The First Thin Commandment

The Thin Commandments: The Ten No-Fail Strategies for Permanent Weight Loss
by Stephen Gullo, PH.D.

Bestselling author of Thin Tastes Better, Dr. Stephen Gullo lets you in on his unique program which has a success rate almost 15 times higher than the national average and has helped patients lose more than 100 pounds and maintain the weight loss for more than five years. At Dr. Gullo's Institute for Health and Weight Sciences in New York City patients wait up to six months for an appointment and pay over $1,000 an hour for the secrets he imparts in this book.

Dr. Gullo's program, incorporating his more than 25 years of clinical experience, features The Ten Thin Commandments that govern all eating habits, and his easy-to-follow ABC Diet plan.

In Part One, Dr. Gullo shares his Thin Commandments, including:

• Think historically, not just calorically—identify trigger foods that can undermine weight loss

• Slips should teach you, not defeat you—uncover the "24 hour secret" and never gain weight from binging again

• Success is about substitution, not denial—discover the 10 most common diet-busting foods and their satisfying substitutes

In Part Two, Dr. Gullo outlines his simple ABC Diet plan. He takes the guesswork out of dieting and offers a three-step program, which begins with a ten-day turbocharged plan that helps melt away pounds quickly and easily. The ABC Diet is complete with menu plans and shopping lists.

Strategy Is Stronger Than Willpower

Dieting is about losing weight — food strategy is about ending the problem.

COMMANDMENT ESSENTIALS

• Use strategy to stay in control.
• Stop self-defeating food talk.
• Weigh yourself on the New Scale for Dieting.
• Keep a food diary.
• Listen to a power tape.

The single greatest surprise of my professional life has been the discovery that success at weight control is not about willpower. Indeed, those who succeed at weight control do not have greater willpower than those who fail—they just have better strategies. This is the most powerful lesson I have learned in 25 years from almost 15,000 clients.

Like you—and many of my colleagues—I once had quite a few preconceptions about people with weight problems: They lack willpower to control their eating; they have psychological or emotional issues that keep them from permanently losing weight; and they lack the food smarts to follow a healthy diet.

When I actually began to work with these individuals, I discovered that almost all of my preconceptions were wrong. They were successful in their professional lives, enjoyed many interests, and had meaningful personal relationships. They were creative people with vision, who cared passionately about their goals and were dedicated to excellence. They epitomized the American ideal of determination and success.

Far from lacking nutritional knowledge, many of my clients already knew what to eat and what not to eat. They'd read diet book after diet book, were aware of calories, carbohydrates, and fats, and knew how to read labels. Many had lost hundreds of pounds over the years. But despite all their knowledge and weight loss, they had never been able to keep the pounds off permanently.

I struggled to reconcile my clients' success in every other area of their lives with their failure at weight control. How could these people—many of whom had overcome tremendous obstacles to achieve greatness—still lose control with chocolates or a breadbasket? They knew what they had to do to lose weight, but they were living in misery because they couldn't do it. Such repeated failure takes a terrible toll, even on the most successful individual.

WHY WE FAIL

By looking back across the years at my clients' dieting, weight loss, and gain, I've seen that there are distinct and predictable patterns of behavior and food choices that have led these men and women to failure. I have conclusively discovered that the particular diet an individual follows is secondary to success at weight control, which is why people can so easily switch diets from year to year. The most important factor for winning is having strategies—not the particular diet you follow.

In a recent article "The Diet That Works" in the Wall Street Journal, Tara Parker Pope captured the truth that resonates for a large number of individuals who struggle with weight control. "If sticking to a diet were easy, so many of us wouldn't be so fat."

The men and women who have avoided a weight problem—or conquered one on their own—instinctively use strategy to stay in control. It's the common thread that unites everyone who has ever won at weight control, including myself. Food strategy has saved me again and again in my own life.

Obviously, no one who has lost weight intends to gain it back. After every diet, every one of my clients was completely committed to maintaining his or her weight loss. But the commitment was overcome by a combination of powerful forces: biology, our value system, and advertising.

Recent research shows that our ancestors passed on powerful biological programming that may predispose us to crave and seek out certain foods, as many of us who are sensitive to sweet, salty, and bitter tastes know well. These differences in sensitivity, not willpower, may explain why some people are able to maintain control around certain foods— such as chocolate chip cookies—while others find that these foods actually trigger increased appetite and losses of control.

And unlike many of our ancestors, who had to struggle to find food, we are literally surrounded by it. Yet we still carry the ancestral mindset of "waste not, want not" in our modern society where food is overly abundant and always present. Just consider all of the food stores, fast-food chains, airport and shopping mall food courts—many of them open 24 hours a day! Overconsumption is the name of the game, and "all-you-can-eat" has become a national mantra. We have been steadily programmed to believe that it is our birthright to eat whatever we want, whenever we want. We're also bombarded by slick commercials that reinforce the belief that foods are the goodies and treats that make life worthwhile and wash away stress—and that any limitation of them is a horrible deprivation. Even the language of love is expressed in terms of food—honey, cookie, peaches, sweetie. And when you fall out of love, that person becomes a crumb!

Saddled with this powerful psychological and biological programming, surrounded by messages that food is the answer to every problem and the reward for every success, it's no wonder so many people fall back into the habits that lead to weight gain. And it's totally clear why so many feel instantly deprived when they think about weight control.

STRATEGY: THE KEY PRINCIPLES

Food situations are a part of every life. They come up again and again, and there's an amazing amount of predictability to what you can expect to encounter. Most of us rely on a very small assortment of foods—the same vegetables, the same meats, the same snack foods that satisfy an eat-and-run diet. Despite the fact that we can buy practically any food at any time, no matter how exotic or out of season, few of us venture beyond the limits of our favorite foods. And most eating occurs in only about seven situations: at home, in the workplace, in restaurants, in others' homes, when traveling, on vacation, and at celebratory events, such as holiday dinners, weddings, and parties. The realm of food is not a big world, but a small village.

The same scenarios come up over and over again. You face the same foods, the same temptations. However overwhelmed you may feel in the land of abundance, there is another more powerful truth at work as well: You have seen it all and tasted it all before. It may come in different shapes, varieties, and new presentations, but there's very little that's new in the world of food that you will face today. I will teach you strategies to deal with each situation. And I'll show you ways to develop your skills so that your responses become automatic. Rather than a constant tug-of-war that drains your willpower and resolve, you will have a set of tools to rely on, no matter where you go or what foods you may meet along the way.

Although food strategies vary depending on the person, the techniques share common themes. This chapter and those that follow will teach you a new way of dealing with your weight that involves key principles that have enabled so many of my clients to turn a lifetime of failure with weight into a lifetime of success.

• Food history. In a world of thousands of types of food, my careful research has revealed that only a handful are at the root of most weight problems. Food history shows that weight control is not a mountain to climb, just a few patterns to master.

• Food desensitizing. Techniques to defuse the power of cravings so that you can be around food that would normally tempt you without feeling deprived.

• Breaking through food "baby talk." Methods to transform self-defeating food talk learned in childhood—that can rule and ruin adulthood—into a new script, with phrases, thoughts, and values that work in the real world and prove that anyone can overcome feelings of deprivation.

• The New Scale for Dieting. A unique and effective tool for measuring the shifts and changes in your attitudes, skills, and motivation that can result in increased pounds, to be used as an early warning system before you step on a real scale. The New Scale for Dieting predicts in advance if you'll be gaining weight and makes it possible to prevent the seven most critical mistakes that lead to weight gain. This has never before been done in a weight program.

• Containment. The powerful technique that turns slips into success and teaches you how to cut off an error and never again feel the guilt of "I blew it."

• Keeping the pleasure of food. Enjoying favorite foods and not feeling deprived is critical for your success. Through recipes and food preparation techniques in my diet plan, you'll discover how to preserve the joy of eating without excess calories, and you will learn the best of the best of the new light foods, which my clients and I have tasted for you. Of the thousands of products we've sampled, only a handful have merited our Taste Is King award (see page 294). And the gourmet recipes will prove that success at weight control is not about giving up the pleasure of fine dining. Indeed, not to enjoy the foods on a weight plan guarantees failure!

Whenever I teach new clients the techniques for weight control, I know that I am training them for "diet fitness." For, just as you can become physically fit and train for a sport, every overweight person has the ability to become psychologically fit and train for long-term weight control. These strategies, along with many others that I will teach you, make it possible not only to dramatically increase your likelihood for success on a diet but also to maintain that success for years.

Some of these strategies may seem unusual or contradict what you have been led to believe about dieting and weight control. But successful weight control is not about doing what's "normal"—it's about doing what works for you. You should not be concerned about the norm—that's the preoccupation of the insecure—but about what brings you the success you deserve. As Chairman Deng responded when criticized by the Communist hardliners for introducing capitalist initiatives into China , "It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white; it only matters if it can catch mice."

DIETS ARE JUST WORDS ON A PAGE

Most of the diet books out there today focus on only half the equation: the right foods. But that leaves out the most critical element for success — you! Diets are just words on a page, a list on paper of what to eat. They don't help you plan what to think or say, and they don't tell you how to behave. They ignore the right behaviors, the critical issues of how to stay motivated and how to bounce back from a lapse, and how to avoid cravings and feelings of deprivation, and they don't change your thinking about food.

Strategy deals with how to make weight control easy. The right techniques actually encourage you to want to continue. They lead you to a way of eating that makes you feel happier and brings about permanent results by changing your mindset. At the core of the lessons I teach is changing the food programming that you've been taught since childhood.

The Lure of Food "Baby Talk"

When faced with cravings and feelings of deprivation, most dieters slide straight back into childhood—and that language that goes with it. "But it's my favorite." "It's not fair that I can't have it." "But I've been so good." "It's my comfort." "It's my treat." "I'll reward myself." This food "baby talk" is at the heart of many people's weight problems, drowning out their common sense and even their desire for health and sometimes life itself.

For many of my clients, this is the only area in their lives still run by the childhood patterns of thinking and conditioning. Indeed, for so many of us, it is the single area of living where childhood thinking has never been updated. Where food is concerned, even the most mature adults often act like children —like children who want their way no matter what, blocking out the negative consequences of their eating. They focus instead on a few minutes' worth of taste that fills the mouth and lingers for a short while, while completely denying the obvious and discomforting cost.

For these foods are not free — you have to wear them for years to come. You can't eat it all and still be thin. This is a fact. But you can be a selective gourmet and never have to give up the pleasure of fine dining.

Food is everywhere, and because it so often looks and tastes great, it's easy for us to continue to live in this childish mindset, telling ourselves "these are my goodies and treats." And we often listen to the message—until it creates disaster. The challenge is that the food is immediate, but the cost is often paid on the "layaway" plan. And like most layaway plans, the interest is high. Perhaps you have only to look in the mirror?

Only children live their lives believing they can have it all without any cost. Now it's time for you to bring this part of your life into the adult world. All of life contains adjustments and tradeoffs. In accepting this, you not only establish a framework for lasting solutions to your weight problem, but you become a more resilient and mature human being. It's time to stop resenting what you do to keep your body healthy and attractive. Everything you value in your life— your relationships, your children, and your career—has taken work, focus, and endurance. Why should it be any different when it comes to managing your weight? Strategy, however, minimizes the cost and maximizes the reward.

The winners have come to this realization, and they no longer feel deprived, but liberated. In a recent survey of my clients, 86 percent said they felt no sense of deprivation. Without taking this step of growth and maturation, there can be no permanent weight loss, no permanent freedom. They've taken a turn in their evolution— evolving from childhood thinking and values into the adult thinking in the world of foods.

If you've come this far, you are already well on your way to that understanding and sense of freedom. You bought this book because you want to lose weight, and you want to do better at ongoing weight control. Now the choice to act is yours.

THREE SIMPLE STEPS

There are three actions that can encourage your progress, guard it, and enhance it. For thousands of my clients, these have proven to be among the most effective weapons available for arming themselves in their battle with weight. They reinforce all of the messages of this book, and I encourage you to do all three of them.

Weigh Yourself on the New Scale for Dieting

Scales don't keep people thin. Every heavy person owns a scale. The scale is the measure of pounds that tells us just how far we've strayed from thin. The regular scale is the end result of your behaviors; it reports where you have stood with the foods in your life since you last weighed in. The New Scale for Dieting predicts in advance which direction the regular scale will be moving—it provides an early warning system. The New Scale for Dieting is a simple 10-question quiz (see the opposite page) that reviews the basic skills and attitudes that you should be maintaining as part of your healthy life of thin. With it, you can track changes in your control skills and thinking in the same way that a diabetic tracks blood sugar or someone with hypertension monitors blood pressure. With regular use, it can alert you to areas where you may be weak and therefore vulnerable to slip-ups and bring your behavior and thinking in line with the winners at weight control. The questions reflect the actions of those who succeed at weight control. In weighing yourself on the New Scale for Dieting, you have an instant means of knowing that you are on the same path. I tell my clients to weigh themselves once a week on a regular scale and once a week on the New Scale for Dieting. This is to guide you to your goal. Once you reach your maintenance level, and the regular scale is no longer going down every week, your motivation will change, and you'll need another, modified New Scale (you'll find it on page 162) to use for quizzing yourself regularly, to protect all that you've accomplished.

Keep a Food Diary

In the studies on weight control, one factor keeps recurring: Those who maintain a written record of what they're eating each day lose more weight and do significantly better at keeping it off than those who do not. A food diary that tracks what and when you eat will allow you to detect any problems in your eating plan as they occur and to accurately gauge how much you are consuming. There is nothing else you can do that takes just a few minutes a day that will increase your weight loss and the likelihood of success as much as this.

I recommend keeping your food diary in a notebook beside your bed, where you can record in it, morning and night. Write down everything you eat, including any nibbles. To help identify your patterns, circle your errors: foods that you may have eaten in excessive amounts, foods not on your eating plan, and foods with hidden calories, such as those cooked in oil, butter, or sauces.

You might also find that it gives you an extra edge to plan meals in advance. You'll benefit from writing out the next day's menus and snacks—especially if it's a day when you expect to be stressed out or to face an array of food temptations, or if you've seen some recent slippage and need to get back on the right footing and follow through. The advance notice programs the psyche and structures behavior. It works like an early fire-alarm system.

The New Scale for Dieting

Give yourself this quiz about once a week. If you're falling back into old patterns and an old foodie belief system, this exercise will make you aware of it. The commandments in this book are designed to help you ace the questions. Every time you ask them, your psyche gets the message about the behaviors and thinking that are becoming a natural part of your new lifestyle.

1. Am I going more than 3 to 4 hours without a healthy snack or meal?

2. Am I failing to plan (i.e., letting supplies of healthy foods run out, going into food situations hungry, failing to prepare for high-risk food situations, and failing to carry my ThinPack when traveling or going out for a busy day)? (See Chapter 4 for more on ThinPacks.)

3. Am I avoiding foods I have a long history of abusing?

4. Am I keeping my moods out of my foods? Am I not eating out of boredom or anger, and am I reminding myself in stressful situations that "this is not about food"?

5. Am I keeping problem foods out of the house or out of sight?

6. Am I avoiding high-risk situations (i.e., reading dessert menus, looking at dessert carts, dining in restaurants with buffet-style and/or family-style service)?

7. Am I maintaining finger control? Avoiding mindless nibbling?

8. Am I eating too much of the "right foods" (such as chicken or fruit) on my plan?

9. Am I watching for the hidden calories that stop weight loss (such as those found in salad dressings, foods made in butter or oil, sauces on food, and side dishes), and failing to ask in restaurants "what does it come with?" and "how's it prepared?"

10. Am I reminding myself that this is not about deprivation but doing what works for a happier, healthier life?

Listen to a Power Tape

Would you like to get the same training that my clients receive without paying thousands of dollars? Would you like to get the same benefits?

Making a recording, in any way that suits your lifestyle—on a cassette, CD, or any other electronic means—and listening to it frequently utilizes one of the most powerful techniques that I have adapted from the advertising world—that is, to reinforce a message by repeating certain key ideas and phrases again and again. It's a powerful tool not only for your behavior but for changing your lifelong thinking and feeling about food. As an instrument for weight control, it will push your buttons to motivate the behavior you want and extinguish the behavior you don't want. As you read this book, pick out several of the commandments—or go for all of them—to use in making tapes for yourself.

A food-control cassette is one of the surefire ways to quell cravings, short-circuit a sense of deprivation, and reinforce motivation and commitment. Basically, your tapes are an advertising campaign for you, and the product they are pitching is a new you. And like any successful ad campaign, they need to be upbeat, catchy, and full of powerful images that will capture your imagination and interest. In this chapter and the ones that follow, I've given you tips for writing your own scripts and three sample dialogues to help you through the three most critical moments in weight control:

1. Getting started

2. Keeping your motivation high, especially once you pass the midpoint of your weight loss, and you're starting to look and feel better

3. Adjusting to the lifestyle for maintenance

As you listen to the tapes regularly, your mind will absorb the message and start reinforcing it on its own, and your thought patterns will begin to mimic the ideas on the tapes. After just a few weeks of daily listening, you should begin to hear the words of your new food talk spontaneously. The repetition will begin to become your internal self-talk, and the changes will be seen not only in your attitude but also in your behavior with food.

Your cassette or CD is a cheerleader in your pocket, always there to give support. You can listen to it in your car on your way to work, or in the bathroom while you shave or shower in the morning, or while power walking around the neighborhood. You can draw on the tape at any time to help drown out the old food talk and reinforce your new inner dialogue.

Your recordings should be as unique and individual as you are. The scripts should be tailored to suit your own situation. You may find it more powerful to speak in the first person, saying, "I will start living today as I never have before!" Or, if a coaching tone works better for you, you might consider using the second-person: "You will start your food-control program today!" Write your scripts to accommodate your needs.

Once you have your library of food talk tapes, make sure you listen to them every day. While you're losing weight and even after you've reached your goal, don't stop tuning in. You don't have to listen every day, but don't cut them out completely. The biggest threat to your weight control is to get cocky and think you're cured. Thin is a lifestyle—not some arbitrary number on a scale. Remember, you lose the weight; you don't lose the vulnerability.

Play It Again ... and Again ... and Again

A food diary and a food-control recording are among the strongest weapons you have in your weight-loss arsenal, a frontline defense in the battle for control over your body. Don't underestimate their power. Writing a message and hearing a message over and over again sinks that message indelibly into your conscious and subconscious mind. The tapes are designed to drown out the old messages that food is sending you—"I have to have it. It looks so delicious. It's so interesting."—and to empower you and keep you focused in challenging situations, such as when you're under stress or bored.

The diary and tapes can keep you from falling into the pattern of doing what you've always done.

Repetition is one of the most powerful tools of advertising. Throughout this book, I'll be repeating key phrases over and over again. This is by intent, to help you change your thinking, not just to have you read words and forget them. Together, we'll use techniques to enhance your life and sell you on a new, thin, all-you-can-be you!

Sample Tape #1: Getting Started

Make listening to a tape a regular part of your routine. Hearing the messages in the morning can be especially effective, getting you off on the right foot to face the day and follow through. This script will help to get you started. Edit it however it suits you to address your vulnerabilities and reprogram your thinking.

You may feel a bit awkward at first as you speak into the tape recorder. But like so many aspects of food control, the consistent and faithful repetition of the process makes it easier and easier to do.

• “What is wrong with this picture of my life that I am losing to a piece of food, taking orders from a cookie (or whatever your problem foods may be)?”

• “I will start my food plan today. I don't want to wait. I won't say that I'll start eating well tomorrow. How many times have I said that before? Saying tomorrow is saying I will not do it today. This is the tomorrow I spoke of yesterday. I would never run a business the way I've treated my own body and my weight problem. If this were something that I needed to do for my children or someone I love, I would have done it a long time ago. Now, indeed, I will do it for someone I love—myself.”

• “Today, I'll start living as never before. I'll remember that thin begins in the supermarket. I will buy the foods that support my success and avoid the ones that sabotage it. If I don't buy it, I don't eat it. If it's not in my kitchen, it's not on my hips.”

• Remind yourself why you're doing this. “None of my clothes fit. I can't bear to look at a picture of myself or in the mirror. I'm not taking care of my health or the quality of my life.”

• Talk about the journey. “There's not a single food that I'll see today that I haven't seen or tasted before. I have seen it all, I've tasted it all, and it hasn't made me happy; it has only made me heavy. This is not a mountain to climb. It is just a few patterns to master. I have overcome a great deal in my life. I can learn to manage three meals and two or three snacks a day. That is my only challenge to buy a lifetime of being trim. What's the worst that can happen to me? I will just see or smell a food that I'd like to eat. It will not be new. I have seen and tasted it before. A food temptation is simply a feeling, it's not a command. It lasts about 4 to 12 minutes. If I break the eye contact and say ‘No way!' it will pass. Isn't thin worth 4 to 12 minutes of standing up to a feeling?”

• Remind yourself of your history. “What I have done in the past has not worked. That's why I will do it a new way using strategy. If it seemed difficult in the past, it probably was because I didn't have strategy. I knew what I wanted—to be trim—but I didn't have a plan to get there and stay there. Strategy gives me the road map that makes it possible. It's not just knowing what to eat and what not to eat. It's knowing how to do it, how to want to do it, and how to make it easy to do. That's what strategy is about, and that's what I'm working on, one day at a time.”

• Focus on the foods and the habits that have contributed to your weight problem. Name your problem foods and problem behaviors. If you've decided that certain foods have made you fail repeatedly, and you want to avoid them while you're trying to lose weight, be very clear and strong with yourself. Either say you are going to temporarily eliminate these foods from your life, or you are going to limit them to special situations. If you've decided to limit specific foods by reserving them for certain times or places, say to yourself, “I will only eat them on the weekend . . . or Sunday night . . . never in a restaurant and never at home.”

• If you are a stress eater, be sure to remind yourself that food doesn't solve problems. “If I have an upsetting situation, I will say to myself, I have an uncomfortable feeling, but it is not about food. Eating over it will not make me happy; it will only make me heavy. Even if I can't solve the problem or change the person who is upsetting me, by not eating, I break a major pattern that has made me heavy. Maybe I can't do anything about other problems in my life, but my weight is one area that I have the power to change. And I will use that power.”

• End with empowerment and perspective. “In a world where there is cancer, and AIDS, and homelessness, what's the big deal if I say no thanks to (problem food), so I can say yes to being thin? Did I come this far in life to take orders from a (problem food)? Remind yourself of your power. I deserve to be trim. I deserve to succeed with this. I deserve to be in control in my life with food.”

DISCOVER WHERE YOU STAND

Weight loss, like most things in life, occurs in stages, over time. Different thoughts, emotions, and levels of motivation mark each stage. For most dieters, feelings of ambivalence and indecisiveness toward old food temptations start to surface after a while. You may diet for many weeks without a hint of a doubt, untroubled by any seductive signals from favorite foods or old eating habits. But then you can begin to waver.

More than likely, you've reached one of the critical, problematic spots of dieting. To maintain your weight—and your control over food—you need to be aware of where you stand in this progression of stages. When you truly know who you are, where you are, and how you perform in the world of food, you can predict how you will behave—and, if necessary, take steps to remain on track and to bolster your flagging motivation and confidence.

Sometimes, after an initial rapid weight loss, the pound drop starts to slow, and you can become discouraged. That's the time to recall that your new program isn't just about losing pounds, it's about losing the problem of yo-yo dieting. Another danger is that, sometimes, after the weight starts to come off, and the clothes get loose, you may develop the misconception that you are already thin, when, in fact, you are simply a little less overweight. The truth is, it's easy to delude yourself, to think because your weight is less, your vulnerability is less, and your need for the strategies is less. On the contrary, strategy becomes more important as a dieter progresses through the phases, and it is most critical in the final phase of maintenance.

Losing weight doesn't change your history, your taste buds, or your vulnerability, so it's essential to avoid becoming sloppy with the strategies or the planning—that's the first critical lesson to master: Think strategy.

The Three Most Critical Points in a Diet Plan

In working with my clients, I've found three stages in the process of weight control that pose the greatest risk of derailing a weight program and undermining a new eating lifestyle. Navigating through these challenges is the path to truly mastering your control with food.

At the beginning. The motivation to start dieting often begins with a desire to look better, to fit into your clothes, to feel better about yourself, and to improve your health—and it often means experiencing strong, very negative feelings. You may feel disgusted with yourself for your lack of control, or hate to look at yourself in the mirror, or dread opening your closet in the morning because you have nothing to wear that will make you feel good about yourself. Although this is the stage that propels many overweight people into treatment, it can also become a black hole, in which motivation to change is overwhelmed by a sense of futility and self-loathing. This is why it's so important to get started with a belief in yourself and your own ability to succeed again. I frequently remind my clients that it's just a piece of food against them. Food has no life smarts or strategy. It has no I.Q. You have every advantage when you know yourself, your history, and how to approach food situations.

• At the midpoint. There's a natural tendency to become less careful when you've started to succeed. Most people on a weight program start to see significant changes in 10 to 30 days. You don't even need to get to the end, to your ideal weight, to see the reward. Your clothes are looser, you're getting compliments, you're happier with yourself, your pain has gone away, and suddenly, you're sliding into old patterns, sabotaging yourself. You may believe that because you've lost a few pounds, you've lost your control problems with certain foods. You may forget that just because the pounds come off, it doesn't mean your history, your taste buds, or your vulnerability to your trigger or problematic foods has changed. Perhaps you're telling yourself that you can handle "just a little." You're feeling a lot less urgency to watch yourself with quantities, to plan ahead, to shop carefully. You become complacent—and complacency is the enemy of thin. Fortunately, there are strategies to save you.

• At the end. Success is yours! You've reached your personal best. Every time you look in the mirror, you feel a thrill of pleasure and a sense of pride. The intense satisfaction of achieving your treasured goal convinces you that you'll never go back to your old ways again. Your motivation and commitment are high—for a while. But soon, the honeymoon is over, and you've got to get down to the business of living trim. Maintenance is the most high-risk period of any weight-control effort. Lots of people succeed with dieting— they get an A for dieting every time they stay the course—and then they flunk maintenance. The cause, of course, is usually a lapse in the strategies that are designed not only to carry you through but to help you realize that just because you've lost the weight, you haven't lost the problem.

Many people think about achieving their weight goal in the same way they think about achieving a high school diploma—you get it once and then you can take it for granted for the rest of your life. But food control is an ongoing, dynamic process. And to make the transition from dieting to lifestyle mode requires changing your thinking and staying with the strategies, which will give you the tools for life, to maintain a lifetime of trim.

A Periodic Checkup

For the record, thin doesn't mean qualifying for the cover of GQ, Shape, or Fitness magazines. By thin, I simply mean your "personal thin." For some, that's the ideal number on the medical charts. For others, personal thin may not be that number—though my wish for each of you is that your weight should be in a healthful range. Yet I realize that if a person is 50 pounds overweight, and he is motivated or able to lose only 10 to 20 pounds, right now, his life will still be healthier—and this is his personal thin for now.

Throughout this book, when I use the word fat, I do not mean it as a judgment, nor as a derogatory term. Fat is simply the word that refers to being medically obese, and I do not attach any judgment to it.

THE WORK OF HAPPINESS

You probably have always associated diets with deprivation. There is a way around this stumbling block. Put it in the larger context of your life and your most treasured goals—to be happy. It may seem strange in the First Commandment of this book, when there is so much to say about weight control, that I want to talk about the work of happiness. What, you may ask, does that have to do with your losing 10 pounds or 40 or 50 pounds and getting back into your clothes? But from my point of view, happiness and weight loss are very important and intimately connected. The popular mantra of the diet industry is all foods in moderation, but that's a tough trick to pull off when the world we live in isn't given to moderation. It's not enough to want to be trim. You need a plan to get there and stay there. A plan that's livable and doable and that you'll enjoy following—a plan that is about the work of happiness— the happiness that comes from living the vision you have for your own body.

Foods may give you momentary pleasure, but your happiness is the greater reward when you look in the mirror and know you're looking your best, wearing clothes that you've always wanted to wear, feeling fit and glowing with well-being. In our fast-paced culture, the landscape of food is always evolving. In recent decades, the level of food stimuli has increased dramatically. To live in this world and be what I call a selective gourmet—not a compulsive eater— involves strategy.

The role of strategy is to save the foods you love the most and keep them in your life. And it also can let you keep what you care about the most — your appearance, your clothes, your control, and your good health.

As you read the pages of this book and approach your weight-control efforts, stop thinking about dieting. This is what I tell my clients when they first enter my office. It surprises them, until I go on to say that they should think instead about looking 10 years younger without a face-lift, think in terms of quality of life, self-mastery and growth, fashionable clothes, saving guilt hours at the gym, struggling to make up for yesterday's food excesses. Most of all, I tell them, think about life enhancement —extending and enjoying every day to come of the lives they've been given. I tell them they should think about their highest goals and the work of happiness.

There is a simple and powerful truth that I will repeat again and again throughout this book: Being thin may not make you happy, but being fat will make you unhappy. I can say that on the darkest day of your life, you'll always be happier with yourself if you are living in control with your weight and your food. And I can also say that if you look at the broader picture, not living trim and in control will always be harder. Always failing with your weight, never knowing success, always feeling reluctant to face yourself in the mirror or a camera: This is far harder than saying no to a breadbasket, a piece of cake, or any food, or waking up each morning dreading to face the scale, the mirror, or your clothes because of food mistakes.

The goal of the strategies that I present here is not just to change your weight, or change your size, or even to change your behavior—but to change, on the most fundamental level, your thinking. So it's easy to follow all of the other commandments!

© 2005 by Dietech Co.

About the Author

Dr. Stephen Gullo is former chair of the National Obesity and Weight Control Institute at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and President of the Institute for Health and Weight Sciences in New York and Beverly Hills. Dr. Gullo is a frequent contributor to Allure magazine. He has appeared on Larry King and Oprah and his work has been featured in The New York Times, Self, and Prevention magazines. He lives in New York City.