Email
Print
FeedThe End of the Yo-Yo
Bala Cynwyd’s Dr. Judith Beck unravels the up-down cycle of dieting.
(page 1 of 3)
At the start of 2009, Oprah divulged a not-so-shocking mea culpa to her millions of viewers: She’d lost the battle of the bulge. Again.
Since the show’s inception, her ups and downs have been a popular topic—and understandably so. After all, if an on-air billionaire with a fleet of personal trainers, chefs and assistants at her disposal can’t keep the weight off, we shouldn’t feel so bad about our own struggles with the scale, right?
Wrong, says Dr. Judith Beck. The reason dieters—including Oprah—aren’t able to keep off the pounds is because they’ve never acquired the skills necessary for permanent weight loss. This past January—just in time to honor those New Year’s resolutions—the New York Times best-selling author and weight-loss expert released her second diet book, The Complete Beck Diet for Life: The Five-Stage Program for Permanent Weight Loss (Oxmoor House, 288 pages). Beck, a psychologist and the director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research in Bala Cynwyd, has devised a plan that institutes signature cognitive therapy tools.
“Most programs just tell you what to eat and what not to eat, but studies show that this is simply not enough,” says Beck. “The difficult part of a diet is sticking to it.”
Beck is the daughter of Aaron T. Beck, the father of cognitive therapy, which research has found to be remarkably effective in treating depression, anxiety, eating disorders, substance abuse and a whole range of psychiatric problems. “The idea behind cognitive therapy is that the way we think about things influences how we feel about things and what we do,” she says.
If you’ve ever tried to lose weight, you’ve probably slimmed down and felt great about it. Then, for whatever reason, you slipped back into your old eating patterns, and the pounds returned. As a wise dietician once said, “Don’t say you lost weight, because that implies you’re trying to find it.”
Beck’s five-step program outlines ways to stay motivated, overcome emotional and binge eating, and jump back on the wagon when you’ve fallen off. As she often points out, there’s nothing miraculous about weight loss. Yet people scour diet books and fitness magazines for ways to get thinner without exerting much effort or sacrificing their favorite foods.
“There are no magic diets,” says Beck. “It’s all calories in and calories out. But if you don’t have really healthy calories, your body is going to rebel, and you’re going to gain weight. If you don’t include your favorite foods, psychologically you’re going to rebel and gain weight back, also.”
The Complete Beck Diet for Life is unique in the way that it teaches dieters to motivate themselves with a healthy daily eating plan geared toward the lifelong goal of permanent weight loss. Giving into sabotaging thoughts is what keeps people from losing weight, says Beck. Such thinking nudges dieters toward food they never planned to eat, with reasoning like, “It’s OK to eat this because I had a bad day at work and I deserve it” or “I’m too stressed-out to diet.”
Beck’s cognitive approach shows readers how to identify and effectively talk back to self-defeating thoughts. A co-worker brings cookies to the office, and you say to yourself, “I want one—everyone else is having one.” You can eat the cookie, or combat the sabotaging thought by saying to yourself, “Yes, the cookies look delicious, but I’d rather stick to my eating plan and be thinner.”
Cognitive therapy “helps people identify their unhealthful thinking and change it so they can behave in a more healthful way,” says Beck.
