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Overview
With over twenty years of experience watching how and why dieters lose weight—and how they don't—Dr. Ian developed a program that actually retrains the brain to diet naturally. In The 4 Day Diet, Dr. Ian distills that program into the acronym SMARTER:
—Sense of where you are: don't fool yourself about your habits and what kind of shape you're in
—Make realistic goals: don't sabotage your success by trying to do too much too fast
—Activate your motivational engine: learn how to be your own best diet coach
—Resist temptation: how to put yourself in an environment that supports your diet and keeps you disciplined
—Think thin: why visualization works
—Every bite counts: track your intake, but learn how to enjoy what you eat more at the same time
—Reward yourself: indulge yourself in small and big ways along the road to permanent weight loss
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780312605599 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 12/22/2009 |
| Edition description: | First Edition |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.52(w) x 8.32(h) x 0.67(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The 4 Day Diet
By Smith, Ian K.
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2008 Smith, Ian K.All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780312373580
CHAPTER 1
Sense of Where You Are
START WITH HONESTY
One afternoon I was rummaging through my uncle’s vast attic filled with dusty memorabilia, the equivalent of gold to an adventurous teen. I came upon a box that had been pushed into a corner underneath a tangle of dust and cobwebs. Hoping for collectible baseball cards or rare coins, I was disappointed to find a pile of books most of whose titles were so worn I couldn’t read them. Those I could read I couldn’t understand. But midway through the stack I was drawn to a skinny paperback that featured on its jacket a photograph of a young man dribbling a basketball. The title is what caught my attention: A Sense of Where You Are.
A serious athlete myself, I plucked the book from the box, brushed off the dust, and lost myself in its sepia-colored pages. The book was about former presidential candidate, three-term U.S. senator, and one of Princeton University’s greatest basketball players, Bill Bradley. From his childhood as a banker’s son to his storied career at Princeton, the book told the story of a hardworking, disciplined, intelligent ball player whose tremendous success on the court was largely attributed to his awareness at all times of his position in relationship to the basket, thus the title A Sense of Where YouAre.
It is this understanding of one’s relationship to the ultimate target that became the blueprint for this chapter. Regardless of how fatigued he was, how outmatched athletically, or how fast the pace of the action, Bill Bradley always had that sure sense of where he stood relative to his ultimate goal: scoring a basket. This understanding is also critical for anyone trying to lose weight. Regardless of what’s going on in your life, whether it is stress at the job, a busy day of running around with the kids, or traveling for pleasure or business, you must always know where you are relative to your goals. It’s not about obsessing over your goals but, rather, having them readily present at least in your subconscious so that when you come to one of those proverbial forks in the road, you don’t even have to think about the right choice. The right choice becomes a simple reflex of your body.
You will often hear people say that they don’t go to the doctor for annual checkups or don’t undergo recommended screening tests even though doing so could possibly catch illnesses in their earlier stages when they’re most curable. Why don’t they want to know what’s going on with their bodies? One of the most common and equally mystifying answers is "If there’s something going on with me, I don’t want to know."
What will best guide your success during THE 4 DAY DIET journey is complete honesty and knowing fully what’s going on. You will have to face the truths that you discover along the way. Rather than run from these truths or try to bury them, you will learn how to embrace them—starting right now. There are some tough questions that you must answer. Write your answers down in order.
Why are you currently overweight?
Why have previous weight-loss efforts failed?
How does your weight influence your self-esteem/self-image?
What are your strengths related to sticking to a weight-loss program?
What are your weaknesses related to sticking to a weight-loss program?
Without weighing yourself or looking at a Body Mass Index (BMI) chart, how many pounds away do you think you are from your target weight?
Once you’ve answered these questions, take some time to consider the answers. These answers are critical not only to give context to your current situation but to serve as a springboard moving forward.
Now there is a second set of questions whose answers will give you a better sense of where you are. Weigh yourself on a reliable scale, one that is convenient and that you’ll be able to use throughout your journey. Once you have the number, use the BMI chart in this chapter to help you answer some of these questions:
What is your current BMI?
What does the chart say is a healthy weight for your height?
What are your bad habits when it comes to exercising/eating right?
What are your good habits when it comes to exercising/eating right?
When was the last time you were at a weight you were happy with?
Keep these answers stored in a place where you won’t lose them. You will need to refer to them throughout your weight-loss journey.
WHERE YOU ARE RIGHT NOW: YOUR BMI
Let’s get down to work. Every journey needs a starting point, so let’s establish yours right now. Your current weight and BMI are a good place to start. According to the Centers for Disease Control, Body Mass Index (BMI) is calculated from a person’s weight and height and is a reliable indicator of a person’s body fatness. The BMI is used to determine which of four major categories you fit into: underweight, normal, overweight, and obese. Determining which category you fall into is critical because it can help indicate your risk for certain diseases and health conditions.
Your BMI can be calculated or simply found on a BMI chart readily accessible on the Internet. Let’s do the calculation here:
So let’s take a man who is 5' 10" (70 inches) and weighs 200 pounds.
You can also get this number by simply using the BMI chart in the Appendix, page 216. Once you’ve figured out your BMI, you can look to see which category you fit into.
The man in our sample would be considered overweight according to his BMI. Why does this matter, since he’s clearly not obese? His being overweight increases his risk for certain medical conditions and even death.
Diseases and Health Conditions Related to Obesity
Hypertension (high blood pressure)
Dyslipidemia (for example, high LDL cholesterol, low HDL cholesterol, or high levels of triglycerides)
Type 2 diabetes
Coronary heart disease
Stroke
Gallbladder disease
Osteoarthritis
Sleep apnea and respiratory problems
Some cancers (endometrial, breast, and colon)
Source: Centers for Disease Control.
EVERYTHING IS NOT AS IT APPEARS
It’s important to distinguish between the medical definition of your weight and the visual interpretation. These can be very different and thus very confusing. You’ve almost certainly heard the expression "She wears her weight well." This typically refers to people who are overweight but don’t look overweight, because they are either very tall or their weight is distributed throughout their body in such a way that no one area looks particularly alarming.
The visual interpretation of weight can be a tricky thing. Just because someone doesn’t look overweight doesn’t mean that he isn’t. Sometimes a person won’t appear to be heavy, but then she steps on the scale or calculates her BMI and realizes she is not only overweight, but in some cases obese. I had this happen with a famous plus-size model who insisted that she was "curvy and voluptuous" and not overweight. She was one of the contestants on my show, Celebrity Fit Club. Her argument was that she didn’t look overweight, that she was full-figured and attractive, and men found her curves irresistible. But her BMI actually pegged her as obese. She not only refused to accept her BMI but even went so far as to suggest the BMI chart was wrong and it didn’t apply to her or others like her. In her estimation, the BMI chart had a bias against ethnic women.
The BMI chart is certainly not perfect, but it is the best tool we have to approximate a person’s degree of overweight and obesity without a more thorough body fat test in a specialist’s office. It was not designed t
Continues...
Excerpted from The 4 Day Diet by Smith, Ian K. Copyright © 2008 by Smith, Ian K.. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction xiii
1 Sense of Where You Are 1
2 Make Realistic Goals 13
3 Activate Your Motivational Engines 31
4 Resist Temptation 49
5 Think Thin 61
6 Every Bite Counts 81
7 Reward Yourself 93
8 The Modular Eating Plan 97
9 Healthy, Low-Calorie Snacks 139
10 Recipes 143
Appendix 215
Body Mass Index (BMI) 216
Fiber Content of Foods 217
How to Read a Food Label 218
Caloric Expenditure During Various Activities 220
Index 225