Michael Roizen - You - On a Diet - The Insider’s Guide to Easy and Permanent Weight Loss

The Insider’s Guide to Easy and Permanent Weight Loss

MICHAEL F. ROIZEN, MD

MEHMET C. OZ, MD

Authors of the million-copy bestselling You: The Owners Manual

With Ted Spiker, Lisa Oz, and Craig Wynett

Illustrations by Gary Hallgren

Disclaimer

Dedication

Part 1

Introduction YOU: On a Diet

Chapter 1

Part 2

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Part 3

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Part 4

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Appendices

About the Appendices

Appendix A

Appendix B

Appendix C

Acknowledgments

Index

Also by Michael F. Roizen and Mehmet C. Oz

Copyright

About the Publisher

This publication contains the opinions and ideas of its authors. It is intended to provide helpful and informative material on the subjects addressed in the publication. It is sold with the understanding that the authors and publisher are not engaged in rendering medical, health, or any other kind of personal professional services in the book. The reader should consult his or her medical, health, or other competent professional before adopting any of the suggestions in this book or drawing inferences from it.

The authors and publisher specifically disclaim all responsibility for any liability, loss, or risk, personal or otherwise, which is incurred as a consequence, directly or indirectly, of the use and application of any of the contents of this book.

To the millions who have dieted hard,

so they can learn to diet smart

Most diets promise commonsense solutions to tight-pants problems: Eat less, and you’ll weigh less. Keep your mouth closed, and you’ll keep the pounds off. Sweat like a sauna-dwelling sumo wrestler, and you’ll wind up skinnier than a sheet of paper. Straightforward enough. But if it really worked that way, our bodies wouldn’t be large enough to be spotted by Google Earth. If it really worked that way, then most diets wouldn’t fail. If it really worked that way, then we all must be a bunch of rebellious hellions with mayo-covered lips and belt-busting bellies who don’t feel like following a few simple instructions.

Or it could be that most diets have it all wrong.

We believe it’s the latter.

You know why? Because most diets instruct you to take on the corn chips, meatball specials, and dessert trays with brute force. It’s you versus food in a lifetime heavyweight fight. But in that scenario, the fight is always fixed—and not in your favor. That’s because the battle against extra pounds isn’t won with force, with sweat, with trying to diet. It’s won with elegance, with smarts, and with healthy choices that become as automatic as a Simon Cowell barb.

When it comes to dieting, trying to whip fat with our weapon of willpower is the food equivalent to holding your breath under water. You can do it for a while, but no matter how psyched up you get, at some point your body—your biology—forces you to the surface gasping for air. And with most diets, your body forces you to gasp (or gulp) for food. No matter how hard you try not to eat, some hidden force deep inside is always prying your mouth back open, making it impossible for willpower to win. Instead of sparring with your waistline, it’s time you made your body an ally in the fight against fat.

Our process is to look at our overweight bodies the way scientists would: Identify the underlying biology of the problem, then find the cures. Why? Because we’re lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time—a time when the scientific world has just now started to unlock the biological mysteries that have caused us to store fat and gain weight. For the first time in our history, the scientific community is uncovering the medical evidence about food, appetite, and satiety that will allow you to tackle weight problems with the real weapon against fat: knowledge. By making this knowledge simple and accessible, we’re going to give you tools and actions to crack the code of true and lifelong waist management. In fact, our plan will help you avoid the dangerous yo-yo cycle of weight gain and weight loss. We’re going to help you reprogram your body so that you can keep off the weight you lose forever.

Through the years, many of us have been led to believe that our weight problem is about two things: calorie counting and mental toughness. While some of us may say that the weight problem is too much of the twelve-cheese lasagna, the real problem is that most of us have as much of a clue about how our bodies work as we have about how our cars do. Sure, we know the major parts and generally what they’re supposed to do. The real danger of thinking we have most of the answers is that we stop asking the questions. If we look under our hood, do we really understand the systems that make our bodies accelerate to a life of fat and the ones that slam the brake on the dangerous cookie-and-cake collisions that take place every day? Probably not, and that’s what we’re here to help you learn.

Above all, we’re going to teach you that when it comes to dieting, you need to work smart, not hard.

Following our plan, you can expect to drop up to two inches from your waist (or a dress size) within two weeks and see results steadily after that. While the end goal is what many of us look for, we believe that the path you choose to get there is what really dictates whether you make it or not. Our path looks like this:

Part 1: What a Waist!Starting here, we’ll talk about our major principles for how the body is designed to work and how our program is geared toward those functions. And we’ll also give you the biological ideals of the human body—how our bodies originally looked and functioned. We’ll also give you some self-assessment tools for figuring out your own body’s ideals. Once you know where you’re going, you’ll have a better idea of how to get there.

Part 2: The Biology of Fat.Here you’ll follow morsels of food from the pantry to the porcelain bowl and everywhere in between. We’ll start by exploring the physiology of appetite, and then we’ll dive into the science of fat—how we store it, how we burn it, how we fight it. You’ll learn what a truly amazing system your body is when you steer it in the right direction through wise nutritional and activity choices.

Part 3: The Science of the Mind.When it comes to overeating, most of us put more emphasis on what we’re noshing than on what we’re thinking. But you can’t discuss weight issues without exploring the scientific and chemical (and even spiritual) reasons why your brain hormones and your emotions drive you to the eight-enchilada special. More important, we’ll show you the strategies for making your emotions and the chemicals that drive them work for, not against, your waistline.