Most Popular Post? Oprah and Optifast!

I just perused my post list for the year, and by a huge margin, my comments about Oprah and Optifast generated the most hits. I'm really smiling, because she never fails to generate such fascination and has such a huge audience (primarily women) following her every move. Although I do not watch her show, I'm so proud for her and everything she has achieved. Oprah has encountered many struggles in her life -- particularly weight -- and has courageously faced them head on. She absolutely deserves all the praise and awards heaped upon her.

Many, many people saw the episode of her show in the late 1980s when she leaped out onto the stage after four months on Optifast, sporting figure-hugging size 10 jeans, sexy boots and a little red wagon filled with numerous plastic "fat blobs" the Optifast clinics keep for illustrative purposes. I saw pictures in magazines at the grocery store, and the pictures still circulate to this day. It was one of those "moments in time" that was captured and stays in a lot of people's memory. It is well-known that she put all the weight she lost through the Optifast program back on (and more), and many people use this as a good example of why the program is destined to fail.

Oprah readily admits she didn't exercise and resumed her poor eating habits after ending her Optifast program. So clearly, we know that the problem is not with Optifast, it revolves around the behavior of the individual when the program ends. I know at my clinic, they specifically target the physical behavioral changes necessary to keep your weight off, which include maintaining a steady exercise routine and following a balanced, reasonable calorie-count diet. This consists of breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner and perhaps another small snack. Occasional "splurges" are fine, because complete denial is inevitably going to lead to a binge and perhaps a total relapse and reversion back to poor eating habits, a sedentary lifestyle, and subsequent obesity. All of this maintenance takes work, and in some cases constant vigilance. So we discuss all of this in class quite a bit.

Now, I strongly believe there is emotional behavioral work we must do as well. This cannot be avoided, in my opinion, because most, if not all of us tend to be "comfort" or "emotional" eaters. We go straight to food -- salty, sugary, high fat and carb-laden - when we are anxious, upset, depressed, or just plain bored. Whether eating solves the problem is suspect. I know it only made my stress and anxiety ten times worse. Yet I kept on eating. I would hazard a guess Oprah is a "comfort" eater as well. I'm not sure about that, but it's definitely possible. And if this emotional behavior was not addressed while she was on the Optifast program (or immediately following it) through therapy or another avenue, that could also explain why she gained all her weight back.

I urge you to begin exploring the wealth of books out there written about emotional eating. Optifast, in my opinion, only gets you to the starting point of the very long stretch of your journey of weight maintenance. I think it's fairly safe to say none of us want to find ourselves -- after doing all the hard work, investing the money, and successfully completing the program -- right back into obesity. We're going to have to work on our emotional problems. It's just that simple. Some might feel uncomfortable with this, it may be foreign or scary. Overwhelming. But I urge you to start learning a little bit more as to why you overeat. This is so important to understand, so you can implement healthy ways to process your feelings that do not include binges and constant over-eating. So seek out some books on this topic. They can help tremendously.

There is also the avenue of talk therapy, which I highly recommend. The therapeutic style I prefer is Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) and it just so happens there is a book written for those trying to lose weight and maintain it utilizing CBT techniques. It's a New York Times Bestseller called, "The Beck Diet Solution: Think Like A Thin Person." A good friend from the Facebook Optifast Chat Support page recommended it, and several of us have gotten a copy.  Go to amazon.com and order it. I think you will find it helpful.

So in sum, I firmly believe that Optifasters are not all destined to "fail" because Oprah did. We can implement strategies she may not have to keep our weight off. The key: follow a routine, educate yourself about yourself, and implement behavioral tools to keep your weight off for good. No, this is not easy. But it gets easier as time goes on and you see results. I am going to follow this path and I hope you will too. Let's prove those skeptics wrong. How great is that?