Tried diet after diet and still can't lose weight? It's time to call the expert. In The Skinny, Dr. Louis Aronne, America's top weight-loss specialist, shares the plan that has worked so well for his many patients. Through his friendly guidance, you'll finally learn how to:

• stop the weight-loss, weight-gain cycle
• learn the strategy for feeling full with fewer calories
• teach your brain to stop craving food
• learn to put down your fork and automatically push away from the table - without counting a single calorie
• learn what common medications and medical conditions can make you gain weight
• lose the weight - even if nothing else has worked

Dr. Louis Aronne is the expert whom doctors refer their toughest cases to. For more than twenty years he's worked on the front lines of obesity research and treatment. The founder and director of the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York - Presbyterian Hospital /Weill Cornell Medical Center, he has helped thousands of people achieve lasting weight loss.

In The Skinny, Dr. Aronne shows you how to fix your internal biology by adjusting your eating and activity one step at a time. Including comprehensive menus, restaurant options for every type of food, a do-it-at-home strength plan and exercise plans, more than fifty low-calorie, high-satisfaction recipes, and extensive advice that helps you put the plan into practice, this is the only book you'll need to learn how to defeat your hunger and cravings, and make the changes to your biochemistry that will keep the weight off for good.

Are you tired of yo-yo dieting? Tired of the pain and discomfort of being overweight? Do you finally want to feel good about the body you're in? Is long-term weight loss as important to you as initial short-term loss? Then you're ready to commit to The Skinny.

Your friends may not believe that you are dedicated to losing weight. Your spouse may not believe you, either. Even your doctor may doubt your sincerity. Well, I believe you. I believe that you want to shed these extra pounds more than you've ever wanted anything, and I believe you are probably willing to do nearly anything to make it happen. In fact, I'd bet a million dollars that if a genie popped out of a little bottle this very moment and granted you just one wish, you would wish for the ability to lose weight.

I believe this because I know just bow tremendously difficult - if not impossible - it is to will yourself to eat less when your brain keeps telling you to eat more.

Why haven't you been able to shrink your portions, forgo dessert, or get yourself to the gym? Why, despite all of your good intentions, do you end up doing the opposite? Why is it that the more you eat, the hungrier you get? These are the very questions I've been studying and trying to answer for the past twenty-three years, ever since Claire came to me for treatment. She was in her late thirties, weighed 270 pounds, and had diabetes, high triglycerides (fat in the blood that tends to clog arteries), and low levels of the health-promoting HDL cholesterol.

Her knees were so arthritic that she walked with a cane. I tried everything to help her lose weight, and she listened to my every suggestion. We tried, and we tried, and we tried. I studied medical journals. I talked with colleagues. I stayed up late each night thinking about her and why her weight would not budge. I never gave up on her. I didn't, because I knew one thing: there was no way Claire wanted to be that heavy and have those health problems. She wanted to lose weight. She wanted it more than anything. She was miserable in her 270-pound body.

I knew that Claire had to be battling strong biological signals that were driving her to eat. These hormonal signals were obliterating her sense of fullness. I couldn't prove if, but I knew it like I knew the world was round.

Claire's struggle led me, two years later, to develop and found the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York Presbyterian Hospital. It was one of the first research and treatment programs in the country devoted to helping people lose weight. My goal was simple: to treat people with weight problems in the same way that our cardiologists treated patients with heart disease. I didn't believe that people with weight problems had psychological or motivational problems. I believed they had a disease, one that could be treated.

To find the best ways to treat this disease, I performed and designed more than twenty-five weight-loss studies, and I consulted with other innovative researchers around the world. I counseled thousands of people, exhaustively working with them to find the most effective eating, behavioral, and lifestyle approaches for lasting weight loss.

I also did media interview after media interview, trying to spread what at the time was an incredibly unpopular message. I wanted people to know that weight loss not about willpower. It's about biology. It's about figuring out why you rarely, if ever, feel full, and about implementing solutions that help you overcome that problem.

© 2009 Louis J. Aronne, M.D.

Tags: Diets and Weight Loss, Nutrition

About the Author

Dr. Louis Aronne has directed the Comprehensive Weight Control Program at New York - Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center since 1986. Dr. Aronne is a former president of the Obesity Society, edited the NIH Guide to Obesity Treatment, was an original host on the TV Food Network, and is perhaps best known for diagnosing David Letterman's heart problem in 2000. He is listed in the Castle Connolly Top Doctors in NY directory as a specialist in obesity and diabetes and is founder of the Cardiometabolic Support Network, www.cmsnonline.com. He lives in Greenwich, Connecticut.

About the Author

Alisa Bowman has collaborated on five New York Times bestsellers, including The 3-Hour Diet and 8 Minutes in the Morning. She lives in Emmaus, Pennsylvania.