Dr.
Phil talks the talk on controlling weight
By
Nanci Hellmich, USA TODAY
Dr. Phil's weapon of choice against
fat is the mind.
He
believes many overweight people won't succeed at controlling their
weight until they change the way they think about themselves.
"What
I've found about chronically overweight people is they don't believe
they can ever be different," says Phil McGraw, 53, a psychologist,
best-selling author and host of the popular daytime TV talk show Dr.
Phil.
"They
have had so many failure experiences. They look at someone who is
an ideal body weight, and they don't believe they can ever be there."
Until
they change that dialogue they have going in their head, they'll never
succeed at weight loss, no matter how many diets they go on, he says.
He
calls this "right thinking." It's one of his key suggestions in The
Ultimate Weight Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom (Free
Press, $26), which is out today.
McGraw's
self-help book has quizzes, charts, exercise programs and practical
advice for changing behaviors: altering emotions, the environment
and food choices.
With
this latest effort, McGraw will be vying for a slice of the huge weight-loss
business. Consumers spend roughly $39.8 billion each year on diet
soft drinks, weight-loss programs, health clubs, medications, diet
books and other products, according to Marketdata Enterprises in Tampa.
Practices what he preaches
At
6-foot-4 and 240 pounds, McGraw follows his own prescriptions for
healthy living. He runs five nine-minute miles every morning on an
elliptical exercise machine, lifts weights daily and plays tennis
every afternoon, he says.
"My
weight doesn't vary. I have to be careful I eat enough. I don't eat
as much beef as I used to because I got tired of it. I eat a lot of
chicken and fish. I really love vegetables, and I don't have much
of a sweet tooth. I haven't had a bite of sugar since the day before
Thanksgiving in 2001."
His
wife, Robin, who he says is "fit as a fiddle," won't touch the stuff.
"You couldn't hold her down and get her to eat sugar."
McGraw
knows all too well the cost of obesity. His father, Joe McGraw, also
a psychologist, died in 1995 of a heart attack after struggling for
years with weight-related heart disease. And two members of McGraw's
extended family weigh 500 pounds.
For
eight years in his career he worked with overweight patients, some
of whom were 300 pounds overweight. He says in the book that more
than 80% of his patients not only lost their excess weight, but they
kept it off — a claim that some obesity researchers are bound
to challenge. Those results aren't based on any official scientific
study, he says, but a long-term tracking of his patients.
To
pull the book together, McGraw says, he got help from several experts,
including a psychologist whom he greatly admires and a nutritionist
whom he thanks in the book for her "tireless work on content, organization,
flow and writing." They thoroughly reviewed the weight-loss research,
which backed up some of his own observations and theories, he says.
All about how you live
You
can't be overweight unless you have a lifestyle that supports that,
he says. You have to have eating patterns that support that, a pantry
that leads you to be overweight, and clothes that allow you to be
overweight.
People
want quick fixes, but that's not what works, he says. "We are a hedonistic
society, and people want what they want right now. They want fast
results. But if you are going to get the weight off and kept it off,
my experience has told me and the research shows that this is about
really changing your lifestyle."
Original
article:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/2003-09-08-phil-side_x.htm
