David L. Katz, MD, MPH, FACPM, FACP
Yale University School of Medicine
Medical Correspondent, ABC News
Author: The Way to Eat, The Flavor Point Diet
O™ Magazine contributor, frequent Oprah Show expert
If you could design the ideal weight loss advice, your priorities would likely include reliability, practicality, simplicity. You would want advice that makes intuitive sense, fits into your life, accommodates your family. And if you could select your advisor, you would doubtless emphasize compassion, insight, intelligence, experience.
In other words, if you could design the ideal packaging of weight loss guidance, you would wind up with something remarkably like The Vice Busting Diet.™ And if you could screen and select among candidates for the ideal weight loss advisor, you would almost certainly choose someone just like Julia Havey!
You are fortunate; no need to design advice, or screen advisors. There is no one more like Julia Havey than Julia herself- so the choice of advisor is clear! And in The Vice Busting Diet,™ Julia has designed for you dietary guidance that will meet your every specification, and surpass your every expectation. Julia is, in a word, terrific, and this is Julia at her best.
The advice Julia offers here is eminently sensible, definitely doable, and wonderfully empowering. It is also tried and true, the basis for Julia’s own remarkable weight loss success. Healthy, vibrant, and 130 lbs lighter than her former self, Julia talks about weight loss- and lasting weight control- not as a hypothetical, but as a journey she knows intimately. When you follow where Julia leads, there is no risk of losing your way, because Julia has walked every step of this walk already!
Julia is clear, confident, and assertive in her guidance, as only a knowledgeable and experienced guide can be. But make no mistake: she is kind, gentle, and understanding. There is no harsh judgment, no recrimination on these pages. When Julia speaks of vices that need busting, she is referring to your diet- not your character!
In this book, it is dietary vices that get the busting they deserve; not you! What you get is protection.
Vice busting is about self-defense- against the obesogenic marauders of this modern world- from fast food to television. Julia is here- with gentle, unflinching strength- to help you chase them off!
By addressing diet vices, Julia is emphasizing the negatives in your diet, so she can help you emphasize the positive potential in your life! Focus on fixing what’s wrong with your diet- and just on fixing what’s wrong- and you wind up with a way of eating you can actually live with. This is in marked contrast to the myriad fad diets that reconstruct your eating pattern from cabbage soup to nuts, based on unsustainable exclusions, cockamamie theories, and/or cumbersome food combination schemes.
Julia correctly identifies leading contributors to the epidemic of obesity- and your personal weight control difficulties. She very insightfully inventories the leading diet vices in our culture. Her words ring true to me, based on my nearly 20 years of counseling patients. These very habits have indeed often been a cause, or even the cause, of weight gain, and failed attempts at lasting weight loss, among my patients. Julia gets it.
And gives just as good as she gets. I like the emphasis on health, first and foremost. I like the focus on simple, unintimidating steps. I like the inclusion of family, the consideration of mental as well as physical well-being. I really like The Vice Busting Diet!
Drawing on her own, rich experience, Julia provides simple and compelling wisdom. She notes, for example:
Deprivation is not living without certain foods, but living with them and being deprived of your true health and happiness!
That’s what wisdom is all about- discovering the obvious that most of us fail to see. Yes, it’s obvious- but only after Julia points it out to us!
I love Julia’s comments about kicking the fast food habit:
Before I realized it, I started to look at other things that I was doing and wondering what results I could achieve by making one more positive change. My next vice to go was my frequent fast food habit. I figured I was opting for fast food too often and I had myself convinced there were plenty of fattening foods that needed to go. I didn’t want to cook for the kids and I started to love French fries too! Now I actually had to cook and it wasn’t as expensive or time consuming as I had originally believed. The kids and I actually sat down and ate together rather than them eating in the car and me eating on the sly. The benefits of that change could fill a chapter in a book about raising children.
I have 5 children, and often emphasize how vitally important it is to think family when thinking diet. Improving your relationship with your children as a by-product of losing weight is one heck of a fringe benefit!
Julia’s guidance comes in simple, user-friendly increments. At every step, she accentuates the positive, from attitude to health to family. She keeps it all simple. Don’t reinvent your diet; just track down, round up, and chase away what’s wrong with it
The Vice Busting Diet replaces the silly, self-defeating goal of ideal weight right away with success measured in actions you truly can take, outcomes you truly can control. Follow in Julia’s footsteps- she knows the way. Take the warm and wise advice she offers, and the empowering control she provides. Do so, and at last, your weight will take care of itself!
