Another
reason many people find it hard to maintain weight loss is that they set their
hearts on losing, say, 40
pounds, and when they find out it requires too great a
sacrifice, they give up, blaming themselves or their genes.

 

Heredity
does play an important part in shaping our shapes. Genes, for example, can make
the body inefficient at burning fat or make metabolism sluggish. Studies on
identical twins confirm that when one twin is overweight, the other one usually
is, too--an association that occurs far less often in fraternal twins, who
don't inherit the exact same genes.

 

Still,
biology isn't destiny. Even among identical twins, weights can be far apart.
Fletcher cites the case of one man who was inspired to slim down because he was
50 pounds
heavier than his identical twin, who'd always been more active.

 

"Genes
set the lower and upper limits of your weight," says Hill, "but it's
lifestyle that moves you up or down within that range." Not surprisingly,
a lifestyle that consists of sitting in front of the television eating
cheeseburgers is more likely to push a person to the right of the range, into
the fat zone, than to the left.

 

When trying
to set a realistic weight goal, adds Fletcher, ask yourself these questions:
What is the least you've weighed as an adult, for at least a year? What is the
largest size clothing you'd be happy with? (Would you settle for a size 14,
say, instead of a 107) What weight were you able to maintain during previous
diets without feeling constantly hungry? Many of the dieters she surveyed found
that their original weight goal was too low to maintain comfortably; those who
succeeded were willing to settle for a more realistic target.

 

Losing just
5 to 10 percent of your current weight, surveys show, brings major physical and
psychological benefits. "You might not become the skinny person of your
dreams," says Foreyt, "but even a small loss can make you feel better
about yourself."

Don't
Deprive Yourself

 

When she
first began her research, Fletcher wasn't much interested in how dieters lost
weight. Instead, she wanted to find out how their eating habits changed
afterward. But, in talking to many dieters, she quickly learned that the issues
couldn't be separated. The more extreme the original diet, they told her, the
harder the transition to a maintenance diet.

 

Still, one
common thread showed up among all those who succeeded: No matter how weird or
wacky their diet started out, they eventually adopted a sensible eating plan
they were content to stay on the rest of their lives. How did they do it? For
one thing, they made sure not to deny themselves their favorite foods.

 

Other
studies back up that finding. Health educator Susan Kayman studied 74 women
enrolled in Kaiser Permanente Medical Offices in Fremont, California,
who'd lost a lot of weight. She discovered two behaviors that distinguished
those who maintained a significant weight loss from those who didn't. The
successful dieters weren't as rigid about what they ate, and they didn't feel
deprived. Instead, they compromised on portions.

 

"One
woman would take a half gallon of ice cream, cut it into cubes, and wrap each
cube individually so she wouldn't devour the entire carton at one
sitting," says Kayman. While that may strike some as a bit obsessive, it
illustrates how successful dieters find ways to make their diet work for them.
Kayman speculates that because they don't label any foods forbidden, they're
able to indulge without triggering feelings of guilt. Dieters with an
all-or-nothing mentality inevitably give up when they stray even a little.

 

The actual
indulgence may matter less than the sense of control it imparts, says Fletcher.
She describes one woman who joined Weight Watchers at a time when the program
was more restrictive. The only way she could tolerate staying on the program
was to "cheat" by eating three chocolate chips every day. The tiny
extravagance paid off: She lost 57 pounds, and she's kept them off for 20
years.

Cut the Fat

 

When
fletcher asked successful dieters to name the three most important factors in
keeping weight down, the number-one diet-related response was "watch my
fat intake."

 

No wonder.
Gram for gram, fat has more than twice the calories of carbohydrates. That's
not all. Researchers have found that certain individuals are inherently bad at
burning fat. That means their bodies go to extraordinary lengths to store fat
in fat cells rather than burn it for energy. To lose weight, then, these people
may have to restrict the fat in their diets to as little as 15 percent of
calories--much lower than the currently recommended 30 percent. That works out
to 34 grams
of fat a day on a 2,000-calorie diet, or roughly 49 fewer grams than the
average American gets each day.

 

Hill
believes that it's important to watch fat intake, even if you're not a low fat
burner. That's because as fat stores shrink, the rate of fat oxidation-how much
fat the body burns for energy-drops. The result, says Hill: "If you eat
the same proportion of fat in the diet as you did before you lost weight,
you'll be more likely to store that fat in fat cells."

 

Rest
assured, cutting the fat doesn't have to mean leading a spartan life. One man
from the registry who lost more than 100 pounds likes to toss enormous salads with
his own "thousand island" dressing, made from fat-free yogurt,
ketchup, and pickle relish. Others created their own low-fat versions of
muffins, potato salad, pizza, lasagna, enchiladas, even pasta-shrimp primavera.
Many successful dieters made finding tasty low-fat foods into an enjoyable
hobby. As one put it: "Once low-fat was a permanent way of life for me,
the search for great low- or no-fat chocolate treats began."

Get Moving

 

It's
telling that A whopping 96 percent of people listed on the registry exercise
regularly. Moving around, after all, keeps energy levels up, fends off stress,
and contributes to a general sense of physical and emotional well-being. What's
more, by burning extra calories, exercise helps to compensate for the metabolic
drop that usually comes with weight loss.

 

Consider a
hypothetical 5 foot
8 inch
woman who for years weighed 150
pounds, which she maintained on a diet of 2,500
calories. Let's say she slimmed down to 135 pounds. According to
researchers at New York's Rockefeller University,
that 15-pound loss (10 percent of her weight) results in a 15 percent drop in
the number of calories she burns. So unless she exercises to make up all or
part of the difference, she can eat no more than 2,125 calories a day without
gaining weight.

 

Another
study illustrating the benefits of exercise involved 110 overweight Boston city workers who
went on spartan diets of 420 to 1,000 calories a day. Only half the
participants exercised--for 90 minutes, three times a week. Two months later,
the sedentary dieters and the exercising dieters both had lost about 25 pounds. But after a
couple more months, only the exercisers had maintained the loss.

 

Similarly,
when psychologist John Foreyt reviewed the existing weight studies, he found
several factors that predicted success. Among them were getting continued
emotional support and maintaining normal eating habits, such as sitting down to
three meals a day. But topping the list was physical activity. "Ninety
percent of people who lost weight and kept it off were regular
exercisers," says Foreyt.

 

Meet the people who surprised the experts by discovering how to lose 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 pounds fast.

 

We've all heard it a million times: Diets don't work. Consider the facts, experts tell us. Of those who start a commercial program, like Weight Watchers, as many as 70 percent never complete it. Of those who sign up for medically supervised liquid-formula diets, half drop out. And the topper is, 90 percent of dieters who lose weight regain all or part of it within five years.

 

There's just one problem with those statistics, says James Hill, a nutritionist at the University of Colorado in Denver. They're way too gloomy. That 90 percent failure rate, for example, is based almost entirely on studies of just the sort of people you'd expect to fail-namely, chronically obese women and men who turn to university research programs as a final, desperate step. People who successfully lose weight on their own, he says, don't get counted.

 

Don't get Hill wrong. He's quick to acknowledge that it is damnably difficult for some people to lose weight and keep the pounds off. But he also believes there are many others out there who have figured out one important lesson: Successful weight loss isn't a matter of losing pounds and then going back to old eating and exercise habits; it's a lifelong commitment.

 

"It's not that, gee, these people have figured out what to do," Hill says. "Nearly everyone knows what's required: Take in fewer calories than you burn. It's that they've figured out how to do it."

 

Hill has more than theory on his side. Four years ago, he and Rena Wing, a psychologist at the University of Pittsburgh, put out a nationwide call for "successful losers," people who had lost 30 pounds or more and kept them off at least a year. Despite limited publicity--a southern California newspaper ran a small item about the project that was later picked up by a few other papers around the country-the response has been startling. "The typical reaction has been, 'I'm so glad someone finally asked,'" says Hill. One woman was so proud of her weight loss that she included a revealing photo she'd had taken for her husband for Valentine's Day.

 

The ongoing project, billed as the National Weight Control Registry, promises to reshape the dieting landscape. "There are two beliefs out there," says Wing. "One is that almost nobody succeeds at weight loss. The other is that for the few people who do, success requires such an extreme sacrifice that they basically do nothing but count calories and exercise all day. We see no reason to believe either is true."

 

Already Hill and Wing have collected detailed histories of 831 people, aged 19 to 81, and have analyzed the first 500. Fully a third of the people lost between 30 and 44 pounds; more than half lost 60 pounds or more. "Some people lost weight very fast and kept it all off," says Wing. "Others lost a lot, regained half, but kept the other half off. And then there were those who lost some, regained a lit-tie, lost some more, but constantly headed in a downward direction."

 

With more names coming in all the time, they believe they've uncovered only the tip of an iceberg of success stories. Indeed, other researchers are turning up similar findings. In 1994, John Foreyt, a psychologist at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, pored over the dozen or so existing studies on diet successes-only a handful had more than 100 subjects-and compiled a list of factors that best predict a person's chances of winning the weight-loss game. Dietitian Anne Fletcher scrutinized the same studies for her 1994 book Thin for Life- Ten Keys to Success From People Who Have Lost Weight and Kept It Off, then went one step further and recruited successful dieters through flyers, newspaper notices, and commercial weight-loss programs. Fletcher eventually surveyed 160 masters, as she calls them, including a former showgirl and a chocolate scientist.

 

The stories that emerge from both the registry and the other studies defy conventional wisdom. It's commonly believed, for instance, that permanent weight loss is out of reach for people who were fat as children, who are middle-aged, or who have repeatedly gained and lost pounds over the years. Yet many of the people Hill and Wing have quizzed beat those very odds. One man, for instance, whose entire family was overweight and who had been fat himself since childhood, lost 107 pounds and has kept them off for 20 years. His younger sister was inspired to lose 60 pounds, a loss she has maintained for five years. Another woman, who weighed 400 pounds at age 40, got down to 120, which she's maintained for four years. Similarly, 70 percent of Fletcher's masters had been fat as kids or teens, a third lost their weight after age 40, and nearly 80 percent had tried at least three or four diets before getting it right.

 

Hill and Wing are quick to point out that what they're learning can be as helpful to someone trying to lose 15 pounds as it is to someone aiming for more ambitious goals. The lessons are the same, they say.

 

Eventually, Hill and Wing hope to sketch a composite picture of a successful dieter and answer specific questions that have baffled researchers for years. Are special fat-free products helpful to dieters? Are successful weight-losers more obsessed with their weight than others? Do their lives change dramatically for the better?

 

But the question that's at the heart of all these investigations is this: What happened in these people's lives that allowed them to overcome their weight problem once and for all?

Do It for Yourself

 

Most of us are motivated to lose weight by a snide comment from a spouse or coworker, an upcoming wedding, or some other external event. The problem with that, according to John Foreyt, is that such events keep us motivated for only about six weeks. After that, you have to constantly build in rewards to keep yourself going.

 

Unless you're losing weight for yourself, your weight-loss efforts may be doomed, says Fletcher. When she asked yo-yo dieters what motivated them to finally keep off the weight after all their previous attempts, she found that they'd undergone a change in attitude. Some described it as a "click" inside the brain or a "light bulb going on." A few cited an actual turning point in their lives. One 475-pound man lost 250 pounds after he nearly drowned in a boating accident because his weight obstructed rescuers. Others decided to lose after learning they had a weight-related medical condition, such as high blood pressure or heart disease.

 

This time, she found, they knew what was needed--and decided trimming down was worth the changes they would have to make, whether starting an exercise program, getting marriage counseling, or quitting a job that required them to be around food all the time. "They know there's no magic answer," says Fletcher. "They accept that it's going to be work and that nobody can do it for them."

 

 

America's favorite self-help guru on how to lose belly fat and get abs brings his tough-love manner to dieting and gives out several personal family secrets along the way. Additionally: his surefire take-off-pounds tips. 

 

On a quiet side street just off Sunset Boulevard, Dr. Phil's enormous Tuscan-style villa beckons in the sparkling morning sun. Thick plantings of frothy violet and pink flowers drape the iron balconies and carpet huge patches of the lush green yard. Out on the sprawling back terrace, the big guy himself is taking meetings by the pool, just like any self-respecting TV mogul. He certainly looks the part: tan, fit, and ready for action, in an impeccable white Adidas tennis outfit. Could the tabloids be right? I wonder momentarily. Has Dr. Phil gone totally Hollywood?

 

The six-foot-four-inch former University of Tulsa linebacker ambles over and swiftly puts that notion to rest. Offering a warm, bear-size handshake, he drawls, "I dressed up for you today." There's a self-deprecatory twinkle in his eye, and it soon becomes apparent that Get-Real Phil is still tellin' it like it is--even in this grand setting.

 

It's been just over a year since the Dallas-based self-help guru on how to lose belly fat and get abs loaded up his family and moved to Beverly Hills to launch his own TV show dealing with belly fat loss. Almost overnight, the syndicated Dr. Phil became a huge hit, drawing an average of six million viewers a day. Featuring Dr. Phil's addictive blend of tough-love wit and down-home wisdom, the series reportedly generated a whopping $52 million for distributor King World in its first season.

 

Meanwhile, the McGraw family seems to have taken to the Southern California lifestyle like ducks to water. Dr. Phil's son Jay, 24, a law student at Southern Methodist University, in Dallas, and a regular contributor to his dad's show, answers the door wearing a baseball cap and khakis. Younger son Jordan, age 17, has a high school friend over. And outside the kitchen, Phil's mother, Jerry McGraw, who just arrived from Dallas for a visit, is relaxing under a big canvas umbrella. Unfortunately, Robin, his bubbly, brown-haired wife of 27 years, is upstairs in bed, suffering a bout with the flu. But her touch is everywhere--from the framed family photos to the deliciously scented candles to the colorful plump pillows.