Diet Rehab: 28 Days to Finally Stop Craving the Foods That Make You Fat Read Online Free PDF

surgery, they aren’t able to stick to the recommended behavioral changes just one year after the procedure. We all have to feed our brains with the right foods and activities or we’ll never be able to be free from the addiction.
    Diet Rehab will address your brain chemistry. You’ll learn how to naturally boost your serotonin and dopamine levels, creating the feelings of peace, calm, excitement, and pleasure that you used to get mainly from food. When your brain chemistry is balanced, you’ll be interested in food for pleasure, yes, but you won’t be dependent on it. It will finally return to its rightful place in your life—and your new weight will show it.
    Don’t Call Domino’s!
     
    The frustrating thing about the food culture we live in is that it’s so easy to overexpose ourselves to high-fat or high-sugar/carb foods without even realizing it. For example, in 2010, Domino’s made a change that resulted in a huge spike in sales: They changed the recipe of their pizzas to include 40 percent more cheese. Just one slice of the new version contains as much as two-thirds of a day’s maximum recommended amount of saturated fat—and how many people stop with just one slice?
    Not only does saturated fat put us at risk for heart disease, but, as we just saw, it ramps up our dopamine levels and can trigger an addiction. Might that explain, at least in part, why Domino’s sales have risen sharply since the new fattier version hit the menu? Or that pizza is the world’s most popular food?
     

Finding Freedom from Food
     
    I remember the first time I helped free someone from a food addiction. My patient Michelle—a longtime sugar addict—and I had been working for weeks on creating new, healthy habits to drive out the old, addictive behaviors. For a while, as in any process of recovery, it was tough going. Michelle was a fighter—no question about that—but although she was not yet thirty, she had been through a lot: an intense battle with stomach cancer, a subtly abusive boyfriend, and a long string of dead-end jobs.
    Now she was finally working in an office where her boss and colleagues appreciated her, and she was looking at programs for going back to school. For the first time in years she wasn’t dating, which she viewed as her chance to come into her own and discover who she was. She had recently joined a softball team, started cooking more often, and had just about reached her ideal weight.
    One day she burst into my office, grinning from ear to ear. “You’ll never guess what happened,” she began, before I even had a chance to ask her how she was. “I was walking by my favorite bakery—and I was thinking so hard about this new project at work, and this idea I had for what they could do, and the way I was going to convince them to put me in charge, that I walked right past it! I’ve never done that before! I didn’t even notice. I even told myself that I could go back, if I wanted to, and get myself a doughnut—I’ve been pretty on target lately, and it was time for a treat—but you know what? I just didn’t feel like it. Dr. Mike, I can’t believe it! I never thought I just wouldn’t feel like eating sugar!” Michelle was describing freedom from addiction, and for her it was a beautiful feeling.
    Are you wondering whether that could ever be you? Don’t worry—I promise you that it can. If you’re eager to get started, turn to page 231 and begin your 28-day Diet Rehab. But I’d love for you to read through the next few chapters, because the more fully you understand what is going on in your brain and body, the better choices you’ll be able to make and the more motivated you’ll be to carry them out.

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    How Food Addiction Makes You Fat
     
    My patient Sondra was a tall, striking woman whose blond hair fell to her shoulders in long, flowing waves. She worked out regularly at her gym, taking a thrice-weekly spin class and lifting weights with a personal trainer. Every morning she