If you are wondering about the Dr. Oz Diet book, You: On A Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management, you have come to the right place. Co-written by Dr. Michael Roizen, it was published in October 2006 and remains a popular diet book. Here is a summary of the 386-page book, why it remains a top selling diet book, and whether or not the principles and directives are effective methods for weight loss.
Who is Dr. Oz
In true Oprah fashion, another star is born and popularized from her interest and endorsement. Dr. Mehmet Oz can be added to the list of celebrity guests along with the likes of Bob Greene of the Best Life Diet program, Dr. Phil McGraw of The Ultimate Weight Solution, Suze Orman, financier, and many others. Dr. Oz has appeared on many television news shows as well, promoting his book and the idea that waist size is more critical a number than total body weight. As a surgeon and vice chairman of surgery at Columbia University, Dr. Oz is a trained medical doctor with years of experience practicing medicine. He is a professor at Columbia, medical director of the Integrated Medicine Center and director of the Heart Institute.
Textbook or Diet Book
Readers beware. The first section of Dr. Oz's diet book serves as an in-depth course on anatomy and physiology, biology, and exercise physiology. However, humor and wit are on your side as the authors show you the workings of the body in a fun and easy-to-read manner. Knowledge, the authors claim, is the key to addressing weight and health issues in hopes that smart choices will subsequently be made regarding food intake and exercise endeavors. Understanding how and why the body stores fat and burns fat in accordance with brain signaling, hormone activity, several organ functions, cellular genetics, and stress level is the focus of part one of the diet book. It is in this section of Dr. Oz's diet book that he makes the reader extremely aware of serious health risks related to the size of a person's waist. He states specifically that the goal for women is a waist circumference of less than 35 inches and men is no more than 40 inches.
The You Diet
After what hopefully is to become a clear and concise understanding of how the body works when it comes to weight management, you will now enter chapters outlining an action plan for its application and achieving those waist size goals. Remembering now that waist measurement is far more important to the authors than the scale number, altering body shape by losing belly fat is the goal here. The following guidelines create the You Diet in Dr. Oz's diet book:
- begin 14 day rebooting program: no trans fat, no saturate fat, limit sugar intake and refined flour
- at minimum, cut 100 calories a day from food intake and you will lose one pound each month.
- begin by measuring waist
- walk 30 minutes a day, no excuses
- find someone to follow diet with you
- clean out the kitchen and fill it with good, nutritious food
- eat three meals and at least one snack each day
- breakfast and lunch meals are encouraged to be similar from day to day because too much variety can lead to over-indulgence
- get seven to eight hours of sleep every night
- drink lots of water
Additional Information
There are also a number of recipes, quizzes, short tidbits of information, and diet plans throughout Dr. Oz's diet book. You are sure to find sidebars of facts in each chapter. Understanding food labels is also highlighted due to the diet's criteria of eliminating trans fat, saturated fat, sugars, and refined flour. For example, sugar is not always simply stated as sugar. Rather, the terms corn syrup or high fructose corn syrup is often used. Similar language variations are used for fat sources as well, such as hydrogenated oils or partially hydrogenated oils instead of trans fat. Take note, however, that as of 2006, all food companies are required to list the amount of trans fat in the nutrition facts section of the food label.
Does It Work?
Since the diet book is based on sound medical advice in terms of nutrition and fitness, the principles do work. One study conducted by the authors themselves proved that nine individuals lost a total of 12.75 inches and 59 pounds in the first week. After 14 weeks, those same nine individuals lost a total of 47 inches and 172 pounds. Be patient, however, because this is not a quick weight loss regimen unless strict compliance with each step of the diet is followed which may not be a realistic path for everyone. Changes in behaviors typically take time and do not occur overnight and last for the duration.
Other Resources
Along with You: On A Diet, there is an exercise DVD that can be purchased. It was developed with the support and guidance of Joel Harper, a well-known personal trainer to the celebrity crowd. It contains three fitness levels for the beginner, moderate exerciser, and regular exercisers and uses your own body weight for strength training. The goal is to increase muscle mass since it burns nearly fifty times more calories than fat mass. This leads to a higher metabolic rate and more calories burnt on a daily basis.
You can find both the book and the DVD at these locations:
You On a Diet: The Owner's Manual for Waist Management Book by Mehmet C. Oz and Michael F. Roizen
