The Automatic Diet

"Muscle mass is the body's most ancient furnace." ~Charles Stuart Platkin Charles Stuart Platkin's "Breaking the Pattern" helped me to analyze my self-sabotaging behaviors and again in The Automatic Diet, he presents strategies for overcoming negative patterns in eating. The Automatic Diet presents ideas for promoting overall health, controlling weight and enhancing your self-esteem. Charles Stuart Platkin unveils misconceptions about weight control and shows you how to have long-term success. The Diet Detective takes you through your eating behaviors and you can decide if you want to include behavior modification strategies to your everyday diet. Through self-analysis you start to break negative patterns and destructive eating tendencies. He explains how most diets deliver temporary results and most people gain the weight back. How is this diet different? This is not a diet where you have to give up chocolate (Who could give up Leonidas Belgium chocolates?) or your favorite foods. What the author seeks to encourage is a healthier lifestyle. Since most diets don't bring the results we are looking for, Charles Stuart Platkin advises a lifestyle change. In most cases, he doesn't take away foods like popcorn and carrots; he shows you the best choice. There are a few lists of "items you ought to think about throwing out." These include the usual suspects - sugar, soda, ice cream. I was a little shocked to learn about the calories in the Starbucks Classic Coffee Cake. I still think in moderation, you can handle a little ice cream, although I must say I feel terrible if I eat too much sugar in a day and it can produce the feeling of chronic fatigue for 24 hours. The author recommends good protein sources, a good variety of vegetables and healthy starch choices. I am happy to see that another author is talking about the muscle mass issue, because this could help many dieters over the initial hurdles of initial weight gain when you start to exercise. The author also explains why a drastic reduction in calories triggers the body's famine-survival mechanism. This of course slows down your metabolism. There are also ideas about "excuse busters" and self-talk is definitely your friend or enemy. My most recent self-talk to increase my exercise includes telling myself how good I'm going to feel after I exercise and eat my fruits and vegetables. Being proactive and buying clothes that are too small also seems to be good motivation. I also threw out any clothes that are too big for me, so I simply will have nothing to wear if I don't exercise. Another idea is not buying anything that you know you should not be eating and buying lots of things you know you should be eating. Then, when you are home and hungry, you make better choices. Doing Yoga also seems to help because it generally puts you in a much calmer state of mind and you feel more in control of your choices. If you are heading towards 40, then you may also want to read The Metabolic Plan

After losing 40 pounds on Weight Watchers, tremendously improving my health, my appearance, and my pleasure in life, I started regaining weight and could not stop gaining. Rejoining Weight Watchers did not help. I kept gaining! I was at the point where I could not stick to a diet for more than four hours! I was desparate by the time I'd regained 25 of the 40 pounds I'd lost. Fortunately, I found Charles Platkin's The Automatic Diet and was able to turn things around. He explains not only what to do but also how to do it and make it part of a lifestyle I can comfortably live with. One week after starting to follow his suggestions, I was down four pounds and am actually enjoying my life while losing! Many of his suggestions are things I already knew but it was like taking an advanced course after completing a beginners course. I've read many wonderful books on fitness and nutrition, but Charles Platkin just puts everything together in a simple way that works and that I (or anyone) can enjoy living with!

If you're like me and have promised yourself that THIS will be the year when you lose the weight and actually stick to your diet, then check out this book. Last year, I started the South Beach diet while I was ringing in the New Year in South Beach. The year before that, I was in the Zone all the way. The problem is, while, I did lose weight in the beginning of the year on all those diets, by the the end of the year, I'd gained it back. So, I decided that this year, I was going to adjust my resolution just a smidge. I want to lose this excess weight and keep it off for good. That's why I'm taking a new approach to my weight loss attempts, and I am using the Automatic Diet's 10-Step program. From what I can tell, this is a diet that actually changes how you eat and see food permanently. In all honestly, I tend to use food as a crutch sometimes. I eat when I'm depressed. I eat when I'm celebrating. I eat when I'm angry. I eat when I'm bored. This book helps you prepare for situations where you know you're going to overeat, and even better, it helps you to recognize those situations you overeat in which you may not have even realized trigger you to overeat. In my opinion, this is the most eye-opening and effective book in the weight loss market, and I should know, I've read almost all of them.

Mind boggling fact from this book: Only around 10% of a person's day contribute to 80% of the reasons a person is overweight. The book refers to these times as "eating alarm times"-- and it is so true! After really taking a look at my eating patterns after finishing the book, I realized that I while I am extremely careful about what I eat all day, I tend to blow it each night after dinner. That explains why even though I've been on a diet for about ten years now, I haven't lost and actually kept off even a pound. The book offers solutions for this and much, much, more. While the book isn't free, I am now becoming more and more free-- more fat free.

This books tells you what to eat...not so much what not to eat. I like that. I am not a fan of those books that tell you to cut stuff out and deprive yourself. While obviously you have to change your eating patterns when you want to lose weight, this book lays out a plan that makes sense...and sounds like it might work. My wife has already stolen "Automatic Diet" from me, and we plan to take the "10 steps" to a healthier new life together. I am actually excited about a "diet" for the first time in my life...actually, this book isn't a diet which is probably why I like it. It doesn't tell you to just eat meat or just eat vegetables or just eat grapefruit. I knew there had to be a way to lose weight without losing you mind!