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What others are saying about The Overfed Head
When it comes to weight and weight loss, I am a typical American. I was thin in high school and college despite stuffing myself at most meals. When I turned 30, though, I noticed that I was slowly starting to gain weight. By my 35th birthday, I had been gaining five pounds a year, and no matter how much I tried to eat less, eat right, or exercise, I was in danger of joining the two-thirds of American adults who are overweight.
Until I wasn't.
After reading a review in the Chicago Tribune, I picked up a copy of Rob Stevens' powerful book, The Overfed Head. In the book, he explains how we can use our hunger as an internal guide to tell us how much food to eat. By switching my focus from how food tasted to how hungry my body was, I immediately cut my food consumption by 15% without changing the kind of food I ate and without feeling deprived. Simply not feeling stuffed every single night made the book worth its cost. To my delight, though, I lost 10 pounds in the first three weeks after buying the book. Over the next three months I lost an additional 15 pounds, and I now weigh approximately what I did when I was in high school.
When I told my story to a diabetes physician who teaches at my medical school he said, "Look, the truth is that nobody loses weight and then keeps the weight off." With all due respect to my professor, that attitude is not acceptable. Not when the annual cost of obesity is over $100 billion. Not when more than 1 in 100 gastric bypass surgery patients dies. Not when minority communities bear the brunt of this crisis. Nor is it even accurate, as Rob Stevens has shown by losing 140 pounds and keeping the weight off for ten years and counting.
You may not trust an author who doesn't have an MD after his name. You may not believe that people can lose weight without struggling, suffering, and relapsing. Whatever beliefs or biases you might have, I urge you to suspend them and read this book.
We can continue to listen to those who say nothing can be done, or we can find alternate solutions. Rob Stevens has shown that losing weight can be easier and less painful than any of us could have imagined. The genius of The Overfed Head is that the solution to the obesity epidemic already lies within our own bodies; we do not need the diet industry, government policies, or even physicians to make us thin. It is by honoring and propagating this kind of simple yet revolutionary idea that you and I will turn America's vast obesity epidemic into a small footnote of medical history.
Sincerely,
John Stracks, M.D.
University of Michigan Department of
Family Medicine.
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“The Overfed Head is a rare refreshment. Rob Stevens delivers an uncomplicated method to achieve freedom from the diet vice battling our minds."
Katherine S. Cosgrove, M.S.
President’s Council On Physical Fitness and Sports
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A revolutionary book. As an MD, I have been conducting extensive research in medical journals, online and in health related books to find information about controlling food intake, as a way of losing weight or maintaining a healthy weight. I am convinced that taking hunger into account and its disappearance following a meal are essential ingredients to a long term solution. But how to do that? Experiments on rats are not very helpful.
Getting feedback from a rat on the disappearance of hunger? Not easy.
One day I discovered Rob Stevens's book, The Overfed Head. In it, he describes the process of getting connected to hunger feelings, which trigger eating behaviors. He also describes what it feels like to have hunger disappear, which is our body's way of telling us it's time to stop eating.
Brilliant! Stevens offers a method of reconnecting to our natural abilities we has as babies to know how much to eat... when we simply ate when we were hungry and stopped eating when our hunger went away. This is also a time when we maintained a natural and healthy weight.
Thanks, Rob!
Christine Letournel, M.D.
Paris, France
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Dear Rob,
On Monday I read your book and for the first time in 40 years I can honestly say I am not on a DIET. Reading your book was like reading the female version of my life. I have been on every diet you can imagine, I have been struggling with my weight since I was seven years old, my family all have weight problems and issues and I have been aware of eating like a thin person. But have never, ever really paid attention to my body's feelings.
The last three days have been the most unbelievable experience of my life. I don't think I ever just ate what I wanted without feeling guilty. Guilt and shame have ruled my life. And you know what. I am not overweight. I am a personal trainer who lived every breathing moment in fear and panic of gaining weight. At times I did gain weight and would try every diet I could muster up my mental strength to do. In my heart I have always known that dieting is not the answer and I think that is why my search for a solution has continued.
I did not want to accept being overweight nor did I want to deny myself every pleasurable eating experience.
I could go on and on with my story but I am sure you have hear it all. First I want to say thank-you for your book. You alone in a few short hours have given me the freedom I have denied myself as long as I can remember.
Your concept is simple but certainly not easy. Although I am confident that I will master thintuition better than any diet I have been on. My life is already better. Yesterday, I went food shopping and Rob, I had the best time. I do eat mostly organic foods (personal choice) but I was able to buy what I really wanted. Words just can't express what that felt like.
Again thank-you and know your book did more than any of the hundreds of books I have read in the past.
Sincerely,
Iris from New Jersey.
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"The honesty and candor of Rob Stevens in this book is refreshing. The thintuition approach will bring back the power and freedom in your life that has been lost around being overweight."
"I love thintuition, not only because I have lost 25 pounds and kept it off, I have lost my cynicism and resignation about weight loss as well. I have also lost more weight more easily than I ever thought possible. I love the freedom and confidence I have in my relationship to eating and in knowing my body. The power in that is amazing–the power that’s missing on diet after diet."
Leslie A. McCloskey, M.D.
Obstetrics/Gynecology
Northwestern Memorial Hospital
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"The central concepts of “thintuition” are right on target! These concepts are simple, straightforward, and accurate!"
"In the end, this book is well-written and fun to read! The examples given and the easy flow of the words and phrases make it a quick read and enhance one’s ability to conceptualize the central themes of “thintuition”. I recommend that you simply sit down and read it, whether you’re overweight or not!"
John N. Sheagren, M.D.
Chair, Department of Internal Medicine
Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center and
Professor of Medicine
University of Illinois, College of Medicine
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"Rob Stevens gives hope to those who are looking for a permanent solution. I believe that with true commitment, anyone can find success through his approach."
Laura L. Concannon, M.D.
Section Head, Department of Integrative Medicine
Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center and
Assistant Professor of Medicine
University of Illinois, College of Medicine
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“The Overfed Head is thought provoking, sensible, and straightforward. Thintuition provides a foundation for positive self-change that very well may ultimately lead one to improved health and well being."
Carla Heiser, M.S., R.D., L.D.
Medical Nutritionist
President, Center for Functional Nutrition
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"I started reading The Overfed Head and couldn’t put it down until I’d finished. What a compelling, logical, straightforward, enjoyable read! This book lays out an easy to follow, easy to implement way of thinking about eating that leads to effective weight loss. And I know it works, because it’s worked for me. Great job, Rob Stevens!"
Jeffrey A. Miller
Psychotherapist
Author, The Anxious Organization
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"I enjoyed reading The Overfed Head. It is well written and makes good sense. I think Rob Stevens is providing the reader with a useful and simple way to keep from gaining weight. I am using the idea--one has to keep reminding oneself
to pay attention to ones bodily sensations--easy to forget and keep eating just because it tastes good.
Peter M. Lewinsohn, Ph.D.
Senior Research Scientist,
Oregon Research Institute
and Emeritus Professor of Psychology,
Unversity of Oregon.
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So if everything you know about weight loss is wrong, what is the right information? It's this. Consider that it's not what you eat but how much. And how much is based not on portion size but on listening to when your body tells you it’s had enough–and you stop eating. This moment occurs before fullness, before overeating–the only reason for weight gain. Thintuition is about being in touch with your hunger levels and allowing them to guide your eating. In short, thintuition is about honoring your body and giving it just enough fuel to make it run at optimum levels. Thintuition is a commitment to your own health and well being.
Here is an excerpt from Chapter 1:
Results Not Typical
This is probably not the first weight loss book you’ve read that begins with a before-and-after story. From the back cover photos you will have already gathered that at one time I was obese, and that now I’m not. You will have surmised that I’m going to tell you how I lost the weight and how you, too, can achieve the same happy result. If you are not skeptical at this point, you ought to be. My success is no guarantee at all of your success. My hope is that this book will disabuse you forever of the notion that having lost a lot of weight makes someone an expert on how you should lose weight. If you’re presently heavier than you want to be, chances are such “experts” are a part of your problem.
Losing a lot of weight on a diet is not an unusual accomplishment. You’ve probably done it yourself—perhaps many times. What is unusual about me is that I stopped dieting in 1997, lost 140 lbs over the course of the following year and a half, and have kept it off ever since. You’re probably assuming that instead of a diet, I made a permanent change in my eating habits. And you’re right. I started eating what I actually wanted to eat. If you were to raid my pantry right now, you’d find real butter, real mayonnaise, real sugar—none of that reduced fat, reduced calorie gunk I used to inflict on myself when I was heavy.
Yes, I know that sounds unbelievable. For 25 years, I shared the belief that certain foods have the power to make you fat or thin. It was my belief system about food—not the foods themselves—that kept me overweight. When I changed my thinking, I was able to shed the weight and keep it off, without a struggle.
The wealth of data we possess on diet, nutrition and weight control is astounding. More of it has been produced in our lifetimes than was produced in the entire previous history of human civilization. Walk into any bookstore and you’ll find a whole wall of the stuff. You can’t channel surf for ten minutes or glance at a newspaper without encountering some new info on what you should and shouldn’t be eating. Legions of people now make their living as diet counselors, nutritionists and trainers—professions that scarcely existed a generation ago. We also have a host of new food products meant to keep us slim: low fat, non-fat and artificially sweet. And yet, we’re in the midst of an obesity epidemic. A majority of Americans are overweight, and a great many of them are dangerously so.
You might suppose that the problem of overweight is driving the growth of the diet industry, that it has sprung up to serve an obvious need. But what if the opposite is actually the case? What if all this data, all these products and services are actually contributing to the problem? It’s clear that the more we’ve learned about fat, the fatter we’ve gotten. Might that be because everything we think we’ve learned is actually wrong? That is the hypothesis I’d like you to consider.
You won’t find any testimonials in this book. Although I know many others who have succeeded with the approach I’ll be describing, I won’t be telling you their before-and-after stories. The experiences of other people are really beside the point. The essence of the approach I call “thintuition” is learning to tune in to your own experience. If you come to agree that what I’m saying makes sense, you will perhaps act on the idea and discover for yourself whether it works for you. Your own success story is the only one that matters.
To read the rest of Chapter One, click here.
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