Excerpt: 'The Ultimate Weight Solution'

ByABC News
February 8, 2004, 3:38 PM

Feb. 9 -- In his new book, The Ultimate Weight Solution, talk show host Dr. Phil McGraw says that behaving positively and stopping negative behavior is the only way to lose weight.

Chapter 1 Getting Real About You and Your Weight

Change can come in either of two important ways: Start behaving positively or stop behaving negatively. Dr. Phil

You have a decision to make.

You know it and so do I. At this very moment, you are standing in the aisle of a bookstore, or at an airport, thumbing through these pages, or you are sitting at home, reading this book. You are thinking about your weight and how you have tried to lose it in a million wrong ways. You are wondering if maybe, just maybe, there is something here for you, something you have wanted for a very long time. And if there is, should you try it?

But hear me out: this decision you are mulling over in your head is not whether to start yet another "diet." You have made that well-intentioned but misguided choice dozens of times. And through it all, your weight just keeps creeping up or maybe even shooting sky-high, and it is getting harder to control with each passing year.

The decision you must make is whether or not you will quit conning yourself and telling yourself what you so desperately wish were the truth: that there is some hot new diet out there, promising quick and easy results. So decide: do you want to keep fooling yourself or not? Do you want to keep chasing after, and being seduced by, "miracle" diets, slimming products, and "overnight" weight loss? You've known for a long time that you were going to have to get real about fat or stay real fat. But if you had done what I'm about to ask you to do, instead of going on that last diet you started or signing up for that last program, this decision would be behind you right now.

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