current and future role

medicine will need to play for us. This will shift ourpersonal well-being, and if enough of us do this, itwill make a shift in corporate well-being, and evenour societal-well-being. At LifeStrive (a company Dr.Greg, Dr. Mark, and I helped co-found), we refer tothis shift in how we look at things, and what we doabout them, as Health Response-Ability. Thegreatest opportunity most of us will ever have whenit comes to our own health, and our shape, wont

come from what medicine will do for us; it will comefrom our ability to choose to do things differently.We have the ability to respond differently; we alsohave the responsibility to do so.By becoming an effective Health Scene Investigator,you will be practicing Health Response-Ability. Youwill be solving your health scene in ways thatimprove the shape and health results you producetoday, but also improving them in ways that offer a

form of insurance for tomorrow.


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Many health challenges seem to occur suddenly. Wedont notice they are a problem, until they arealready a big problem. We are noticing things late in

the game. The causes have often been ongoing foryears, or in some instances decades. In most of thepatients I work with, there are ongoing opportunitiesto make changes that will alter the outcome of thehealth game much earlier, long before a big problemhas occurred. Shape is a clue to this opportunity.Shape doesnt occur in a vacuum. It has causes. Itsalso a clue to the direction our health is traveling. Aslowly increasing waistline is a trend that predicts

catastrophic long-term outcomes. Paying attentionto this trend, and altering the course as early aspossible, will take you to an entirely differentdestination in the long-term. If coming to grips withthe idea, that a small change early in the course oflife would make a big long-term change in outcome,is difficult for you, I ask you to ponder how a verysmall change in course early in the voyage of theTitanic would have changed the outcome of that

tragic story. No matter what your current shape, orwhether its early, in the middle, or late in your ownpersonal health game, what you do starting todaycan alter the direction you are trending.

While very enjoyable, this book is not fluffy. Serioustopics deserve a respectful and thoroughinvestigation. Shape is one of these topics. It is timethe world has access to a book of this caliber. I do

my best to answer the question of Why? when mychildren ask it, and when my patients ask it. I amcertain that this book, and the approach to shapeand health it offers, will help you to answer this andother questions for yourself.

Be Well.

David H. Haase, M.D.

Founder, MaxWell Clinic for Proactive MedicineChief Medical Officer, LifeStrive


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Introduction

Definitions:

Shape (noun): The contour of a person's body; thefigure.

Shape (verb): To give a particular form to; createShift (noun): A change (in direction or appearance)Shift (verb): to (cause something or someone to)move or change from one position or direction toanother

Shape provides information that can be missedwhen the only detail we focus upon is weight.Weight can also lead us into thinking one thing when

the truth is something quite different, or at the veryleast, more complicated. My own shape storyhighlights these points. I gained 55 pounds duringmy four years of college. In our weight-obsessedculture, the tendency would be to look at thisnumber55 poundsand think, oh my, thats a lotof weight: You must have gotten really fat. The truthis more nuanced. I started college short and skinny. Igrew a few inches and put weight on my chest,

back, arms, and legs. At the time, I consideredgaining this weight as a positive thing. I still do. Ialso gained about 4 inches around my waist. I wasntas thrilled with this weight. My shape had shiftedthrough my college years. Some of the shifts werefor the better; others were for the worse. Soon aftergraduation, my shape would shift again.

I graduated from college in 1984 and was

commissioned as an officer in the United StatesNavy. Prior to commissioning, I was fitted foruniforms. My waist measured slightly more than 33


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inches. The tailor recommended getting size 34-inchpants. His opinion was that it was far more likelythat I would gain more weight around

my waist than lose it, so it made sense to build in alittle cushion.I agreed. We were both wrong: My waist size neverexpanded to reach 34 inches. In fact, during my firstfew months in the Navy, it went significantly in theother direction: I dropped about 3 inches from mywaist and about 20 pounds of weight. My uniformpants were too loose around the waist and remainedthat way for the five and one half years I stayed in

the Navy. It is two and one half decades later andthey would still be too loose for me.

In our culture we tend to overemphasize weight lossand underemphasize more important changes.Weight didnt really tell an accurate story in either ofthese two shifts in shape. I wasnt trying to loseweight during my first few months in the Navy. I wastrying to get in better shape. That some weight was

lost as I got in better shape was more of a sideeffect. And the loss of 20 pounds I experiencedfailed to accurately capture the totality of the shapechange I experienced. My muscles became biggerand better toned. Put another way, I gained weightin some areas of my body. At the same time mystomach became flatter and more defined. I didntjust lose weight; my overall shape changed.Sometimes this happens when we lose weight, but

many times it doesnt. Paying attention to shape, inall its subtleties, is a better barometer.

Shape is changeable. It shifts based on our habitsand circumstances. Mine shifted when I went tocollege and lived a very different life than the one Ihad lived in high school. It shifted again when I wentinto the Navy. It has continued to evolve since. Thisis what shape does. It adapts to our habits and

circumstances in what might best be described asevolutionarily sensible ways. Our shape is areflection of our genes interacting with the lives we


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have led and are leading. I didnt experience the bigchange in my shape during my first few months inthe Navy because of restricting calories or going on

some fad diet. My shape changed because myhabits and circumstances changed. What I ate, whenI ate it, my exercise routines, my sleep-wake cycles,and more, radically changed during my first fewmonths in the Navy. I went from being a night-persongoing to bed most nights at 2 to 3 in themorning and waking around noonto being an earlyto bed, early to rise person. I stopped eating late atnight and started eating breakfast, lunch, and earlier

dinners. I became more serious about training withweights.I walked more. I decided to learn about whatconstitutes healthy food and took moreresponsibility for what I would, and converselywouldnt (at least not regularly) eat. I swapped softdrinks for water. I started to associate moreregularly with people who cared about their shapes,and I asked them for advice. My diet, lifestyle and

environment shifted, and, not surprisingly, my shapedid as well.

I arrived at my first ship in the beginning of 1985lean and fit. This did not go unnoticed. The Navy hada problem with overweight sailors in the mid 1980s.My understanding is that they still do. On my firstship, it wasnt long before this became my problem.Before going to a ship, an officer receives official

orders. The orders include the ship you will beassigned to, where and when to report, and your jobassignment. My ship was the USS Ouellete. I was toreport at the beginning of February of 1985 to PearlHarbor, Hawaii. My job was going to be working inthe ships engineering department. This would bemy primary job; it wouldnt be my only one. Officersoften have one or more collateral duties. I was noexception. I had a handful of collateral duties, one of

which, since I looked to be in shape, cared aboutwhat I was eating, and exercised regularly, was tobe in charge of the shipboard fitness program,


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including all of the sailors who were having troublemeeting Navy weight standards. This was arelatively fruitless job. Most of the sailors who had

difficulty meeting the Navys weight standards didntwant to be in this program: Adherence was aconstant issue. Navy menus, at least at the time,were cafeteria style, all-you-can-eat, with manytempting and fattening food choices. Snack foodsoft drinks, cookies, crackers, chips, and candywere one of the few things you could purchase on aship. Navy personnel, especially at sea, arechronically sleep-deprived. Body clock disruption is

an ongoing stress that becomes even moreexaggerated when the ship pulls out to sea becauseof watch schedules and the availability of midnightmeals. Dedicating time to exercise while at seatypically meant taking time away from sleeping.And, as a last ditch effort to pass the weightstandards, overweight sailors would typically go on acrash diet; restricting calories to lose enough weightto meet Navy weight standards for one moment in

time (their weigh in). Not uncommonly a sailor wouldsucceed, only to regain the lost weight in time tofail the next fitness test. These factors all acted tostack the deck against producing a sustainableshape improvement. In fact, they were contributingto the problem in the first place. Many of thecircumstances that life in the Navy entails arefattening. Most sailors dont arrive onboard their firstship over-fat. Their shape shifts in a fattening

direction after they arrive. In this book you will learnto identify the factors that contribute to this shift.Some, perhaps many, of these same factors arelikely contributing to your shape.

My understanding of shape has evolved in the morethan two decades since I left the Navy. The biggestleap forward in this evolution came when myparadigm around shape, the metaphor I used to

think about this subject, shifted. Suddenlyinformation that hadnt made sense did. Results thathad been puzzling came into focus. Cases that


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couldnt be solved were. With this shift in paradigmsome of what I once considered sensible nowseemed nonsensical, and some things I had viewed

as unrelated to shape now took on big roles. Thisbook is the product of these shifts in understandingand perspective.

The most important shift I had was in realizing that Iam in a cooperative relationship with my body. Innature there are many relationships that arecharacterized by mutual benefit to both parties.Each party advances their individual interests, but

this plays out in a way that allows both parties togain, trading favors so to speak.A bee pollinates a tree, but the tree provides food(pollen) for the bee. This is a reciprocal relationship.The bee does its part; the tree does its; and bothbenefit. Health and shape are a lot like thisreciprocal relationship. There are many things yourbody does for you without any need for yourconscious mind to be involved, and there are other

things it is dependent upon you to do for it.

When most of us think of our body, and morespecifically our shape (or weight), we tend to thinkabout it as if we are in charge or control. This controlmetaphor is reflected in the most common strategyfollowed to alter shapedieting. The theory behinddieting postulates that we can control our weight byeating less food. This control metaphor misses a key

point: Our body behaves as if it has a mind of itsown. We might want one shape, but if our bodywants a different one, guess who usually gets whatthey want. What we want doesnt occur in avacuum. Our body wants what it wants and needswhat it needs. We have a much better chance ofgetting what we want if we help it get what it needs.We observe this with sleep. The body wants andneeds sufficient sleep to be healthy and to stay lean.

It is our job to help it get enough. If we do our part,it does its, and were both better off. If we resistdoing our part, sleeping far less than we need, we


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suffer, it suffers, and shape usually suffers. If yourgoal is to improve your shape, there are absolutelythings you can do that will all but guarantee this

outcome. You will need to do your part when itcomes to these things. You will also need to trustthat your body can do its part.

The body is capable of tremendous feats ofintelligent adaptation, but the way it adapts when itsneeds are met, in contrast to when they are unmet,can be extremely different. It takes intelligence tosurvive in a constantly changing world. It also takes

flexibility, a willingness to alter strategies to adaptto new circumstances. The human body is an expertwhen it comes to intelligent adaptation.

The human body is capable of adapting to allmanner of real world challenges. Many of theadaptations it makes, including shape, areevolutionarily sensible. What you do and dont dowill influence shape significantly, because your

habits and circumstances will cause your body toadapt in ways that make sense to it. Shape is adynamic thing. It is adjustable, but it adjusts itselfbased on its rules, not ours. Understanding theserules can be the difference between succeeding inco-creating a sustainable shape you will be satisfiedwith, or failing over and over again. The mostimportant rule of this game is that your body will doits best to adapt intelligently to the circumstances

and situations it faces. Your shape is a reflection ofthese adaptations, and all of the past and presentfactors that have contributed to them. If you want adifferent shape, something will need to shift in oneor more areas of your diet, lifestyle habits, orenvironment. If you want to sustain theimprovement, the factor you shifted will need toremain shifted. Temporary changes in weight orshape can be obtained by temporarily changing

something about your life. Lasting change in shaperequires more than temporary changes in habits.Because of this, the focus of this book is to point you


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in the direction of habits and circumstances that canbe changed in ways that are sustainable.

Its our hope that the information contained in thisbook will help you shift your shape. Its also ourhope that this book will shift your perspectivepointof view and understandingswhen it comes toshape. We believe that our bodies are trying to dotheir best to take care of themselves and us. This isan incredibly important job; one our conscious mindcould never do entirely on its own. Many of theadaptations the body makes are intended to protect

us against a perceived threat or to better prepare usto face situations the body thinks we might faceagain. Shape is one of these intelligent adaptations.It is protective in nature, intended to better prepareus for things we might encounter again, and is, at itsmost fundamental level, a survival mechanism. Wemight not always agree with how the body goesabout protecting us or altering our shape, but it isour hope that this book will help foster an

appreciation that your body will be trying to do itsbest given what it knows how to do, and what it hasavailable to do it.

Over the past decade, Dr. Mark and I have coachedclients on the principles in this book. We have alsotaught classes to health professionals and helpedthem work with their patients on shape issues.Arising from our work in this area was an

appreciation that improving shape often involvedwhat amounted to detective work. We needed toinvestigate areas of a persons diet, lifestyle, habits,environment and beliefs about shape, gatheringclues as we went. This process of investigationrequired help from our clients. In a sense, we helpedthem become better detectives when it came totheir own personal health scenes. With their help,once we had gathered the right clues, the mystery

often solved itself. Mark and I eventually came tocall this investigational approach to shape (and in abigger sense health) Health Scene Investigation


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(HSI). In this book we will be sharing this approachwith you.

Before we can solve a health scene, we must be ableto properly investigate it. But how do we do this?CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (commonly referredto simply as CSI) is one of the most popular TVshows. It is about a team of criminal investigatorswho solve difficult crime cases. House (formerlytitled House, M.D.) is about a team of physicianswho go to extraordinary lengths to find the realanswers behind unusual ailments. The characters in

these shows are investigation specialists. They areexperts in looking for clues and gathering evidence.They use the latest technology and techniques toanalyze the clues they find. And, only after all of thisis done, do they solve the case. CSI and House aremodern day versions of Sherlock Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes has been an enduring literaryfigure for more than 100 years. His cases usually

have an official inspector, who represents aconventional point of view that causes them to missclues and go about solving cases incorrectly. Inmany ways, they are analogous to the conventionalapproach to shape cases. The other key character isDr. Watson; the trusted sidekick and narrator of thestories. At the beginning of a case he is in the dark(uninformed) just like us. The case either lookscompletely unsolvable or very obvious from his

initial vantage point. It is usually neither. He is givenaccess and insight into Holmes method ofinvestigation. While he might not have had thegenius of Sherlock Holmes, he was able to become abetter investigator by learning his methods. Thegoal of this book is to help you become like Watson,to improve your ability to investigate your shape andto, in a phrase, solve it. This book is intended to helpyou shift the way you solve problems, shift your

point of view, shift your actions, and ultimately shiftyour shape and health. As you proceed with thisinvestigation you may find that what youve thought


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is important might not be, and other things you hadpreviously overlooked, might be the critical clueswhen it comes to producing a sustainable new

shape. With these things in mind, I want to welcomeyou to the HSI team.

Dr. Greg

shape shift foreward and introduction

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