Scott Abel > Quotes

“You stop accepting yourself and stop connecting three realms of the triangle of awareness within you. You fail to realize that this is mistaken notion that "a lighter you is a happier you" isn't making you happier at all.”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“If you work and do pure research in this industry as long as I have – and you actually pay attention and do your homework, then this naked and raw truth stands out -> The supplement world of cancer-fighters, CAD-preventers, health-promoters, magic-water – AND/OR - muscle-builders, fat-burners and weight-loss agents – all of them – already have an over-crowded mass grave-yard of previous magic bullets that would supposedly make your life and/or body better – Yes, so promising and heavily promoted “this” era – but so dead and gone the next – leaving in their wake a trail of mass-consumer confusion – but also leaving their actual intention -> a new generation of passive consumers – those who can’t differentiate the sizzle from the steak. Or as W.C. Fields put it so long ago – “There’s a sucker born every minute.” -> There isn’t a supplement on the planet that marks the difference between ‘health or ill-health’ – or between ‘fit or fat.’ - or between ‘results and stagnation.”
― Scott Abel

“It’s just human psychological truth really. Anything acquired without effort and without cost investment of time and energy is generally unappreciated within you. And in this day and age of ultra-convenience and easy credit – it seems the damaging consequence of this combination is that the only thing so many people value now – is what they can “covet” and “want for” – And that isn’t a recipe for appreciation – it’s a recipe for angst – which is why there is so much depression and anxiety in the modern world. The void of true inside-out appreciation will seldom ever be filled with instant gratification.”
― Scott Abel

“Careful in what and how you are learning. Professors specialize in “teaching” knowledge – They do not specialize in organization and application of knowledge. This is often why modern education includes “job placement” for real-world understanding and immersion of what you learn. Listen, you can grow up in Saudi Arabia, or in Kenya, or Bolivia – and study every book available on-line about hockey. But that will NEVER, by itself, lead you to become an adept hockey player or Hockey Coach. Yet, this is exactly the kind of thing going on all across the Fitness Industry, with ‘weekend certifications’ and the like. Knowledge is more than information gathering– and knowledge is NOT power in and of itself. Knowledge and access to it, is merely the “potential for proper and expert application.”
― Scott Abel

“The act of starving yourself only guarantees a ravenous appetite.”
― Scott Abel, Beyond Metabolism: How Your Brain, Biology, and the Environment Create and Perpetuate Weight Issues …and What You Can Do About It

“You have an eating disorder if diet and food negatively impact your life and add stress where natural calm energy would usually be.”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“The hormonal and metabolic environment of the body within which calories enter determines how your body deals with those calories.”
― Scott Abel, Understanding Metabolism: The Truth About Counting Calories, Sustainable Weight Loss, and Metabolic Damage

“You can't sculpt a pebble.”
― Scott Abel

“Can we talk real for a minute then? Do you "really" think that your problem is that you just need to gather more information and data before you start to "do" better with your commitment to yourself? Or isn't the real truth more like -> you are already educated with enough information - beyond your level of behavioral obedience to what you already know! You don't need to "know more" to get going- you simply need to buckle down and get real about "doing better" with what you already know.”
― Scott Abel

“Dietary fat was singled out as the most villainous culprit responsible for weight gain and declining health. The food industry adjusted by replacing saturated animal fats with “heart healthy,” super-processed vegetable seed oils, and high fructose corn syrup. Soon, our average body weight started to rise, and it did so quickly.”
― Scott Abel, Beyond Metabolism: How Your Brain, Biology, and the Environment Create and Perpetuate Weight Issues …and What You Can Do About It

“And conversely, didn’t you know that the reverse is true as well? For within this message is another, more insidious message.  If a lighter and leaner you is a better you, then if you are currently overweight, then of course you are led to believe that you are not “good enough” just the way you are right now.  And from here the personal angst begins.”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“The message of the diet-industry is that you can’t possibly be spiritually and personally fulfilled unless you are leaner and lighter.”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“You fail to realize the fundamental truth: inevitable failure is what drives and sustains the diet-industry.  They don’t want you to master weight-control, because if you do, they’ve lost a customer.  But you can’t see it. You can’t see that the mentality involved is just all wrong and discombobulated. The focus on food is also all wrong. But you think there must be magic in that focus. And that becomes part of your diet-mentality”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“Cheap food tends to be highly-refined and layered with sugar, like the Frosted Flakes described previously. Sugar in all its forms has a direct effect on the dopamine response as we determined.”
― Scott Abel, Beyond Metabolism: How Your Brain, Biology, and the Environment Create and Perpetuate Weight Issues …and What You Can Do About It

“Real wellness habits transcend being told what to eat.  For”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“No other animal on the planet needs to be told what, when, why or how to eat, how to eat, and neither did we, until recently.”
― Scott Abel, Beyond Metabolism: How Your Brain, Biology, and the Environment Create and Perpetuate Weight Issues …and What You Can Do About It

“Think about it. The industry generates billions of dollars of profit and revenue each year. They do so by selling answers. But if they had the answers, then these so-called answers would just be copied and pasted and handed out, and the industry itself would crumble.”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“Once again, when you fully understand the neural circuitry of the brain’s reward center to seek survival and emotional rewards, it becomes easier to see how diets are part of the problem, and by themselves are never the solution.”
― Scott Abel, Beyond Metabolism: How Your Brain, Biology, and the Environment Create and Perpetuate Weight Issues …and What You Can Do About It

“if you are led to believe carbs are bad then you fear them, and you try to cut out potatoes, yams, rice, whatever. These become your ‘fear foods’ and it can get pretty ridiculous. For example, people who buy into the notion of high vs. low glycemic carbs are told to cut out carrots for example, so that a completely healthy and useful food becomes a ‘fear food.’ When”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“The cycle of deprivation, indulgence, further deprivation and so on illustrates how all overly restrictive diets fail us.”
― Scott Abel, Beyond Metabolism: How Your Brain, Biology, and the Environment Create and Perpetuate Weight Issues …and What You Can Do About It

“The security (emotional security, spiritual security, intrapersonal security) that you think being thin or lean will provide you is just an illusion. Leanness and weight-loss will not deliver these securities to you.”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“The subliminal message of the diet-industry is that you should care (intensely) about your weight. Most people are prone to a certain level of body-consciousness anyway, since it is a biological and cultural imperative. What the diet-industry does is spin this and magnify and exaggerate the emphasis of body-consciousness. It puts body-consciousness on steroids.”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“Gordon Shepherd MD and PhD at Yale School of Medicine, said this: “The industry is geared to over-stimulating the senses of the consumer so that they eat more. The goal is to activate the parts of the brain that are susceptible to being conditioned to finding a product desirable and then wanting more of it.”
― Scott Abel, Beyond Metabolism: How Your Brain, Biology, and the Environment Create and Perpetuate Weight Issues …and What You Can Do About It

“Diet/food/eating should NEVER be the means by which you objectify yourself, disconnect from yourself, judge yourself, or worst of all, reject and hate yourself.”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“The most common denominator among all people who diet – “serial dieters” if you will – isn’t in the physical realm. The most common denominator among all people who diet takes place in the emotional realm. Do you have it yet?  SELF-CRITICISM is the most common denominator among all people who identify themselves as “dieters.”  You constantly”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“When your life’s focus becomes taken over and swallowed by food and diet – what to eat, how to eat, what you can’t eat, what you ‘have to’ eat, what you weigh, the right vs. the wrong foods, the good vs. the bad foods, the healthy vs. the indulgent foods, the right diet vs. the wrong diet, what other people will think – then doesn’t this list make it obvious that food and diet become a black-hole of thought and emotion and of wasted spiritual focus and psychic energy? While”
― Scott Abel, The Anti-Diet Approach to Weight Loss and Weight Control

“Metabolism. Some kind of exercise is going to be necessary to offset your slowing metabolism.  A slower metabolism leads to weight-gain and sluggishness. Weight training has the greatest effects in terms of optimizing metabolism, because it optimizes lean tissue gain and retention.”
― Scott Abel, Physique After 50: How to Use Resistance Training to Feel Younger, Maintain Muscle & Fight the Effects of Aging