The Instinct Diet: Use Your Five Food Instincts to Lose Weight and Keep it Off

Satisfying our hardwired instincts has been critical to our survival for as long as we have been human. That's why we eat when food is available, choose the most calorie-dense foods, and hate the feeling of hunger. Today, these same drives are leading millions down the path of obesity. But Dr. Susan B. Roberts, an internationally recognized nutrition researcher at Tufts University, shows how to turn our food instincts into an engine for permanent, healthy weight loss.

The Instinct Diet—the "I" diet—is a pleasure to follow: a diet based on impeccable research, a diet where the dieter never goes hungry, a diet that's unequivocally healthy, thoroughly grounded in the metabolic, genetic, and psychological workings of the human body. Essentially, it shows how you can control the controls. Through its focus on delicious, deeply satisfying dishes like Orange Crumbed French Toast, Pork and Lemongrass Soup, Watercress and Citrus Salad with Parmesan Toast, and Chocolate Bread Pudding, plus proven behavioral modifications (Dr. Roberts is a professor of nutrition and professor of psychiatry), the diet is a fat-burning marvel. At Tufts, 85 percent of participants in Dr. Roberts' research program lost 10 to 50 pounds in the first six months, and 90 percent of them kept the weight off for at least a year. The Instinct Diet shares everything learned by Dr. Roberts over 17 years and more: better ways to lose weight whatever you eat; also a three-stage diet plan; over 100 recipes; eight weeks of menus (with vegetarian and "non-cook" options throughout); and dozens of ideas and strategies for how to retrain our bodies—how to combat the "Gulping Syndrome," use the "Sandwich Technique," why tapping your forehead is an emergency measure to reduce food cravings, and more.

Susan B. Roberts, Ph.D., a professor of nutrition and a professor of psychiatry at Tufts University, is an internationally recognized expert on nutrition and obesity who has appeared on The Today Show, ABC News, NPR and CNN. She is the author of Feeding Your Child for Lifelong Health, as well as nearly 200 research articles published in scientific journals including The New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, and JAMA. Dr. Roberts lives with her husband and daughter outside Boston.

Betty Kelly Sargent is the co-author of Beautiful Bones without Hormones (with Leon Root, M.D.), What Every Daughter Wants Her Mother to Know and What Every Daughter Wants Her Father to Know.