Dean Ornish: Forget About Willpower

[supernova]

Lovely, encouraging article from Dr Dean Ornish in this week's Newsweek. I found this article through HuffPo and thought I'd share. If you don't know, Dean Ornish was one of the original proponents of a very low fat diet before we learned that some fats, like olive oil, are good. Anyway, he's had great success rehabbing cardiac patients and trying to forestall and in some cases reverse heart disease.

Forget About Willpower

The real secret to sticking to your New Year's resolutions is knowing why you want to lose weight and live healthier. Fear of dying is not sustainable; joy of living is.

I went to a holiday party last night and saw a friend I hadn't seen in a while.

"Hey, Woody—you look great! How did you manage to lose so much weight?"

"Well, I tried something radical: I'm eating less food. I realized that I liked looking good and feeling good more than I liked eating extra food. I found that I was eating a lot when I felt depressed or stressed or lonely, so I decided to find other ways of managing stress and being with people I love that weren't centered around eating too much."

I've been conducting clinical research for over 30 years. In the process I've learned what really works to make and maintain lasting changes in diet and lifestyle. Woody got it right.

more: http://www.newsweek.com/id/81153/page/1