Thinking thin can help you be thin

The New You
You’ll probably find that dieting and weight loss follow a predictable cycle: During the first week or two, you might find that dieting is relatively easy. Then things likely become somewhat more difficult. Cravings set in or intensify. Life intervenes. Your schedule gets busy. You feel emotionally stressed. And you might come up with any number of reasons to stray from your diet.

If you just keep practicing the skills described in this program, however, you’ll do fine. Dieting will become easier. Cravings and hunger will diminish. You’ll learn better ways to deal with stress. Your thinking will change. In fact, you’ll get to the point where you’ll react differently when you see food you know you shouldn’t eat. Instead of saying, I wish I could eat this, and feeling sad, or It’s unfair that I can’t eat this, and feeling unhappy, you’ll automatically say, I’m so glad I’m not eating that. At some point, you’ll shift from, I hate depriving myself, to I’m happy I didn’t overeat! Just take it one day at a time, as this book suggests. You’ll get there!

The word

doesn’t appear again in this book outside of this box. I’ve omitted it intentionally because too many unsuccessful dieters have all-or-nothing thoughts about their eating:

I’ve found that people who view themselves as having cheated usually feel demoralized and even “bad,” which makes it even more difficult for them to get back on track.

Instead of cheat, I’ve used the words unplanned eating and overeating. These terms are less negatively charged. People who use them are able to take a more benign view and say, Okay, so I ate something I didn’t plan to eat or I ate more than I was supposed to. But they’re also able to then add, It was just a mistake, no big deal ... I’ll get back on track for the rest of the day.

Why Weight Matters — for Everyone
If you’re ambivalent about starting the Beck Diet Solution, consider this: Many people gain a few pounds every year due to a natural age-related slowing of the metabolism. Add to this the fact that it takes only 20 or so extra calories a day to gain 2 pounds a year. This means that if you’re 10 pounds overweight today and do nothing about it, a year from now you may be 12 or 13 pounds overweight ... the year after that, perhaps 14 or 15 pounds ... and so on and so on. But instead of gaining, you can lose weight and maintain your weight loss by practicing the principles you’ll learn in The Beck Diet Solution.

SOLUTION AT A GLANCE

• Cognitive Therapy is a psychological treatment that will help you successfully
• lose excess weight and keep it off.
• The way you think about food, eating, and dieting affects your behavior and how you feel emotionally.
• Certain ways of thinking make it difficult to follow a diet and to maintain weight loss.
• The Beck Diet Solution takes you through a six-week process to change sabotaging thoughts (that cause you to stray from your diet) to helpful thinking (that will lead to success).

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