Table 3. Hit List of Weight-Gaining Behaviors from Dr. Phil

I have to take the book back to the library later today but I found this table very interesting and I thought I'd share it while I still can:

"The information in this chart is based on typical calorie counts of foods and beverages, as well as on scientific studies of the caloric cost of specific eating behaviors. Results may vary from person to person. Annual weight gain is based on calculating the estimated yearly caloric cost of each behavior, then dividing by 3,500 calories (the number of additional calories it takes to gain one pound.) *These figures have been rounded up."

EATING BEHAVIOR --- WEEKLY CALORIC COSTS -- ANNUAL CALORIC COSTS --
POTENTIAL WEIGHT GAIN PER YEAR

Eating second helpings (200 calories per helping) three times a week -- 600 extra calories a week -- 31,200 extra calories a year -- 9 pounds

Habitual overeating, every day, 380 extra calories a day -- 2,660 extra calories a week -- 138,320 extra calories a year -- 40 pounds*

Eating a super-sized bagel (4-1/2" diameter, 323 calories), three times a week, rather than having a small bagel, (3" diameter, 156 calories -- 500 extra calories a week -- 26,000 extra calories a year -- 8 pounds*

Eating Big Macs (or equivalent, 570 calories) twice a week, rather than choosing a small-size hamburger (260 calories) -- 620 extra calories a week -- 32,240 extra calories a year -- 9 pounds

Eating one glazed doughnut (290 calories) every day at work during your coffee break - 1,450 extra calories a week -- 75,400 extra calories a year -- 21 pounds*

Drinking a cup of whole milk (150 calories) twice a day, rather than having skim milk (86 calories) -- 896 extra calories a week -- 46,600 extra calories a year -- 13 pounds

Drinking one regular soda a day (144 calories), rather than having a calorie-free soda -- 1,008 extra calories a week -- 52,400 extra calories a year -- 15 pounds

Snacking on 15 to 20 potato chips a day (150 calories) -- 1,050 extra calories a week - 54,600 extra calories a year -- 16 pounds*

Eating bowl of regular ice cream (280 calories) five times a week, rather than having a bowl of nonfat frozen yogurt (160 calories) -- 600 extra calories a week -- 31,200 extra calories a year -- 9 pounds

Bingeing twice a week (1,000 to 3,000 calories per binge) -- 2,000 to 6,000 extra calories a week -- 104,00 to 312,00 extra calories a year -- 30 to 90 pounds

Eating out at fast-food restaurants five times a week compared to having a healthy meal prepared at home (56 extra calories per fast-food meal) -- 280 extra calories a week -- 14,560 extra calories a year -- 4 pounds

Snacking while watching television, five hours a week (136 extra calories per snack) -- 680 extra calories a week -- 35,360 extra calories a year --
10 pounds

Nighttime eating, five episodes a week (270 calories per episode) -- 1,350 extra calories a week -- 70,200 extra calories a year -- 20 pounds

Drinking three beers at Happy House once a week (146 calories per beer) --
438 extra calories a week -- 22,776 extra calories a year -- 6-1/2 pounds

Ok. may I please clarify why I appear to have a bias against Dr. Phil that has caused me to cast a crtitical eye on his book?

When he helped Oprah with the beef trial in Texas and she repaid him by giving him a regular day on her show, I was very intrigued with his homespun homilies and direct answers and they were sponatneous and had common sense. When he first stated the Seven Rules I was impressed and posted them right here. then someone told me someone else originated them.

When he launched his own show I began tothink Oprah created a monster in the sense that riding on her coattails and his entertainment value he began to acquire his own little media empire and he got really cocky and nasty with some of his guests, often reducing them to tears and certainly embarrassing them. BTW: nothing new to ASD since 1996. This is not even "Tough Love. because it is not done in private and it doesn't matter that the guests expect to be riidiculed on national TV.

Dr. Phil, Montel, Jesse Sally et al don't practice my favorite form of therapy even though I was direct and outspoken to you on my personal diet philosophy. However I have earned both my stripes and my gripes in personal weight loss.

Assuming you are correct that even if Dr. Phil borrowed some basis for his ideas, he is giving good advice and it is helping--well good.
Whatever it takes.

But having seen that since Atkins died his diet has more products, more advertising and is even bigger business than ever--remembering how Jean
Nidech got muscled out of the company she started, Weight
Watchers..Watching the sunny Summerizing of Suzanne, the Pouting and
Shouting of Susan Powter I am skeptivcal of the entire diet industry.
It reminds me of

"Elmer Gantry" a medicine because it is just that--an hawkers' industry.

The people who we could turn to for help do not get sufficient grounding in nutrition in medical school. The argricultural lobby has the government under their thumb having to promote and endorse the Food
Pyramid. The drug and chemical companies and large food processors are running and ruining America.

So you may wonder since i am so against the huge and largeness of the diet field, what am I for? I already told you and you didn't like it or me because of it.

Well that's OK. You will find your own way and if Dr. Phil is holding the flashlight so you can see the light at the end of the tunnel, more power to you.

Maybe if I needed Dr. Phil, I would turn to him too but I am strongly of the opinion that he has a big appetite for big bucks and has seized on a time when obesity has overtaken America to capitalize on it.

I just have bad vibes about him and time will tell.

That's exactly what I do. I joined up at Costco last year and some of the things that *are* cheaper there (not everything is, I've found) are big packages of chicken breasts and fish. I package them up in zip lock bags in 4oz portions - either a whole breast fillet trimmed to 4oz or 4oz of the trimmings which I will use to make stir fries. All I have to do then is take one bag out of the freezer in the morning and decide what to cook when I get home. There is enough in the cupboard to make chicken every might interesting (as long as you like chicken to start with!)

Are you in a manic, bitchy phase today, Carol?

IN the past I did that, but I had a freezer I could use. I would buy my favorite fish, wrap each fillet in a peice of wax paper, then put them in a larger ziplock bag. I could eaily take them out one at a time to thaw and cook.

I should be able to get the freezer on Thursday or Friday. Then one more paycheck to start filling it up.
Meghan & the Zoo Crew
Equine and Pet Photography http://www.zoocrewphoto.com

It's just one page of the book, designed to illustrate the bad choices we make/made to get us fat. Dr. Phil's diet plan does not require any calorie counting. It is definitely not an elaborate plan and is not demanding or exacting. Before you criticize a diet plan, read the fricking book or you come off looking like an *idiot*. The last sentence in your post could have been lifted directly out of the book!

This is from the book, p. 185:

"If you hate counting calories, adding up points, calculating charbohydrates or fat grams, multiplying nutrient percentages, and having to remember confusing details about food groups, then you will love what I am going to show you about meal planning. All you have to do is take out a dinner plate and mentally divide it into four sections, or quadrants.

At each meal, fill one section with a protein, another section with a starch, and the remaining two sections with vegetables or a vegetable and a fruit. Another way to look at this is that one-fourth of your food comes frpm protein, one-fourth from starch, and the rest (half of your plate)
comes from low-calories, high-fiber plant-based foods, including fruits and vegetables."

From p. 190

"THE SEVEN-DAY HIGH-RESPONSE COST, HIGH-YIELD FOOD PLAN

Day 1: Sunday

Breakfast: Banana, oat bran (cooked), low-fat milk, coffee or tea
Snack: Apple, meal replacement beverages [i.e., protein shake (my comment)]
Lunch: Tuna, vegetable soupu, salad greens and slice tomato, whole-wheat roll (medium), reduced-fat salad dressing
Snack: Orange
Dinner: Sirloin steak, baked potato with fat-free sour cream, broccoli, green beans"

In between page 185-190, he explains what good portion sizes are and how to judge them. He also explains prior to p.185 what are the "good" foods.
There is absolutely nothing listed that I would disagree with.

Open your mind, Carol. It gets stale in there if you don't!

I never said it was disgusting. In fact, I was trying to say that I would never get to that point because I love chocolate so much. This is one item I will never be able to say good bye to like i did to mountain dew.

Sorry, I was kind confusing on that one.

Meghan & the Zoo Crew
Equine and Pet Photography http://www.zoocrewphoto.com

I like those too. They all help in those hormonal times. Now that mine have leveled off I can take the chocolate or leave it. Actually, when the whole TOM thing is done and gone, it's the best 10 days or so of my life. I feel great with energy and all, I don't crave any foods and only want to eat when I'm hungry, and my water retention and anxiety crap disappear...until
PMS reappears.

Interesting. Sounds like it is worth a try. Where do you find it? Is it on the regular candy aisle, or with the diet foods?

Meghan & the Zoo Crew
Equine and Pet Photography http://www.zoocrewphoto.com

Does it have aspertame? I'd love to try it if it doesn't. Was it at the grocery store? I've never seen it.

Meghan & the Zoo Crew
Equine and Pet Photography http://www.zoocrewphoto.com

That doesn't interest me. When I want chocolate, I'll have it less often and get the good stuff. I'll just have less amounts, less often.

You come across as a very bitter person where Dr. Phil is concerned.
How can you condemn a person that's helping so many people? The last time I looked this was a support group. You make it very unpleasant.
Goodbye.

Oh, yeah, Richard Simmons' is only in it for altruistic reasons. I still have a bridge for sale. Look at http://www.richardsimmons.com/homepage.asp

You have to pay to join his "clubhouse". If that's not "self serving", nothing is. Richard Simmons has taken up the cause of some of folks in 900 lb club only to abandon them if they refused to be exploited by him. I haven't seen Dr. Phil do that, yet.

Dr. Phil's tv show is something else. Those people who appear on the program know what they're getting themselves into. The book is something totally different from the tv. The advice he offers is very sound and by collecting it all in one book and explaining it in "hillbilly" terms, he may just get across to folks who are turned off by Richard Simmons phony concern and up-beat attitude.

But you've already made up your mind and that's ok. I just object to you're spreading falsehoods about something when you know nothing about it. Read the book, then you could discuss it rationally and intelligently.

No more than usual. If I had only been dieting for a few months or a few years, I might be more tolerant of all the bull shi---- people do about dieting because if they are sincere they will look upon it as liberation, not deprivation. you were never crazy about me Tonia and neither my weight nor that has changed in a few years.
if someone is sincere they will accept that changes must be made and they will make them. All else is rhetoric.

Jeri, she has her mind made up that anything Dr. Phil says is wrong and is not going to bother to find out what he's actually saying. I don't think she actually *read* the chart. She has some strange idea that what he's telling folks to do is not common sense (which is *not* common among the population) and is some weird strategy that is overly restrictive and requires eating at a overly low calorie level. There ARE *no* strict rules inDr. Phil's plan.

I'm done trying to tell her that she's totally wrong about what Dr. Phil's book says. For the beginnng dieters who want to know want to do and not spend months trying to figure out a strategy, I say check the book out of the library if you can and read it. The rest of us who have been here a while really won't learn anything new in it but it's nice to see someone putting forth sensible reasonable WOE advice. He doesn't use that term but makes a point that you do have to make it a permanently way of eating and not a diet. What might be useful to those of us (yeah, I'm one of them) who keep falling off the track, is his section on getting to the root causes of why we find it more comfortable to be overweight and even obese than buckle down and deal with it.

Don't be disappointed if some things never becomes disgusting to you. There are some things that I still like the taste of, but they aren't good to eat regularly. If they aren't going to trigger some type of feeding frenzy, I limit those foods to small amounts very infrequently. If it's something like chips or mac & cheese where once I start eating it I don't want to stop, I never touch the stuff.

There are plenty of foods I used to love and eat in mass quantities that I wouldn't touch with a 10 ft. pole now, pizza and fried chicken are two of them, chinese food (except home made) is another. For me, it's the salt in all of them. I'm more sensitive to the taste and the effects than I used to be.

I used to like cheesecake a lot too, but can't stomach the real thing anymore. I did find a suggestion on Mistress Krista's website (http://www.stumptuous.com/weights.html) to blend lowfat cottage cheese with a packet or two of splenda and I'll be damned if it isn't the next best thing to real cheesecake. A little walden farms sugar free chocolate syrup and I'm in heaven It's my evening snack that I eat to take my pills.

Since I try to avoid sugar, I don't eat regular chocolate candy, but I found some substitutions that work for the occasional chocolate candy craving.

I followed Dr. Phil's introduction of the diet, the seven rules etc etc. on TV when he roared on with it big time.

I no longer buy or borrow diet books nor do I plan to write one. If I did it might be pretty useful as through diet I have restored my thyroid function, minimized very serious chemical sensitivity, stabilized bi-polar disease and generally built myself a positive and satisfying life that I didn't have before taking control of eating habits.

I don't go for books on how to go from being in debt to becoming a miilionaire any more either, although David Bach's is pretty intriguing.

That said, I did not arrive here without help from ASD or reading books, but once I was able to take off the training wheels I've sometimes been able to cycle hands free for quite a stretch.

People are looking for answers in book after book instead of looking within. Most of them know why they are overweight and what is required.
they are impatient and don't want to let go of certain foods and certain ways.

I am sorry to learn that Richard Simmons also has feet of clay as I always admired him.

Many people go on the premise that they might as well get highly paid for diet advice because if they don't someone else will. I guess both these guys fit the profile.

I hope all is well with you generally and in the diet department too.

Hershey's SF stuff doesn't have aspartame, it's sweetened with some stuff called lactitol which has "a laxative effect" if you eat too much of it.

Same here. Especially with the pop and ice cream. I'm surprised I'm not a blimp!

I did quit drinking mountain dew last year. I do still drink some rootbeer, but not nearly as much pop as I used to. Until I quit the mountain dew, I never drank water, and now I average 4-6 glasses a day. I'm working on improving that. I drank 4 glasses at work today. I should be able to get at least 2-3 more at home.

Meghan & the Zoo Crew
Equine and Pet Photography http://www.zoocrewphoto.com

You know, that chart sort of reinforces the way my thinking was going yesterday when I was totally down about my stall. I was telling my trainer that I used to eat way more than I am now and didn't really gain weight.
Well, that wasn't true, now was it, or I wouldn't be in the great shape I am today. Those little "treats" can add up. I sometimes wonder how I used to eat the way I did...and with no exercise. That's something I definitely do not want to revisit about my younger days.

Thanks for the info.

You can take it a step further and add some marinade to the bag before it you freeze. As it thaws in the refrigerator throughout the day, the marinade will work it's magic and dinner will be that much more interesting.

I think I'd be sunk if I hadn't discovered Hersey's sugar free dark chocolate pieces. Two of them have 68 calories and totally satisfy my chocolate cravings, which have been massive lately probably due to hormones.
(Aunt Flo is still AWOL).

Hershey's Dark Chocolate Candy Sugar Free, 3.3 oz package, about 10 individual wrapped pieces.

"Ingredients: lactitol; chocolate; cocoa butter; milkfat; polydextrose;
contains 2% of less of : soy lecithin and PGPR, as emulsifiers; vanillin, and artificial flavor; and sucralose."

"Lactitol (a sugar substitute) is a slowly metabolized carbohydrate that generally causes only a small rise in blood glucose levels."

That came from the package. They have a website: www.herseys.com. But it wouldn't come up when I tried to go there, said server not found.

I've bought it in both Albertson's and United Supermarkets here in the candy section, of course.

This is pretty much where I am. I still like everything I ever did, but there are more healthy things now that I also like a lot and eat more often. I also will eat any of the fattening things on occasion, but I limit the frequency and the portion size. (Like last night I ate some buffalo wings. But we split an appetizer among 3 of us, so I only had 3 wings. And it's probably the second time I've had them in about a year.) I also try to be more selective with things like desserts (which I only consider eating when at a party or sometimes a restaurant). I taste and, if it isn't really super, I generally don't have any more. I try to save the calories for the really good instances of splurge food

If/when I see the Ghiardelli chocolates sold as singles I occasionally indulge. They don't sell them up here like that which is a darn good thing because I'd end up going nuts sometimes.

Sorry T, in my books, money grubbing Dr. Phil is the bad choice. he has now crowned himself king of the diet community when i would give the title to Richard Simmons for genuibe caring that is not self serving. I am very akti Phil becaus of how he embarasses subjects on national television.

Afew years ago i tried the Montignac Method which had two stages. Lindt
Excellence Chocolate was allowed on stage two. But this gal sometimes speed reads and only what she wants to see so I bought the Lindt bar which is 70% cocoa while on stage one.. I was in the habit of eating one small square from the bar and it was totally satisfying----for a while.
You can guess the rest.

At times it seems our entire neighborhood was on that diest as the
Lindt display was always sold out of "Execllence" but their other bars were not in short supply.
BTW. i never did make it to stage two legit

Excellent points. I am hoping to get a new freezer next week so I can start stocking up on some variety as well as make some larger batches of things and freeze them for smaller servings. I currently have a 6.0 cubic foot refrigerator with a tiny freezer in the top. So, I tend to buy most of my food on a daily basis (I work in a grocery store). So,
I do have a problem of purchasing food on a whim. It would be much nicer to have 6-10 different dinner choices, all healthy, so that I could pick something that feels good that day without making a bad choice.

I should be able to get a decent size chest freezer. I have a space for it, and I'm hoping to get it Thursday or Friday. Then I can go to
Costco and buy some fish fillets and chicken breasts. I can freeze them in seperate servings for later usage. It's alot cheaper, pretty convenient, and would make healthy eating a lot easier.

Meghan & the Zoo Crew
Equine and Pet Photography http://www.zoocrewphoto.com

Is Dr. Phil a psychologist or an accountant. He makes me soooo tired.

Losing weight needs to be simplified and made attractive.
That means a wide variety of wholesome, appetizing food, nice meals, minimal snacking, an optimistic attitude and a productive life. it helps to have a Whole Foods market nearby for focus on shopping for what you want that is actually what you need.

In the time spent with the calculator and all the supposition and numbers crunching (which you negate by cheating0 you could be doing something that's fun instead!

i think Dr. Phil is a blight and so are all the other elaborate diet specialists with their demanding, exacting programs.

Make lifestyle changes and moderations and stop looking for pie in the sky you can eat and still expect to lose weight.

With me, two pieces are quite enough. I make a point to bite each piece in half and savor each half, letting it slowly melt in my mouth instead of chewing it up quickly and swallowing it. I keep the bag in one of those hanging three wire basket sets in the middle basket which hangs over my head but not quite out of my reach. So I have to make a bit of an effort to get to it. It makes me think about my consumption of the goody. I don't even have it everyday but when I need a fix, it's there.