#2 Thank you, Dr. Bob: Chapter 2

It was December 31, 2011. I found myself at a New Year's get-together, sitting at a table next to my friend, a retired doctor, Dr. Robert Easton, known affectionately as Dr. Bob.

I was pouring my heart out to him. I was 43 years old. I had gained weight that winter, and I was embarrassed. My face was all broken out. I had recently had a cyst grow on the side of my face that I had to have removed by a dermatologist. I wasn't well. I had fairly severe anemia, as my hemoglobin level was just 8.3 (which should be between 12 and 16). I was weak and tired. For the first time in my life, I had arthritis in my hands. My body felt like a giant blob of inflammation. I would barely bump something and feel sore. My hormones were a mess. I'll get into more details of my condition in my lessons, but suffice it to say for now that I had just seen another specialist, and had learned the sobering news that I was going to need surgery. I was depressed and demoralized.

Dr. Bob said to me, “You know, Tonya, you can turn this around.” He talked to me briefly about changing my diet. He left, went home, and returned with a book, The McDougall Program for Women, by Dr. John McDougall, which he loaned me.

That encounter with Dr. Bob, along with that book, changed the trajectory of my life. I soon read one book after another of Dr. McDougall's and watched every lecture I could find on the Internet. By February of 2012, I was following Dr. McDougall's diet. In June of that year, I attended Dr. McDougall's 10-day live-in program in Santa Rosa, California. My body was healing. I no longer needed surgery.

Dr. Bob has since passed away, but I will feel forever indebted to him. And just as he shared information with me that day that changed the course of my life, I have been all too eager to share this information with others. I have held several classes on how to lose weight without hunger in my home, and I've taught classes through the park district in my city. In fact, Dr. Bob enthusiastically attended my first class, and encouraged me to continue.

And now some friends have encouraged me to do more to share what I've learned via the Internet. Taking a chance, I've decided to pursue this, at least on a trial basis, and just see where it goes. I look forward to your feedback. I hope that you find my information to be of value. I know the power it has to transform lives, as it transformed mine.

The day that Dr. Bob gave me that book was tantamount to the beginning of a second chapter in my life. And for that reason, I call my journey and my program “Chapter 2.” I hope you'll come with me on this journey. . .your second chapter awaits!

#1 Why Most Diets Fail: Hunger

For years it was a constant struggle to keep my weight down. I tried numerous diets beginning in my teenage years in the 1980s, including the Beverly Hills diet (in which you eat only pineapple and two bananas the first day), but when all else failed, my go-to method was simply calorie counting. I would limit my daily calories to 1200 or 1500, depending on how ambitious I felt.

During my days of dieting, I would think about nothing but food. I would go to sleep thinking about food and wake up thinking about food. I would worry about the fact that the crackers I had at lunch had cut into too many of my remaining calories, and indeed they had. I would negotiate with myself: if I ate too many calories one day, I would cut back the next.

I could last, almost like clockwork, for 21 days. But by that twenty second day, I couldn't take it anymore. I would go on an out-of-control binge on chocolate and peanut butter candy bars or potato chips (or both), and wonder why I was such a glutton.

I couldn't understand how my skinny friends were able to say "no” to seconds or even (gasp) leave food on their plates. We could be at an event or a party, and I'd be barely able to concentrate on the conversation, as I'd be thinking about the brownies on the corner table. I'd be doing some rough brownie calorie calculations in my head, thinking how I wanted another one, and how I really shouldn't. My skinny friends didn't seem to be thinking about the brownies at all, and if they actually ate one, they appeared to soon forget all about the rest of them. I admired their discipline and their amazing self-control. Well, I kinda did. Truth was, I mostly envied it. I wished I had their tremendous willpower.

I was overweight, but never terribly so. So I was all the more baffled why I couldn't get a handle on this. It didn't make sense.

It wouldn't be until my 40s that I would finally understand what was going on. Little did I know, but my skinny friends were NOT pushing themselves away from the table. They didn't have tremendous willpower; in fact, they weren't relying on any willpower. They weren't so disciplined, and they didn't have amazing self-control. They weren't making a conscious effort to ignore the brownies; they really did forget about them.

And, likewise, I wasn't out of control. Nor was I a glutton. The truth is that my skinny friends weren't hungry, but I was. They declined seconds because they were full. On the other hand, I was eating multiple brownies because I was experiencing sincere hunger. The difference between my skinny friends and me wasn't a moral failing on my part; the difference was hunger.

Through these Chapter 2 newsletters, I'll explain why my skinny friends weren't hungry and why I was. I'll teach you how you can successfully lose weight and sustain weight loss — without hunger.

Best wishes to you, and welcome!