The Real You Diet: Your Personal Program for Lasting Weight Loss

As a clinician, researcher, and media expert, Dr. Madelyn Fernstrom knows how you can lose weight. Her toolbox approach to weight loss is different from standard one-size-fits-all programs because you don't need to adapt to the plan; this plan adapts to you. It introduces you to the four types of tools that must work together for effective weight loss: eating, activity, behavior, and medical/biological. Do you overeat from stress or boredom? Do you like to exercise alone or with a group? The answers to these questions and others will unlock the unique weight-loss toolkit that's right for you. With some honest self-evaluation, you'll be able to explore and compare all of the options for weight loss in a single book. The right combination of tools, hand-picked by you, will support your weight loss and, later, weight stability over the long haul.

• Helps you develop your own unique path to weight loss, not a one-size-fits-all approach
• Addresses the four key areas for successful weight loss: eating, activity, behavior, and medical/biology
• Includes self-assessment quizzes and mini-tools to put into action right away
• Shows you how to keep going through plateaus and how to overcome obstacles

We all make fantastic promises to ourselves, but when real life intervenes and derails our good intentions, it can seriously demoralize us. Your strategy should be to set goals that will work in the real world, not the perfect one. Once you’ve agreed to that plan, your tools will fall right into place. Here are many of my favorites. Once you get started, you’ll be able to think of many others that work for you.

The Perfect World versus the Real World

Perfect world: Never eat after 7 p.m.
Real world: Allow one mini-meal at night (up to 200 calories).

Perfect world: Avoid all fast food.
Real world: Choose a kids’ meal.

Perfect world: Visit the gym every day.
Real world: Go to the gym at least three days a week.

Perfect world: Cook a low-calorie dinner every night.
Real world: Keep calorie-controlled frozen entrees on hand.

Perfect world: Eliminate a late-afternoon snack to save calories.
Real world: Plan your dinner hour and allow yourself 100 to 200 calories when dinner is two or three hours away.

Perfect world: Walk and or/jog four miles on the treadmill daily.
Real world: Wear a pedometer and monitor your steps during your daily living activity. Make up the daily difference on the treadmill (10,000 steps is about 4 miles).

Once you’ve mastered the best tools for personal goal setting, you’ll be able to incorporate your own good intentions into the Real You plan. Learn more about these and other goal-setting techniques in my book, The Real You Diet.