The Official Newsletter of Bodyfatguide.com
November 5, 2003
What's
Wrong with Dr. Phil's Weight-loss Challenge?
by Ron Brown, author of The Body Fat Guide
What's
Wrong with by Ron Brown, author of The Body Fat Guide
"Ron Brown is a certified fitness trainer who doesn't have an inch of flab on his body. He'll tell you what you can do to become fit and trim too."
TALK TO AMERICA, Washington DC
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NORTH AMERICAN
TV audiences have a new weight-loss guru. Dr. Phil, with his 38–inch+ waist
(I'm being kind) has challenged his television-show viewers to take control of
their weight. What a great idea! However, I wish he would have consulted with me
first. You see, the advice that Dr. Phil is dispensing on his show will do
little toward helping anyone achieve more than temporary weight loss.
When taking a closer look at Dr. Phil's program, one immediately recognizes the familiar advice to eat a balanced diet (good) in portion-controlled amounts (a reasonable strategy). The problem is that Dr. Phil's dieters are not monitoring their energy balance, or the balance between the amount of calories they eat and burn. By discouraging people from counting calories, Dr. Phil's plan falls into the same trap as most quick-fix commercial weight-loss plans designed for mass appeal to dieters. As Dr. Phil's dieters restrict themselves to smaller portions, they will lose weight. But, this is not because they are learning how to precisely adjust their energy balance modifications. It's only because they are correctly guessing that they are eating fewer calories than they are burning. What will happen when their restricted program ends? How much should they eat then? How much should they exercise? Are they going to continue limiting their intake of their favorite foods forever? Not likely! Dr. Phil's dieters will no doubt do fairly well at losing weight, and his program will receive good ratings. The problem is that without learning specific skills to maintain their weight, statistics predict that many of Dr. Phil's dieters will regain their lost weight. The specific skills necessary to maintain |
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one's weight include the ability to monitor and flexibly adjust one's calorie intake and calorie expenditures each day. Unfortunately, slavishly following a restricted diet alone doesn't teach one those skills. A few dieters in Dr. Phil's program may continue on and manage to maintain long-term weight loss, but they are not likely to do so by exclusively following Dr. Phil's advice. It's not that following Dr. Phil's advice isn't useful. But, unless you are prepared to live within narrow restrictions for the rest of you life, you are going to need much more to achieve permanent weight loss in our world of labor-saving devices and abundant food supplies. The only chance anyone has of achieving long-term weight loss in such a world of unlimited choices is by learning the principles of energy balance, and by applying those principles to their diet and activity modifications. Where can you learn that? |
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