Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight

• Ron Finley’s 3 weight-loss POWER moves
• compost is one of the sexiest things on the planet
• game-changing knowledge I wish I had when I was 30 pounds overweight
• example of 3 meals that unlocked my HAPPY weight

Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight in his 2 minute Masterclass trailer

Not by counting calories. Or points. Or macros.

But by making eating SIMPLE.

I still don’t know what macros are. And I don’t need to know. (You don’t either.) After a decade of counting EVERYTHING I ate, obsessively, I finally lost weight 22 years ago without counting ANYTHING.

My mission is for you to stop counting too.

Stop counting!

Start living.

Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight with 3 POWER moves

Ron Finley’s Masterclass trailer ticks every box for me.

Urban Gardener, Ron Finley is:

• resourceful
• big-thinking
• & completely authentic

Which makes him hot, funny and smart.

(Those were my original top 3 descriptors. But then I was like… But WHY is he hot, funny and smart?!)

Anyways… I could watch Ron Finley’s Masterclass trailer ALL DAY LONG.

Join me as I press play, again… and see if you can figure out the 3 ways Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight in this super-short video.

(Hint: You DON’T have to grow your own food.)

Let’s talk about Ron Finley

There’s so much to unpack here…

But let’s stay focused.

Here’s the 3 game-changing weight-loss gems he shared:

Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight: POWER MOVE #1

KNOWLEDGE IS GANGSTER

OMG I love him!

When I wanted to lose weight I just dove in and believed everything I read.

Birthday money, babysitting money, my weekly allowance… it all went down the drain because I bought magazines with covers that said stuff like “drop 8 lbs in 7 days”.

“Perfect.” I’d think. “Then I’ll be able to wear my favorite jeans by Friday… right in time for the school dance.”

Reality?

It wasn’t until I STOPPED dieting, 10 years later, that I lost weight.

Sadly, over that entire decade I thought I was collecting a comprehensive approach to weight loss.

But the truth is, following rules like:

• blot your pizza before eating it, to get off the excess oil
• never eat french fries
• only eat fruit before noon
• drink skim milk
• stick with low-fat food ONLY
• just eat the white of an egg

… all these restrictions made my eating disordered.

Navigating a simple meal was a nightmare

No matter what I ate, I’d think I made a mistake. And I always, always felt guilty.

And too many people feel this way!

As one of my clients said this week:

Suddenly it occurred to me that before speaking to Kelly I’d been serving up a heaping scoop of guilt at almost every meal.
-Tori, Executive Coach

When you embark on any project—whether you’re learning to:

contour your cheek bones
build a garden
or lose weight

Educate yourself first!

(Apparently you need a dark, matte shade, a soft angled brush and to be at-the-ready with a “fish face” <suck in your cheeks> to really nail the contouring.)

Second:
Have a plan that makes sense AND has evidence of results. And more results.

Third:
Run your plan by someone you trust. Because if your weight-loss method includes things you’re doing in secret, then you probably shouldn’t be doing them.

Like, you don’t have to:

• workout like a mad man to lose weight.
• be hungry to lose weight.
• eat specialized foods, like gluten-free ghee, spelt-berry butter or raw buckwheat flour from France… to lose weight.

(One of those might be made up.)

…then get started!

Lasting weight loss is about having GOOD INFORMATION

Gardening is gangsta. Drugs, robbing—that's not gangsta. Building community—that's gangsta. I'm changing the vernacular— Ron Finley, the gangsta gardenerThen you can put all your high-achiever energy behind weight-loss strategies that work. And then get on with building your own herb garden in an old dresser drawer… Or whatever it is you do in your down time.

Knowledge is power.

Knowledge is gangster!

Ready for some game-changing knowledge I wish I had when I was running 10 miles a day, drinking diet coke and counting the calories on the back of a ROLD GOLD pretzel package… whilst clocking in at 30 pounds overweight?

Here it is:

Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight: POWER MOVE #2

EAT NATURAL FOOD

Ron Finley wants you to eat MORE food created by Mother Nature.

And LESS made within the factory walls of Nestlé, PepsiCo., Inc., and the Kraft-Heinz Company.

Humans are part of the natural world so natural food works with our bodies the best.

In other words, don’t try to shove an apple computer chord into a Toshiba laptop.

Spoiler Alert: It won’t work.

Keep apples with apples.

Why does Ron Finley want you to eat natural food?

Factory food is also known as:

convenience food
processed food
empty calorie food
junk food
& my personal favorite to really drive it home: FAKE food

These edible products confuse your body.

All the added ingredients, including artificial colors, flavors, preservatives and so on, are foreign to your body and WREAK HAVOC within it.

For instance, all that added sugar in your:

• cereal
• ketchup
• OJ
• low-fat yogurt
• BBQ sauce
• flavored coffees
• granola
• ice tea
• protein bars
• vitamin water
• pre-made soups and so on…

…all that sugar (that you might not even know is there) makes your blood sugar spike. Then the excess sugar gets stored as fat and your blood sugar and energy levels crash.

I had low energy for the 10 years I was 30 pounds overweight.

Next?

Hunger and cravings are triggered.

In other words, your body starts sending you signals to eat.

And round and round the FAT STORAGE CYCLE you go:

If you’re thinking: “But I drink diet pop and only choose foods with artificial sweeteners.”

Think back to Ron Finley.

Who makes artificial sweeteners?

NOT mère Nature, madre natura, Mutter Natur…

That’s Mother Nature in French, Italian and German.

Of course I looked it up!

I only speak English, a little French but I’m fluent in Coco.

Coco is one of my cats and he can’t purrr. So he announces everything he does like Road Runner from Looney Tunes. A long flight of stairs is a shrill of noise that goes a bit like this: meep meep meep meep meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep!

Coco’s on the left and GUILTY as charged.

He’s also incredibly sweet (and I’m obsessed with him).

Not FAKE sweet.

Naturally sweet.

(As is his best bud, Gunther, who came with the name).

Which is important.

Because…

Artificial sweeteners are worse than regular sugar

I would know because I did a stint of drinking a case of diet coke a day.

(By stint I mean a decade.)

The sad thing is everything I’ve described about processed food is “best case scenario.”

Here’s why:

Manufacturers are allowed to decide for themselves whether their additives are GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) without informing the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration). None of this would matter if all food additives were safe. But some are not… this constitutes yet another reason not to eat ultra-processed food products with long lists of additive ingredients.
-Marion Nestle, previously a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University

Look at the label of processed food.

Can you even pronounce the ingredients?

Ron Finley knows natural food works WITH your body

Natural food, also known as whole food, fresh food, one-ingredient food or “real” food is packed with:

• water
• fiber
• vitamins
• minerals
• protein
• carbohydrates
• fat

All nutrients that your body RECOGNIZES (because they’re natural).

So your body knows what to do when you eat a carrot, piece of salmon fried in butter and potato with full-fat sour cream.

Or one of those sweet potatoes Ron Finley grows.

(Above is a sneak peak at some of my new friends. I’ll tell you more about them soon…)

Your body does NOT know what to do with a bag of Doritos and a chocolate bar that’s washed down with a super-sized Diet Coke. Or a low-fat yogurt with an aspartame-sweetened fruit topping and low-fat granola bar made with a laundry-list of chemicals. I mean, ingredients.

…Like “mixed tocopherols”, “Red Dye 40”, and so on.

Red Dye 40 is a synthetic color additive or food dye made from petroleum. It’s one of the most widely used food dyes, as well as one of the most controversial. The dye is thought to be linked to allergies, migraines, and mental disorders in children.
– National Center for Biotechnology Information

2 Key outcomes from eating like Ron Finley

1. When you eat natural food, you fill up naturally and don’t eat more than you need.
(Unlike the FAT STORAGE CYCLE described earlier, that keeps you hungry.)

2. Natural food keeps you full LONGER.
Here’s why:

All the nutrients listed above, like water, fiber, vitamins, minerals, and so on:

a) take longer for your body to break down because unlike factory food, your body does all the processing!

b) meet your body’s needs. And once you meet your body’s needs you stop feeling hungry.

That’s why a 100 calories of processed food, like jelly beans, will get you reaching for MORE jelly beans quickly. Then you become OVERFED and UNDERNOURISHED.

I didn’t know that!

Which is why I asked myself this for 10 years:

Whereas 100 calories of almonds will keep you feeling satisfied loooooooonger. (So you eat less!)

Thus between meals you can get on with clamoring around the internet looking for more YouTube Videos that feature Ron Finley, without being distracted by hunger.

What a nuisance!

All the above is just ONE of the many reasons why it’s a waste of time to count calories.

Once food enters your body, calories become irrelevant! You’re no longer comparing sweet potatoes with sweet potatoes.

Gardening taught me that nothing ever dies. It’s an energy transfer. When you see compost do what it does, you realize there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on.
– Ron Finley, the gangsta gardener

So… Ron Finley thinks compost is sexy?

Well.

Not counting calories is sexy too.

All this talk of fresh food and watching Ron Finley make the most of any patch of soil, from sidewalks, to rooftops to flowerpots… has got me craving fresh food.

So I stopped part way through POWER MOVE #2 of Why Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight, to cut up this watermelon that’s been sitting on my counter all week:

Yum!

Eating a watermelon is a bit of a commitment because you need to have room in the fridge after you open it. Not too big a deal around here because I can polish off the better part of a medium watermelon pretty quickly. Eat your water! But I still needed to do some shuffling.

REMEMBER:

Whatever you eat you get used to eating

You can get used to popping jelly beans straight-outta-the-bag as easily as you can get used to putting a delicious, balanced snack on a plate.

For years I blacklisted donuts.

So I wanted donuts.

…Now I’d take some watermelon, almonds and a latte over a donut ANY day!

Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight: POWER MOVE #3

MAKE 1/3 OF WHAT YOU EAT FRESH FOOD

Pack your plate out with fiber!

Aka fruit and veg and whole-food carbs (when you can. I eat white bread too. It’s no big deal).

Why is fiber fab?

For all the reasons already discussed. (Like it keeps you full longer.)

And most importantly because Ron Finley told you so!

I know a lot of people out there, you don’t like leafy greens. I don’t either. Put them in your diet anyway because this is one of the healthiest things you can possibly eat.
– Ron Finley, the gangsta gardener

Ron Finley approved meals I eat regularly:

Please note:
I’m not a food photographer. But Ron Finley’s message is more important than a pretty pic.

BREAKFAST

Steel-cut oats topped with fruit, pepitas and chia seeds.

LUNCH

Scrambled egg wrap with mozzarella cheese and some veg.

& DINNER

Baked potato with full-fat sour cream, kale with a homemade Caesar Salad dressing plus real parmesan cheese, a sausage and a sliced pepper.

And look… at least 1/3 of what I ate was fruit and/or veg.

I also had a random banana sometime during that day because I wasn’t too hungry between meals. And a latte with breakfast and lunch. What would we have done if we didn’t find that Breville Latte Machine?

It’s big, balanced meals like these, made of one-ingredient foods, that unlocked my H 🙂 PPY weight 22 years ago.

#EatFoodThatRots

(I’m trying to make that a thing, ok?!)

Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight BONUS POWER move:

RON FINLEY TAKES NO EXCUSES

When people won’t accept your would’ves, could’ves and should’ves… what they’re actually doing is empowering you.

I did not grow the veg. Or watermelon. Or other fresh foods in this post, like these delicious radishes that someone plucked straight from the soil:

(Although I wish I did. It would have been incredibly rewarding.)

If you don’t have time or space to grow your fruit and veg, there’s other ways to get it on your plate at every meal (and snack!)

I bought all that veg.

And it wasn’t expensive.

Get to know your city within the city. Or your town within your town.
There is no end to the bounty of mother nature. There is enough for everybody. And that’s the one thing you will learn from gardening— Ron Finley, the gangsta gardener

When I walk down to the post office there’s this great little grocery store that has veg. We bought kale (same price as the Swiss chard) there for ages because it was a lot less than we paid at our chain grocery store:

Then recently another grocery stop popped up next to us.

Here’s the cost of their tender green kale:

Who needs 4 bunches of radishes?!

Turns out I did.

They also have a rack of half price veg that’s in Grade A condition which is why I arrive with an extra-large Ikea bag and raid the shelves.

You can always find a way to eat fresh food

Look around and shop around.

No excuses!

(Both photos above were taken on the same day so the prices are comparable.)

No matter where you shop… you can get a head of kale that feeds around 4 people for LESS than a Caramel Ribbon Crunch Frappuccino® Blended Beverage at Starbucks (aka liquid sugar).

Check out this urban garden

It’s at the hotel across the street from my home in downtown Toronto.

(The trowel is simply a prop.)

This urban garden was created in just a very narrow corridor.

But look what they’ve done:

It’s all about, as Ron Finley would say, “bringing creativity to your space”.

Ron Finley’s final word

Ron Finley’s 2 Minute Masterclass trailer is packed FULL of messages you can really ruminate on.

Along with how Ron Finley teaches you how to lose weight by being healthy (the healthy choice helps you lose weight!) and his big empowering BONUS above, he leaves us with this gem:

We are supposed to inspire each other to wake up in and realize what’s truly important. I want to bring your creativity into your space. I want you to know that you have the power to do this.
– Ron Finley, the gangsta gardener

You have the power to eat fruit and veg and other fresh foods.

You can plant them or buy them.

But the bottom line is that you eat them.

And what’s truly important to me?

I want to see YOU start eating ROUGHLY balanced meals made MOSTLY of REAL food and get healthy.

And then I want to see you help somebody else by doing what you LOVE to do.

Use your interests to make something better.

You have the power to inspire somebody in your own, magical way.

Just like Ron Finley.

Make Today Count

You don’t need to plant a food forest like Ron Finley.

But you can eat from a food forest today.

What fresh food can you add to 1/3 of what you eat to make sure it’s balanced?

Build healthy eating and exercise habits. A healthy weight will follow.

Next Steps

Get growing (if you can), chopping and chewing! Prepping some veg ahead of time makes it easier to grab a few peeled and sliced carrots WHILE you’re building habits and making fresh food your preference. To begin, just add some fruit or veg to what you usually eat. Is it a bowl of chips? Cool. Enjoy them with a side of carrot sticks.

My god I’m fickle… Move over Taylor Hanson and HELLO Ron Finley!
Gardening is my graffiti. The soil is my canvas... I grow my art... I can eat my art— Ron Finley, the gangsta gardener
In case you haven’t got enough of Ron Finley, above is a brilliant TED Talk he did in 2014. Since then he’s polished up his game.

But it’s important to realize that we all start from somewhere. You don’t have to get it perfect straight out of the gate. Just get started. Whether it’s a TED Talk, growing herbs or throwing some fresh food on your plate.