The Complete Beck Diet Solution is one of the mainstays of my new eating plan, along with The Good Mood Diet. Judith Beck is a psychologist and the daughter of Dr. Aaron Beck, who pioneered cognitive therapy. I explained in my first Confessions of a Foodie Mom that I’m in a weight-loss group patterned on Beck’s work. In my blog about countering sabotaging thoughts, I explained that cognitive therapy focuses on challenging one’s assumptions and reframing one’s thoughts to better meet both the real situation and your goals.
Beck earlier published The Beck Diet Solution and the Beck Diet Solution Weight Loss Workbook. These books were unusual in that they allowed the dieter to choose any healthy diet program. Beck’s program is a skills-based program based on motivating yourself, planning ahead for different situations, and disciplining yourself to make and follow an eating plan, inflexibly at first and then gradually learning how to be flexible within a structure that works for you.
The new book, The Complete Beck Diet Solution, is still a skills-based program. Beck discovered, from her patients and readers, that many people were choosing a plan that was too low in calories, fiber, or protein to keep hunger and cravings at bay, or was lacking in other important nutrients. She consulted with nutritionists to come up with her “Think Thin Eating Formula, detailed in the new book. This plan calls for eating three meals and three snacks a day. Beck provides Think Thin Formulas for 1600, 1800, 2000, 2200 or 2400 calories per day and provides a formula for determining how many calories you need.
At first, however, Beck recommends not changing your eating habits much at all. The first stage of her program is spent developing habits of reading your reasons for wanting to lose weight daily, becoming aware of what you’re thinking when you want food and developing responses, eating slowly while sitting down, writing down what you plan to eat and sticking to it (even if that plan does not yet include measuring foods or following the Think Thin Formula). Beck believes it’s important to develop habits gradually so that change will last.
Once the ten Stage One Success Skills are in place, you move to Stage 2, following the Think Thin Eating Plan in controlled situations. Stage Three involves learning to follow the plan in challenging situations, such as eating out, when ill or stressed, when a friend or relative pressing you to eat something. Stage Four is entered once you have been following the plan inflexibly for a while and some of your thoughts about food have begun to change. Although you must accept that you must always watch what you eat, Stage Four presents times where you might “plan to change your plan” for vacations or other special days, or experiment with adding your snack calories to your meals or having Sunday brunch instead of breakfast, am snack and lunch. Stage Five is about maintaining your motivation for life.