Category Archives: Weight Loss Tips

Are Protein Shakes Really a Good Idea For Weight Loss?

Posted on January 30, 2020 | 4 comments

In a word, “yes”. Here’s why. A real weight loss expert explains.


New clients and readers ask, “What should I eat to lose weight? What should I avoid?” I don’t answer with lists of foods and diets. Instead, I teach a method for permanent weight loss that includes the foods they like, holidays, dining out and all the things they’ll want for the rest of their lives. Success comes from building habits that include your favorite things while they keep you at your optimum weight. “Dieting” with schemes that won’t last only leads to yo-yo dieting and continuous weight gain.

However, I’m sometimes asked questions about specific foods that are easy to answer and provide immediate effective help with no study and effort. One of the questions is about the advisability of protein shakes. The answer: yes, they are a good idea, and here’s why:

1) Protein shakes are an easy way to achieve your daily caloric goals.

To lose weight, women generally need to limit their intake to about1000 calories per day consistently for an extended period of time, and men, about 1500. In our culture of big breakfasts, lunch in restaurants, meetings and break rooms with snacks and vending machines, you’ve undoubtedly discovered it’s impossible to do. It’s easy to be at 2000 before you’ve even gotten home for dinner.

By keeping your breakfast light with a 300-calorie egg-based breakfast, and then using a 150-calorie protein shake as a meal substitute at lunch, it’s easy to limit your intake during the day to under 500 calories (especially when you use my meals-and-fasting method), leaving you 500 in the budget for a satisfying home-made or prepared meal at the end of the day.

2. Protein shakes suppress your appetite rather that stimulate it.

Simple carbohydrates, like the sugar in prepared foods and fruit, act like a drug that stimulates your appetite. You feel hungry soon after you’ve eaten and it’s hard to resist eating more. Simple carbs are digested quickly and sends your blood sugar way up. This triggers an overproduction of insulin by your pancreas, which sends your brain the message that you need to eat more. We experience this as hunger and cravings. A grain and fruit breakfast often makes people ravenous by 10, while going without doesn’t.

Protein, on the other hand, takes a long time to digest and keeps your blood sugar even, without the spike in insulin and the hunger and cravings it creates.

So, you’ll find that a 150 calorie protein shake will fuel you for a whole morning or afternoon without feeling hungry again a few hours later.

You’ve got to be careful, though, in selecting a “meal substitute” shake. When you look at the nutritional information, some are loaded with sugar and they are low in protein. Some so-called “healthy” shakes and snack bars are just sugary drinks and candy bars in diguise. You’ll end up hungry in a short while just like with other sugary foods. All shakes are not equal. You’ll see some with just a few grams of protein and mostly carbs, and you’ll be hungry right away. When you have those, you can never get enough. Some of the better shakes have as much as 30 grams of protein. Those will stay with you all afternoon.

3. Protein is especially important nutritionally when you eat less to lose weight.

You’ve probably heard of the “RDA”, the recommended daily allowance of nutrients the dietitians talk about. If you don’t get enough protein, carbohydrate, fat (yes, even fat), vitamins, minerals and water, you risk compromising your health. Usually, in America, we don’t have to give it much thought because we eat so much that you can’t help but get more than enough of everything.

However, when you cut back enough to start losing weight, you risk hurting your body rather than helping it if you’re not getting enough of the right nutrients.

Remember that reducing your weight and body fat requires you to “undereat”, consuming fewer calories than you burn. (Read my article about the science of weight loss). Most of the calories in typical American foods come from carbs and fat. Our usual diets are low in protein. When you cut back, unless you pay attention, you won’t get sufficient protein.

When you undereat, if you don’t get your nutritional needs met, your body will “eat” itself to get what it needs. That’s great if it gets what it needs from your stored fat. But if you are not getting enough protein, your body will consume it’s own muscle and organ tissue, and that’s very bad. You’ll see the scale drop, but you’re losing muscle instead of fat. You’ll look and feel worse, not better. And your metabolic rate will decrease. It will become harder to lose weight and keep from gaining!

By using a protein shake with 30 grams of protein as a lunch or breakfast substitute, you can make it easy to get enough protein to prevent muscle loss even when you are eating much less than your metabolic rate.

So, yes, protein shakes are a good idea for weight loss, especially when you make them a habit for life. I’ve been using them on a regular basis to keep the calories down for over 30 years. They’ve helped me maintain my ideal weight using my method the entire time after years of being obese. I highly recommend them.

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Posted in Obesity Diet Plan, Weight Loss Tips

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Can Your Smartphone Help You Lose Weight?

Posted on July 9, 2018 | 4 comments

For many, no. Here’s why.

In the first week of my method’s training, clients keep track of the calories they consume. There is no diet, and not even an obligation to “be good”. They eat as they usually eat, but they keep an accounting of their caloric intake. And no guilt or shame is allowed! Just eat, and count.

These days, since the advent of apps like Myfitnesspal and Loseit, clients who love their smartphones ask if they can use their apps.

The answer is yes, but…

In 1985, when I first started teaching this life-changing method, all the logging and accounting was done by hand and recorded in a little pocket-sized ledger. The caloric values were obtained from reliable sources compiled by Registered Dieticians. This is a lot of work for a while, but it is worth it.

The end result is the ability to habitually eat in a way that is very satisfying and easy, eating what you like, and it also keeps the weight off. There is no need to record anything anywhere but in your mind. It’s a delightful way to live and has helped people to lose weight and keep it off for over 35 years.

The problem with using the apps is that this same result does not usually occur. Some have found the apps helpful during a time-limited diet to lose weight, but I’ve found that using an app for tracking calories can be a hindrance to creating long-term weight loss success.

Here’s why:

When we engage in the process of physically writing down what we eat, checking references for accurate numbers, and doing it over and over again, our brain undergoes an unconscious memorizing and reprogramming miracle. If we engage in the exercise as instructed, we reprogram our brain so that, given enough time spent in the training, we end up with habits and a new preferred way to live that makes us succeed by doing what we feel like doing. Our unconscious mind takes on the responsibility of keeping us fit with the behavior we’ve trained it to do. Eating in a way to maintain your preferred weight becomes the new normal, the way you feel like living, without the books or the apps or the feelings of deprivation and oppression.

What happens when we use a device?

When we use a device, outside of ourselves, to perform a function we would usually do with our own body and mind, our unconscious mind excuses us from performing that work, excuses us from the responsibility, and we become dependent on the device. Not only that, but we lose the ability ourselves!

Think of our dependence on calculators and iPhones. In the past, people used to know hundreds of phone numbers, easily associating a name with a number in a fraction of a second. Now, people don’t even remember the phone numbers of their family they call all the time.

At one time, people could make mathematical computations in their heads. Today, people cannot even make change without a machine. They can’t figure out what to give you back if you hand them a $50 bill for something that is marked $26.88. The machines were supposed to multiply our strengths, and in some ways, they have, but in some ways, they have weakened us.

It’s like using a machine to lift things, get in and out of chairs, get from one place to another miles away, or go to the 5th floor. When we make our body and mind perform, they rise to the occasion, build the muscle power or brainpower, and all those tasks become easy. When we rely on machines, the mind and body atrophy, and we lose the ability. We can’t calculate percentages, remember phone numbers, or keep track of what we are spending at the grocery store. We can’t take a few flights of stairs without being winded and stopping to catch our breath. We even forget we used to be able to do those things. People who have never done them, who never experienced life without those machines, don’t even know what they are capable of. They have no idea of what their mind and body can do, and often will not believe you when you tell them.

Do you know what you are capable of? Probably not.

Imagine succeeding in things you thought were impossible.

The goal of my approach is to create habits where we automatically eat the foods we like in the right amounts to reach and maintain our preferred weight. Instead of suffering diets and feelings of deprivation, we make it so when we eat in ways that make us feel good, we are eating in ways that keep us at the weight we want to be.

I discovered ways to make this happen with reprogramming techniques, some call it mind control, a repertoire of behaviors that create a result in our unconscious mind. The result is the ability to do something that we could not do with our conscious mind and will. The techniques and behaviors do not sound miraculous at all. They sound simple, perhaps even silly, unnecessary, and sometimes clients skip them. When they skip them, they miss getting the benefit they create.

The machines make everything easier, right? Why do all that work when a machine can do it? Why develop the ability to do mental calculations or remember phone numbers? The machines will do that, right? Why develop the strength and endurance to climb stairs? What good is that? Why keep a written log of calories eaten when a machine will do it? What good is that?

So, when clients make faces when I tell them to keep a written log, and they ask if they can use an app, I say “yes, but…” and I try to persuade them to write it down, by hand.

 

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Posted in Weight Loss Tips

How to Stay Focused on Your Weight Loss Goals in 2017

Posted on December 27, 2016 | 2 comments

I’m asked all the time, “What finally made you decide to solve your weight problem?” as if it didn’t bother me being overweight for 25 years. The truth is that I sincerely wanted to solve my problem when I was 12! But I wasn’t successful until 20 years later. It took me that long to learn what I needed in order to be successful.
Bill in 1983 and 2005

(William Anderson, author of The Anderson Method, Secrets to Permanent Weight Loss, in print and audiobook.)

Wanting, even with all your heart, to lose weight does not make it happen, as anyone with a stubborn weight problem knows.

Hopefully, it won’t take you 20 years to learn what I learned. You can learn it from me!

For my first 30 years, I was overweight and out of control, more than 300 pounds as an adult. Only in my early 30s was I finally able to succeed, losing 140 pounds and becoming my ideal body weight. I’ve maintained it handily since. Now I help other people and I wrote a book, now an eBook and an audiobook, about what I eventually learned that made me successful. Here are a few of the most important things, five key requirements to make 2017 the year you solve your weight problem for good:

1) You must make it the priority in your life.

You need to decide that being healthy in body, mind and spirit is more important than anything else and that your weight problem must be solved. Losing weight must become your No. 1 one concern. More important than your job. More important than your favorite pastimes, clubs, hobbies or comforts. You must become like a zealot who forsakes all else, a soldier in the field where losing this battle means losing everything. Nothing else can stand in the way of doing what you need in your effort to solve your weight problem.

Some may criticize this as being unreasonable and off-centered. I understand their criticism, but for most of us, this is one of those things where you will not make it unless you are totally devoted. To enjoy all of those other things you cherish, you’ve got to get this right. Nothing less than total dedication will do. It’s like wanting to make it to the top in a music, sports or business career. Nothing else can get in the way of doing what you need to do to succeed. It cannot take a back seat to anything else, cast aside when something else “comes up” as if it were more important. Controlling your weight is more important.

2) You must respect the science that tells us that we need to eat fewer calories than we burn to lose weight. We must accept the fact that we need to develop habits where we consistently eat within our caloric “budget” to keep it off.

There is no mystery to the science of weight control. It has not changed in eons. Eat too many calories and you get fat. Eat fewer than you burn and you burn it off. Accepting this reality does not by itself solve the problem, but there is no hope until you do. Hoping for a way around this fact will prevent you from ever succeeding. There is no way around this, no magic pill or surgery that will relieve you of having to limit your caloric intake. Fight this reality and you’ll never succeed. Accept it, and you’re on the path to success. In over 20 years, I have never had a client not lose weight when they eat the way I teach them.

3) You must learn how to train your mind to program yourself and master your habits, desires, impulses and feelings. The idea that your behavior and feelings are a matter of just making up your mind or wanting it badly enough is a fallacy. We are not born with well-developed “will power” and conscious control over the things that go on in our mind and body. In fact, most of what goes on is unconscious and a product of conditioning and programming that we were not even aware of. Habits and impulses were not chosen and they can seem to have a life of their own beyond your control. However, you can learn the programming and conditioning techniques discovered in behavioral and cognitive psychology as well as the ideo-dynamic phenomena that hypnotherapies use. The techniques I teach in my method are not unknown to science and behavioral medicine, but we are not born knowing them. They must be learned.

4) Make your goal the development of new permanent habits, rather than weight loss. Don’t focus so much on pounds but rather on the way you are living.

The most common approach to weight loss is doing something out of the ordinary for a while, like eating a special diet or going on an exercise crusade, and then going back to “normal” after a while. This is self-defeating. Even if we lose the weight we want, the “normal” that we have learned is what makes people fat, so we’ll just put it back on.

We are suckers for these diets and schemes because usually, we don’t want to change our habits. We are fond of doing the things we do, snacking the way we do, enjoying our favorite foods and restaurants and not having to think about it. We don’t want to give those things up. We’ve tried and we couldn’t do it or it was so miserable we gave up the idea.

However, we don’t have to give up enjoying food. In fact, one of the keys of reprogramming is that the new behavior must be satisfying. I enjoy food now more than I did when I was overweight. I eat all my favorite foods, don’t deny myself any food I really want, and enjoy it more. However, it is different than the way I used to eat. But just wanting and “willing” yourself to change habits is not the way it’s done. There are reprogramming techniques you need to use. The first step is to realize that our goal needs to be a change in our habitual behavior. When that happens, the weight comes off automatically. Focusing on weight loss instead of a change in yourself and your habits will not work.

5) You must be honest and sincere. I used to say things like “no matter what I do, I can’t lose weight.” That’s crazy of course. If I somehow got myself to eat very little, I’d lose weight. If I kept it up long enough, I’d starve to death. People who don’t have food in the Sudan are not fat. I was telling myself nonsense, lying to myself.

I used to say, “This won’t matter” if I cheated or “I just don’t care anymore” when my self-control flagged. Neither was really true. Everything counts. When I got discouraged and caved, I cried “uncle” and gave up in that moment, but I never stopped caring. I never stopped hating obesity and wanting something better. I still cared. Saying, “It doesn’t matter” was a lie.

Behavioral science teaches us that what we say to ourselves affects how we feel and how we act in an almost magical or mystical way. When we tell ourselves this nonsense, we are literally programming ourselves to overeat and become overweight, just as if we were using hypnotherapy to gain weight. When we say, “I just can’t lose weight,” we are using cognitive therapy techniques to make ourselves feel hopeless and depressed and self-hypnosis to unconsciously sabotage any efforts to succeed.

Changing the way we think and talk is essential to reversing obesity. Getting honest and serious, truly sincere about what we want, is one of the most important keys.

So, what do you think? Can you say, “yes” to these five key requirements? If you can’t, and you are a person who has been overweight and unable to fix it, you now know where you need to start to make changes. We are not going to solve this problem by accident. We need to be very intentional and meet these requirements. If you meet them now, you are on the path to success. That’s progress! Follow me.

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What is Behavioral Medicine and Behavioral Healthcare?

Posted on September 7, 2011 | Leave a comment

A writer asks, “I’ve heard that you are very successful helping people to lose weight with ‘Behavioral Medicine’. I also know of a counseling center that calls itself ‘Behavioral Healthcare’. What do these terms mean?”

(The author is the psychotherapist who lost 140 lbs. when he discovered Therapeutic Psychogenics,  and he’s kept it off for over 25 years. He has written about it in his groundbreaking weight loss self-help book, The Anderson Method and has helped thousands to lose weight permanently with this approach. More about it at the end of the article.)

When I refer to my practice of behavioral medicine, I am referring mainly to my work in helping people establish the behavior that will treat or “cure” their disorders related to being overweight. Many diseases are caused or worsened by being overweight. Diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, disability, cancer, inflammatory disorders, depression, obesity itself – the list is endless of the life-threatening diseases that are caused by excess weight and conversely improved and even cured by weight loss. I’ve helped thousands to finally solve their “impossible” weight problem, successfully lose great amounts of weight and maintain a healthy weight. I do it with my brand of Behavioral Medicine I call Therapeutic Psychogenics.

We know that  an obesegenic lifestyle is the primary cause of the problem, eating more calories than we use and storing them as fat. Conversely, we know how to lose weight, regardless of the cause of the gain.  Eat fewer calories than we use and we lose weight. Eat in balance and we don’t regain. The thermodynamics is irrefutable. Simple, right? No.

While the thermodynamics of weight control are easily understood, the dynamics of human behavior are anything but.  While some people think that everyone should just be able to make up their mind to master their habits, desires and feelings, most of us know that it’s not that easy. The forces at work that shape our behavior, the drives, the neurochemistry, the conditioning and habit formation are not often within our conscious control, even when we understand them. Self control, especially when you are talking about compelling and addictive behaviors, is not just a matter of “wanting it Badly enough” or “will power”.

That’s where I and my brand of behavioral therapy comes in. Understanding more about ourselves and the psychological technique for self-mastery are things that can be learned and developed. We treat the whole person, body, mind and spirit. The components of my eclectic formula of therapy have many names in the profession – Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Behavior Therapy, Cybernetic Self-Management  Technique, psychoeducation, nutrition education – together I call it Therapeutic Psychogenics. Many names but the goal is one: to create a permanent change in our automatic habitual behavior so that the way we habitually think, feel and act makes us lose the excess weight and keep it off. It’s kind of like “reprogramming”. It’s certainly not just “will power”.  Learning and developing the psychological “power tools” is what empowers us to change the behavior, not will alone. When we can change the behavior, the body will change.

However, Behavioral Medicine encompasses more than what I’ve just described.  Here’s the textbook definition: Behavioral Medicine is the interdisciplinary field concerned with the development and integration of behavioral, psychosocial, and biomedical science, knowledge and techniques relevant to the understanding of health and illness, and the application of this knowledge and these techniques to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation.

The psyche and body are one. They are not separate. Our physical condition affects our spirit, mood and mental state. Drugs and our hormonal and neurochemical state affects or mood, thinking , feelings and behavior (appetite too). Our behavior influences our neurochemistry and hormones and creates physical conditions and many states of mind and spirit. Behavioral Medicine recognizes this and integrates these dimensions for purposes of understanding and treatment. Professionals from the medical and mental health fields attend to the whole person and fashion treatment protocols that call for intervention in all spheres. This is Behavioral Medicine.

Behavioral Health and Behavioral Healthcare are terms used in a more limited scope to address all the behavior we engage in that affects our health. It is used to describe complex psychological conditions like addictions and eating disorders, but also includes the everyday habits we have that affect our health. For instance, our use of seat belts in automobiles and hand washing procedure would be included as issues addressed in Behavioral health.

Behavioral Healthcare, seen as a part of Behavioral Medicine, most often describes mental health and psychiatric care specifically, including counseling for a variety of reasons.

I hope I have not been too clinical in trying to give an accurate and complete answer to this very good question. People hear these terms and rarely know what they mean. Most of us don’t want the jargon. I know my clients don’t care what it’s called. That it helps them to solve their weight problem is all they care about.

Behavioral Medicine saved my life when I discovered Therapeutic Psychogenics as a result of my work in addictions counseling and behavioral science. I lost 140 lbs using this method, after 25 years of failure with diets and exercise schemes and I’ve kept it off for 25 years. I’ve been helping others since, teaching other therapists too, and I’ve also got a book about it. If you’ve had a terrible time trying to lose weight, Behavioral Medicine has the best solution. Go to www.TheAndersonMethod.com to get more information about my work, my growing network of therapists, and my book describing the method.

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