Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

Mindful Empowerment

Calories Unmasked

For many years, we've been taught that in order to lose weight we have to learn to live without the foods we love. To get lean, you have to be extreme . . . right?

Wrong. Scientific research consistently shows that this approach doesn't work--and your epic battle with the bathroom scale proves it. Dieting is a zero-sum game. You can lose weight fast by cutting out certain foods and learning to live with cravings, but more than one-third of people on typical diets regain all of the weight they lose within a year. Long-term studies of Americans who've dropped 30 or more £ds and have kept it off for a minimum of 1 year--and in some cases, decades--offer proof that drastic change is not the answer. The people who are able to lose weight and maintain their weight loss successfully aren't following 30-day diet plans or subscribing to meal delivery services. They don't eliminate carbs or fat, and they certainly don't skip meals.

They all follow a strategy that worked long before the Era of the Diet, and one that will work long after the last fad diet is gone.

They reduce calories and they exercise.

If this bit of information doesn't come as a surprise to you, then here's something that might: You can do it, too. Lose It! will help you reach your health and fitness goals, and if you ask any one of the millions of people who've already benefited from this revolutionary weight-loss tool, they'll attest to the fact that you don't have to suffer for your success. If nothing gives you more satisfaction than a pillow-soft loaf of bread fresh from the oven (like quite a few Lose It! users), then don't give up your beloved carbs! If a hot dog with the works is your ultimate weakness, no one's going to stop you from indulging.

There are millions of reasons why Lose It! will work for you--about 6 million, in fact. That's because more than 6 million people have used the program since its inception. Each one has been able to create a personalized plan, tailored to his or her unique schedule, lifestyle, dietary needs, and food preferences. Lose It! simply empowers them with knowledge--the knowledge of how many calories they should be eating and how many calories they really are eating. This knowledge gives them (and you) the power to make small changes that add up to major losses.

The best possible weight-loss plan, after all, is the one that you design yourself. Just ask Brian Newby of Florida, who cycled on and off of the Atkins Diet for years, struggling to stay on the plan because he simply couldn't say no to bread. (For Brian, an Alabama native, a meal isn't a meal if it doesn't come with biscuits.) Then Brian discovered Lose It! After a year of following the program dutifully, he's lost more than 100 £ds--and he didn't have to give up the carbs he loves. Another Lose It! pro, Blaine Smelscer of Texas, shrunk himself from 280 £ds down to 180-- without giving up the hot dogs, burgers, and chicken fingers that form the foundation of his diet. He simply learned how to adjust his portion sizes and choose burgers, dogs, and chicken with fewer calories.

With Lose It!, you can forget about following someone else's idea of what you should and shouldn't eat and simply learn to love food again. One of the first things you'll discover is how to calculate a calorie budget that reflects your specific needs. When you stay within its limits, you're in the Green Zone. But when you eat more calories than you've budgeted for a day, you will enter the Red Zone--dangerous territory. It's similar to your financial budget. When you see how much you're spending on your choices (some of them regrettable), you'll learn to plan ahead and spend wisely. The end result? You'll spend on the things you really want--and stay in the green.

"I'm teaching myself to eat better," said Sabrina Euton, who lives in Georgia and has lost more than 40 £ds since January of 2010. "I know it's called Lose It!, but for me it's a tool that I use to teach myself to treat my body better. I can't tell you the last time I ate fast food. I used to pick up food on the way home from work all the time. Now I buy food and portion it into individual servings so I'm able to come home, pull out one container, and heat it up. I'm still eating things I want to eat. I'm just scheduling and preparing them ahead of time. My husband and I don't have that last-minute, 'What are we going to have for dinner?' fight anymore. Our local pizza shop was always the winner of that fight. They knew us by our first names."

THINK ECONOMICALLY, NOT JUDGMENTALLY

From now on, what you choose to eat is between you and your taste buds. A study by Tufts University scientists, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, showed that people who followed weight-loss plans that they didn't perceive as being too restrictive lost more weight and lowered their risk of developing cardiovascular diseases more than those who felt deprived. Simply put, the freedom to eat the foods you like can mean the difference between keeping the £ds off for good and finding yourself shopping for the next size up in a few short months.

When you consider that 70 percent of Americans surveyed in a 2010 study said that they were concerned about their weight, and nearly 80 percent said that they wanted to either lose or maintain their weight, the nationwide need for a little food freedom becomes more than clear.

But here's the scary part: Most Americans have no idea how many calories they're consuming and where those calories are going! The same 2010 study-- carried out by the International Food Information Council Foundation--found that only 12 percent of Americans could correctly estimate the number of calories they should be consuming in a day based on their age, weight, height, and activity level. And nearly half of all Americans have no idea how many calories they burn in a day.

It's not that they aren't trying to eat less and burn more. A majority of Americans say that to lose the weight, they're changing the amount of food they eat and the amount of time they spend being active. But making those changes without any knowledge of the amount of calories you need and the amount of calories you're burning daily is like driving across the country without a map. There's a chance you'll reach your destination, but there's also a chance you'll take a wrong turn and end up in Seattle when you were shooting for San Diego.

The premise of the plan is simple: The more you know about the number of calories you need to burn to reach your target weight and the number of calories that are in the foods you like to eat, the smarter the choices you make will be. To lose weight without depriving yourself, you need to know precisely how many calories you can afford to spend. When you ignore this basic information, the calories add up faster than you can say, "spare tire."

You wouldn't walk into Saks Fifth Avenue and buy a coat off the rack without peeking at the price tag, would you? And you certainly wouldn't take that coat to the register without having a rough idea of what's in your bank account. Yet most Americans go on a caloric spending spree every time they open up their fridge or walk into a sandwich shop.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST

Even if you think you're pretty careful about what you eat, there's a good chance you're consuming more calories than you realize. A 2006 study by scientists at Cornell University and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that the more food you have on your plate, the more likely you are to underestimate the number of calories it contains (in some cases, by as much as 40 percent!). Tack onto that all of the little snacks and bites you sneak between meals each day, and it's no wonder the weight won't take a hike.

Yup, that's right. Those little bites add up, and they affect us all--the parents who finish their kids' mac 'n' cheese and uneaten chicken nuggets, the stealthy snacker who sneaks a spoonful of ice cream every night before bed, the sampler who always grabs those bite-size bits of free muffins at the local coffee shop, and even the human garbage disposal who makes a habit of putting away those last bites of hamburger or cheese lasagna that his friends have left stranded on their plates.

Plate Cleaning, Parenting Pounds, Sneaky Snacks, and Small Bites--They All Add Up!