Think Thin, Be Thin: 101 Psychological Ways to Lose Weight

If you’ve been struggling with your weight, you know how hard it can be to lose those extra pounds and keep them off. In the groundbreaking Think Thin, Be Thin, nationally prominent psychotherapist Doris Wild Helmering and award-winning health writer Dianne Hales assert that the true key to a healthy body weight is a healthy attitude toward food and exercise. Their logic is simple: Your brain ultimately controls what you eat and whether you work out. If you change the way you think, you can change the way you behave. And you can lose weight.

Using proven psychological strategies and scientifically based exercises, you will learn how to harness your thoughts to transform your behavior, body, and life. With practical advice on such troublesome issues as curbing emotional eating, motivating yourself to exercise, and overcoming diet plateaus, this book is the ideal complement to any diet and weight-loss program.

The tips are drawn from a variety of disciplines, including Gestalt therapy, transactional awareness, compliance theory and cognitive-behavior therapy: all these sources these translate to "there's something for everyone". Old standards like keeping a food diary and finding simple ways to burn calories (like gardening or taking the stairs at work) are mixed with creative ideas like becoming your own advice columnist for a day and watching specific comedy movies that also offer encouragement for change (think Groundhog's Day). Whether you sit down and plow through the book in one sitting or pick and choose a few tips to follow for short time periods, you'll find the positive tone both relaxing and inspiring.

While the emotional and mental aspects of weight loss are the focal point, you'll also find a few tips aimed at the more practical side, like tracking your BMI (a charted is included as an appendix) and how many calories are burned by an assortment of activities. Whether it servers as a companion to a new gym membership or a refresher course in positive thinking, this book has plenty of helpful tips to keep you on track. --Jill Lightner