Twelve weeks to total transformation. If you're familiar withGet With the Program!, Make the Connection,and Basic Training, a program on my Web site www.getwiththeprogram.org, you know that I've always said that it takes time and patience to lose weight. Now here I am with a three-month program. Have I gone off the deep end?

Not at all, and I think you'll agree when I explain the thinking behind Total Body Makeover.

Anytime I work with someone, be it on a one-to-one basis or through my books, my goal is to help that person attain physical health and emotional well-being. The 12-week Total Body Makeover is simply an accelerated program. It's a bit like boot camp: intense and meant to accomplish a lot in a short amount of time while giving you quicker and more dramatic results. One (and the most important) of those results is obtaining a new, elevated, and healthier metabolism. Through a combination of vigorous exercise and five simple eating rules -- no strict or formal "dieting" -- you will be burning far more calories each day when you reach the end of the 12 weeks.

This program offers something for everyone. Whether you're a beginning exerciser, already have a regular workout routine going, or are at an advanced level of fitness, you can personalize the Total Body Makeover plan to suit you. And no matter whether you have a substantial amount of weight to lose, a little to lose, or are just trying to get into the best shape of your life, you will see substantial changes in your body at the end of 12 weeks. Some of you will have reached your ultimate goal by then; some of you will have made a great start and will still have a way to go. But all of you, if you stay committed, will look and feel significantly different. Some of you will even have changed your lives in ways that were totally unexpected. Most important, you will be on the road to a lifetime of healthy living.

I can't stress enough how critical it is to have the proper mind-set before you begin this program. This means you have to think like an athlete. (You don't have to be an athlete, just think like one for now.) Athletes train intensely for an event, but once the event is over, they scale back and continue to stay active at a less rigid pace. That's essentially what you're going to be doing. You're going to ramp it up for 12 weeks, then pull back a bit but continue to be active and eat healthfully so that you don't lose the fitness, weight loss, and health strides you've made. Your goal should not be to follow this program for 12 weeks, celebrate the results, then abandon all the changes you made and return to what you were doing before. Granted, the 12 weeks are tough; I want to be honest about that. But I also want you to bear in mind that if you keep your goal in your line of sight, it will help you power through the days when staying on the program seems particularly difficult.

Here's what else I think will help you succeed on this program: the success of others. The pages of this book are peppered with stories of real-life people who have made over their bodies -- indeed, their very lives -- through their dedication and commitment. As you read these motivating tales, I hope they'll both inspire you and allow you to see your own struggles -- and your own possibilities! -- in the experiences of others.

To listen to the news these days is to hear some pretty dismal reports about Americans' ability (or rather, inability) to adopt healthy habits. Obesity rates are rising, large numbers of both kids and adults aren't exercising, many people find it hard to stick to a nutritious diet. And even when people do make an effort to slim down, they often give up after a while. According to some estimates, as many as 95 percent of people who lose weight gain it back. That's particularly scary when you consider that the latest figures indicate that obesity is fast on its way to replacing smoking as the number one cause of preventable death.

But there are people who are beating the odds and losing weight -- permanently. I know because I've met them. In my travels around the country, I've talked to many, many people who have committed themselves to change, with striking results. And they're not just slimming down for a few months, then ballooning back up again. They're dropping pounds and keeping them off over the long haul. That's the real challenge, and these inspiring individuals are meeting it.

As I see it, we all have a choice. We can dwell on the sad state of affairs and moan about how it must be impossible to be fit and healthy. Or we can take a look at those people who are successful and ask, What are they doing right? How did they overcome the obstacles that have tripped up so many others? We have so much to learn from these folks.

Certainly, in the grand scheme of things, the number of people who are able to lose weight and change their lives for good isn't staggering -- it's really just a blip on the demographic chart that highlights the nation's expanding waistline. Nonetheless, each of the individuals you'll meet in this book proves that it's truly possible to effect significant change. And within each of their stories are some very important clues to how it's done. No two tales, as it turns out, are exactly alike, but every one of them shows that resolve can pay off.

Twelve Weeks to a New Body

Though the 12-week Total Body Makeover program is challenging on many levels, it doesn't include a formal diet. That may both surprise you and alarm you if that's the way you've tried to lose or control your weight in the past. But one of the things that sets my philosophy apart is that I firmly believe in getting an exercise program going and adopting a few simple eating rules: get a grip on your emotional eating, eat breakfast, have an eating cutoff time, drink plenty of water, and abstain from or limit your intake of alcohol -- before you even begin to think about "officially" dieting. If you don't meet your goals, you may feel that you need to go on a structured eating plan when the 12 weeks are up. With this in mind I have devoted a lot of space in chapter 5 to helping you make sense of the most popular diets. However, right now it's in your best interest not to drastically cut calories before you have had a chance, through exercise, to ensure that your metabolism is running on high. And this may be particularly true if your metabolism, owing to the effects of going on diet after diet through the years, is as slow as molasses. Everybody can benefit from a metabolic charge-up before they start dieting, but chronic dietersespeciallyneed exercise to increase their calorie-burning rate.

Greatly restricting your food intake does the opposite of boosting your metabolism: it slows it down. The body is very sensitive to calorie input. Cutting way back on the amount of calories you consume triggers a survival mechanism, which developed when food was a lot scarcer than it is now and which causes your metabolism to switch into lower gear so that you don't expend energy too quickly. In fact, one of the worst things you can do is to restrict your calorie intake drastically without exercising at all. Because exercise can help moderate the body's survival tactic a bit, dieting at the same time you're exercising regularly is a little better, but, it's still not optimal. Best of all -- and this is the approach built into this program -- is to avoid formal dieting altogether, concentrate on exercise, and let the five simple eating rules in chapter 4 guide your approach to eating. While the rules may help you reduce your calorie intake a bit, you won't eat so little that your fat-defending survival mechanism kicks in.

Here's another important consideration: When you're in the throes of an intensive exercise program, you need to make sure you're getting enough calories to fuel your workouts. Go on a very-low-calorie diet, and you may feel too weak to work out!

When I tell my clients that they won't be dieting, some of them balk at first, but I ask them to be patient in order to see how well they do with just exercise and the eating and drinking guidelines first. The vast majority of them end up reaching their goals without ever having to go on a formal diet. Generally what happens is that after a certain point -- it could be week two, it could be week four, it could be even after the 12 weeks are over -- they reach a point I call the "free fall," when their metabolism revs up and the weight starts consistently melting off. Some people, though, even if they do eventually go into the free fall, don't lose enough weight. A small percentage of people find that they ultimately do need a structured plan to help them reach their goal.

I'm asking the same thing of you that I ask of my clients: Follow the 12-week program,thendecide whether you need to follow a formal eating plan. I do think that under the right circumstances, diets can be very helpful, which is why I go over ten of the most popular ones in chapter 5, "Making the Transition to Real Life." They can assist you in clarifying your dietary needs and learning to make better food choices. Some of them will introduce you to a whole new way of eating that you never knew would be satisfying.

But whether you end up going on a diet or not, I think it's important to keep in mind that exercise has some revitalizing benefits that dieting, and especially going on a very rigid diet, doesn't. Working out is a proactive approach to reshaping your body. It's something you do, something you add to your life, and something that you'll quite possibly find can even be pleasurable. On the flip side, cutting calories is about not doing something, and, to me at least, that seems a lot harder, not to mention a lot less fun. I also believe that exercising combined with sensible eating is a much more effective, healthier -- and ultimately more life-changing -- approach than trying to diet your way there.

I can think of no better example of this than the struggle Oprah went through many years ago. Some of you may remember that she went on a liquid diet in 1988 and, in four months, lowered her weight from 211 to 142. She even came out on her show pulling a wagonful of lard representing all the body fat that she had lost. But something didn't seem right back then, and something wasn't. If you look at pictures of Oprah at that time, she was thin, but she had a gaunt appearance, and she certainly didn't have the muscle tone and healthy glow that she has today -- seventeen years later!

Oprah's new body was short-lived. A year later, she was up to 175; a year and a half later, she hit an all-time high of 237 pounds. Needless to say, she was devastated.

Several years and life lessons later, Oprah looks healthy, vibrant, and radiant. If you saw pictures of her around the time of her fiftieth birthday in April 2004, you might have noticed that she has a new energy and vibrance. This time, she totally made over her body with exercise and sensible eating. She doesn't count calories, and she certainly hasn't been on a formal diet in a long, long time.

Conscientious eating and dieting are not the same thing. Conscientious eating is a way of life that allows you to stay within healthy boundaries while still eating enough to give you energy to exercise and to feel satisfied. Dieting is typically something you do short term, usually yielding short-term results. Sometimes going on a formal eating plan (though not an extreme one like a liquid diet) can really help you organize your eating and develop positive eating habits. Just be mindful that diets are not the be-all and end-all.

Now let's talk about exercise, the heart and soul of this program. There are actually three different categories of exercises you'll be doing over the 12 weeks: functional exercise, strength training exercise, and aerobic exercise. It may sound like a lot, but the three types of exercises are woven together smoothly so that in the end the combination feels like a seamless workout. From my experience working with many different people, I can tell you that it's very doable.

The first type of activity, functional exercises, refers to moves that improve your core strength, flexibility, balance, and coordination. They are primarily stretches and exercises that strengthen the stabilizing muscle groups, such as your abdominals. Through these moves, you'll achieve what's called functional fitness, which will not only make the strengthening and aerobic portions of the program easier for you to perform but also improve your posture, make you move more gracefully, and help you avoid injury.

To build strength, you'll be doing weight-training exercises, mostly with dumbbells or weight machines. These exercises will also help you increase your muscular power and endurance and, most important, strengthen your joints so that you can participate in more vigorous exercise. Strength training will also help you avoid injury and keep your metabolism running in high gear by building muscle. Muscle burns considerably more calories than body fat, increasing your body's calorie-burning potential.

The type of aerobic exercise you will do during this program will be your choice (although I'll have some recommendations for you). Aerobic workouts, the kind that elevate your heart rate, help you burn calories while you're doing them, of course, but they also boost your metabolism for hours after you've hung up your gym shoes. These workouts will be a critical part of your regimen, both for their weight loss and their health benefits.

Preparing for This Program

For many people, the preparation they do before embarking on an exercise program is just as important as -- maybe even more important than -- the program itself. It's essential that you realize that the meter on this program doesn't start ticking the minute you finish this introduction. It will vastly increase your chances of success if you first do some emotional work to ensure that your heart and mind, not just your body, are ready to go. The first chapter in this book, "Building a Sound Emotional Foundation," is dedicated to helping you lay the groundwork for change. In my experience, very few people have transformed their bodies without doing four things: telling themselves the truth about why they haven't been able to lose weight or get fit in the past; taking responsibility for their behavior; making a commitment to do what it takes to change; and mustering their inner strength to make it all happen. If you want to succeed in making your body over -- indeed, if you want to succeed at life -- here are the keys to the castle.

What these four cornerstones -- honesty, responsibility, commitment, and inner strength -- do is provide a rock-solid emotional foundation that will hold you up when the going gets rough. And it will. Without these four cornerstones, trying to institute change is like building a house on an unstable foundation -- at the first rumble of trouble, it's likely to tumble.

Changing your behavior isn't easy, but it's a lot easier if you have a very good sense of yourself as well as an unwavering dedication to your goal. People who succeed look themselves in the eye and are truthful about why they are where they are in their lives. They identify their weaknesses and their discomforting or painful personal issues, and they make the connection between them and their eating habits and inactivity. If they're overweight, they dig down deep to understand why. When they figure out what it is that needs to change, they make a promise to their harshest critic -- themselves -- to change it and muster the willpower to see it through.

I'm not discounting the fact that you may already have a strong emotional foundation. Many people are already clear about what they're doing wrong and staunchly committed to doing what it will take to fix it. If you haven't started a bunch of other programs only to fail again and again and you feel that you have the resolve and the willpower to do what it takes to succeed, you can give chapter 1 a pass -- or, better yet, quickly read it to reinforce where you are.

If, on the other hand, youhaveexperienced failure many times, you can't pass this chapter by. I wish it were the case that all you had to do to get the body you want is to get onto a treadmill or pick up some weights, but experience has shown me that it's almost impossible to lose weight (or, more precisely, to keep lost weight from returning) if you don't address why you are overweight in the first place, whether it's a deep-seated emotional matter, lack of support from those around you, simple bad habits, maybe even just laziness. Excess weight is always a symptom of something else. Identifying what that something else is and changing it is the key to long-term success. If you address only the symptom, you'll never permanently solve the problem.

The time you spend preparing your mind to tackle the big job of changing your body will be time well spent. I've quite often met people who have lost more than 150 pounds, totally transforming the way they look and, most important, the way they feel about themselves. I have talked to men and women who, though they needed to lose only a small amount of weight, used exercise to help them achieve a total health overhaul. I've also met people who, by most standards, already lived a healthy life but who wanted to become -- and did become -- superfit. What these people all had in common was that they achieved their goals when -- and only when -- they were completely ready. Many of them had tried and failed many times before, but at some point they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps, turned a searching eye on their lives, and came away with the insight, willpower, and commitment they needed to succeed. It's not as though once they made the decision, they never experienced a temptation to return to their old ways -- that, to be honest, never goes away. But they became better at managing their lives and, consequently, better at fending off the pull of anything that would get in the way of their success.

It's not enough to want to transform your body; everybody wants to do that. You have to want to do the hard work that is required to lose weight. Tough decisions will be required of you, and you have to be ready, even eager, to make them. No one succeeds without giving up something, be it leisure time or favorite foods. You may find that you even have to revaluate and change some of the relationships you're in.

But let me tell you that the sacrifices you make in the process of transforming yourself will change your life drastically and, usually, in the best way possible. That, in fact, should be your biggest motivator next to wanting to improve your health. The way you feel about yourself (the way you feel, period), your relationships with others, your whole approach to the world can be different and far more positive. I haven't yet met anyone who successfully made their body over without finding that their lives changed in ways -- wonderful ways -- that they had never imagined.

The prospect of shaking up your world may not sound all that interesting when you're really just thinking about how to lose 5 or 50 or even 150 pounds. That's okay; let the weight loss be your focus, but keep the prospect of life changes in the back of your mind, because ultimately, it's probably going to happen, and if you're like any of the successful people you'll be reading about in this book, you'll be thrilled that it did.

What Else Is in Store?

As part of your preparation for the 12-week program, I'd like you to put your intentions into writing by signing a contract with yourself. If you're familiar with some of my other books or if you've seen my work with people onThe Oprah Winfrey Show,you'll know that I often ask people to sign contracts withthemselves.Why? For the simple reason that it can really make a difference in the way you approach change. Putting something into writing gives what's being promised greater weight, especially when the person you are making the promise to is you. Signing a contract also creates something tangible that you can drag out and put on the table as a constant reminder that you are committed to making your body over. You probably wouldn't break a contract you had with someone else; my hope is that you'll also be true to the contract you make with yourself.

In January 2003,O, The Oprah Magazinepublished a contract I designed (similar to the one in this book) that challenged readers to commit themselves to regular exercise, healthful food choices, and nutritional rather than emotional eating. The idea was to take people a step beyond the usual "Yeah, I'm going to do something about my health." Thousands of women (and men) sent in contracts, and while I can't claim to know how it worked for all of them, many followed up with letters telling us that signing the contract had been a turning point in their lives and that they'd gone on to keep the commitment. They proved that making a promise, in writing to yourself, can be a positive catalyst for change.

I also want to talk a bit about emotional eating. In a perfect world, everyone would eat just enough to fuel them through their day and provide them with a nice amount of sensory pleasure. As it is, many people eat for emotional reasons -- boredom, stress, anxiety, depression, a void in their lives. If you're one of them, it's important to identify and acknowledge the emotional trigger points that send you running to the refrigerator or the cupboard. This, too, is about telling yourself the truth. What are your real feelings, and why are you trying to mask them with food? In chapter 3, you'll find some tools to help you answer these questions and avoid burying emotional issues under boxes of cookies and cartons of ice cream. For many people, simply eliminating emotional eating can be the difference between weighing 250 pounds and 125 pounds, no dieting involved.

If you do end up going on a diet, it's crucial to pick the right one. I don't believe in one-size-fits-all diets. People are different. Some need a lot of structure; some need a little structure or none at all. But one thing is true for everybody: in order for a diet to work, you have to stay on it, and in order for you to stay on it, it has to realistic and within your capabilities. It has to suit your tastes, your lifestyle, and your resources. Not your sister's, a friend's, or some movie star's, but yours. And since only you can know what type of eating plan will fit you to a T, I want you to be in charge of selecting your own diet -- though I've done some legwork to help guide you toward one that will safely allow you to continue your body makeover process.

In chapter 5, "Making the Transition to Real Life," I'll take a look at popular eating plans: What do they really ask of you? What are their advantages and disadvantages? Who will they probably work best for? I also want to give you the option of developing your own plan. If you already know what type of eating plan works for you, and as long as your self-devised diet isn't drastic or unhealthy (an earlier book of mine,The Get With the Program Guide to Good Eating,can help you establish some parameters), go for it. What counts is that it be a plan you can stick with.

Keep in mind that the science of nutrition and weight loss is relatively young. We are always learning new things about the body and how it reacts to food and exercise, so the definitive ultimate diet is probably quite a few years away. That said, there are some fundamental truths about becoming healthier and slimmer. One of them is that not everybody has to follow the same exact diet plan in order to succeed at losing weight. In fact, different people respond differently to different diets, although nobody is exactly sure why. Some people, for instance, feel energetic and full of life while following a low-carbohydrate diet, while others feel as though they can barely muster the energy to get off the couch. Some people feel hungry all the time on a low-fat diet, while others feel perfectly satisfied. Some people drop a ton of weight when given an exact menu for every meal; others, oddly enough, end up gaining.

That said, bear in mind that the formula for weight loss is fairly simple: When the calories coming in (what you eat) are fewer than the calories going out (what you expend through exercise, basic body functions such as your heart beating and eyes blinking, and unstructured activity such as brushing your hair out of your eyes), you will lose weight. No matter what eating plan you end up choosing, that's the bottom line.

Tawni: The Amazing Woman on the Cover of This Book

If you need a muse to get you started on the road to total transformation, I recommend Tawni, the incredible woman I am posing with on the cover of this book. I'll let Tawni tell you her story in her own words, but let me preface it by saying that she is proof of that old saying "Where there's, a will there's a way."

A Lightbulb Goes On

Tawni's Story

Like a lot of people who struggle with their weight, I had been heavy most of my life, having had only a brief period of "normal" weight during high school. But the way I stayed thin back then was hardly normal: my mom sent me to a "fat farm," where I lost a bunch of weight, and then I kept it off by forcing myself to vomit after eating binges. During my senior year I kicked the purging habit, but the binging continued. Eventually I gained 50 pounds.

After high school and throughout my twenties, I turned to food for comfort. I was depressed and lonely, and food soothed me. But it was a vicious cycle. I'd feel depressed, eat, then feel depressed about eating. By the time I moved to San Francisco in 1994, I weighed almost 185 pounds, quite a bit for someone who is only five feet, three inches tall.

To make matters worse, while I was in the process of moving I was carjacked. Everything I owned except for the clothes on my back was taken, and I had to start over from scratch. Add to that the fact that I was in a new city where I knew no one, and the loneliness was nearly intolerable. Again I turned to food for solace. That first year in San Francisco, I gained more than 100 pounds, hitting 295.

Change eventually started to come, but it came slowly. I began to get my bearings. I bought clothes and furniture, and started to rebuild my life.

In 1996, I was on a business trip in Arizona. When I got back to my hotel room and flipped on the TV,The Oprah Winfrey Showwas on. It wasn't the first time I'd watched: I'm a huge fan of Oprah's, and I had a habit of taping the show every day. On that particular afternoon, I stayed put and watched the show, which was about the launch ofMake the Connection,a book that Oprah and Bob had written together.

I sat in that hotel room and couldn't believe what I was hearing. Oprah gets up at 5 a.m. to exercise? I bought the book and stayed up all night in my hotel room reading it. The book appealed to me because it wasn't a diet, it was a way of life. It was about working from the inside out, and it dawned on me that that was always the way I had known I was going to lose weight.

What happened in that hotel room is that I had an honest conversation with myself. I admitted to myself that if one of the most industrious women in America was making time to exercise, my own excuse was lame. After some soul-searching, I owned up to the idea that I didn't need a magic diet; I needed something that would help me address my emotional eating.

When I got back to San Francisco, I bought a treadmill, put it right in front of the TV in my tiny apartment, and started walking every evening after work while I watched a tape of Oprah's daily show. That was in September. By December I'd lost 20 pounds.

Then, on December 4, I got up early to do my walking routine outside for the very first time. (I'd never stopped thinking about Oprah getting up at five and wondering if I too could become a morning person.) Luck wasn't with me: I was hit by a car and spent the next six months in a wheelchair while going through rehab.

It might have been a serious setback, but this time, unlike after the carjacking incident, I decided to come out better, not bitter. I was feeling good about the 20 pounds I'd lost and didn't want another 100-pound gain. I'd been honest with myself about my past behavior and was successfully using it to predict -- and prevent -- my future behavior. (Because, for instance, I knew I tended to overeat when stressed, when heading into a stressful situation I'd bring baby carrots or celery to munch on so I wouldn't make a beeline for the vending machines.)

In addition, I had founded a support group for people struggling with their weight, and I was the leader. I needed to set a good example; I didn't want to let the group down. Something else was also different this time around. While in the beginning, losing the weight had taken a lot of willpower, now the things that had allowed me to succeed -- lots of exercise and retooling my diet -- had become habit. I was in the habit of healthy living.

My group helped me as much as I helped them. Through the power of the group and my conviction that I wouldn't be a victim this time around, I didn't gain an ounce during the six months after the accident. As soon as I got out of the wheelchair, I picked up with my walking right where I'd left off. Three months later, I did my first 5K run.

By 1998, I had lost more than 100 pounds. I weighed 175 and was proud of it. I'd done it slowly and consistently by cleaning up my diet and exercising. Ironically, although I'd gone through years of therapy to combat depression and even tried antidepressants, exercise turned out to be the best drug for me -- and all the side effects were positive ones.

This isn't the end of my story. I won my weight loss battle because I made a commitment to myself to not let anything stand in my way -- and I held to it. Last year I even renewed my commitment and signed the "Contract with Myself." [The same contract you'll find on page 58.] My goal this time was to lose enough weight to run the Chicago Marathon in October in under five hours. Today, I have 30 marathons under my belt and weigh 140 pounds.

This process took me eight years. I had my setbacks and even some tragedies in between. But it has all been worth it because I have changed not just my body, but almost every aspect of my life. While I've always been an overachiever, before this transformation, my personal life was out of control. I always initiated contact with both men and women friends, and I'd jump through hoops to please them. Underneath there was a lot of envy and resentment in these relationships. Now I have healthier, more balanced relationships. Whereas I used to never take time for myself, now I make it a priority. I'm asked to do fifty million things a day, but now before I say yes I look at how it's going to affect the things that I have to get done for me. I'm no longer last on my list.

Another big change in my life has been a newfound ability to speak my mind. It used to be that if my husband's socks were on the floor, I'd get resentful and go eat a bowl of ice cream. I never made the connection that I was eating because I was upset. Now instead of eating I just say, "Would you pick up your socks?" I stand up for myself and say what I think. If I'm uncomfortable with something, I say so. If someone hurts my feelings, I tell them. I also now use exercise as an outlet for my feelings. I used to be an emotional eater; now I'm an emotional exerciser. I even keep an emergency pair of shoes in my car so that if I get stressed out I can pull over and walk instead of pulling into the closest drive-through. I used to nervously eat, now I nervously walk.

I've learned to set new boundaries and make decisions that aren't always popular. Before I was married, my friends weren't too happy when I told them I couldn't go out to clubs because I had to be asleep by ten so I could get up early and exercise. But that's all part of it. I worked hard for every pound I lost, and I still do. Along the way I discovered tjoy in life is helping others find the same happiness I have. Through two Web sites that I run (www.nomoreexcuses.net and www.connectingconnectors.com), I have become part of a whole new community.

You might say that Tawni is a marathoner in more than one sense of the word. Just as she has run races, taking them step by step and staying the course, so has she improved her life by changing it bit by bit and hanging in there over the long haul. Like marathoning, making your body over is a test of endurance and one that you can succeed in only if you are willing to keep chugging along. The next 12 weeks will be a little bit of a sprint, but they're just part of the training for an ongoing process. When you cross the finish line, you'll be fitter than ever -- and ready to stay on the path to a new life.

Copyright © 2005 by Bob Greene Enterprises, Inc.

Chapter 1: Building a Sound Emotional Foundation

Most people poised to embark upon a 12-week body makeover program will begin by thinking about, and maybe even worrying about, how they're going to change their eating and exercise habits. But this program is different. It begins not with food or fitness, but with something that I think is equally, if not more, important: building a solid emotional foundation.

If you've tried lots of other weight loss programs before (and even if you haven't), putting diet and fitness concerns aside for a short while probably seems like a pretty crazy idea. In fact, it's the sanest thing you can do. If you want to transform your body, the first thing you need to do is transform your mind-set, your attitudes, your outlook, your way of seeing the world, and most critical of all, your way of seeing yourself.

The root of most people's weight problems, or any problems that relate to lack of motivation, is buried deep within. I have heard enough tales of stalled body makeover attempts to confidently say that virtually no one -- no one -- who hopes to lose weight and keep it off for good can succeed without first addressing her attitudes and the way it affects her behavior, then shoring up her level of motivation. You can cut calories and exercise all you want, but if you don't develop a strong emotional foundation first, everything you've built is likely to fall down like a house of cards. For long-term success, spend the time to make yourself emotionally healthy before you even think about adjusting your diet or joining a gym.

Building a new, healthier life for yourself is a lot like building a house: both require that you start by laying a foundation. Without a foundation to prop it up, a house cannot stand (at least for long). Likewise, without a strong emotional foundation, everything you achieve toward making your body over will not withstand the stress, strains, and temptations of daily life. The house, your body -- each needs a solid base.

So how do you build that base? It starts with four cornerstones. You might call them the mental equivalent of bricks and mortar: honesty, responsibility, commitment, and inner strength. They're the seeds of success for accomplishment in weight loss and, in fact, all areas of life. The reason is very simple: these four cornerstones provide you with what you need to stay resolute in the face of everyday challenges to your resolve. They also help you weather the storms that typically derail months and even years of effort. If you think about it, when someone fails to reach a goal, it's usually because there's been a breakdown in one of these four areas. But if you've got them all in check and are standing on steady emotional ground, nothing -- not relationship troubles, family crises, job stress, blows to your self-esteem, illness -- is going to keep you from achieving long-term success.

I want you to know, though, that honesty, responsibility, commitment, and inner strength are more than just concepts. Each represents a goal in itself, one that can be reached only by doing some serious soul-searching and self-evaluation. Much is often made about how difficult it is to eat right and exercise, but taking an honest look at yourself and working to change or fortify some fundamental aspects of your personality is an even greater challenge. So by asking you to lay the four cornerstones of a strong emotional foundation, I am asking you to gear up for what might be a tough, challenging, and perhaps even uncomfortable endeavor. Getting there may or may not be fun -- some people find that having those moments of self-revelation where everything comes together is quite wonderful, others don't.

But making the effort is entirely worth it.

Successful people who have made honesty, responsibility, commitment, and inner strength central to their very being have found that it changed them in ways they would never have imagined. That's because while, certainly, these are the keys to making your body over once and for all, they are also the keys to accomplishinganything.

As you go through the steps of conquering each cornerstone, you'll find you have the power to let go of the past and anything else that is stopping you from becoming the person you really want to be. I'm not going to kid you: the process can be rough. But make it through the emotional discomfort, and you'll find that you have emotional freedom and that the pleasure you can take in this empowering, life-changing experience will far outweigh the pain. If you're tired of feeling guilty about your actions and are disgusted with yourself for procrastinating, tired of feeling bad about the way you look, and fearful about the state of your health, this is the road you want to be on.

I want to qualify this a little bit before I go on. Just as there are exceptions to every rule, there are exceptions to the idea that most people need to do some soul-searching before they try to lose weight. Maybe you already have a good mind-set about eating and exercise, know yourself well, and take responsibility for your actions. Maybe you've just never had to be disciplined about eating and exercise before and simply need some help getting on to the right track. Perhaps committing to something isn't a problem for you as long as you have the right tools to work with. If you feel you don't need to spend the time working on your emotional foundation, then by all means move on to the next chapter. But it's not a bad idea to spend some time reading through the next sections just to reinforce the attitudes and actions that determine success (and failure).

So here's the deal: Take however long you need to be honest with yourself, assume responsibility for your actions, make a commitment to change your life, and use your inner strength to help you stick to your resolve. Then move on to the 12-week Total Body Makeover program and the task of achieving your goals. Believe me, years down the road, when you have transformed your body -- and kept it that way -- you won't regret taking this extra step in the least.

The First Cornerstone: Honesty

The process of change requires that you stop wearing blinders; you must be honest with yourself about who you are and why you do the things you do. It's funny how we can so often give an incisive psychological portrait of other people yet are frequently at pains to truly know ourselves. I'm asking you to be as insightful into your own psyche as you are into others'.

Lying to yourself is like having one big crack in your emotional foundation -- you're in trouble before you even get started. I've met people who've made a career out of deluding themselves and as a consequence never really accomplished what they wanted to. By making excuses, blaming others, putting things off -- and all the while telling themselves that they're not really doing the things that they are indeed doing -- they have doomed themselves to failure.

I can't stress enough how essential being honest about your strengths, your weaknesses, and even your past failures will be to your success. Recently I met with a client who was reluctant to answer any of my questions about his life. I wasn't trying to be nosy or to be a trainer/therapist. I was just trying to get a read on some of the issues that might be affecting his weight. I respected his privacy and certainly understood that it's not easy to share the details of your life with someone you barely know. But I also told him that when it comes to what he tellshimself,reticence is a different matter. He didn't have to tell me what was going on, but not being truthful with himself would be self-defeating.

An unwillingness to open up and to experience the discomfort that kind of honesty inevitably brings is a huge barrier to success. This process is about self-discovery, and those who go through it change not only the behaviors that previously kept them from dramatically altering their bodies but the behaviors that hampered their lives in other ways, too. Sometimes what you find out about yourself is embarrassing; sometimes it's painful; sometimes it's just depressing. But when you have that "Aha!" moment -- "Oh,that'swhy I've been doing that!" -- it can be very freeing. Imagine trying to fix a lamp that suddenly goes off without checking to see if the lightbulb is burned out. Your chances of getting the light back on aren't very high. Same thing here: if you've tried to lose weight again and again without determining what is fundamentally causing the problem, you're working in the dark. It's just not going to happen. Oh, you might lose the weight for a while, but before you know it, you're going to put it back on.

The point of doing some honest self-exploration is not to beat yourself up about your shortcomings. Rather, it's to learn something that you didn't know about yourself or, if you did know it on some level, to officially admit it to yourself. When you make these discoveries, it's important not to just gloss over them. Don't just tell yourself, "Yeah, I guess I stopped walking after work not because it was so late when I got home but because I really preferred to watchJeopardy!"Pause and think more about it. Do you really likeJeopardy!that much, or are you using it as an excuse? Are you lazy? Are you embarrassed to be seen "fitness walking" around your neighborhood because you think it calls attention to your weight? Are you afraid that your significant other will be angry at you for taking the time for yourself? Do you simply have no energy (a problem that might be remedied by switching your workouts to the morning)? What is really going on? Your assignment is to find out. Replay decisions you've made, both good and bad, and analyze them. It's the only way you're going to break ingrained unhealthy behavior patterns.

Here's the story of how one client of mine did it. She asked herself some hard questions, and the answers helped her get onto the right track.

Who's Your Boss?

Abby's Story

A friend introduced me to Bob, and the two of us enlisted him to help us lose weight and get fit. I got off to a good start: six weeks into my program, my regular workouts and the changes I'd made in my diet were having a noticeable impact. But then things started to go wrong. I began missing some of my exercise sessions, and I had to confess to Bob that I wasn't making healthy meals as often as before. I didn't see this as my fault, though. My kids were rebelling against the new, healthier menu, and my husband was making snide remarks about there being nothing good to eat in the house. Even my mother-in-law made comments about me being away from home so much now that I was exercising.

When Bob asked me why I'd cut back on both my healthy meals and my workouts, I blamed it on all the other people in my life: my kids, my husband, my mother-in-law. He asked me if I really thought that it was their fault and not my own. I admitted that I have had a tendency to blame other people when things don't work. Bob then asked me to take a good hard look at the present situation and be truthful about it: If I were to keep foods in the house that would satisfy my kids and husband, did that mean I would have to eat them too? Couldn't I be frank with my mother-in-law about how much meeting my weight loss goals meant to me? I realized he was right and that I alone and no one else was in control of my situation.

Over the next few weeks, I made it a point to speak honestly with my family, and to my surprise they were very understanding once I made it clear what I was trying to do. It not only improved my relationship with everybody but also got them on my side. In just outside of a year, I met my weight loss goals.

Abby had been in denial for a long time, but by finally facing up to the truth about herself, she was able to recover her fitness gains and go on to achieve even more. What I'm suggesting, though, is that you begin by assessing where you're at so that you don't find yourself grappling with obstacles in mid-makeover. Abby recovered, but many people do not. They just end up back where they started, wondering why they can never get the body they want.

I'll tell you another reason why it's so important to be honest with yourself at the outset. I have had many clients who believed that they simply lacked the proper discipline to turn down their favorite foods, when in reality their dilemma was much more complex. Many people eat because something is missing from their lives, and they don't connect it to their bad eating habits. It may have been that they never took the time or wanted to expend the energy to explore their feelings. It may have even been that exploring their feelings was simply too discomforting or painful, so they buried those feelings away beneath platefuls of food.

Sometimes it's obvious when we lie to ourselves, but other times we are simply not self-aware. Either way, you can find the truth if you make an effort to investigate who you really are. Do you feel as though you are a victim of life's circumstances or do you feel that you have control of your life? What makes you happy? What makes you sad? Are your relationships with other people distressing or joyful? What is your family history like, and how has it influenced your behavior? Have you experienced something traumatic in the past, and, if so, what are the mechanisms you've developed to cope with it? Do you use food as an anesthetic to deal with emotional pain? If you do, why is food your drug of choice?

These are some of the hard questions you need to ask yourself. Many of the issues they touch on may be sore spots, but, the only way you're going to be able to move forward is to deal with the past, then find a way to put it behind you. Bury the truth, and you'll have cracks in your foundation before you even start building; grasp the reality of your own life, and you'll be on your way to changing your body and your health for the better.

Self-discovery, I should add, doesn't end when you reach a certain weight or size; it's an ongoing process. So even though the exercises that follow are aimed at helping you begin the task of learning the truth about yourself, you need to continue to honestly examine your attitudes and actions on an ongoing basis. Just as giving up on exercise or, say, returning to night eating can undo all the good that's been done, so can losing the self-awareness you develop at the outset of this program.

Finally, it's important to note that being honest with yourself also means telling the truth about your strengths, not just your weaknesses. Discovering and acknowledging your assets is part of the process because you're going to need to rely on those strengths to help you succeed. So as you go through the following exercises, be mindful of the positive features of your personality. We all have weaknesses, but we all have strengths, too.

Get to Know Yourself

People who are successful at weight loss have asked the hard questions and responded with straightforward answers. No rationalizations, no excuses. Instead of taking a cosmetic approach to the problem, they've gotten to the root of their behavior, making change possible. A weight problem or chronic unhappiness with your body isn't like a cut; you can't just put a bandage on it and hope that it will heal. While excess weight is evident on the exterior, it really stems from inside you, which means that you have to dig down deep to remedy the situation.

Recently I heard someone say that the hardest thing to do in baseball is to hit a pitch that's going 95 miles per hour. But people do it every day, he said, and the reason is that they know what's coming at them and can prepare for it. I think that's a perfect metaphor for this truth-telling process. Losing weight and keeping it off is one of the hardest things you can do, but the people who do it do so because they know what to expect. They know themselves, and they know how to prepare for their reactions in certain situations. Someone who knows herself will know that a family holiday dinner is going to make her revert back to her old ways of eating with childlike abandon, and she can prepare for it by bringing along healthful dishes that will help her control her portions. Someone who knows the truth about herself will know that she feels self-conscious in exercise classes -- so she'll find an individual workout she likes or a trainer to work with instead. The more honest you are with yourself, the better you'll do on this program.

If you're at a loss as to where to begin, the following exercises will help. I've profiled eight of the most common types of behaviors that lead to failure and indicate a need for some soul-searching. If one or more of the behaviors sound all too familiar, it's a call for you to ask yourself some probing questions. I'll guide you by giving you some things to think about, but you need to rely on yourself for the answers. Be completely honest even if it hurts. Personally, I think that writing things down really aids in this kind of soul-searching, but whether you want to record the answers to the questions you ask yourself or just mull them over is up to you.

If you've read any of my other books, some of the questions might seem familiar: Do you procrastinate? Are you an immediate gratification junkie? Do you put the blame on other people and make excuses for why you don't eat right or exercise? I ask them again not because I lack imagination but because after talking to hundreds of people about their weight problems, I know that procrastination, the need for immediate gratification, blaming, excuse making, and all the other issues that this section deals with are exceptionally common. One or more of them is almost always at the core of an overweight person's predicament. And these issues cut across all lines -- age, gender, race, profession, financial class. People from all walks of life deal with them.

This isn't to say that something other than the problems I identify here might be tripping you up. These exercises are limited in scope. Create other questions for yourself that are specific to your individual life. Think about things people have told you about yourself, both good and bad. Do they apply? Anything that allows you to discover more about yourself will help you with this endeavor. Believe me, the time you spend reflecting on what you think and feel will be time well spent.

I really want to drive that point home because many people feel that such exercises are a waste of time or that doing them is just not their style. Even a close friend told me that she had liked one of my earlier books but could never see herself doing the emotional exercises; she just wasn't the "type" -- thoughIbelieved she wasexactlythe type of person who actually needed to do them the most. Interestingly, she recently began working with someone who gave her very similar exercises to try; she's been doing them and making progress. So even if you don't consider yourself the soul-searching type, give them a try. What have you got to lose?

Cutting Corners: Are you always looking for the easy way out?

In matters of traveling from, say, Albuquerque to Santa Fe, taking shortcuts may be a desirable, even wise plan of attack. In matters of changing your life, however, cutting corners is simply foolish. Much as I'd like to tell you that there's an easy way to lose weight and keep it off, there is no easy way.

Now, be honest -- have you tried "miracle" schemes, diets, pills, or the like that promise to whittle your body down without any work on your part at all? Even if you haven't fallen for any of these gimmicks of the diet trade, ask yourself if you ever really work hard to achieve your goals. It doesn't even have to be weight loss-related. It could be anything, from something at work to something in your home life. Are you always looking to accomplish something by doing as little effort as possible? How many times have you taken shortcuts or done far less than your best when trying to achieve something? How did it work out? Were you satisfied with the results? Would you say you were successful? Be honest about why you took the easy route. Has it been a lifelong habit, or did something happen to change the way you approach a challenge? Ask yourself, too, why you cut corners. Out of laziness? Impatience? Fear of failing if you take a more challenging path?

To get anywhere in life, you have to be dedicated and hardworking. Cutting corners, on the other hand, is the sure road to failure. If you hope to accomplish anything worthwhile, you've got to do the work. And I don't just mean that you have to work at weight loss (though of course you do). Putting forth a valiant effort is the prime ingredient for success in everything, from maintaining a loving relationship and raising a family to advancing in a career. The hard workers succeed; the corner cutters typically do not.

So why aren't you working hard? If laziness is your problem, you need to pick yourself up and get going. Realize, too, that energy begets energy. You know the old saying "If you want something done, give it to a busy person"? The more you do, the more youcando, and I believe the same holds true when it comes to putting effort into reaching a goal. Once you get going, working hard will be easier for you. You'll get into it, and the lazy person in your past will seem like a stranger.

If impatience is your problem, consider that most accomplishments achieved overnight tend to fall apart just as rapidly. Patience, as they say, is a virtue, and while taking shortcuts may get you some rapid results, they're not results that will be likely to stick around. (See page 30 for more on the perils of immediate gratification.)

Some people cut corners for an entirely different reason: they feel that they're just not capable of doing the work. If that's true in your case, you've got to work on building your confidence. Believe in yourself! The work ahead may be hard, but you'll be taking it one step at a time, which will make it easier. Think of Tawni, whom you met in the introduction and who went from being bedridden to running marathons. She didn't jump out of bed and head for the finish line. She went step by step, building on each small success. That's what you're going to do, too.

Making Excuses:Do you always have a "reason" for not making good on your commitments?

Excuse makers are people who always, always find a reason for not doing what they've committed to do, whether that commitment was to themselves or to others. Excuse makers are never at a loss for a creative reason for their actions, but when you examine the justification it almost always breaks down.

Excuses are big obstacles in the road to change, though you may not even be aware that you're making them. Instead, you may just view them as "reasons." When you're late for an appointment or you break a promise to do somebody a favor, do you say, "I was late for lunch because of the traffic" when the real reason is "I was late for lunch because even though I know there is always traffic at this hour, I was talking on the phone and didn't leave early enough" and the bottom line was "I was late for lunch because I put my desire to continue a conversation before someone else's desire not to sit alone waiting at a table for a half hour"?

If you're capable of making excuses like that, you are probably also capable of making excuses for not exercising and eating right. How many times have you lied to yourself about why you didn't make it to the gym or why you ended up ordering a pizza for dinner? Do you tell yourself things like "Well, my ankle was kind of hurting" and "That's what the kids wanted for dinner" instead of admitting "I just didn't feel like working out" and "That's what I wanted for dinner"?

I think you know deep down when you're kidding yourself. Now's the time to own up to it and to investigate the real reasons behind your behaviors.

Excuses are a sure sign that you're not ready to do the hard work of change that lies in front of you. On the other hand, if you're willing to call yourself on your excuses and see them for what they are -- diversionary tactics you're using to keep yourself from feeling awful about making bad choices or ways to defend your current way of life -- then there's hope. You need to realize that making excuses affects not just you but others in your life. Sometimes excuses can be legitimate, but mostly they're just dishonest. If you're always giving yourself a pass (and asking other people to do the same), you're never going to get anywhere. So acknowledge your excuses past and present and resolve to remove them from your vocabulary.

People who succeed at weight loss give up on making excuses. They don't let themselves off the hook. They're not always perfect, but when they aren't, they take responsibility for their actions and then move on. Most important, they follow up on their promises in the first place so that they don't have any reason to fabricate excuses. If you want to succeed, you have to make excuses unacceptable. Eventually, your goal should be to rarely have a need to make excuses. Once you're committed to making your body over, you'll be so self-disciplined that you'll make good on your promises -- there will be no reason to have to try to justify your bad behavior because it won't exist. First, though, you need to look at the excuses you're throwing out now, own up to the real reasons for your actions, and contemplate ways you can change.

Giving Up Easily: Do setbacks routinely knock you off course?

Life is full of setbacks, but some people don't see them for what they really are: temporary, not permanent, hindrances. What happens to you when the gains you made in an area -- be it losing weight, mastering a sport or hobby, succeeding on the job -- either stagnate or reverse? Do you usually just give up? Do you feel discouraged and angry? How much of a perfectionist are you? Do you think that anything that can't be done perfectly shouldn't be done at all?

I think it's fair to say that nobody who has succeeded in any area of life has made it without experiencing setbacks. If you're disheartened by even small disappointments, you're going to find it difficult to reach your goals. Have you already let setbacks deter you in the past? And -- think carefully here -- was the setback really such a failure? What makes you feel as though you have to be perfect or that you won't be able to recover from a defeat? Now think about instances when youdidn'tlet setbacks stop you from reaching your goal. When have you and when haven't you persevered, and what was the difference between the two experiences?

If you haven't noticed by now that life is a roller coaster, then you haven't been paying attention. You're going to have ups and downs -- everybody does -- and your success is going to hinge on how well you weather the downs. Many people I know use setbacks to let themselves off the hook. Consciously or unconsciously, they secretly want the opportunity to get out of the hard work of change or to confirm that they weren't meant to achieve what they set out to do. Sometimes these are hard traits to recognize in yourself. It's really important to acknowledge how you have dealt with disappointments in the past and to dig deep to understand why you let them knock you off course.

Don't be someone who lets setbacks invalidate all your previous efforts and keep you from making ongoing attempts to change your life. Don't use them as an excuse to give up. Not being able to sweep minor failures under the carpet and get on with life is a major reason for ultimate failure. Don't give in to the little failures -- they'll just turn into big ones. Keep your focus on the progress you've made. Be prepared to experience setbacks, to acknowledge them, and then to move on.

Part of this is being realistic. Know, for instance, that if one night you slip up and eat a piece of cake, you're not going to weigh three pounds more the next day. More important, there's no reason not to get back on track. Setbacks can be depressing, but don't use the disappointment you're feeling as a justification for overeating and forgoing exercise. Successful people have an ability to roll with the punches, a skill you're going to need to master if you too hope to succeed. Some people come by the skill naturally, but others have to develop it, and you can do that by focusing on the truth: setbacks are bumps in the road; they are not the end of the road.

Immediate Gratification:Are you impatient if you don't see results right away? Do you opt for what feels good now over what will feel good later?

If there is a litmus test for success at weight loss, getting fit, and changing your health profile, it's whether you constantly need immediate gratification. People who can defer gratification usually lose weight and become healthy and fit; those who live for immediate gratification usually don't. If you can't master the urge to satisfy yourself in the short term, you're going to have a long, hard road in front of you.

Impatience is rampant these days, and it's not hard to see why. We live in a "fast" society: everything from information on the Internet to food comes to us quickly -- more quickly than we might even have imagined just a few short years ago. It's no wonder, then, that most people are intolerant of anything short of immediate gratification. But are you chronically impatient? Does your desire to have everythingright nowextend to all aspects of your life? Are you anxious to be on the next rung of your career ladder when you've just started your new job? Do you want your financial investments to pay off overnight? Do you expect to be instantaneously accomplished at any skill, from tennis to painting, you take on yourself to learn? When it comes to your body, do you want to participate in an exercise class, go home, and see a different body in the mirror? Do you want to eat less on one day and weigh less the very next?

Getting what you want right now doesn't jibe with achieving weight loss; you must be willing to delay gratification. Many an immediate gratification junkie has given up because he or she didn't see change right away. These people are also prone to opting for what makes them happy in the short term over what will make them happy in the long term. How many times have you chosen a piece of cake for dessert because it offers instant fulfillment over the delayed satisfaction of having a thinner, healthier body? How many times have you skipped a workout to sleep late now, the prospect of being fitter later be damned? You can probably detect this same kind of behavior in other areas. Was there a time, for instance, when you bought yourself a new outfit instead of tucking the money away towards vacation? Are there times when, to the contrary, you've waited to get the things you want? How did that feel, and can you see yourself doing it again?

Deflecting temptation and delaying satisfaction aren't easy. But succeeding at making yourself over depends on your ability to delay gratification, to pass on temptations by looking and striving toward the future. This is one of the hardest parts, if not the hardest, of making yourself over. You have to be willing to make sacrifices. You can't (literally and figuratively) have your cake and eat it, too.

But if you've lived your life giving in to the need for immediate satisfaction, how do you change? One thing that helps is to constantly remind yourself of what your goals are and how important they are to you. When temptation strikes during this 12-week program (and it will!), picture yourself accomplishing what you've set out to and reflect on how gratifying it will be if you can just get past the moment of temptation. (And often it is just a moment -- sometimes if you just wait for a minute or two instead of acting right away, the desire will pass.) It can also help to surround yourself with reminders of what you want to achieve: an article of clothing you hope to fit into one day; pictures of yourself at a weight you aim to return to; entry blanks for 5K or 10K runs you want to participate in; pamphlets for hiking or biking trips you'd like to go on when you're fit enough. Anytime you're tempted to miss an exercise session or eat something you know isn't good for you, use these talismans to remind you of your goals. You might even try writing down what you're giving up and what, in the future, you'll get in return. Seeing it in black and white may make your choice much clearer.

Use imagery, too. When you're standing in front of the refrigerator deciding whether or not to dive into the leftovers from dinner, conjure up images of yourself reaching your goal. Keep that vision in your mind's eye, and it will help you get through tough times.

Focus on the positive things that are happening. Too often people have their eyes only on the main prize -- a fitter body -- when there are many smaller prizes to be had as well. As you get fitter, do you find yourself feeling better? Sleeping better? Do you have the energy to do things, such as playing with your kids, that you weren't able to do before? Have you discovered that you have the strength to lift weights? Have you become fit enough to increase your level of aerobic exercise? These are all important accomplishments that signal that you are becoming healthier -- and that really should be your number one goal. Good health is the ultimate reward.

Here is something else that I think will eventually get you through times of temptation: habit. As you get going on this program, you will develop new, healthier habits. If you show some strength -- and this, obviously, is the most challenging part -- pretty soon your need for immediate gratification will subside as your healthy habits take over. Sloughing off exercise will be less of a temptation when you're in the habit of working out. Likewise, eating foods that you know aren't healthful will be less alluring when you are used to consuming more nutritious foods. I'm not saying that temptation ever completely goes away, but if you can avoid caving in early on, it does get easier as you go along.

What I'm asking you to do here is to think differently about the fleeting pleasure of giving into temptation. Small sacrifices now will have a big payoff later. Stay focused on your goal of making your body over, and you'll be less prone to giving in to immediate gratification.

Laying Blame:Do you always find someone or something else to blame for your actions?

The easiest way to let yourself off the hook for something you're ashamed of or embarrassed about is to lay blame elsewhere. The recipient of your blame might be your job, your family, some nebulous force in the universe -- it doesn't really matter. If you're not taking responsibility for your own actions or failings, you are never going to be able to make changes and stick with them.

In my line of work, I see a lot of blamers. Blamers don't feel as though they're in control of their own life, and, like excuse makers, they're always trying to justify their actions. Think a minute about your obligations to others and whether they keep you from fulfilling your obligations to yourself. Do you devote the time you could be exercising to your work instead? Do you let your family's food needs take precedence over your own? There's no doubt that work and family should be priorities, but why can't your own needs also be satisfied? Isn't there a happy medium that you may be overlooking? Contemplate the family and work situations that have led you to give up on your goals. Be honest about whether you used them as excuses or they were legitimate. Say, for instance, that you give up morning walks because they didn't give you enough time to get the kids ready for school. Okay, so why couldn't you get up a half hour earlier or get a walk in later in the day? These are the kinds of things I want you to think about as you consider where you're laying the blame for your behavior.

What worthwhile thing have you accomplished in your life? Did you do so by making it a top priority? Chances are the answer is yes. Life just doesn't work any other way. It follows, then, that if you're going to change your life,youhave to be among your top priorities. That means that if you don't accomplish what you planned to, you are to blame -- not anyone or anything else.

Reshuffling your life to put health and fitness goals front and center can be unsettling. But look at it this way: you are going to be a much better friend, spouse, significant other, parent, employee, employer -- whichever role(s) you play in daily life -- if you are happy and healthy. Maybe the airline metaphor is overused, but let me throw it out there anyway. There's a reason why, in case of emergency, the flight attendants ask you to first place the oxygen mask over your own face before assisting children: you're not going to do them any good if you can't breathe yourself! The same is true when it comes to your health: though you may think you are sacrificing your own goals for others, in fact, you are doing them a disservice by not being the best you can be. If you stay on track, your relationships with others will benefit tremendously, and you will also be setting a good example for people you care about and who care about you. This is especially important if you are a parent. Kids mimic their parents' behavior, and, especially in this age of increasing childhood obesity, it's essential to present them with good role models.

I know what you may be thinking: Reprioritizing is easier said than done! How can I reorder my work or family obligations? If you think creatively, there is always a way. You may have to be more efficient in your other responsibilities; you may have to let some things go and concede that, say, not everything in your house will be put away perfectly or that you will have to say no to covering for a coworker.

One woman who shared her makeover story with me for my Web site faced this problem. Her family protested when she stopped bringing junk food into the house, but when she stood her ground, they eventually came around. "I have a family history of diabetes, and not only did I not want that for myself, I didn't want it for my children or husband," she said. "Now I keep bags of oranges and apples and granola and flavored water in the house instead of chips and soda. The whole family has gotten healthier, and my husband has lost weight, too. At first I got a few frowns, but it's better now -- and there is still room for treats in our lives. It's just that now we go out and get ice cream on occasion instead of always keeping a gallon of ice cream in the freezer."

When you think about your obligations to others, be certain that you aren't using those responsibilities as an excuse to let yourself off the hook. If you're just being lazy or avoiding the unpleasant, be honest about it. You're never going to get to the next step if you don't face up to the real reasons why you've failed in the past.

Making Her Health a Priority

Shawn's Story

Many women continue to carry some "baby weight" after they have a child. Multiply it by five -- I am the mother of five children, ages 3 to 14 -- and you can see my predicament. After giving birth to my last child, I found that I weighed 421 pounds.

It may sound surprising, but I had never tried diets or exercise before. Three years ago, though, I was rummaging through a used-book sale and I came upon Bob and Oprah's bookMake the Connection.I found that the book spoke to me. I looked through it and thought to myself, "I could really do this."

The book stresses that you really have to have a plan and that you should chart your food and water intake as well as everything about your exercise. Keeping a journal is something I still do today. At the end of the week, I look over what I've done and think about what I could have done better. I might, for instance, see that I ate a bran muffin for breakfast, which sounded healthy at the time but, upon reflection, I know deep down has too many calories. Next week, the bran muffin will be out.

So far, I have lost 140 pounds and while I'm not at my goal weight yet, I am continuing to work toward it. And my life has changed drastically. I have so much more energy, am a much more active person, and am eating much more healthfully -- as is everyone else in my family.

One of the best steps I took was to follow Bob's advice to have an eating cutoff time three hours before bedtime. The first month that I started the program, I didn't really see any weight loss, but as soon as I instituted that rule, I lost three pounds. That's probably because I was a big-time night eater. I would get up at three in the morning and eat a big bowl of Lucky Charms or Sugar Pops with full-fat milk. Now I'm rarely hungry enough to eat after my cutoff time, and when I am I know it's because I haven't eaten well during the day.

Changing my eating habits was a gradual process because not only did I have to alter my habits, I had to wean my kids off some of the foods we typically had in the house. So I did things like replace Froot Loops with Cheerios, and once the kids got used to it, they were perfectly happy. I stopped buying potato chips and started sneaking healthy foods like brown rice and beans into casseroles. I bought everyone in the household his and her own water bottle. I found that if there are no other options, they'll eat and drink what's there. If they put up a fuss, I just tell them, "This is for my health."

I began the exercise part of my program by walking. At first it was all I was able to do. Once I got up to speed, I joined a gym, and now I do a variety of different cardiovascular exercises. I work out on the elliptical trainer, ride the stationary bike, and walk on the treadmill. Once I started weight training, more inches came off. My weight actually went up a little, but I came down in body fat. I now go to the gym six days a week and strength train two to three times weekly.

When you have five children, it's not easy to fit in exercise, but I made it a priority. I decided that I was going to give myself permission to put myself first, because at the end of the day I'm able to do a lot more for other people when I'm also doing something for myself. So even when I was working, I made sure that I had some time to exercise. I schedule the kids' activities around the time I go to the gym or walk. I tell them, "This is the time I have available to take you places," and it seems to work out. They often walk with me, although they could keep up with me better in the beginning. Now that I walk faster, it's a little harder for them.

My being active has benefited my children. Now I have the energy to stay up in the evenings and watch the boys play basketball. We hike and backpack, and I play with the kids at the playground. Once I was on the swing, and a woman came up and asked me if I wasn't embarrassed to be on the swing because I was so heavy. Another time I was Rollerblading, and some people worried about what they would do if I fell. Would they have to pick me up? Despite the hurtful things that people say, I decided I was not going to just sit on a park bench and watch my children. My daughter jogs and one day I'd like to be able to run with her and to help my boys with soccer.

I want to be part of my kids' lives. I want my children to learn to be healthy and to question what's in the things they're eating. I do things like instead of ordering a take-out pizza, I make my own with whole wheat crust, lots of veggies, and lean Canadian bacon on top. My kids love it and have learned that healthy food can taste good, too.

One of the hard things about losing weight when you have a lot to lose is that people might not notice it at first. I lost about 70 pounds before people started noticing. And even if the numbers on the scale are dropping, they never feel like they're going low enough. So I had to learn to look for other ways to measure my success. One of them was my dress size. When I was a size 32 dress, I bought a 24, and now wear that dress. I'm going to buy myself a size 16 bathing suit this year in anticipation of where I'll be next summer. I also measure myself, because inches lost tell part of the story too. I still weigh myself, but only about once a month.

I have found that the more I stick to my program, the more committed I become. But before you become committed, I think you have to find a reason for doing what you're going to do. My reason was and still is simple: I want to be a good mom to my kids!

Losing weight has changed my life in ways that I would never have imagined. For example, people are starting to ask me how I've lost weight, and I tell them my story, which has helped me to make new friends -- being so heavy had tended to make me shy away from people in the past. I also never used to go to the movies because I couldn't fit into the seat, but recently I went with my kids. It was the first time in their lives that we all went to the movies as a family. All along they thought I was crying because of the movie, but I was really crying because I realized that I am now able to do "normal things" like sitting in a booth at a restaurant as well.

I think my relationship with my husband has also improved. I notice that I don't put myself down and that I accept the blame when things aren't going right. I have also accepted the fact that I have made some bad choices, not just in the foods I used to buy but in the way I spent money and paid the bills. I had bad habits when it came to those things, and now I budget our money and have learned to spend wisely. I used to buy things to comfort myself and to make myself feel better -- things like lotions and body sprays and perfumes. But now I am confident enough to say I am worth it. I am worth being happy, and I don't need those things to make me happy. Just by living my life I am happy, and by being productive I am making a difference in my life and in the lives of my children. Most people think that loving yourself is a given, but I never did. I see that I had no self-love because I wouldn't take care of myself. Now, though, I'm learning to love and accept myself with all my assets and all my flaws as well.

Enabling Saboteurs:Do you let other people prevent you from succeeding?

You just read about how family and other people close to you can sometimes interfere with the process of change. Sometimes, the problem is not so much that you're laying the blame on other people but that you are allowing other people to dictate the choices you make. Often people sabotage those they love. It may be, for instance, that you have a significant other who is not only unsupportive of your goals but who actively tries to interfere with them by making derogatory remarks, refusing to alter his or her schedule to help you make time for exercise, acting hurt or angry if you want him or her to change the type of food they make for you, even "not letting" you do things such as joining a gym or participating in a walking group. These are just some of things saboteurs do, sometimes unconsciously, although sometimes with full awareness.

And why, subconsciously or not, do they do it at all? Sometimes it can be jealousy -- they don't want you to become more attractive to other people, or if they lack willpower of their own, they're envious of your determination. Some people feel threatened by having someone close to them change because it forces them to look at their own situation and challenges them to do something about it. Some people are just used to exercising control over what their significant other does and doesn't do. Generally, what drives all of these things is fear: they are afraid of being left behind. You are improving yourself, which may cause them either to fear that you will elevate yourself right out of their sphere of influence or to fear that you will become "better" than they are because they haven't also done what they need to do to change.

Look at your own situation and think about it. Do you feel anxious when trying to cut calories or increase your exercise because you know that you're going to hear some smart remarks from -- or even experience the anger of -- your friends or family? Do friends or other people close to you try to entice you to eat foods that are fattening or to skip your workouts and go out to dinner instead? Do they tell stories about others who have tried to make healthful changes and failed? Open up your ears and eyes to see what's really going on.

You don't live alone in a cave; I know your family and social relationships are very important to you. But you have to take a look at those relationships for what they are. If someone is not being supportive of you or is actually trying to sabotage your efforts to lose weight and improve your health, that relationship needs to change. The best-case scenario is to get that person on board not only to support and encourage you to but to join you in getting healthy. You may find however, that you will have to reevaluate that relationship. Here's a story that illustrates the best-case scenario.

Mutual Support

Dee and James's Story

Dee:I am five feet, two inches and used to wear a size 20. I had to shed about 60 pounds to reach my goal. Looking back, I realize that though I lost all that weight in about six months, it took about 12 years for me to find the will to change my lifestyle and my way of eating. All that time I had been dieting off and on, losing and gaining but never getting anywhere. I always wanted to be able to say "I did it!" I wanted to experience the joy. I wanted to be who I am now, wearing size 10. I had prayed for it for years. I had prayed alone, I had prayed with my husband. And then one day I saw Bob's article in O magazine, and it all came together. I said to myself, "This time I will be able to do it." I filled out the form and mailed it to Bob and Oprah.

It would not have happened without my husband's support. I told him that this was a turning point in my life -- that I had signed a Contract with Myself and that I needed him to help me keep my word. I asked him to play a role in my diet for six months. I asked him not to bring any food into the house that wasn't on my diet. No soft drinks, no sweets, no junk-food snacks, no fried chicken. James is a very good man. We have been married 18 years. He agreed on the spot to help me.

James:In the past, when Dee was dieting I didn't participate. She had tried several plans, none of them with lasting results. But this time I could tell it was different. She was serious. She explained that it would increase her chance of success if I followed the diet with her. I didn't think much about it. "Sure," I said, "I'll do it with you!"

Maybe it was my male ego, but I didn't think that I had to lose that much weight. I was 210 pounds at the time, with a 38-inch waist, and pretty confident about my looks. But then the first week, I lost about eight pounds, my clothes got looser, and I felt better. "Wow," I thought, "I have to keep doing this thing!" I lost 35 pounds, and now I have a 32-inch waist. I am in it for the long run.

Dee:The new eating plan was simple. A friend of ours who had lost a lot of weight had given it to me. We had to eliminate sugar, salt, bread, and soft drinks. We also had to give up fried food. We are from the South, natives of Tennessee, and have lived in Memphis, Nashville, and now Atlanta. Fried food is a tradition with us. We had to learn a completely different way of cooking. We began to grill fish, chicken, and beef.

James:We had a gas grill on our porch. We fired it up! We grilled in the rain. We grilled in winter. We grilled twice a day. We grilled food in advance and then put it in the freezer. It was great. And I was happy to help Dee prepare meals and be so much part of the whole process. Not to mention that the cleaning up afterward was much simpler than when she was cooking on a stove!

Dee:We removed all the products that would cause us to gain weight or tempt us to eat when we were not hungry. I stopped buying oil, quite a switch for me! I also stopped using a lot of butter -- I used to use so much in mashed potatoes and on the green vegetables. We got rid of the salt and instead learned to cook with herbs, spices, and garlic powder. We filled our refrigerator and pantry with healthy snacks such as applesauce, fresh pineapple chunks, and sugar-free Jell-O.

I realized that changing one's ways is a question of discipline. Without it, no one can give up old habits or learn new techniques. In general, I stopped thinking about taste and instead focused on the foods' benefits to my health and weight.

We told our teenage children that if they wanted to eat sweets or unhealthy food, they would have to buy their own single servings or eat at the mall. They agreed. Sometimes my son teases me and tells me that he loved me just as much when I was my fat, warm, and cuddly self!

Members of our extended family are supportive as well. At the beginning they weren't sure, but now they know that I mean it when I say that I don't eat fried food anymore. At the last family gathering, they grilled food instead of frying it. I was very impressed.

James:Our exercise routine has been the same for the last 20 years. Dee and I exercise on the treadmill at home for about 30 minutes a day at least five days a week. Maybe that's why, at our age and in spite of the excess weight we have carried around all these years, we have maintained good health -- we have good blood pressure, low cholesterol, and are not diabetic. I am 40 and Dee is 42, but we feel and look years younger since we changed our diet and dropped all those pounds.

Together, we have relearned how to eat. Now we pray every night out of gratitude. Our prayers keep us focused and motivated.

Dee had it pretty easy with James. She asked him to be supportive, and he didn't hesitate to jump on her bandwagon. Some of you might not have it so easy, but you still need to take that first step, which is to ask your partner, family, and/or friends to help you out. Let them know that you are serious about your commitment to change, thenshowthem you are serious about change through your actions. Ultimately, you can really strengthen your relationships by starting a dialogue about your needs and asserting your independence. Remember, though, that whether your friends and family are supportive or not, the buck still stops with you. They may make it more difficult for you to accomplish your goals, but if you really want to do so, no one can stop you from achieving them.

If encouragement and assistance aren't forthcoming, you'll need to do some serious thinking about whether you want to continue to have a relationship with the person or persons who are being unsupportive. In some cases, you may need to move on. Many people have found that in fact the real change they needed to make was not what they ate for dinner, but something much larger: they needed to change or let go of a relationship, and once they did, making changes in their health-related behavior came a lot more easily. (See Angela's story on page 68.)

Procrastination: Do you never do today what you can put off till tomorrow?

Everybody puts things off once in a while, but chronic procrastinators put off just about everything. The trouble is, they often put off things so long that they never get around to doing them at all. How well does this describe you? If you are a procrastinator, why do you let things slide? Is it laziness, or is it fear of change? Replay some of the times when you've procrastinated, then ask yourself what stood in your way. It's really crucial that you be honest here because in order to succeed you have to break the cycle of procrastination, and to do that you have to understand why you drag your feet all the time. Dig down deep on this one: Are you simply avoiding the discomfort of making healthy changes, or are you worried that your life will change in ways that you may not be able to cope with?

I wish we had another word for lazy. The "L" word is just about the worst thing you can label someone in this society; no one likes to be called lazy. But I'm not talking about always-sitting-in-a-La-Z-Boy-chair-with-a-mai-tai kind of lazy, I'm talking about emotional laziness (okay, and when it comes to exercise, some physical laziness, too). You know things need to change, but you don't make the effort. You're always putting things off and taking the easy way out. Letting yourself off the hook. That's the kind of lazy I'm talking about.

If laziness is behind your procrastination, you have to change --now.What's often overlooked about procrastination is what accompanies it: feelings of guilt and anger at oneself. So take the bull by the horns and get going. Start a cycle of positive momentum by taking small steps toward your goals each day and feeling good about each of those steps that you take. Make a list of all the things you need to get you going -- whether it be arranging for child care so you can exercise, joining a gym, stocking your kitchen with healthful foods, or visiting a farmers' market. Write down a start date for each, and then stick to that calendar.

If laziness is not your problem, is it fear? What are you afraid of? Change takes you from your comfort zone into the unknown, so it's not unusual to feel anxious. But to make your body over, you must be willing to live outside your comfort zone. That's a trait all of the successful folks you're reading about possess: they're brave.

Fear of change stops lots of people in their tracks. People who have this fear sometimes even breathe a sigh of relief when they encounter a setback because it allows them to go back to their old ways. But what is it that's so scary? For some people it's actually fear of success. Being overweight helps make many people feel as if they are invisible. Losing weight literally uncovers them, ending or at least reducing their self-imposed protection from everyday life. Often they seek ways to sabotage themselves so that they can return to the safety their excess weight provides. Or they just procrastinate and don't start at all.

If this is you, take heart. When you do find the courage to risk change and experience it in small doses, at your own rate, you'll be in for wonderful life changes. You can't know what the water is like until you put a toe in. So start small, but do start, and see where it leads. There aren't many people who can say that losing weight has been detrimental to their life. Sure, you will have adjustments to make and you will have to deal with people complimenting you and paying attention to you in admiring ways. Nice as that is, it can also make you wonder why they weren't paying attention to you before. It's a good question, but the answer doesn't really matter (and is best left to social scientists). What matters in the end is that by making your body over, you will be a healthier and -- odds are -- happier person. Ask yourself what you would leave behind if you lost weight. Probably nothing worth holding on to. Fear is not always an easy thing to overcome, but once you do, your life will change for the better.

Dwelling in the Past:Do you blame your current life on something that happened a long time ago?

There's no doubt that our past shapes us in fundamental ways. Yet none of us has to be defined by what happened in our formative years. By asking if you're dwelling in the past, I'm asking if you can't let go of long-ago incidents and relationships that affected you deeply. Has your self-image been shaped by earlier events to such a degree that it's hindering your future? How attached are you to the present? Do you feel paralyzed because you can't see yourself any other way than the way you are now?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to take some time and revisit the past. It may cause you discomfort or even pain, I know, but it's an essential part of the truth-telling process. Dredge up any memories that have to do with how you feel about your body. It may be related to how members of your family or those close to you treated you. For instance, some people who were taunted for being fat by parents or siblings end up staying that way because they use food to soothe away the pain of being ridiculed. It could be some type of abuse you were subject to, either physical or emotional, that's caused you to hide behind your weight. Maybe your problem has more to do with your familial approach to food. Many families equate food with love, and to reject food is to reject love. As you reflect, think about how you've learned to cope with any painful issues, incidents, or relationships. They may hold the key to why you're holding on to being overweight.

The past is past. It's time to start living in the present and making changes that will enhance your future. While certainly what happened long ago has influenced your life, that's no excuse for using it as a crutch. Successful people break the cycle of self-abuse that comes from clinging to unpleasant or even horrible experiences. Show some strength and stop blaming events, family, significant others, anyone or anything else for your eating and exercise habits. You can't change the past, but you can change how you deal with it.Join life.Life has both pleasures and pain, and you learn from both. If you're ready to do that, you're ready to begin making your body over.

Asking the Big Questions

Jeff's Story

Sometimes it takes a crisis to bring your life into focus. I was 39 years old and had ended up in the hospital in critical condition, my body overcome by diabetes. I'm a big man, six feet two, but the 310 pounds I was carrying was taking a big toll on both my body and my mind.

When the fog of that episode began to lift, I had to ask myself why I wasn't achieving what I desired. It wasn't as if I didn't try to be healthy, but I had a lot of the wrong ideas about things. I was lifting weights six times a week and eating lots of hamburgers and steaks. I'd work out for two hours and then go eat fried chicken, figuring that I was exercising the calories away. I tried different diets and even tried visualizing myself at a healthy weight, but the pounds kept piling on month after month.

When I was 18, I was applying for a summer job when I was approached by Oprah, who happened to be in the same place that day. She must have sensed my depression, because she offered some kind words. She told me that I could be whatever I wanted to be, and she made me promise I wouldn't give up. Just to be kind back, I agreed.

Twenty-two years later, when my struggle with weight brought me to the place where I had no choice but to maintain a healthier diet, there Oprah was again. This time, she was eighty-five pounds lighter and had kept the weight off for more than two years with help of Bob Greene. Part of my reeducation on eating was found in Make the Connection by Bob and Oprah. Reading through Oprah's stories about her own weight loss battles along with the encouragement and advice she and Bob provided helped walk me toward a healthier and happier existence.

Most important, I asked myself, "Why am I here, and how can I battle what I cannot see?" The answer came to me through keeping a daily journal. It allowed me to ask myself powerful and, at times, painful questions. Answering those questions became my private therapy session, helping me to take a good hard look at what I was truly battling. One of the things that I realized was that because of the abuse I'd suffered as a child I was trying to make myself big so no one could take advantage of me ever again. Not surprisingly, I was not succeeding at trying to be big and lose weight at the same time.

Since I made that connection, I have become 30 pounds lighter and much healthier. For the first time I realized what I was doing, and I was able to let it all go. I've learned to eat more nutritiously, and even though I sometimes eat foods I know I shouldn't, I have been able to maintain a healthier diet. I've gone from taking insulin three times a day to twice a week. I do cardiovascular exercise every day, generally doing 20 to 30 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes to an hour in the evenings. In the summer and spring I walk, and in the winter and fall I do tae bo. I also work out on the treadmill and elliptical machine and do wind sprints on the track. I've cut back my weight training to one day a week (for some reason lifting causes my blood sugar to rise). I have 20 more pounds to go before I achieve the body I've been visualizing, but I'm making progress.

Since dropping the weight, I no longer suffer from nagging back pain, shortness of breath, or trying to find clothes that fit (I can now tuck my shirt in and see my feet while standing up). I feel that I can achieve anything I set my mind to, and, released from the prison of fear and failure, I am free to create the life I want. I am no longer affected by life; life is now affected by me. The promise I made years ago not to give up has been fulfilled.

The Second Cornerstone: Responsibility

I once worked with a client who was a tremendously honest person. He was willing to own up to all his weaknesses, which included a tendency to try to cut corners and a strong attachment to immediate gratification. But while he was willing to own up to these shortcomings, he wasn't willing toownthem -- and those are two different things. "That's just the way I am," he would say, as if he were a robot who had been programmed, with no will of his own. He could swallow the notion that his actions were detrimental to his health and weight loss goals, but not the notion that he could change those actions. Taking responsibility wasn't in his realm of possibilities.

Until one day it was. After his wife asked him for a divorce, he really reflected on his behavior, realized it was his responsibility to change it, and decided that he would. Now he's remarried, has money in the bank (he was always broke before), and very happy. The divorce motivated him to change his core behavior. As a result, everything else in his life improved too.

Leveling with yourself is just the first step to building a sound emotional foundation. But successful people don't just tell the truth, they also take responsibility for it. They vow to change and make good on that promise. Saying "That's just the way I am, and I'll have to work around it" won't get you anywhere. Saying "That's how Iusedto be, but I'm not going to be that person anymore" will.

The real challenge you have ahead of you is to change things about you that may be central to your personality. To make that possible, you need to stop pointing to external reasons for the state of your weight and your health. The way you were brought up, your significant other, the stress of your job or parenting duties -- none of these things is to blame for your behavior. You can no longer fall back on saying "My mother did this to me," "My husband and kids won't eat that," "My boss demands this and that." It's simply not going to wash anymore. You've got to look at the truth aboutyouand stop blaming your life on outside factors. Nor can you put the blame on a world filled with endless temptations (so many wonderful things to eat, so many other things to do besides exercise). The responsibility is yours and yours alone. It all comes down to you. You are in control of your actions and, likewise, in control of making over your body. The people I know who'vechangedtheir livesof their lives. Ask yourself: What kind of life do you want? Define it, work for it, seize it.

Dean, whose story you're about to read, is a perfect example. Dean is a young woman who has had such bad luck that she could easily have laid the blame for her weight problem at fate's feet. Instead, one day she woke up to the fact that she had to take responsibility for her behavior. Today, she has the body to prove that seizing control of your life will set you on the road to success.

I Am Not a Victim

Dean's Story

My journey began on my thirty-second birthday in June 2002. My husband and family had given me a surprise party. It was a joyous occasion -- until I saw myself on a video a friend took of the party. I was so disgusted with how incredibly huge and jiggly my body was that I teared up and wanted to run out of the room to hide. Right then I knew for sure that I had to make a big change.

At the time I was a size 16 and was carrying 190 pounds on a five foot, two inch frame. At one point I had even been a size 20 and weighed 215 pounds. Today, I have lost 105 pounds and wear a size 6. Although I still have a little weight to lose, my skin is now firm and my muscles are toned. But to get from there to here turned out to be a physical and emotional roller-coaster ride.

After that fateful birthday, I bought the Atkins diet book and began to read it. I felt as though Dr. Atkins was describing me, and I started the program the very next day. I felt that dieting would be the solution since exercise was difficult; I have fibromyalgia, an incurable chronic pain syndrome that leaves me weak, fatigued, and sore from head to toe.

Still, I bought some yoga and Pilates tapes and began to work out in front of the television while my two older boys were in school. Even though I had to take it slowly, I lost 10 pounds in two weeks.

My health, unfortunately, got in the way. First it was female problems -- heavy bleeding, cramping, pain -- and it became apparent that I needed a hysterectomy. A date was set for surgery, but two days before the operation, my health insurance company denied my claim. By August, I had to have an emergency D & C, but it didn't solve the problem. I was still bleeding and emotionally drained, so much so that one day I fell apart, sobbing uncontrollably. I literally dropped to my knees to pray and ask God to please give me the strength I needed to lose weight and feel good about myself. I was so sick of being sick!Before I go on, I want to make it clear that I am not a victim. In fact, I come from a long line of strong women. My grandmother and my mother are my heroes. They taught me to "dream big and do bigger." All through my ordeal, I remembered their example. Giving up was never an option. As my grams used to say, "With perseverance, even the snail made it to the ark."

My real problem is not obesity per se. Since childhood I would denigrate myself and punish myself for things I had no control over. I would medicate myself with food instead of dealing with my low self-esteem. As a child, I blamed myself for the divorce of my parents, feeling that I had failed them somehow. I was present when my twin sister died in a freak accident when we were only six years old. From then on, I thought that I deserved all the cruelty I was to endure, including being sexually molested between the ages of seven and nine.

One day I hit rock bottom. I wept for my traumatic childhood. I wept for my difficult pregnancies and births. I wept for being diagnosed with fibromyalgia and all that goes with this dreadful disease, including severe depression. Finally, I wept for my most recent loss, the death of my grandmother. Then I decided never to cry myself to sleep again and to change my attitude right then and there. I knew that I had to accept who I was in spite of my imperfections.

I fought the insurance company and won. I recommitted to my new lifestyle of low carbs, no sugar, and exercise six days a week. Whenever I felt down, I thought of my children and my husband. To help them, I would have to help myself. Getting well was the greatest way I could show my love for them.

My surgery dates were again postponed. It actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because in the process the doctors discovered bladder disease. Finally, in December 2002, I had the hysterectomy and bladder surgeries.

As I slowly recovered, I went back to yoga and Pilates. By January, I had lost 40 pounds and eleven inches around my waist. One Sunday, I was hurrying down the hall when I tripped and fell flat on my face. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that my slip had dropped down to my ankles. It wasn't my most graceful moment, but it was a moment of crazy joy!

That's when I took Bob and Oprah's challenge and signed the contract with myself. My goal was to lose the rest of the weight within the next twelve weeks. In hindsight, I am so glad I made that official commitment to myself at that point. It helped me through the last big hurdle.

In early February, doubled over with intense abdominal pain, I was admitted to the hospital. I had to have my gall bladder removed, but when I woke up in recovery, I was told that my appendix had also been removed and a liver biopsy performed. I was in the most excruciating pain I have ever experienced.

I had very serious complications and had to be transferred by ambulance to a hospital in San Francisco, a hundred miles away from where I live. My mother took care of my three boys while I underwent five major surgeries in a nine-week period. That's when I came close to dying -- and when I decided I could not give up.

I decided I wasn't going to allow anything to keep me from losing weight. I didn't want to die a fat lady! Every time I thought I could not go on, I looked at a photo of my three precious boys and somehow managed to get through it.

It has been a long and slow recovery. Luckily, I didn't gain any weight in the hospital. I was able to return to my diet and yoga, though Pilates was too strenuous for my condition. Though I will never be cured of fibromyalgia, I am no longer plagued with psychological symptoms. I have energy that I've never known before. I have discovered an inner strength I didn't know I had. Instead of hating myself, I now treat myself the way I would treat my best friend. I have become a better individual, wife, lover, mother, daughter, and friend. I have become nicer to be around, able to laugh more and relax.

Originally, my goal was to be the size (10) and have the health I had when I first got married. To my surprise, through my challenging, yet wonderful journey, I have discovered that I can do even better than my twenty-something-year-old self. I am driven, stronger, more patient, more compassionate, much happier, and even smaller today (size 6) than I have ever been in my life!

Through accountability -- and not just wanting health but working hard toward it each day -- I feel as if I have been given a second chance, and I am not going to waste one second. I feel comfortable in my own skin, flaws and all, and for the very first time in 34 years I have stopped surviving through each day and actually started to live.

I believe in myself now. I have no more fear of trying new things or taking risks. I can look at myself in the mirror and instead of crying because of what I see look deeper and appreciate all the effort and progress I have made. There are still many days when my illness overwhelms me physically and emotionally, but I no longer have to lug around the extra hundred-plus pounds of me, and that helps make the bad days fewer and farther between.

I have come to realize that just like everyone else I too am entitled to joy. Earning my health is what probably means the most to me. I didn't have plastic surgery or eat special foods; I didn't take a magic pill or find a "quick fix." I exercise and eat healthy meals just as I breathe every second or shower and brush my teeth each day. I put my belief in myself into action and have never looked back.

To sum it all up, I guess I would say that life has become a celebration. For me, finding -- no, choosing -- better health is remembering who I am and finally living up to the potential God labeled "Dean."

One last thing: If I can do this, anyone can! Please, please, believe in yourself. I think Maya Angelou says it best: "I can be changed by what happens to me, butI refuse to be reduced by it."

I am under no illusion that changing your character or letting go of ideas you've been clinging to for years is an easy task, but I also know that it can be done if you take control of your own life (control, which by the way, you've always had but perhaps just chose not to exercise). There's no shame in admitting that in the past you've acted in ways you're not proud of. What matters is what you're going to do right now and in the future. At this time you stand on the dividing line between the old you and the new you -- which way are you going to go?

Taking responsibility might simply mean that you admit that you've been lazy and have chosen the easy way out every time; from now on you're not going to let a distaste for hard work get in your way. Or it might mean that you have to make some difficult decisions. If, for instance, you are in a rocky or even demoralizing relationship that's affected your ability to take good care of yourself, then you have to ask yourself what you can do to improve or perhaps even end the relationship. If you have been burying the pain of something terrible that happened long ago under the weight of excess pounds, you need to make a decision about how you can put the past behind you. Maybe you will need to seek professional help to help you deal with the pain. However you choose to approach it, your goal should be to get to a place where you're able to stop blaming the past for your present woes. Free yourself from what's been dragging you down, and you'll have the ability to move on.

Essentially, what I am asking you to do is to take hold of your life -- to accept that you've messed up or that you just haven't run your life in an effective manner. Coming to a crossroads can be paralyzing, but I know that it's possible for anyone who really wants to make himself or herself over to get onto the right path. Yes, this is the hand you've been dealt, but you're going to reshuffle the deck and deal yourself a winning hand. Take responsibility for the past and the future, and you'll succeed.

The Third Cornerstone: Commitment

You don't have to look far within our society to see that commitments are no longer as sacred as they once were. It's almost as though not honoring a commitment has become socially acceptable. How often do people make others wait, break dates, not show up, go back on offers to help? It's epidemic.

What does this have to do with weight loss? A lot, in my estimation. If you're lax about your commitments in one area of your life, you're a lot more likely to be lax about other vows you make -- both to others and to yourself. It's not a far leap from being late for a dinner date to blowing off a workout; in both cases there's a lack of respect at work.

Successful people keep commitments. They show up on time, they don't break dates, and they don't break promises. Their word is their word, and they stand by it. And, most important, they see themselves as deserving of the same respect they give to others. They keep their commitments to themselves just as they keep their commitments to friends, family, and business associates.

That last part is critical. Maybe you're a little put off by the suggestion that you don't keep commitments, because you are meticulous about keeping promises -- to other people! But do you keep the promises you make toyourself?A classic trait I see among people who struggle with their weight is that they honor all kinds of commitments to others but always forget to put themselves on the list. They want to be considered "a good person," so they do their utmost to devote themselves to others.

That's selfless; however, it can also border on selfishness. Why? Because you do a disservice to those who care about you by not taking care of yourself. As nice as it is to be seen as a giving person, you also need to pay attention to your own needs. I know many people who are caretakers of others who don't bother to care for themselves; they cringe at the idea of putting themselves first. But ultimately, if you don't, you won't be much use to anyone else either. And let's be honest: if you don't take care of your health, you run the risk of becoming sick or dying prematurely. How will that help your spouse, your children, your friends, and everyone else who loves and needs you?

I'm not telling you to forget your commitments to others and just concentrate on yourself. But you should examine the reasons you allow the needs of others to take precedence over your own. Why does your commitment to care for your family mean that you can't also fulfill the promise you made to yourself to exercise regularly and eat healthfully? Is your commitment to your work such that there is no way to take a walk at lunchtime or get in a meal before you get so ravenous that you grab all the wrong foods? There should be a happy medium that allows you to honor every pledge you make.

This is where I pull out the famous contract. If you're familiar with my work from my other books, magazines, or TV, you know that I believe that signing a contract helps make a commitment sacred. It shouldn't really matter if you put a promise into writing or not; I hope that you would keep it even if the promise exists only in your heart and mind. But somehow, putting pen to paper seems to drive home the seriousness of the endeavor.

Dean, whose story you just read, is only one example of someone who signed the contract to help her honor her commitment to herself. She, like many other people who responded when the contract ran in the January 2003 issue ofO, The Oprah Magazineand the thousands who have signed it in theGet With the Program!books, used it to help her stay committed to a program on which she had already embarked. In your case, you may be signing it before you've made any changes -- an excellent way to start. As I've said before, you are much more likely to be successful if you begin by really weighing all the issues: Are you being honest about why you're overweight? Have you owned up to your behavior? And most important, are you truly ready to change? When the answer is yes, the contract on page 58 is waiting for you.

It's Never Too Late to Make the Commitment

Alice's Story

As I write this, I have lost 45 pounds of unhealthy body weight. In the course of a year, I went from a dress size 16 to a size 6. It was a long road getting there. I am 75 years old now, but my weight struggles began when I was very young -- they used to call me little bear because I was so chubby. As I got older, boys thought of me as a sister, never as a girlfriend. I even went to my school prom by myself. When I was in college I learned a new way to combat weight: bulimia. It made me thin, but it also made me end up in the hospital. Eventually, I met my husband and married. I was slim at the time; however, shortly after the wedding my weight started rising. After three months of marriage I was so plump my mother-in-law thought I was pregnant!

Things reached a new low in July 2002. My husband had died, and I was eating through the pain -- gaining weight because I was depressed and depressed because I was gaining weight. Then a couple of things happened that helped pull me out of the rut and set me on my path to weight loss.

I had looked at Bob's books before, but now I really read them carefully and took to heart a lot of what he had to say. One of his ideas is that to lose weight, you have to love yourself, and that was something I realized was missing in my life: I didn't like me. So I started to do what Bob said. I pledged to eat primarily to satisfy my nutritional needs rather than my emotional needs. I ate fresh fruits and vegetables and baked chicken and fish instead of canned foods. I drank two quarts of water a day and stopped drinking sodas. I began walking five miles a day in beautiful Coral Reef Park in Miami. I discovered that I love to walk. In fact, I was losing weight so fast that my doctor advised me to cut back my walking to three miles a day. That's what I do every weekday and sometimes on Saturdays and Sundays, too. The combination of the exercise and the quiet, meditative time makes me feel wonderful, peaceful, and euphoric. I love walking, and I lovememuch more.

The other inspiration I received came from my parish priest. In one of his sermons during Lent, he spoke on the subject of fasting, a spiritual experience I had always flunked. My priest said that if you have any kind of habit that is more powerful than the God within you, then it is your God. That's when it hit me that food was my God. This was the attitude that was making it very difficult for me to lose the pounds I was fighting so hard to get rid of. With the guidance of my family doctor, I was able to fast for Lent. I lost 20 pounds, but it wasn't really about losing the weight. It was about spiritual empowerment. After it was over, I was able to bring my eating habits under control, and I've gone on to eat sensibly.

I have lost weight before, but what's different this time is that the desire comes from within, not without. My whole outlook has changed, and I'm continuing on my road to a healthier lifestyle under the motto "Nothing -- not cake, not candy -- tastes better than how being healthy and thin feels." I can really feel the difference, too. I used to suffer from arthritis and no longer do. I feel much more energetic, and I like people more. I'm friendlier!

I'm constantly being told, "Alice, you look so young. You look like a teenager!" Ironically, I do feel like the teenager I was in college with the exception that I now have far more transcendent wisdom. Oprah has said that each time you move toward the life you want, you are doing the most important spiritual work. Well, sticking to my own fitness contract is certainly enabling me to do my most important spiritual work.

Total Body Makeover

Contract with Myself

I, ___________________, hereby commit to 12 weeks of regular vigorous exercise and to self-control when it comes to my eating. I will be focused on challenging my abilities in the pursuit of elevating my physical performance. In addition, I will not indulge in any alcoholic beverages during the 12-week period regardless of the nature of the temptation. I will also terminate my consumption of all food two to three hours prior to my bedtime. I will endeavor to be conscious of when and why I eat and will, to the best of my ability, eat simply to satisfy my nutritional needs as opposed to my emotional needs. I will also do my best to make healthful food choices.

I realize that this contract is solely with myself and that it carries no rewards, penalties, or punishments other than those associated with the reflection of the strength of my character.

____________day of____________________, 20____

________________________________________(signature)

The Fourth Cornerstone: Inner Strength

For some reason the idea that losing weight requires willpower has gone out of vogue. Instead, the emphasis over the last few years has been on taking the easy way out. Eat more, weigh less! Exercise just ten minutes a day for a better body! Take a pill and lose weight while you sleep! Eat as much steak, butter, and cheese as you want! But in the end, the idea that changing your body is easy is just wishful thinking.

The ability to impose your will to accomplish what you want to do is what separates those who succeed in any area of life from those who don't. Youdoneed willpower, no matter what anyone says. Actually, I prefer to call it inner strength, because those words describe where willpower actually comes from. We all have it deep inside of us; whether you choose to use it is up to you.

I believe that one key to inner strength is making conscious decisions. If you're like most people who struggle with their weight, many of your decisions have become rote reactions, not conscious choices. You come home from a stressful day at work, and you have a drink or dig into a bag of chips; it's a habit. A conscious decision would be to choose to go for a walk instead. You go to a favorite restaurant, and you order the fish and chips because it's what you always get. A conscious decision would be to try the broiled fish. Do you automatically take the elevator instead of the stairs, park as close as possible to your destination, always eat dinner an hour before you go to bed at night? All these things matter, and you should be conscious of them.

All my clients get the "ten-second delay" talk. I ask them to take ten seconds to think about their choices before deciding whether they'll give in to fleeting desires or exercise inner strength to combat them. Ten seconds is just long enough for you to make the decision consciously rather than impulsively. By drawing out the time, you may find that you make a different and much healthier choice whether the choice is between grabbing a cup of yogurt or a piece of cake from the refrigerator or between going to the gym in the morning and rolling over and going back to sleep.

As much as a tool like the ten-second delay can help, in order to draw on your inner strength you're going to have to have made some fundamental changes in your thinking. When you've searched your soul for the reasons you haven't succeeded in the past, owned up to your responsibility for your actions, and really committed to making a change, willpower will be second nature. You'll only need to hone it. Think of your inner strength like a biceps muscle: the more you exercise it, the more powerful you'll be.

Preparing to Change

At this early stage of the program, before you really start taking action to make your body over, I'd like you to think about what you ultimately hope to achieve. It's important to think realistically about your body and how much weight you're capable of losing as well as what you hope weight loss will bring to your life. What is yourrealintention, and how will that intention be realized?

If your intention is to be successful because you truly care about yourself -- and not because you are trying to please or attract other people -- then your chances of success are greatly increased. This goes back to telling the truth, which I discussed earlier in this chapter. Be honest about why you're going on this program so that you can make sure from the start that you are doing it for the right reasons. Losing weight can make you feel better about yourself, but it's not the ultimate key to happiness. Yes, slimming down can improve your self-esteem, but it can't erase painful experiences from your past that you've avoided dealing with. It can give you newfound or renewed confidence, but it can't make an unhealthy relationship you're in disappear. Don't, in other words, put all your emotional eggs into one weight loss basket. Extra pounds may cause unhappiness, but more often they're asymptomof unhappiness.

So don't make weight loss more important than it really is. It's only one way to feel good about yourself. It's healthy to have goals that aren't weight loss-related -- learning to play an instrument, doing charitable work, mastering another language, growing a garden in your backyard -- the more options you have to help you feel accomplished, the better.

Another thing I think it's important to think about is your ultimate body makeover goals. I'm not going to pretend that most people aren't driven by the goal to look more appealing. There's nothing wrong with that. But I also want to make a case for concentrating on how the changes you make will affect both your health and the way you feel. Those benefits of this 12-week program will come a lot sooner than substantial weight loss, and though you won't necessarily see them staring back at you in the mirror, they're not inconsequential. Eating nutritiously and exercising will do you a world of good above and beyond reducing your body size, so don't take those payoffs for granted.

As you prepare for change, also think about how much change you expect to occur. How much weight do you plan to lose? Most important, is it in your biological nature to accomplish that goal? When you see some of the pictures of makeover success stories on my Website (totalbodymakeover.com), you'll see that not everyone worked him- or herself down to a size 2. Those who did had an inherently thin body hiding underneath the excess pounds. Those who didn't get skinny simply may not have skinny genes. I don't have to tell you that we come in all shapes and sizes and that some people's healthy weight is higher than others. The good news is that everybody can attain a healthy weight for him- or herself.

Consider what's really feasible for you. What is your family history? What is your body type? Even if you can whittle your body down to a very small size, ask yourself what you're going to need to do to sustain it. Will you be able to sustain the low calorie intake and hours of exercise that got you there? Your goal should be to adopt changes that you can sustain for the rest of your life. Keep your goal realistic, and you'll succeed.

The Science of Weight Loss: What You Can Expect to Happen

Did you know that your body allows for only about a loss of three pounds of fat per week? Sure, you can lose water and muscle tissue -- that's how quick-fix diets that promise you'll drop a lot of pounds instantly work -- but you don't want to. Everyone loses weight at different rates, but in general losing one pound or even a half pound a week means that you are losing in a way that can last. Quick weight loss, though inspiring and satisfying, hardly ever lasts. Slow going is more frustrating but ultimately offers a bigger payoff. In the beginning, you may find that this 12-week program feels like you're rolling a boulder up a hill -- lots of work but no payoff -- but I promise you, you will reach the top and begin losing at a faster rate.

In the beginning, as you start exercising and ramping up your workouts and as you change your eating habits, the water your body holds on to (or lets go of) will largely dictate your losses -- or even gains. As you become more active and drink more water, your muscles will retain water. The primary culprit here is glycogen, a form of carbohydrate that's stored in your muscles and is the main fuel for exercise. The more active you are, the more glycogen your muscles will retain and thus the more water you'll hold on to: Each gram of glycogen stores an additional 2.5 grams of water. What's more, the fitter you become, the more glycogen you store.

This initial water weight gain can be disheartening, but hang in there. Water-weight gain will cover up the body fat losses that you will be experiencing. After a few weeks, you will begin to see fat loss. And the reality is, this is a part of charging up your metabolism, which will ultimately lead to an increase in your fat-burning power.

The initial weeks of this 12-week program will really be a test of your will. You need to trust that you're doing the right thing, even if it doesn't show up right away on the scale. And while we're on the subject of the scale, try not to get too attached to it. I know that it's hard not to check up on how you're doing constantly, but try to weigh yourself no more than one day a week. Concentrate on how you feel and how your clothes fit. Don't be like the kid in the backseat whining "Are we there yet?" Just be patient. You'll reach your destination, and it's going to be great!

Copyright © 2005 by Bob Greene Enterprises, Inc.

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Excerpted from Bob Greene's Total Body Makeover: An Accelerated Program of Exercise and Nutrition for Maximum Results in Minimum Time by Bob Greene
All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.