Has anyone tried to teach themselves the discipline of dieting without signing up for an expensive diet? I was thinking like a book or video for motivational support and a method of learning about the steps to success.
If you are interested in reading books, I highly highly suggest you look at your library first. My library is awesome, I can go online, put a book on hold, they'll pull the book and put it on a shelf for me near the checkout then e-mail me that the book is ready. I then go to the library, check out the book and leave within 5 minutes.
I recently read Eat to Live from the library which is a book I recommend for anyone who wants to lose weight and improve their overall health.
I second the library suggestion. I have bought soooooo many diet books, it's ridiculous. And they all basically say the same thing. Eat a balanced diet in moderation and get some exercise. The last one I read, I got at the Goodwill store. It was Richard Simmons' Never Say Diet book. It was funny and inspirational. It's fairly old though, so I'm sure it's out of print. Possibly it's at your library. Another good one I like is Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. It's not a diet persay, but it's about how and why we eat like we do (the psychology of eating). It can give you ideas of how to be more concious of what you're putting into your mouth.
Best wishes, Donna
Yes, do browse your local library! 613.712 and 613.25 are the general Dewey numbers you'll want, with cookbooks in 641.5635ish.
I like Mindless Eating by Wansink, Volumetrics by Barbara Rolls and a VERY elderly book called either the Diet Myth or Diet Trap. I'll have to double check the title, but it must've been published in the 70s. It's AMAZING how little has changed, really. I didn't like "You: on a Diet". Too much name dropping and it didn't hold my attention.
I also recommend the library. If you find something that really "speaks to you" then you can buy it.
I like Ann Fletcher's books: Thin for Life and Eating Thin for Life. I also like Barbara Rolls Volumetrics. Additionally, Ellie Krieger's Small Changes, Big Results. I have also read the Sonoma Diet Book and the Sonoma diet cookbook and Mindless Eating, by Brian Wansink. The first three authors are my favorites, and I ended up purchasing these books.
I certainly believe you can do it without paying for anything and I think reading is an important component.
My plan pretty much went like this:
Read
Clean out the junk food
Eat fresh, homemade
Find a support group - 3fc
Read something every day for inspiration - Goal stories at 3fc, or maintenance stories at 3fc or your prefered life-style/nutrition book.
Get a little bit of exercise - don't be discouraged by the ammount some people exercise. Any little thing helps. I started out by parking my car in the out-lying area of the parking lot.
Read some more about diet, nutrition, exercise
Explore the free Fitday site - where you can record your calories and exercise and they make it all look like a PhD thesis! It is fun.
My costs have been the price of the books I bought - You can eliminate this by using the library exclusively, and the price of food, which I would have had anyway - ya gotta eat.
I think the most important thing to remember is that you are going to have to change some habits permanently, if you want to keep the weight off.
Having yapped on, I am not at goal, and I don't know what the future holds, but so far, I am doing well. Good luck to you, and hang around here. You will learn all kinds of helpful stuff.
I'm new here, but a book I've read that I found incredibly helpful - and that has formed the basis for my "own plan" - is "Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy", by Dr. Walter Willett. Dr. Willett is Chairman of the Department of Nutrition at Harvard Medical School, and the book is a very easy to read, clear and concise look at nutrition, what we should be eating, and why. It's not a specific diet - but a wealth of information that cuts through all the hype and gives you a clear idea of how you should eat for weight loss and health.
What I particularly like is how Dr. Willett revamped the Food Pyramid. His pyramid looks like this:
At the bottom, daily exercise and weight control
A step up, whole grain foods and plant oils
A step up, vegetables and fruit
A step up, nuts and legumes
A step up, fish, poultry and eggs
A step up, dairy
And finally, at the tip of the pyramid (what should be eaten most rarely), you'll find red meat, butter, white rice, white bread, white pasta, potatoes, soda and sweets.
The whole things just makes complete sense to me - but I love that the book explains WHY we should do the things we should do. It's also a very non-biased look at other information that is out there, and the advice is practical and relevant. I highly recommend it!
I've also read - and use - "Superfoods RX" and "Superfoods Healthstyle". Both of these books provide information on specific foods that are essential aids to good health and prevention of disease. They are whole foods, and they fall right in line with the recommendations in "Eat, Drink and Be Healthy". I use all the books as information sources of what I should eat and why, and Dr. Willett's book as a guide for how much I should be eating and general nutrition information.
If I could pick JUST ONE, this would be it. It focuses on the transtheoretical model of change -- the stages that we go through when making any major change. You've probably heard them before... pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. This book's whole premise is that "diet books" focus on action. Sometimes they include maintenance. But 9 times out of 10 people fail in change because they haven't really finished "contemplation" and "preparation", and so "action" fails. So she leads you through each stage with exercises. The "four-day" part is because you set do-able goals, and do them for four days, and then reward yourself. It helps to set up a positive motion forward in your plan. It's not a diet. But the work you do in this book will help ANY diet you use. Get it from the library and see what I mean. I read half of it, and went out and bought my own copy!
This one is amazing for the science of how your body works, why you need to diet, and what happens when you diet. It explains things like cholesterol, hormones, artery damage, diabetes, inflammation, and blood pressure in ways that I can understand (and explain to others!). The second section also has a very solid diet plan, with some tasty recipes.
This one is just downright inspirational. The author interviewed hundreds of people who have lost weight and kept it off, and analyzed the similarities in their methods. She's narrowed it down to 10 key things, written in a conversational manner and liberally laced with anecdotes from her research and discussions with people who have been there and done that.
Others that I like to pick up now and then, but aren't in my must-have list:
From Chunk to Hunk. Fred used to keep a blog online of his weight-loss journey, and he later got it published as a book. He lost a HUGE amount of weight, and kept it off, and this book takes you step by step.
The Flavor-point Diet. This one is an actual diet book. It's an interesting concept, though I'm not sure that it works. The premise is that if you lace the same flavor throughout your food during the day (mint one day, and lemon the next, etc.) you will be satisfied with less food. We tend to eat more when there is a variety of flavors. I'm not sure if that can fact can actually translate into eating less day by day, as in this plan, but I respect the author very much. I actually use this one for the recipes, more than the diet. The soups and salads are AMAZING. The eating plan is low calorie (around the 1500 range), and very tasty, so that by itself is worth getting it out of the library once in a while.
I would like to second the recommendation of Eat, Drink, and be Healthy. I bought it several years ago and I actually pulled it out yesterday to re-read about protein and calcium. Very informative.
This isn't a book, but it's a very simple and balanced way to eat. It's called the Idaho plate method. You start with a 9 in. plate and draw an imaginary line down the middle to cut it in half. On half of the plate you have a vegetable or two (I usually have salad). The other half of the plate, you cut in half, so that on 1/4 of the whole plate you have your protein-lean meat, fish, poultry, eggs, nuts, etc. On the other quarter you can have a starch (rice, potatoes, bread, crackers, etc). Off the plate you can have 1c. lowfat milk or 1/2c. lite ice cream, and a small piece of fruit. I've found this to be a great way to feed my family. The only problem is finding veggies that my kids like to eat. We get tired of green beans-HA! They have a website (if I'm allowed to post it) www.platemethod.com. I wrote to the info contact and they sent me a free guide that has all the info on it. You can also order a placemat from them, but I didn't do that. There are also free downloads that explain more about the way to set up your plate and serving sizes. I think it's a really simple and balanced way to eat. Best Wishes!
Okay, I was totally wrong. The old book I really recommend is The Thin Game: Dieting Scams and Dietary Sense by Edwin Bayrd. 1978 Really good book and really cheap to purchase, as well. It's dated in that it deals a lot with "housewives" but a lot of the info hasn't changed (he does lump Atkins in with the "scam" part of things, but I'm not an Atkins kinda gal. If you are, it's probably not the book for you)
I would also recommend reading non-diet books that are health/food related. I find that those sort of books getting me thinking about food differently, and often more carefully. I just read a great one called The Omnivore's Dilemma, which was about agriculture and the food system in the US - it was fascinating, and *really* got me thinking carefully about what I put in my body, how it gets to me, why I eat what I eat, and what I could change. Same things happened when I read books like SuperSize Me. Then it's not just what I should/shouldn't eat that I think about, but also *why* and *what* I eat.
If I could pick JUST ONE, this would be it. It focuses on the transtheoretical model of change -- the stages that we go through when making any major change. You've probably heard them before... pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, and maintenance. This book's whole premise is that "diet books" focus on action. Sometimes they include maintenance. But 9 times out of 10 people fail in change because they haven't really finished "contemplation" and "preparation", and so "action" fails. So she leads you through each stage with exercises. The "four-day" part is because you set do-able goals, and do them for four days, and then reward yourself. It helps to set up a positive motion forward in your plan. It's not a diet. But the work you do in this book will help ANY diet you use. Get it from the library and see what I mean. I read half of it, and went out and bought my own copy!
I was at Borders to buy The Beck Diet Solution last night (which I did) and I found the Audio book for the Four Day Win on the bargain table for 3 bucks! I bought it because I only remembered Beck not the first name LOL But it sounds promising! I feel really glad I stumbled upon it. My point is, I would think a lot of Borders are having sidewalk sales to clear out their warehouses and it might be something someone can find at their local Borders store
Last edited by surrealchereal; 11-10-2007 at 03:11 PM.
First of all, I want to THANK ALL OF YOU who have shared these book titles but also other suggestions as well. If I have learned ANYTHING from the years of trying and failing to lose the same amount of weight is that: I needed to educate myself in every aspect of the whole process.
Having said that, I have also found both the used books section of Amazon online and the public library as a great source of weight lose reading materials. I have been disappointed in the past when I have bought (into)the "latest" book/weight lose program/plan on weight lose and found out that it was something that I couldn't follow realistically.
I have spent thousands of dollars on very unhealthy and unrealistic ways of losing weight. Some of these plans are national/international and people are still following them. If a friend or someone asks my opinion, I hate to admit that out of fear of sounding "sour grapes" I usually will wish them luck and tell them I will support them in their efforts. It is dishonest on my part but if I were my normal weight I would feel like my opinion carried "more weight", if you know what I mean.
In the past year I had a close friend who spent close to $800 to lose 20 lbs which she did but within four months she had gained it back---and, guess what, she blamed herself. She said "I guess, it was a lifestyle change that I wasn't ready to do". I feel bad for her because she is a single woman and she has a lot of financial concerns that she carries alone. I feel like these programs are not much better than bank robbers. The only honest thing they do is "show their face". If they wore a stocking over their heads we wouldn't trust them!
Right now, I am using the WW Flex Points as a tool in my weight lose efforts but I don't consider it a diet per se. I am using it to deal with portion control which I have identified was my biggest problem. Eating less. I do eat relatively healthy. I do not routinely bring in "white" or processed food. I make most of my meals from scratch (which is crazy when it comes time in figuring points!) and I am starting to buy more organic whole foods--even though they are more expensive. I have resumed a consistent and challenging exercise program.
Right now, I am reading a lot of books, both bought and checked out from the library. I am going through my cupboards and refrigerator. I am reading labels even it means going back into the garbage and fishing out the empty cans. I am educating myself. Like so many other things in life, "one size does not fit all!". I think we each need to find out who we are in relation to food, why we given it so much power in our lives, and how we can walk towards a life of normalcy in this area. I believe it is possible for each and every one of us to "lick this problem" once and for all!
I think most of us who have hung in there long enough will eventually make it. I really mean that!
I want to thank all of you for what you have shared. I have "eaten it up" like it was fries at McDonalds! A little "food humor" there. When I eventually shed this body of fat, I know that I did it because of all of the people who I was willing to listen to and learn from---and that means YOU!!!
Last edited by pamatga; 11-10-2007 at 01:37 PM.
Reason: spelling, as always
I wanna chime in with a book that I learned a lot from, Jillian Michaels' "Winning by Losing". It has an eating plan as well as an exercise plan. If you don't have a lot of weight to lose (20 lbs or less), try her second book - "Making the Cut". Jillian is the black team trainer from The Biggest Loser. I like her because she doesn't pretend any of this is easy - she tells it like it is.
Read any good diet books lately?
. The last one I read, I got at the Goodwill store. It was Richard Simmons' Never Say Diet book. It was funny and inspirational. It's fairly old though, so I'm sure it's out of print. Possibly it's at your library. Another good one I like is Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink. It's not a diet persay, but it's about how and why we eat like we do (the psychology of eating). It can give you ideas of how to be more concious of what you're putting into your mouth.
Yes I have, thanks to all of you!
First of all, I want to THANK ALL OF YOU who have shared these book titles but also other suggestions as well. If I have learned ANYTHING from the years of trying and failing to lose the same amount of weight is that: I needed to educate myself in every aspect of the whole process. 
