The Beck Diet Solution

Judith S. Beck, Ph.D., is the Director of the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research in suburban Philadelphia and Clinical Associate Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania. She received her doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in 1983.

Dr. Beck is internationally renowned in the field of Cognitive Therapy. She wrote the basic textbook, Cognitive Therapy: Basics and Beyond, which has been translated into 18 languages, and has authored several other books and numerous articles and chapters on various applications of Cognitive Therapy. She has presented hundreds of workshops in the United States and abroad and is the President of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy.

Dr. Beck is involved in many different professional activities. She and her father, Aaron T. Beck, M.D., established the non-profit Beck Institute in 1994. She directs the three major functions of the Beck Institute: education, clinical care, and research. She divides her time between supervision, clinical work, administration, research, program development, and writing. She is a consultant for several National Institute of Mental Health research studies and teaches Cognitive Therapy worldwide.

Have you unsuccessfully dieted in the past? Or have you managed to lose weight only to gain it back? You probably haven't been successful in the past because you just didn't know how.

Each day of The Beck Diet Solution's comprehensive six-week program presents a new task designed to build psychological skills that will enable you to:

avoid cheating

cope with hunger and cravings

deal with stress and strong negative emotions without turning to food

motivate yourself to exercise

handle eating out, vacations, and special occasions

conquer every excuse you've ever used to overeat, binge, or backslide

You can learn how to do all of the things you need to do to diet successfully by changing the way you think.

Easy-to-use tools are found throughout the program, including hunger monitoring scales, daily planning schedules, weight loss graphs, and motivational cards for handling time/energy hurdles, eating out, and other high-risk situations.

Prevention Magazine May 2007
Fitness Magazine March 2007
Newsweek April 2007
O The Oprah Magazine April 2007
The National Psychologist April 2007
NPR Morning Edition December 2006
Today Show March 2007

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I've been dieting on and off for years...losing weight and then regaining it-- plus some extra with every attempt. I was about to give up when I found the Beck solution just last week....

I've read the entire book already---it really hit a home run for me.

I never thought of my excuse for regaining weight as being "it isn't fair if I can't eat the foods that I want to eat"...but I got a good kick in the pants by Dr. Beck when she says that life's not fair....even in the world of dieting! Finally....something that I can grasp as to why I continue to diet and regain weight!

Life's not fair in fact....I already knew that tidbit...but never applied it to my dieting struggles. Now I feel a certain freedom....life is not fair...but I can accept that and now move on. Hopefully with a new, thinner body!!

If you are tired of gimmicks and of being told that extreme dieting works...give this book a chance. It will clearly change the way you think about dieting and about life in general.

I've dieted since I was 14 and have been up and down in weight many times. Nine years ago I lost 20 lbs. and kept if off for about four years. But in the last five years, my weight has slowly crept up about four lbs. a year. Just as Judith Beck states in her book, it wasn't not knowing a good diet to follow that kept me from losing these four pounds a year, it was a lack of motivation, self-deception about the accumulation of pounds over the years, not knowing how to win the victory over hunger and food cravings, and a lack of knowledge of motivational and organizational skills.

Last night I read through the entire book and today I'm starting at the first chapter and will do step by step what the author outlines. So while I can't say that I've done the book yet with success, I can say emphatically that I know what Ms. Beck writes is true. Whether or not I personally succeed is up to me--but the plan, I believe, has to work.

This is a brilliant book written by a compassionate woman. For the first time in my life, I know that I can lose the weight I want to lose and keep if off. More importantly, I know that the self-control I learn from the author's techniques will help me grow in other areas of my life.

As a born-again Christian, I am delighted that her idea that changing how we think will determine our success at losing weight and keeping it off matches what the Scriptures say! There is no doubt that the battle is always in the mind, that how we think and what we believe will always determine our success, and that we can change patterns of thought to achieve the goals we consider to be important.

Cognitive behavior is not a magic bullet. You have to persevere if you want to lose weight but knowing some solid principles of cognitive behavior helps, such as the author's check list to help you be aware of harmful thinking about food. Beck illustrates sabotaging thoughts that you might have such as "I can learn to eat sensibly after I finish dieting." Then she suggests helpful self-responses to damaging thoughts such as "If I don't learn how to eat sensibly now, what evidence do I have that I'll be able to learn later? I need to start now."

Beck give examples of "triggers" that start a chain of events that lead to eating unhealthy food and how you can interrupt the chain so that it leads to a different conclusion. An example of this kind of an unhealthy chain is: someone offers you a piece of cake, then the cake looks good, then you think you'll have it, then you eat the cake. You can anticipate triggers and plan different responses to them ahead of time.

Beck makes you aware of some of the characteristics of people who can't lose weight such as: confusing hunger with the desire to eat, having a low tolerance for hunger and cravings, liking the feeling of being full, fooling yourself about the quantity of food you consume, comforting yourself with food. When you are aware of these negative characteristics, you can change them by making small, positive interruptions in habitual thinking and behavior.

Changing your thinking about food and starting to think about food the way a thin person thinks about food is an immense help. This takes advantage of neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to re-wire itself as a result of new thinking and new behavior. As you change patterns of eating that are not working for you, and there are many examples in this book to show you how to do that, you are actually building new neural patterns in your brain that over time become dominant.

When you exercise a muscle it becomes strong, when you exercise a thought, it becomes dominant. The brain always follows the direction of its most current dominant thought. Making changes in your thinking about food can actually make physical changes in your brain. As you practice new thinking and behavior, you re-wire your brain neuron by neuron until you are able to think like a thin person thinks, and you become more adept at avoiding temptations.