Excerpt from The Ultimate Weight Solution by Dr Phillip McGraw, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

When you follow my instructions and take the decisive and effective action I will detail for you, you will begin to live with such a high level of health, energy, vitality, and control that your life will seem like new. And you will never have to revert to your old, overweight self again -- ever. Trust me, you are going to get there faster with this approach than if you had followed all the fad diets in the world, one right after the other. Whatever your current weight or diet history, this is something that you can do. All it requires is a willing spirit and an open mind.

I am not one to jump on my own bandwagon, but there was an eight-year period in my career during which my work focused particularly on people who were 100, 200, 300, or more pounds overweight -- men and women who would normally be written off as "hopeless cases" -- most of them emptied of any expectancy for ever scaling down to a normal weight. The approaches I used with them are precisely the very same get-real strategies for weight loss you will learn about and apply here. That said, I will skip to the end of the story and tell you that, significantly, more than 80 percent of these patients not only lost their excess weight, they kept it off. (Regarding that 80-plus percent success rate, know that these kinds of numbers are amazingly rare and fly in the face of the outcome of conventional diet programs, which, embarrassingly, can claim barely a 5 percent "success" rate. Put another way, this means that dieting has a 95 percent failure rate. Ninety-five percent of all people who lose weight gain it all back, with interest, within a few years. Not very good odds, not good at all. You wouldn't gamble your money if those were the odds, if out of every 100 spins, rolls, or poker hands, you'd lose 95 times. You'd go broke. Same deal here: stop gambling with your weight and your health.)

I'm so confident about what I'm giving you in this book because it is not only from my own professional experience, but it is also from what the most current research into weight control suggests. I reviewed every piece of quality research I could find in the psychological and medical literature. You're going to learn the scientific and proven truth, the reality, and the honest-to-God deal about those things that can genuinely help you when you take action and do your part. It's information that you won't get from the weight loss gurus and the diet industry because it can't be Madison-Avenued into new diet schemes. What I've done for you is to distill all the relevant information you need, from my clinical practice and from the research on who keeps weight off and who doesn't, into a coherent, doable plan that will help you do this right, one time, beginning now. Up until this point, you just haven't had the answers, the knowledge, the tools, the inside scoop you need to initiate and sustain lasting change. Now you do; now you will have what you need. But for you to succeed, you have to translate this knowledge, awareness, and insight into action. I will show you how on every single page of this book. This is not brain surgery, not even close. There is, however, a science to these matters. And I know the science. So if you will do what I am about to set out for you, you will lose your unwanted weight and you will keep it off. If you don't, you won't. It's just that simple. Further, what you are about to do doesn't work some of the time, it works all of the time.

But let me warn you: I'm not going to tell you what you want to hear. I'm going to tell it like it is, even though that may be difficult to hear. I'm going to tell you the truth, and in so doing, stop this ridiculous roller-coaster ride you have been on for way too long. What's more, experience has taught me that effective weight control will never be "quick and easy," but it is doable. The reason no one has ever told you the truth is simply that "quick and easy" sells a whole lot better than "doable!" I promise you that "doable" works because the quickest route from A to Z, from what your weight is now to what you want it to be, is not at some hurry-up, panicked, fevered pace. If you are going to get the results you want, the fastest way is by following the plan I will outline for you here.

Copyright © 2003 by Phillip C. McGraw