Paul Rivas, M.D., has specialized in obesity for over a decade and has successfully treated over 15,000 patients. A sought-after expert, he has been interviewed on more than 50 radio and TV shows, including Good Morning America, and has appeared in articles in the Wall Street Journal, Cosmopolitan and the Los Angeles Times. He lives in Maryland.
Introduction
If you were told that from now on, you would have to work at a boring, repetitive job for sixteen hours a day, seven days a week, year after year, with a great starting salary, but no raises or bonuses, how long do you think you'd stick with it? Odds are you'd burn out within the first twelve months. Expecting to spend the rest of your life doing that kind of work is completely unrealistic. Yet this is exactly the kind of expectation we have of ourselves when we diet to lose weight.
Who can eat bland meals that contain no carbohydrates or fats for 365 days a year, every year for life? Who can live on a 1,500-calorie daily allotment with no relief in sight? No wonder 95 percent of dieters fail, with more than half of them quitting in the first six to twelve months. Diets are boring! Failure is built into them. And as you'll see in this book, even if you manage to stick with a diet over the long term, your body will eventually adjust to the changes you've made and start packing on weight again.
You avoid job burnout by adding variety to your work, taking time off and allowing yourself to have fun once in awhile. The good news is that you can do exactly the same thing with your diet. You can take weekends off! You can cheat with the foods you love most! And here's the bonus: Taking time off and allowing yourself to cheat on weekends helps you burn extra calories.
The Cheater's Diet not only encourages you, but requires you to cheat on weekends with delicious foods such as chocolate, wine, beer and pizza! That's right. During the workweek, you'll enjoy wonderful, satisfying meals that are designed to make you lose weight without giving up fat or carbohydrates. And on weekends, you get to choose any foods you like, from cake to steak. The Cheater's Diet allows you to say good-bye to deprivation and hello to guilt-free eating and cheating.
Best of all, it works.
How do I know? I've seen it. I'm a bariatrician—a physician who specializes in weight loss. In over a decade of practice, I've watched more than 15,000 patients struggle with their weight, try all kinds of diets and ultimately fail. I'm also a board-certified internist, so I'm concerned with more than getting my patients into smaller clothing sizes—their health is always my first concern. I don't believe that diets that cut carbs and allow you to eat all the saturated fat you want constitute a terribly good idea. Neither am I a big fan of food plans that cut your fat consumption almost to zero, but allow you to stuff yourself with white bread, rice and potatoes. People who want to lose weight need a diet that puts the joy back into eating; doesn't require a lot of fuss, worry, guilt and sacrifice; beats the body's ability to adapt; offers lots of variety; and actually improves health. That's what the Cheater's Diet does. Of course, if you still insist on following the same old low-carb or low-fat plan that's been boring your palate for the past few months, the principles you read about here will work with them as well. Where weight management and health are concerned, there's a new golden rule: Cheaters always win, and winners always cheat. So read on, have fun, and bon appétit!
©2005. Paul Rivas, M.D., and Ernie Tremblay. All rights reserved. Reprinted from The Cheater's Diet :The Medically Proven Way to Supercharge Your Weight Loss, Break Through Diet Ruts and Stay Thin for Good. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the written permission of the publisher. Publisher: Health Communications, Inc., 3201 SW 15th Street, Deerfield Beach, FL 33442.
