The Beck diet solution: train your brain to think like a thin person

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BOOK REVIEW

The Beck diet solution: train your brain to think like a thin person

Melanie Ogliari Pereira

Psychiatrist. Cognitive therapist by the Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research, Bala Cynwyd, PA, USA. Founding member of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy, Philadelphia, PA, USA. Member of the International Credential Comity of The Academy of Cognitive Therapy, Philadelphia, PA, USA.

^{Correspondence}

Judith Beck

Porto Alegre, Artmed, 2008

Dr. Judith Beck's book was launched in the second semester of 2007 in the USA and it was translated and published by Editora Artmed in August 2008 at Bienal de São Paulo.

It was already considered a bestseller in its origin country and when it was launched here in Brazil.

Dr. Aaron Beck's preface presents Dr. Judith Beck's new book as "a new field for cognitive therapy" and the author defines it as "an option for the difficult task of losing weight."

The book has its focus on patients with obesity; however, similarly to Mind Over Mood by Christine Padesky, it will probably be used as well by health professionals to manage this type of patient.

This book is divided into three segments throughout its 317 pages:

- "The Power of Cognitive Therapy for Weight Loss;"

- "The Program;"

- "Going Forward."

In the introduction the author proposes to the patient to make a team for the journey of losing weight, aiming to help the individual recognize his/her eating pattern, his/her cognitive distortions related to weight loss and to his/her body and how the Cognitive Therapy Restructuring Model can help him/her lose weight and remain thin.

The writing style used by the author establishes a tone of intimacy and complicity between the patient and the therapist, one important characteristic of this type of approach and proposal.

The first segment, "The Power of Cognitive Therapy," is divided into four chapters: "The key to success," "What really makes you eat," "How thin people think," "How to use the Beck Diet Solution."

In its first segment chapter, "The key to success," Dr. Judith Beck presents the cognitive model to the patient: "the way you think about food, eating and dieting influences your behavior and how you feel emotionally."

In the second chapter, "What really makes you eat," concepts and examples are discussed as: what dysfunctional automatic thoughts are (named by the author in the book as "sabotaging thoughts") and that "eating is not an automatic behavior," but a consequence of stimulus.

The author says: "if you can identify the triggers that evoke sabotaging thoughts and lead you to eat in unhelpful ways, you can minimize your exposure to them or change your response to them."

In chapter three, "How thin people think," she discusses how thin people manage to distinguish between hunger and desire to eat and how they manage to program and limit their eating in an organized and healthy way.

She presents characteristics that distinguish thin and obese individuals such as the low tolerance that obese people have to hunger and uncontrollable desire to eat (this is how the author defines compulsion in the colloquial language she uses in the book), and she uses clinical vignettes as examples.

In the fourth chapter, "How to use the Beck Diet Solution," the 6-week program is generally described.

Therefore, the first segment of the book has a more psychoeducational role on obesity and on how the cognitive model can help as an intervention and motivational instrument to deal with this disorder.

In the second segment - "The Program" - Dr Judith Beck presents the treatment process in itself on details, week after week, day by day.

Each week of the program and its purposes are presented from pages 63 to 294. The weeks are presented individually:

- Week 1 - Get ready: lay the groundwork;

- Week 2 - Get set: prepare to diet;

- Week 3 - Go, start your diet;

- Week 4 - Respond to sabotaging thoughts;

- Week 5 - Overcome challenges;

- Week 6 - Fine-tune your new skills.

In this segment, "The Program," which accounts for most of the book, she describes by using practical examples how the patient can get ready to start and maintain his diet, points out the importance of choosing a healthy diet plan and a diet coach to be responsible for this process - nutritionist, clinician, endocrinologist, etc.

Each day has practical exercises such as the Advantage and Disadvantage Record Chart for losing weight, cards such as the "Reasons why I want to lose weight," and she proposes "What to do" lists for each day, the seven-question technique (which is how Dysfunctional Thought Record is called in this book).

There are tasks for each day, always one skill to be added to the patient's "arsenal" during the whole process.

The book in itself has some spaces for the patient to complete. The program lasts 42 days and it puts cognitive therapy tools at the service of teaching the patient to lose and maintain his/her weight.

The second segment is where the patient learns to be his own therapist in the task of losing and maintaining his/her weight.

The last segment, "Going Forward," is dedicated to teach cognitive and behavioral maintenance strategies and it has two chapters:

"1. When to stop losing and start maintaining"

"2. How to stay at your new weight"

Here the patient learns techniques of relapse prevention and how to create a summary of what seemed more useful during the treatment process, and it will be used throughout the patient's lifetime.

This new book by Dr. Judith Beck is for the general public, but it will be certainly used by all types of health professionals.

It is an approach for obese patients to lose weight in a healthy, adequate way and to help them maintain such weight loss.

It is an elegant and easy book to read in view of its colloquial language, one of its strengths, but this does not mean that it can be seen as a reduction for the obesity problem.

The Beck Diet Solution is another important tool for the treatment of patients with obesity. It is not indicated for patients with eating disorders.

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  13 Jan 2009
• Date of issue
  Aug 2008