The Perfect Fit Diet: Combine What Science Knows About Weight Loss With What You Know About Yourself

By Lisa Sanders, M.D.
Published by Rodale Press
January 2004; $24.95US/$36.95CAN; 1-57954-698-6

We all have different shapes, different tastes, and different lifestyles, so why should one diet work for everyone? How can you take the guesswork out of selecting the diet that's a perfect fit for you?

Lisa Sanders, M.D., an internist and a researcher at the Yale University School of Medicine, has spent the past 5 years analyzing more than 700 weight-loss programs and has uncovered a fundamental truth about dieting: Sustainable weight loss is only possible on a diet that fits your food preferences, satiety signals, lifestyle, and medical profile. You can lose weight with many diets -- but you can keep the weight off only with a diet that satisfies all of you.

Building on her research, Dr. Sanders has designed the first science-based method for creating a customized weight-loss plan that works for you -- for life!

The key to her plan is an interactive questionnaire that covers everything from your family and medical histories to the foods that tickle your tastebuds, relieve your stress, and trigger feelings of satisfaction. The answers to these questions guide you to the basic diet that will help you lose weight for life. Dr. Sanders then reveals how to customize that diet to accommodate your lifestyle, activity level, and personal tastes.

The Perfect Fit Diet is a reliable compass for navigating the thicket of competing diet claims, a rational path for the thinking person who wants to lose weight.

Low-carb, high-fat. High-carb, low-fat. Eat like a caveman. Eat in "The Zone." Eat on "The Beach." Does anything really work? More important, will any of it work for you?

Until now, the only way to find the right diet has been through a maddening guessing game. And there's nothing more frustrating than failing, then gaining back all of the weight -- and more!

Lisa Sanders, M.D., has made it her mission to find out how diets really work and why, despite the odds, some dieters are able to take the weight off and keep it off. She's spent years poring over hundreds and hundreds of medical studies -- and guess what?

Each of these diets works -- for the right person. The trick is to find the diet that works for you. Dr. Sanders has uncovered the secret to matching the dieter to the weight-loss program -- one that is most suited to the dieter's tastes, lifestyle, and cravings.

Dr. Sanders's revolutionary Perfect Fit Questionnaire will eliminate the guesswork and guide you to your Perfect Fit Diet, pointing you to one of three basic diets. You'll then customize that diet to create a perfectly personalized plan -- one that allows you to shed those pounds, without feeling hungry or deprived, for a lifetime!

Author

Lisa Sanders, M.D., is an internist practicing in Connecticut and is on the faculty of Yale University School of Medicine. In her research and practice, she specializes in the treatment of overweight and obese patients. Before entering medical school, she was an Emmy Award-winning producer at CBS News, where she covered medicine and health. Her widely read "Diagnosis" column appears monthly in The New York Times. Dr. Sanders lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with her husband and two daughters.

For more information, please visit www.writtenvoices.com.

Reviews

"Finally, a book that acknowledges that we are all on diets. Because Dr. Sanders knows that gimmicks are bound to fail, she brilliantly gives us the guidelines we need to craft an eating plan based on our own food preferences, to come up with a diet that permits us to eat well and eat right."

--Mark Bittman, New York Times columnist and author of How to Cook Everything

"You are what you eat, we often hear, but now Lisa Sanders tells us that you eat what you are-- that our individual biological makeups determine our eating habits. Grounded in the latest science, written with great clarity and humor, The Perfect Fit Diet is the sanest and most sensible book on dieting I've ever read."

--Michael Pollan, best-selling author of The Botany of Desire

"The Perfect Fit Diet is unlike any other weight-loss book I've ever read. Dr. Sanders is right. No eating rules apply to everyone. I had great fun answering the questionnaire about me, and then eating accordingly. I expect to lose all the weight I need to -- painlessly and soon. Thanks, Lisa."

--Isadore Rosenfeld, M.D., best-selling author of Live Now, Age Later and Dr. Rosenfeld's Guide to Alternative Medicine

Excerpt

The following is an excerpt from the book The Perfect Fit Diet

by Lisa Sanders, M.D.

Published by Rodale Press; January 2004; $24.95US/$36.95CAN; 1-57954-698-6

Copyright © 2004 Lisa Sanders, M.D.

Tips for Sweets Eaters, No Matter What Diet You Are On

1. Clear the house of everything you don't want to eat. Don't just keep stuff stashed away. Get it out.

2. Always have something sweet at hand that you will feel good about eating. You can try having fruit around; very sweet fruits like grapes and melon can work for some people, at least part of the time. Frozen fruit bars might work. Low-calorie ice cream bars sometimes do the trick.

3. Have a variety of healthy sweet treats around the house and only one type of sweet that you could crave but wouldn't want to eat too much of. That will improve your odds of satisfying your craving with a food that you won't be sorry you ate.

4. Only have as much of the restricted sweet in the house as you would want to eat at any given moment. Buy serving sizes and, if necessary, buy them one at a time. Then replace your stock when you are not having cravings, so that you will be prepared next time they come.

5. Have a plan for what to do when the wholesome sweets at hand don't do it for you. The nature of that plan will depend on you and your cravings. Janet (remember her?) has a real sweet tooth and loves ice cream. When she craves ice cream and nothing else will do, she makes herself walk to get it. She lives in a large city, and there is a local store nearby. She figures the walk (and the hassle) into her craving calculations.

6. If you feel that you can never learn to eat sweets in moderation and decide that the only way you can deal with your "addiction" is to ban sweets forever, have a plan for what to do if you "fall off the wagon." Having no plan means leaving your diet in the hands of chance and whim. My whole shtick is that you do better in managing what you eat if you have a plan and choose what to eat, no matter how hard that is. You need to take charge of your diet, and that means staying in charge even when you can't control all your cravings all the time.

7. Finally, anticipate how you will feel after you've eaten something you hadn't planned on. Too often the response is "I'll start again tomorrow," and that can trigger a binge. Be proactive in the face of what might feel like a failure. When you are late paying a bill, you don't say, "Oh well, I'll pay that bill next month." Same with unintended splurges. Try to get back on track, that day, that hour, that very minute -- and go from there.

For carbohydrate counters: If you love sweets, then a carbohydrate-counting diet is going to be pretty darn tough. These foods need to be eaten in moderation, especially when you are in the early phase of the diet and want to stay "in the pink." Have only a small amount of sweet foods at hand. Make sure these foods are the ones you can eat without regret.

Here are some foods you can eat in moderation, even in the early phase.

• Strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries


• Sugarless candy or gum (These snacks have a built-in overeating prevention mechanism: They can give you powerful and very regrettable gas when eaten in excess.)


• Sugarless gelatin


• A small scoop of Cool Whip or even a dab of real whipped cream to brighten up the gelatin or fruits

Remember, although sugarless items don't have carbohydrates, they do contain calories. Moderation in all things is key.

For calorie counters: Portion control is key in eating sweets, so give yourself an edge.

• Only have as much in the house as you would want to eat at any given moment.


• Have a variety of healthy sweet treats around and only one type of sweet that you could crave but wouldn't want to eat often. The greater, the variety of sweets around you, the greater the quantity of sweets you tend to eat. Use that understanding to try to ease your craving with a variety of wholesome, low-calorie treats.

For fat counters: Avoid chocolate. It is loaded with fats, and in general, the higher the quality of chocolate, the greater the amount of fat, most of it saturated. Here are some good rules of thumb for all sweets.

• Check out the fat content of all the sweets you eat -- cookies, pastries, and other baked goods are usually dripping with fats. Find out how much fat is in a sweet, and if it contains more than 33 percent fat, choose again.


• Avoid low-fat versions of sweets if you can. The fat is usually replaced with sugar, and sugar can make you fat too.

(Reprinted from The Perfect Fit Diet: Combine What Science Knows About Weight Loss With What You Know About Yourself by Lisa Sanders, M.D. (Rodale Inc., Hardcover, $24.95). Permission granted by Rodale, Emmaus, PA 18098. Available wherever books are sold.)

Copyright © 2004 Lisa Sanders, M.D.

For more information, please visit www.writtenvoices.com.