Dr Phil's Diet

As the name obviously suggests, this diet was designed by Dr. Phil. He approached the problem of shedding weight from a unique perspective. He figured that there was a mental side of things to the condition of weight gain and resultant obesity. He felt that the mind of a person had a great role to play in a person indulging in overeating.

How else could you explain away the fact that a perfectly healthy individual, otherwise like us in all other respects, tends to eat so much more than the rest of us? Of course, there are cases where this is a genetic phenomenon, but these cases are rare.

The psychology of weight gain

Approaching the problem of weight gain from this angle, Dr. Phil devised a sort of holistic diet regimen that looked not at just the physical/physiological aspects of weight gain and resultant obesity, but the mental aspect of the problem as well.

Dr. Phil talks about his diet plan in a book he has authored - The Ultimate Weight Loss Solution: The 7 Keys to Weight Loss Freedom.

Dr. Phil's diet is different from the Atkins and Zone diets in that it stresses the importance of eating healthy food and also thinking healthy, good thoughts.

This approach is based on the scientifically proven fact that many times, people tend to indulge themselves with extra food and drink when their mind is in a depressed state. The craving for food at times becomes a continuous urge and soon the person may become overweight, and be at risk of obesity.

Dr Phil's diet plan

This is the key area that Dr. Phil addresses in his diet regimen. According to Dr. Phil, weight loss is not something that you can achieve like that, with a snap of your fingers, overnight. Though it may be possible to drastically lose weight in a few days' time, as many diet regimens advertise, it is not advisable to follow such a plan, for quite a few reasons.

Firstly, the greater risk in this approach is that the body may not be equipped to handle such drastic weight loss, and there may be debilitating side effects. Besides, there is always the risk of putting back those pounds faster than you had lost them.

Long term vision

The key to the Dr. Phil's diet is its long-term vision. This diet addresses weight loss by changing behavioral patterns. Dr. Phil's diet lays out the weight reduction plan in seven simple and precise steps.

These seven steps focus not just on weight loss, but on other peripheral but equally vital aspects such as thinking right to enable you to succeed in exercising self-control, attaining mastery over the amount of food you consume, and cultivating the habit of daily exercise.

The seven steps that sum up Dr. Phil's diet are listed here:

• Thinking right.
• Cultivating the healing feelings.
• Creating a positive mental frame, where failure doesn't find any place.
• Developing the ability to control the urge to eat excessively.
• Ensuring that your diet has highly nutritious food.
• Developing the habit of exercising.
• Developing a circle of support.

The other thing about Dr. Phil's diet regimen is that it doesn't have a fixed time frame, unlike many of the other diet plans. You can follow this all your life; actually it is better if you follow this always.

It doesn't have very stringent numbers as far as the calories are concerned. One can still do with a dose of tasty carbohydrate when he feels like it, as long as it remains just that, a momentary feeling once in a while as opposed to a regular, obsessive urge.