The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work - Hardcover

Freedhoff M.D., Yoni

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0804137579 ISBN 13: 9780804137577

Publisher: Harmony, 2014

Synopsis

With The Diet Fix, weight loss expert Dr. Yoni Freedhoff offers a groundbreaking, useable guide to begin living happily while losing weight permanently.

It is time to break the cycle of traumatic dieting. Despite the success stories publicized by Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers, and others, 90% of all diets end in failure. How can we fix the way we lose weight so that we make results last? Whether used on its own or in conjunction with any other diet, Dr. Freedhoff’s program shows how to replace a toxic dieting mindset with positive beliefs and behaviors.
 
Dr. Freedhoff has uncovered the flawed thinking that sabotages even the most earnest weight loss efforts. The majority of dieting or weight loss programs call for regular sacrifice: Give up an entire food group; fight hunger day and night; undertake exhausting and grueling exercise regiments. These approaches are unrealistic, unhealthy, and make it nearly impossible to maintain results. 

Now, at last, there is hope. In The Diet Fix, Dr. Freedhoff offers a tested program for breaking down the negative thought patterns that prevent people from losing weight and keeping it off.  Through the course of years of research and patient treatment, he has developed a 10-Day Reset that supports losing weight while maintaining a healthy, enjoyable lifestyle. This reset is designed to eliminate the habits that so often lead to weight gain: use it to shut down cravings, prevent indulgences from turning into binges, and break up with the scale once and for all. The 10-Day Reset can make any diet more effective, whether it’s low-carb, low-fat, meal replacement, calorie tracking, or anything in between.

About this title

Review:

Q&A with Yoni Freedhoff M.D. on The Diet Fix: Why Diets Fail and How to Make Yours Work

What misconception about dieting do you think causes the most damage?

The most damaging misconception about dieting is that our weights should all be “ideal” and that scales not only measure pounds, but also possess the ability to measure the presence or absence of health. It’s those messages that lead dieters to undertake wholly nonsensical approaches to weight management, and they also serve to help fuel society’s hateful weight biases.

What is Post Traumatic Dieting Disorder?

Post-traumatic dieting disorder or PTDD is the frequent consequence of years of recurrent traumatic dieting efforts. It’s a shared constellation of symptoms that often extends far beyond a dieter’s relationship with food and may include feelings of ineffectiveness, shame, hopelessness, loss of healthy body image, feeling permanently damaged, social withdrawal, and, at times, can even impact upon interpersonal relationships. Another very common symptom of PTDD is the belief that traumatic diets are required for weight management success; oftentimes folks with PTDD spend huge portions of their lives yo-yo’ing from one traumatic diet to the next. This leads to a vicious cycle of suffering, binge dieting, and feelings of inadequacy that sets people up for failure.

What is the most important factor in sustaining your weight?

The most important factor in sustaining your weight is not just tolerating, but actually liking your life and being both consistent, and, believe it or not, imperfect. Truly, your job in regard to both weight and health is to live the healthiest life that you can enjoy - in other words, to do your best. That said, it’s important to note that the best you can do over say, Christmas or a vacation, is very different than the best you can do during a plain, old, boring week, but that also doesn’t mean you shouldn’t still be thinking about things. Given our modern day Willy Wonkian food environment, not paying attention, for many, leads to easy gains, and given it’s so much easier to gain than it is to lose, remaining thoughtful, but not blindly strict, and doing so consistently, is crucial. Putting this another way - the healthiest life you can enjoy still needs to include chocolate, but that amount of chocolate needs to be the smallest amount that you need in order to be happy, and that amount changes day by day.

Why is the label of obesity misleading?

Unfortunately the label “obesity” carries with it a huge amount of societal stigma, stereotype and frankly ugly judgment whereby people who are described as “being” obese are regularly perceived and portrayed as lazy and gluttonous. Yet the presence or absence of weight really doesn’t define anyone. There are healthy people with weight to lose, and unhealthy skinny ones, and I certainly know plenty of beanpole gluttons. While there’s no doubt that medical risk rises with weight, risks are certainly not guarantees, and more importantly, weight does not and cannot be used to judge a person’s lifestyle. So if you’re ever writing about obesity, remember that a person cannot “be” labeled as obese, they can only have obesity, and that given the negative stereotypes and implications surrounding the word obesity, that distinction matters.

What is the biggest misconception you wish people could shake off about dieting?

The biggest misconception that I wish people could shake off about dieting is that suffering and sacrifice are dieting’s true determinants of success. Unfortunately, as a species, we just aren’t built to suffer in perpetuity. Consequently, weight that’s lost through suffering, through some combination of under-eating and/or over-exercising, is bound to come back.

What’s the best diet?

There really is no one “best” diet - if there were, there wouldn’t be tens of thousands of different diet books available, and weight struggles would be rare to non-existent. Ultimately a person’s “best” diet is the healthiest diet that they can enjoy, as diets that are merely tolerable, given food’s star billing as one of life’s most seminal pleasures, simply don’t last. Real life does, and frankly must, still include chocolate.

About the Author:

Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, MD, CCFP, is widely considered to be Canada's most outspoken obesity expert. His weekly column in U.S. News & World Report's online Eat + Run edition is regularly the most read on the site, and he writes periodically on issues of health, weight management, and fitness for a variety of publications including Psychology Today and The Huffington Post, and daily on his award winning blog Weighty Matters. He is also an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Ottawa and a sought after international speaker. Dr. Freedhoff graduated with honors from the University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, where he received the Betty Stewart Sisam Award as the graduating student who "has shown the greatest human understanding and care for the welfare and health of patients."

About this edition

• Publisher: Harmony
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0804137579
• ISBN 13: 9780804137577
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352