Eps-601 Addition Reading

EPS-601 Addition Reading—Book Summary

Dr. Phil McGraw’s The Ultimate Weight Solution—The Seven Keys to Weight Loss Freedom

“Get real or get real fat.”
“Do you want to keep chasing after, and being seduced by, “miracle” diets, slimming products, and “overnight” weight loss?”
“I know that you’re looking for something that melts fat off like the sun melts ice.” These are representative quotes of the Texas born-and-bred “Dr. Phil”, whose homespun platitudes literally roll off his tongue. Dr. Phillip McGraw, Ph.D., is the #1 best-selling author of Life Strategies, Relationship Rescue, and Self Matters. He is the host of the nationally syndicated, daily one-hour series ‘Dr. Phil’. He is a self-proclaimed expert in the field of human
functioning, and his 2003 book, The Ultimate Weight Loss Challenge is the product of his thirty years of working with overweight patients in a private practice situation. Dr. Phil’s philosophy is fairly simple and straightforward: “Change can come in either of two important ways: Start behaving positively or stop behaving negatively.” He asks that you quit conning yourself and telling yourself what you so desperately wish were the truth: that there is some hot new diet out there, promising quick and easy results. He claims that we are looking for something that we can take tonight that promises slim tomorrow. But the fruitless search for the easy way out will only bring you frustration, pain, and self-remorse, claims Dr. Phil. His plan for achieving the “healthy, vibrant, in shape, and fully in charge of yourself and everything you think, do, and feel” you, includes: “The Seven Keys to Permanent Weight Loss”. When unlocked with the right keys, each of these seven doors will lead you closer to personal and permanent control over your weight. His claim is that it is your job to unlock each door, step through it with a commitment to change, and keep moving forward until you’ve walked through all seven. If you fail to unlock any door and step through it, you’ll roll right back to where you started. In order to fully understand Dr. Phil’s weight loss philosophy, I will briefly outline his seven keys:
KEY #1: RIGHT THINKING Where you are with your weight challenges, everything you are, everything you do, begins with and is based on what Dr. Phil calls your personal truth. He claims that this is whatever it is about yourself and your weight problem that you have come to believe. This is the essence of his plan because he believes if the truth is real to you, then it is the precise reality in which you will live your life—Self-Control. This is incorporated into our deepest understanding of whom you are and what you think you can accomplish.
KEY #2: HEALING FEELINGS It is no significant news flash that many people eat as a way to medicate themselves, typically in response to negative emotions such as anger, guilt, loneliness, stress, or boredom. We may also eat in response to positive emotions, such as, happiness and joy and in a celebratory vein. Emotional eating figures significantly in most people’s weight problems. Dr. Phil purports that although we can’t eliminate emotional triggers and stress in our lives, we can learn how to heal our counterproductive responses to life’s challenges, which he calls Emotional Control.
KEY #3: MASTERY OVER FOOD AND IMPULSE EATING The third key provides you with the ability to shape, design, and manage your environment so that it is virtually impossible for you to fail at weight control—External Control. Dr. Phil asks you to concentrate on the “personal landscape” of your life that includes ridding your home, office and all external areas of unhealthy foods so as to minimize opportunities that invite needless snacking, overeating, and bingeing. He calls it “re-engineering your environment for success”.
KEY #4: MASTERY OVER FOOD AND IMPULSE EATING In order to achieve permanent weight loss and control, it is essential to discover why you are continuing in the self-destructive habits and behavior of overeating and bingeing. Unlocking the door to Habit Control will teach you how to control and reshape your behaviors, first by identifying why you persist in these bad habits, and second, by replacing them with actions designed to weaken their hold over you.
KEY #5: HIGH-RESPONSE COST, HIGH-YIELD NUTRITION High-response, high-yield nutrition unlocks the door to Food Control: an approach to nutritional balance that is “nothing short of revolutionary, and amazingly powerful in its simplicity”. High-response cost food include these tenets: • Take considerable time and effort to fix • Require a great deal of chewing and ingestion energy • Cannot be eaten quickly • Is not “convenience food” in any sense of the word

High-nutrition foods are those that supply a maximum of nutrients—in the form of carbohydrate, protein, fat, vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other food components—relative to the amount of calories they contain. These foods are generally those of a more pure, basic variety, and are closer to the state in which they are found in nature. They have been relatively unchanged during food processing, and thus, are not loaded with sugar, fat, additives, and other health-defeating ingredients. Raw broccoli is an example of a high-response cost, high-yield food.
KEY #6: INTENTIONAL EXERCISE The sixth key unlocks the door to Body Control, the power to keep the pounds at bay with a maximum-results workout strategy that you can start slowly and continue at your own pace.
Dr. Phil challenges his readers to make exercise a deliberate and permanent fixture in his/her life and a priority in life. He claims that exercise is too powerful a fat fighter to live a healthy life without and that there is “absolutely no way you can control your weight for a lifetime without it”. Dr. Phil’s bottom line is that you should be performing at least three to four hours weekly of moderate activity and at least two to three hours weekly of vigorous
activity.
Moderate activities expend approximately 200 calories an hour, and include: • Climbing stairs • Parking farther away from you destination • Walking for pleasure • Moderate on-the-job activities • Moderate yard work • Moderate housework
Vigorous activities burn approximately 350 calories or more in an hour, and include: • Brisk walking, jogging, running, biking, or swimming • Aerobic dance class • Calisthenics or general exercise • Racquet sports • Basketball, volleyball, backpacking, skiing, etc. • Weightlifting

KEY #7: YOUR CIRCLE OF SUPPORT Finally, the seventh key will assist you in unlocking the door to Social Control, where you will assemble a support circle of people who will encourage you and provide the accountability you need to achieve your goals. Dr. Phil encourages us to surround ourselves with a group of “like-minded” individuals who support our successes. Dr. Phil purports that weight loss is not a “do-it-yourself deal”. If you expect to lose weight and keep it off, you must built and nurture relationships that affirm and uplift you in life-changing ways. The strength and power in the ability to nurture relationships are built on trust, acceptance, and encouragement. Dr. Phil wrote this book just for me; he must be speaking to me when he refers to the “roller coaster ride” of diets I have been on over the last several years. From the cabbage soup diet to Scarsdale to the Zone to the grapefruit diet to Weight Watchers to Atkins, and to South Beach; I guarantee, it has been anything but an “E-ticket ride”. Unfortunately, I must include myself in the 95% of all dieters who lose weight, only to gain it all back, with interest. Yes, I have lost in excess of 100 pounds over the last several years in the same ten-pound increments, only to gain back every last pound, and more! Dr.
Phil bravely states that he will not tell me what I want to hear; he seems to revel in his “I call it as I see it; I will tell you the truth” philosophy. Effective weight control will never be “quick and easy”, but that is “doable”. His book espouses a philosophy that is brilliant in its simplicity. He includes a wealth of self-analysis in the form of assessments, timelines, goal setting, readiness profiles and action plans. His book incorporates concrete details for daily planning and food action plans, which include a specific system of meal planning that is widely used by dietitians and health organizations. He describes a divided-plate system for meal planning: ¼ protein, ¼ starch, and ½ low-calorie, high-fiber plant-based food—fruits and vegetables. Dr. Phil has helped me see that by replacing those parts of my life that are self-defeating for those which are self-affirming, my weight, my health and my life can change dramatically. In order to achieve permanent weight loss, I have to be totally, consciously in charge of everything and myself I do, think, and feel. Dr. Phil outlines all the steps and tools in this book to achieve this
end. Included in his book is a quote from his author friend, Maya Angelou, that I found particularly enlightening: “You did what you knew how to do, and when you knew better, you did better.” Whatever I did in the past to try to lose weight has obviously been less than effective. Dr. Phil adds that the definition of insane is “repeating the same behavior, hoping for a different result”. In his compilation of time-tested strategies, Dr. Phil has inspired me to “do better” and not repeat the same ole “tried-and-untrue” methods. It is now my choice to “get real about fat or get real fat”.