Customer Reviews

The Art & Science of Rational Eating

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The message of this book is that most human beings are genetically predetermined to be fat by the current standards of society( there is a lot of truth to this). You can try to lose weight, but you will most likely fail to keep it off, so you are better off not trying to lose weight and accepting yourself as you are. Should you be foolish enough to try, the authors offer some diet tips mixed in with REBT (cognitive therapy) all while reminding you that failure is likely.

The authors only give the reader examples from their weight control therapy groups of people who try to lose weight and fail. The examples that are painted in a positive light are patients who decide that losing weight is not worth the discomfort and who learn to accept being heavy. People who try to be fit are painted as being shallow and wasting their time on a triviality.

The authors claim to know a lot about nutrition, dieting and fitness. Yet, they recommend going on extremely low calorie diets because they think seeing fast results will keep people motivated. It is believed that crash diets are responsible for the yo-yo effect they decry and contributes to raising body weight set points. The authors also minimize regular exercise as a fat loss tool, claiming it helps a little, and is good for health, but it doesn't contribute much to serious weight loss. No wonder so many of their patients give up on trying to lose fat and focus on acceptance.

For what it is worth people do lose large amounts of weight and keep that weight off for long periods of time without being uncomfortable. People interested in this should go to the web site for The National Weight Control Registry [...]

The book has an interesting discussion about bigotry and the bigotry against heavy people.

I believe people who read the front cover of this book where "The sensible, sure-fire way to lose unwanted pounds" is printed will be disappointed. The contents of this book do not match the descriptions of it. This book is not a manual for making weight loss work. This book is about calling into question why people try to lose weight and encouraging people not to do so.

If you are interested in learning to use REBT(cognitive therapy) as a tool for learning how to have better eating habits "How To Stick To A Diet" by Windy Dryden is a far better choice.

Although not a "diet" book per se this is the best in that category. Rather than provide the right way to eat, it demonstrates through extensive research that body weight is the result of a complex interplay of biological and behavioral factors. The authors first seek to teach self-acceptance, then the rational-emotive/cognitive behavioral methods to maximize self-regulation. The case vignettes presented throughout the book both add to its entertainment value and its applicability

I recently picked up a copy of this book because of my interest in the work of Ellis. Apparently Abrams and Dengelegi are terrific researchers. They have added alot of clearly presented biological research to the work. Excellent.

I was lucky enough to take an Abnormal psychology class with Dr. Abrams. He is a strong believer in REBT. I was also fortunate to be given this book as a gift. Being the know-it-all that I am when it comes to fitness, i was hesitant to read this book. The authors do an excellant job in something that no fitness book(at least that I have read) has done before, and that is tackle the mental aspect of long-term fitness and health. I found the book very helpful in helping me to change my irrational thinking. I strongly urge anyone on the quest to look and feel better about themselves to pick up this book.

Is fatness a disease? There's no real evidence for such a view. African Americans and Native Americans, for example, suffer high rates of heart disease and cancer, yet no one would reasonably suggest that being a racial minority is a disease.

And what's the big deal about losing weight in the first place? It certainly doesn't increase longevity. Even trying to lose weight can be very bad for your health. The constant losing/gaining/losing process, for one, can make fat even tougher to lose on the next attempt if not impossible. There's also moodiness and irritability and even depression that can come from dieting - not to mention the pain of hunger pangs.

As human beings, we dieters, would-be dieters, and non-dieters are not cognitively nor instinctively equipped to monitor caloric intake with anything like the precision required to enhance fat loss. In fact, no one is. Thin people think that because they've been able to maintain slenderness without pain or trouble, it's possible for everyone to do so, particularly fat people. Slender people have no need to lose weight and thus don't know that fat cells don't like to disappear and that they create severe hunger pangs in a body in order to stay put. The more obese a person is, the more hunger he or she will feel when trying to lose fat. It's an uphill battle. Besides, everybody has a body with a set-point and that set-point doesn't really want to move. Genes have to a lot to do with your body size as well.

Haven't you seen or experienced successful weight loss - only to discover that the "new person" doesn't actually look as good as when he or she was fatter? And isn't it "easy" to take the weight off - once - but much harder to keep from putting it back on? Fat has a mind of its own and disappears unevenly, A person can look older than his years just for the simple fact of having lost fat. The skin often looks less resilient as well.

Eating, even overeating, generates feel-good hormones called endorphins and there's some research proving that obese people generate more endorphins while eating than other folks. Why give up that good feeling up simply in order to look thin?

Besides, what the hell is just so awful about being fat in the first place? Does it mean you can't get a date if you're a female? No. Guys don't, on average, go for the fashion model-type, however ubiquitous is their image on magazines. And women really don't care about men's fat as much as some may think.

Does it mean you are stupid and worthless then because you are fat? Hell, no. Do you judge your friends and loved ones because of one single imperfection? No. So why would being fat be the absolute worst flaw ever? There is no reason!

Maybe one can learn to and choose to accept oneself unconditionally - regardless of one's size or looks. Wouldn't that be a good and rational thing to do rather than berate oneself and down oneself because of one's avoirdupois?

The above ideas, considerations and perspectives are what Albert Ellis and the other authors offer the prospective reader for the first 126 pages or so of this 300-page book when it comes to an empathetic address to fat, fat people and what is rational and scientific concerning fat and fat people. The authors inform the prospective reader that it is a valid and rational choice not to diet.

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The middle chunk of the book is devoted to toughing it out, so to speak, should the prospective reader decide to "go for it" after all and decide that it is worthwhile after all to diet in order to lose weight. [The authors advocate following a speedy fat-loss program consisting in consuming no more than 800 calories a day if one is 30 or more pounds overweight!]

Here you will find support and appropriate self-talk strategies to inspire you and to aid you to keep going. The first and foremost bit of support the book offers is stark and realistic: it hurts to lose fat; you not only have to face that fact but you have to learn to develop inner strength in order to endure it. Albert Ellis calls this inner strength high frustration tolerance.

One of the primary strategies to develop high frustration tolerance is to realize that the pain and discomfort of dieting is temporary and that you can (learn to) endure it. As you learn to develop a tolerance for hunger pains, you begin to experience yourself as a successful dieter, as someone who can achieve his or her goals. The authors help teach you what excuses one makes for not keeping to one's weight-loss goals and how to overcome failures and set-backs. Here, the underlying key to overcoming failure and backsliding is simply to learn to stop telling oneself how awful and horrible it is to have failed or to have eaten more than one should for requisite weight-loss. It's the impulse toward catastrophizing that makes dieting failure so terrible.

Here are a few ways the authors suggest one give talk to oneself while dieting - and failure.

"Although I'd like to always maintain control around food, how well I maintain it is not a reflection of my worth as a person."

"I am a good person and can accept myself, even if I have lapses in following my food plan. There's more to me than my diet."

"I am more than just the pounds I weight, more than just my body. I am a human being, not a lower animal. I can think and feel, and I can choose to be good to myself and to others in countless ways."

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The last third of the book is a textbook introduction into the philosophy and psychology of RET (rational emotive therapy) where the reader learns that "nearly all people, especially when they are young, often give priority to their feelings even when these lead to poor results." The authors want the prospective reader to learn and know that long-range hedonism can decidedly pay off.

As an overweight person, I found the book well-written, clear, very kind, informative, and helpful. So far, I have developed a greater tolerance for hunger pains and gotten my trousers to fit looser around the waist as a result. I'm looking forward . . . !