Introduction This is not your typical diet book and I am not your typical physician. The program in this book is a medically sound one that has already changed the lives of my patients. It works because, having listened to thousands of patients talk about the struggles they faced as dieters, I developed a program based on their experiences, which provides real answers and solutions to life's challenges. My twenty-year journey of listening, learning, and discovering has culminated in the Personality Type Diet. I first became interested in nutrition and weight control as a fourth-year medical student because I was truly moved by the frustration that dieters felt as they tried one diet after another without success. I also was fascinated with the intricacies of metabolism and appetite control that underlie many of the medical treatments available today. After finishing a residency in internal medicine, I completed a two-year postgraduate fellowship in nutrition and a master's degree in nutrition. This was as rare a career path for physicians back then as it is today. In 1984, I began to treat patients burdened by overweight and obesity by establishing the first multidisciplinary weight management program at the University of Chicago. In 1998, I moved the program to Northwestern University and assumed the position of medical director of the Wellness Institute at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago. Here I embraced the importance of the mind-body connection to healthy weight loss, which complements my more traditional and science‚based medical training. I also made some new discoveries that forever changed my approach to weight management and spearheaded this book. As a medical student, I was always trained to listen to my patients' symptoms and then direct my treatment toward improving those symptoms. For example, a patient with asthma who complains of nighttime wheezing requires a different treatment plan from someone with exercise-induced asthma. Yet the traditional approach to helping patients lose weight didn't vary with 'symptoms' as much as in other diseases. As I paid more attention to my patients' symptoms of being overweight, I noticed definite patterns. One patient was a night eater, another used food to deal with stress, and yet another liked to exercise but couldn't fit it into her busy schedule. These lifestyle patterns (or "symptom patterns" as I identify them to other physicians) have helped to form the foundation for this revolutionary personality approach to weight control. In brief, this approach helps you to identify your diet personality - which eating, exercise and coping lifestyle patterns that have been preventing you from losing weight for good. Using simple quizzes and checklists, you learn to zero in on the lifestyle patterns that continually trip you up, and you learn the step-by-step weight-busting strategies to overcome them. Like peeling the layers of an onion, you will discover how to shape one pattern, enjoy the benefits, and then move on to the next. I simplify and personalize a weight management program that can be woven painlessly into each of your busy lives. I often reflect on how much my patients have taught me about weight control - specifically what works for them and what doesn't. Their responses to my treatment approach through the years have helped make my program what it is today. I'd like to share with you some patient comments that support seven weight management prescriptions that are central to my program. Rx 1: Stop Blaming Yourself Previously I had always blamed myself for being overweight - thinking there was something wrong with me. But after being in your program, now I really understand why my weight has been out of control; it's the environment we live in. Over the years, as I noticed the similarities in my patients' struggles with weight loss and regain, I realized there were strong environmental forces pressuring patients to eat more and exercise less. I even coined a term that explains it: scaling up syndrome. In Chapter 1, you learn why you have struggled with losing weight and keeping it off. As you better understand the real culprit in the battle of the bulge, your energies can be directed away from self-blame and toward weight loss and improved health. And for those interested in jump-starting their weight loss, I provide a special three-week plan. Rx 2: Know your Lifestyle Many doctors have suggested that I needed to change my lifestyle, handed me a written, low-calorie diet to follow, then sent me on my way. But you actually taught me how to change my lifestyle, and you did it in such a gradual way that I didn't notice it happening and it really wasn't hard. My patients taught me early on that the solution to controlling weight once and for all doesn't lie with following a preprinted diet plan or unsound, unscientific, and silly "food rules" but rather with a better understanding of themselves and their particular lifestyle. That's why in Chapter 2, I help you to identify the eating, exercise, and coping patterns that have fed your weight gain. These three aspects of your diet personality form the foundation for my personalized treatment plans that follow. Once you understand the patterns that have caused weight gain, you can take back control to reshape them, one pattern at a time. Rx 3: Make Small Changes When I started your program, weight loss seemed to be such a huge, insurmountable hurdle. I didn't know what to do first, but you were able to break it up into manageable pieces for me. Since my patients' lives are so busy, I knew that big lifestyle changes would never work for them over the long run. Instead it was the small, easy-to-follow changes that added up to make the biggest differences in their weight and health. In Chapters 3, 4 and 5, you learn the simple steps (tailored to your particular eating, exercise and coping patterns) that will help you achieve the long-term success you've been seeking. Rx 4: Self-Monitor to Stay on Track With all other weight loss programs, I'd lose the weight and then gain it right back. But your self-monitoring tools and strategies enabled me to catch a temporary lapse in behaviors and prevent it from turning into total collapse. Lapses in behavior are an expected part of any weight loss program. The key is to identify them early enough so you can troubleshoot and then take the corrective actions that put you back in control. In Chapter 6, you learn the three-step process for weight maintenance along with ways your family and friends can support your long-term successes. Rx 5: Identify Recipes for Success I always thought that cooking healthy was time-consuming and difficult to master. But after trying the right recipes, I was happily proven wrong. Learning how to cook healthful, good-tasting foods is a valuable skill - especially if you want to reach and maintain your weight loss goal. But you need the right recipes. Developed by a registered dietitian, who is also a healthy cooking expert, the recipes and menu plans in Chapter 7 are sure to be big hits at your kitchen table. Rx 6: Be Resourceful When it comes to my general health care needs, I usually make good choices, but when it comes to weight loss, I am frequently confused. Whether I needed psychological counseling, dietary guidance, or medical interventions, you always steered me right. Part of being successful on a healthy weight loss program is being able to identify if and when you need additional help. Since the process of losing weight may require you to have more extensive dietary counseling (for example, if you have diabetes or food intolerances), or can expose sensitive issues (depression or binge eating disorder) that are helped by psychological counseling or can be supported by physician monitoring and intervention, you need to know your options. In Chapter 8, you learn the different resources available should you ever need them. The Bottom Line The bottom line to my beliefs about weight control and this book is that weight management is about so much more than just carbs and protein. It's your lifestyle that holds the key to conquering your weight loss struggles. So my book's mission is threefold: First, to help you understand how scaling up syndrome has played out in your life. Second, to help you identify your particular diet personality - that is, the unconscious eating, exercise, and coping patterns you've developed in response to this syndrome. Third, to guide you step by step to reshape your lifestyle patterns toward healthy, lasting, weight loss. As I tell my patients, we're in this together and for the long run. How to Use This Book Though your typical diet book approach may be to skip the beginning chapters and fast forward to the later chapters, I don't recommend this because you'll be missing out on the process of awareness and self-discovery that form the foundation of this program. And I also highly recommend that you try the three-week starter plan that allows you to begin the process of behavior change while also jump-starting your mind and body toward weight loss and improved health. Once you complete (and then tally) your diet personality quiz in Chapter 2, you'll have a couple of options. You can either zero in on the specific sections in Chapters 3-5 that pertain to your identified patterns, or you can read through the chapters in their entirety, learning about all the patterns (before you go back to focus on your own). By doing the latter, you'll learn all the weight loss strategies that have helped my patients over the years. You'll also be more knowledgeable about how scaling up syndrome can affect members of your family, colleagues at work, and friends - or even you, maybe at a later date. Since your diet personality can change alongside your life challenges, this book is meant to be a living document for successful weight loss that you can turn to for help again and again.