Behavior Change - Popular Diets: Obesity
Content provided by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School
Behavior change
Books: The Ultimate Weight Solution; The Automatic Diet
Some people use food for comfort and overeat in response to sadness, loneliness, depression, or any number of other triggers. Breaking an unhealthy relationship with food can help such individuals lose weight. That's where these and other diets come in.
Rationale. In his The Ultimate Weight Solution, Dr. Phil McGraw offers "seven keys to permanent weight loss" — right thinking, healing feelings, a no-fail environment, mastery over food and impulse eating, intentional exercise, a circle of support, and what "Dr. Phil" calls high-response cost, high-yield nutrition. The plan offers little advice about nutrition. The Automatic Diet uses behavior modification techniques to reprogram the patterns that work against healthy eating.
Bottom line. If you think that your habits, behaviors, and relationships with other people and with food promote poor eating habits or influence your ability to lose weight or maintain a steady weight, then a behavioral approach makes sense. Combining it with a healthy eating pattern based on sound nutrition would be even better.
| Last updated: | June 20, 2007 |
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Medical content reviewed by the Faculty of the Harvard Medical School. Harvard Health Publications, Copyright © 2007 by President and Fellows of Harvard College. All rights reserved. Used with permission of StayWell.
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