By now, you don’t have to be Marie Curie to know the power of chemicals and realize that you’re the clear-cut underdog if you try to take them on with brute force. You know that chemical changes in your brain and body play a big role in dictating everything from your actions to your emotions. But you can alter your chemistry in more subtle ways. For instance, take the act of positive thinking and interacting in social groups. There’s evidence that those kinds of actions change serotonin levels to make you feel better and reduce appetite. That’s really how you should be using your mind and all the intangible concepts like willpower, discipline, and motivation-to complement the chemical changes you’re making in other, more concrete ways. They’re the things that will help you overcome the occasional butter-laced obstacles that you’ll face.

To show you how you can use emotions to work for you as you’re about to embark on the YOU Diet, let’s step back into the mind of a typical dieter -- let’s say a woman. One of the psychological realities of being overweight is that many dieters-that is, people who know they need to lose weight and want to –- are somewhat comfortable with their bodies. Yes, that body may be twenty, thirty, forty, or more pounds heavier than it was the day she turned eighteen. But maybe she’s used to post-pregnancy weight, she enjoys Friday lunches with her friends, or she can’t face a total wardrobe overhaul. YOU-reka! It’s who she is- and she’s more comfortable living her life at that level than going through the struggles and hard work (not to mention the guilt and shame) of trying to shed weight.

So the dieter has two choices: She can remain on top of the hill where she’s currently standing and (relatively) comfortable. Or she can try to get to the top of that beautiful mountain in the distance -- the ultimate destination for all of her weight-loss goals. There, on the mountain, she’ll find smaller sizes, leaf-size bikinis, fewer doctor’s visits, and probably fewer doctor’s visits, and probably fewer health risks and an improved quality of life. Maybe that’s where she’d ideally like to be. But the problem is that there’s no easy bridge from the comfort zone of the hill to the peak of the mountain. To get there, she must travel all the way down from her current comfort level, hit some rough terrain along the way, and then climb, climb, climb her way up this seemingly insurmountable incline. So she asks: is it worth it to go through all the hard work to reach the top of the ideal mountain, or am I comfortable enough with where I’m standing right now?

That’s how the dieter thinks after trying it once or twice. It’s easier to stay at the current comfort level at a less ideal size than it is to go through a short period of somewhat uncomfortable change -- doing things like developing a physical activity program, or avoiding drive throughs, or changing menus, going through periods of irritability and hunger. For many dieters, that path is hard to navigate, so they return -– very quickly -- to the original hill, the original place of comfort (often it is an even wider hill, psychologically and waist-size-wise). The fact is, most people aren’t willing to face the challenges of finding the mountain peak, even if the peak reveals such vistas as better health and higher self-esteem.

So what we have to do is build that bridge -- that bridge of smart food choices, of exercise discipline, or working smart, not hard. And we have to support the bridge with strategies and tactics that allow you to make wrong steps without falling completely into the abyss of chocolate nougat. How do we do it? By getting started. Right now. With small actions that lead to big changes.

Sometimes, we think the motivation to start a program has to come first, but oftentimes, the motivation comes after the action: Make a small change (be it walking thirty minutes a day, or eating nuts before dinner to keep you full), and suddenly you feel motivated to make more changes -- and to succeed.

The point is that we want you to make it across the bridge as pain-free as possible, by giving you the tools to avoid the uncomfortable feelings associated with dieting, with hunger, with evil scales. The journey to the top of the mountain may feel like a bit of a climb, but it shouldn’t feel like you’re starting way down there at the bottom. We’ll build that bridge with these strategies and our YOU Diet and YOU Activity Plan. Continued ...


Excerpted from 'YOU on a Diet' by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D. Copyright© 2006 by by Michael F. Roizen, M.D. and Mehmet C. Oz, M.D.. Excerpted by permission of Free Press, a division of Simon and Schuster. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.