Strategy 4, Death Ground, and Losing Weight

From 33 Strategies: #4: Create a Sense of Urgency and Desperation: The Death-Ground Strategy

This strategy is potent and powerful: burn your ships back home and you will fight with a tenacity like none other. Cortez burned his ships back to Spain, and his men defeated the locals in present day Mexico.

This strategy I stumbled upon by accident, and it led me to losing 33 pounds (33, ironically, considering the title of the book). I was running away from home, and decided to land at the airport in San Juan, Puerto Rico. On this unknown land, I had to rely on my wits, sensibility, and a few hundred dollars in my bank account. I was overweight at the time, but being on the run from home I simply couldn’t afford food, so I almost completely stopped eating. I spent my days walking miles back and forth around the city, swimming in the Caribbean Sea, and lasting on 75 cent cans of beans. At night I slept in the airport and in the morning I left before security could put up a fuss.

It was a crazy time for me, but what had happened was miraculous: with all of the walking and none of the food consumption, I went from 212 pounds to 179 pounds. By putting myself on death ground where I was far away from home, had next to no money for food, and nothing to do all day but walk and swim, I pulled off one of the biggest weight loss journeys in my life.