Copyright © 2013 by Deepak Chopra

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the
Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC,
a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
www.crownpublishing.com

Harmony Books is a registered trademark and the Circle colophon

is a trademark of Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available upon request.

ISBN 978-0-7704-3721-3
eBook ISBN 978-0-7704-3722-0

Printed in the United States of America

Book design by Chris Welch

Jacket photograph by David Malan/Getty Images

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

First Edition

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 Contents

OVERVIEW
AWARENESS AND WEIGHT LOSS
Why This Will Work For You  3
The Mind-Body Connection  21

PART ONE
THE CHOPRA SOLUTION
Change Your Story, Change Your Body  37
Purity, Energy, and Balance  58
“What Should I Eat?”  86
The Ayurvedic Way  88
The Six Tastes at Every Meal  94
Expanded Flavors  107
The Earliest Prevention  119

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 PART TWO
RAISING YOUR CONSCIOUSNESS
The Joy of Awareness  125
Self-Regulation: Let Your Body Take Care of You  151
Emotional Well-Being: It’s a Choice  180
Lightness of Soul  203

PART THREE
RECIPES FROM THE CHOPRA CENTER
KITCHEN
Light Breakfast  245
Appetizers  247
Soups  250
Entrées and Side Dishes  261
Salads  272
Condiments, Dips, and Sauces  278
Desserts  284
Beverages  288

Acknowledgments  291

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 Why This Will Work
for You

A
t this moment there’s a groundswell that is changing peo-
ple’s lives. It can be sensed from the headlines. A former
president, shocked by suffering an early heart attack, an-
nounces that he has become a vegan. That’s an amazing statement,
and to back up his conversion, Bill Clinton tells everyone how good
he feels—and looks. On another front, an extensive study in Spain
finds that people who eat a Mediterranean diet high in fish, nuts, and
olive oil can reduce the incidence of heart attacks by one-third. This
is the biggest dietary finding in years. Everyone who was weaning
themselves off red meat is medically vindicated.
The groundswell is moving on many other fronts. The toxins pres-
ent in processed and manufactured food are less and less acceptable.
Organic has become a mainstream word. More people than ever are
becoming vegetarians, a lifestyle whose benefits have been known for
a long time. (In one poll, half of British women described themselves
as basically vegetarian.) In a sustainable world, there’s no room for
the polluting effect of pesticides and herbicides. People are waking
up to a new reality, and a completely new way of eating has quickly
emerged.
I got swept up in the groundswell about five years ago. I was
­already a “good” eater. My diet didn’t include much red meat, and

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 4 What Are You Hungry For?

I had long ago curbed obvious toxins like alcohol and tobacco. I en-
joyed what I ate, and I ate what I enjoyed. But as I looked around at
the medical literature, new findings were emerging every day. All
kinds of links were being made between sugar and obesity, alcohol
and disturbed sleep rhythms, simple carbohydrates and diabetes—
and many of these findings affected being overweight.
Evidence was piling up that pointed in only one direction. I needed
to find the ideal diet, because there was every good reason to. Only
habit and neglect were keeping me from maximizing the connection
between food, body, and mind.
Not to mention that I was carrying 20 extra pounds.
Despite my “good” eating, I had become a statistic, joining the
two-thirds of Americans who are either overweight or obese. I be-
came a statistic despite the fact that I had medical training, moti-
vation, reasonably good habits, no major toxins, and access to any
food I wanted. I also knew that going on a diet was futile—look at
the numerous studies that prove, over and over, that the rebound ef-
fect makes you regain the weight you lost on your diet, and then 5 or
10 pounds more. The surplus pounds are your body’s way of saying,
“You tried to deprive me. Don’t do it again.”
My solution was to adopt the ideal diet, and I did it more or less
overnight. There was no reason not to, given all the medical evidence
I knew.

I eliminated all processed foods.

I ate the purest foods, always natural, as much organic as possible.
Already a nondrinker, I also eliminated fermented foods like
cheese.
I gave up refined white sugar.
I drastically cut back on salt.
I gave up red meat, mostly eating chicken and fish but moving in
the direction of being a vegetarian.

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 Why This Will Work for You 5

I drank pure water.

I paid attention to getting proper sleep.

Because everything is connected, something like getting a good

night’s sleep was part of my new way of eating. Lack of sleep throws
off the balance between two hormones (leptin and ghrelin) respon-
sible for making you feel hungry and full. People who don’t sleep
well overeat easily when their body stops sending the right hormonal
messages. Belly fat disturbs the same hormones. And what you end
up with is a self-perpetuating cycle that is not only unhealthy but
potentially dangerous.
I didn’t worry that I was becoming a purity fanatic. Nothing in
my new eating was imposed. I wasn’t motivated by worry or fear.
The simple fact is that “normal” eating, American style, has gone to
unhealthy extremes. The average American consumes 150 pounds of
sugar a year, a grotesque amount of empty calories that wreak havoc
on insulin levels and blood sugar. As for our addiction to processed
foods, which account for 70 percent of what Americans eat, take
a look at your local supermarket. There are whole aisles devoted to
cookies, crackers, other snack foods, soda pop, frozen pizza, and ice
cream. Economics rule, and if those foods didn’t sell in abundance,
they wouldn’t get all that shelf space.
What’s not extreme is to eat naturally, based on the best medical
knowledge available. That’s what the groundswell has been all about.
Attention must be paid, and for the longest time our society hasn’t
been paying attention to the distorted way we eat.
I was pursuing “awareness eating.” All the steps I took made me
feel very good. My body felt lighter, even before I dropped 19 pounds,
which came off effortlessly. I stopped doing unconscious things like
taking cell phone calls during a meal—why not fully enjoy what
you’re eating? I didn’t deprive myself either. Every meal was satisfy-
ing because my eating was now in tune with my body, and this in

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 6 What Are You Hungry For?

turn raised my mood level. Although I’ve always been an energetic

person, I had energy and buoyancy as never before.
But the most gratifying thing was other people’s response. When I
talked about awareness eating, they nodded. Most had already been
going along the same path that I was on. The groundswell was real
and growing. Standing back, I saw that a tipping point had been
reached. Collective consciousness had gotten the message.
When I sat down to write this book, I had confidence that many
more people want to walk this new path. They didn’t need to be
coaxed into new beliefs, because healthy eating is already their goal.
Yet certain things hold them back.

Bad habits and old conditioning.

Fear of change and family pressure not to change.
A stubborn belief that the next diet will work.
Discouragement about being overweight.
A history of not losing weight.
Hunger cravings, especially for salty, sweet, and fatty foods.
Time pressure, which makes it easy to reach for processed foods
and snacks, and to make a quick stop at McDonald’s.

It’s a formidable list. These are huge obstacles in the lives of mil-
lions of people. In fact, it’s amazing that a new way of eating has
managed to become so popular—just look at television advertising,
which uses buzzwords like natural, light, and nutritious to sell almost
nothing but processed food, while the advertising for fresh fruits and
vegetables, whole grains, and organic produce is next to nil.
To get past the obstacles that have led to your weight gain, whether
it’s a little or a lot, I’m not going to repeat the same advice about
healthy eating that has existed for decades. The advice is all good.
What’s missing is how to change. Awareness is the key, because we
have all been trained through massive conditioning to damage our
bodies in the following ways:

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 Why This Will Work for You 7

Eating unconsciously, not caring what’s in our food.

Losing control over our appetite.
Opting for bigger and bigger portions.
Using food for emotional reasons, e.g., to soften the stress of daily
life.
Reaching for the fastest food that will satisfy our cravings.

All of these obstacles begin in one place: the mind. The body is a
physical reflection of the choices you make over a lifetime. Knowl-
edge is important, but adding more good advice isn’t the solution to
healthy eating. The solution is to transform your awareness.
I decided to show people how transformative awareness works,
how they can achieve it, and why. Otherwise, the best advice, even
when it leads to improved eating, will still leave us enclosed in limited
notions of our bodies. Being a rigidly “good” eater who follows a set
of rules and never deviates isn’t a happy situation, either. But with
transformed awareness, all of your ingrained, self-destructive behav-
iors can be changed easily. You can’t control what you aren’t aware
of. If you had a rock in your shoe, you’d remove it immediately. The
signals of pain tell you instantly that something is wrong. Eating
poorly isn’t like that. More often than not, it sends no pain signals,
and the harmful effects often happen invisibly, gradually, and out of
sight. You must gain a new level of awareness in order to notice what’s
going wrong inside you. Only then can you proceed to change it.
So, if you’re overweight or feeling sluggish, or if your energy levels
are low or you are unhappy about your body image, remembering
how much better you looked and felt when you were younger, this
book is for you. It will bring many surprises and discoveries—chief
among them is that ideal weight is the most natural state you can be
in. Your body can become your ally in finding a better way to live,
reaching beyond weight loss. Awareness reveals many unexpected
solutions, what I call applied wisdom.
Let’s get down to it—the journey is exciting, and you can join the

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 8 What Are You Hungry For?

groundswell with real enthusiasm, knowing how much better you

will look and feel.

Eating, Weight, and Hunger

If you want to return to your ideal weight, two choices face you. You
can go on a diet or do something else. This book is about that some-
thing else. Dieting involves the wrong kind of motivation, which is
why it rarely leads to the desired goal. You are taking the route of
self-denial and doing without. Every day on a diet involves struggling
against your hunger and fighting for self-control. Is there a more un-
satisfying way to live?
Weight loss needs to be satisfying in order to succeed—this is the
“something else” that works after dieting has failed. If you bring the
body’s hunger signals back into balance, your impulse to eat becomes
your ally instead of your enemy. If you trust your body to know what
you need, it will take care of you instead of fighting back. It’s all
about getting the messages straight that connect mind and body.
Medically, I was trained to analyze hunger in terms of the rise and
fall of certain hormones. Hunger is one of the most powerful chemi-
cal messages sent by the body to the brain. It shouldn’t happen that
a person can feel hungry right after eating a meal or that having a
snack in the afternoon should lead to a second snack or a third. But
I’ve experienced these things—as have millions of people—which
means that the experience of hunger can exist even when the need for
food doesn’t.
It’s this experience of hunger that you need to change when you
find yourself overeating. Cravings and false hunger aren’t the same as
giving your body the fuel it needs. Your body isn’t like a gas-guzzling
car. It’s the physical expression of thousands of messages that are
being sent to and from the brain. In the act of eating, your self-image

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 Why This Will Work for You 9

is involved, along with your habits, conditioning, and memories. The

mind is the key to losing weight, and when the mind is satisfied, the
body quits craving too much food.
A mind-body approach will work for you because it asks you for
only one thing: Find your fulfillment. To be fulfilled is something that
food alone can’t do. You must nourish:

• the body with healthy food

• the heart with joy, compassion, and love
• the mind with knowledge
• the spirit with equanimity and self-awareness

With awareness, all of these things become possible. But if you

neglect them, they move further and further out of reach.
It sounds like a paradox, but to lose weight, you need to fill your-
self. If you fill yourself with other kinds of satisfaction, food will no
longer be a problem. It was never meant to be. Eating is a natural way
to feel happy. Overeating isn’t. For centuries life has been celebrated
at feasts, and some of these celebrations, such as wedding banquets
and retirement dinners, can be the highlight of a person’s life. What
child doesn’t brighten up when the birthday cake appears? But the
delight that food brings makes overeating a peculiar and unique
problem. Feeling happy, which is good for you, morphs into some-
thing that’s bad for you.
At this moment you fall somewhere on the sliding scale that con-
nects food with happiness:

Normal eating Overeating Cravings Food Addiction

Eating normally feels good.

Overeating feels good in the moment but leads to bad results in
the long run.

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 10 What Are You Hungry For?

Giving in to cravings doesn’t feel good at all—remorse, guilt, and

frustration set in almost immediately.
Being addicted to food brings suffering, declining health, and total
lack of self-esteem.

The slippery slope to becoming overweight starts with something

that’s actually positive: the natural goodness of food. (You can’t say
the same about drugs and alcohol, which can be toxic substances
even when a person isn’t addicted to them.) Food nourishes us, and
when eating goes wrong, we are torn between short-term pleasure
(such as a delicious bite of chocolate ice cream) and long-term pain
(the many drawbacks of being overweight for years at a time).
So why does normal eating start to slide into overeating? The
simple answer: lack of fulfillment. You start overeating to make up
for a lack somewhere else. Looking back on my medical residency,
when I was still in my twenties, I can see now how bad eating habits
insinuate themselves. I’d come home from a grueling shift at the hos-
pital feeling stressed out. My mind was still filled with a dozen cases.
Some patients were still in jeopardy. What awaited me at home was
a loving wife and a home-cooked meal.
In terms of getting enough calories, sitting down to dinner met
all the requirements. You had to look at the human situation to
see the hidden problems. I had hit the coffee machine and grabbed
snacks on the run at work. From lack of sleep I didn’t really notice
what I was eating. The minute I walked in the door I usually had a
drink, and there was a half-empty pack of cigarettes lying around
somewhere.
In the seventies I was a normal working male following the same
habits as every other young doctor I knew. I counted myself ex-
tremely fortunate to have such a loving wife and two beautiful babies
at home. But the ravenous way I dug into a nourishing home-cooked
dinner, combined with all the other signs of stressed eating, was set-

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 Why This Will Work for You 11

ting a pattern that was desperately wrong. Ironically, even back then
I considered myself pretty aware.
What turned the corner was becoming much more aware—the
solution I’m proposing in this book. No matter how much it gets
abused, the body can restore balance. The first rule is to stop in-
terfering with nature. In its natural state, the brain controls hunger
automatically. When your blood sugar falls below a certain level,
messages are sent to an almond-sized region of the brain known as
the hypothalamus, which is responsible for regulating hunger. When
it receives messages of decreased blood sugar, your hypothalamus
secretes hormones to make you feel hungry, and when you’ve eaten
enough, the hormones reverse, making you no longer hungry. This
feedback loop between blood and brain operates on its own, as it has
for millions of years. Any animal with a spinal cord (vertebrate) has a
hypothalamus, which makes sense, because hunger is so basic.
But in humans, hunger can get interfered with quite easily. The
way we feel emotionally can make us ravenous or unable to eat at
all. We can be distracted and forget to eat, or we can be obsessed
and think about food all day. However, we are always in search of
satisfaction. There are lots of things you can fill up on besides food.
Desire comes from needs, starting with the most basic ones:

Everyone needs to feel safe and secure.

Everyone needs to feel nurtured.
Everyone needs to feel loved and appreciated.
Everyone needs to feel that their life is relevant and meaningful.

If you have filled these needs, food will be just one delight out of
many. But countless people turn to overeating to substitute for what
they really want. It becomes a game of switch-up, and often they
don’t even see what’s happening. Is that the situation you find your-
self in? Here are some common indicators.

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 12 What Are You Hungry For?

You don’t feel secure unless you are dulled by eating too much.
Dullness brings a kind of calm that lasts a short while.

You don’t feel nurtured except when your taste buds are over­
stimulated with sugar, salt, and fat.

You don’t feel loved and appreciated, so you turn eating into “giv-
ing myself some love.”

Your life lacks meaning, but at least when you eat, the emptiness
inside can be ignored for a little while.

If you stop focusing so hard on diet and calories, you can see that
the story of overweight in America is the story of missed fulfillment.
We have the best foods in the world at our disposal, but we gorge
on the worst. We have blessed opportunities to grow and evolve, but
instead we feel empty.
My goal is to bring you to a state of fulfillment. Once that begins
to happen, you will stop eating for the wrong reasons. The solution
is simple but profound: To lose weight, every step of the way must be
satisfying. You don’t have to psychoanalyze yourself; you can stop
obsessing about your body and dwelling in disappointment and frus-
tration. There is only one principle that applies: Life is about fulfill-
ment. If your life isn’t fulfilled, your stomach can never supply what’s
missing.

“What Am I Hungry For?”

Everyone’s life story is complicated, and the best intentions go astray

because people find it hard to change. Bad habits, like bad memories,
stick around stubbornly when we wish they’d go away. But you have a

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 Why This Will Work for You 13

great motivation working for you, which is your desire for happiness.
I define happiness as the state of fulfillment, and everyone wants to
be fulfilled. If you keep your eye on this, your most basic motivation,
then the choices you make come down to a single question: “What
am I hungry for?” Your true desire will lead you in the right direc-
tion. False desires lead in the wrong direction. You can take a simple
test to prove this to yourself: The next time you go to the refrigerator
for something to eat, stop for a second. What’s making you reach for
food? There are only two answers:

1. You’re hungry and need to eat.

2. You’re trying to fill a hole, and food has become the quickest
way to do that.

Modern medicine has quite a lot of knowledge about the “trig-

gers” that set off the impulse to eat. Your body secretes hormones
and enzymes connecting the hunger center in your brain with the
stomach and digestive tract. When you were a baby, this was the
only kind of trigger you responded to. You cried because you were
hungry. Now the reverse might be true: When you feel like crying,
you get hungry.
Over a lifetime, we create new triggers that a baby could never
anticipate. Depression is a well-known trigger for overeating. So
are stress, sudden loss, grief, repressed anger—and there are many
others. Which ones are you most vulnerable to? You probably have
only a vague idea. Most people are unaware when their eating behav-
ior is being triggered, because triggers are often unconscious—that’s
what makes them so powerful. You respond automatically without
thinking.

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 14 What Are You Hungry For?

Quiz:
What Triggers You to Overeat?

The most common triggers for overeating appear in the following

checklists. Some are easier to overcome than others. Look at the lists
and check the most common causes that make you eat even when
you’re not hungry. Mark as many items as you feel apply to you.

Group A: I tend to overeat if

___ I’m busy or distracted at work.
___ I’m rushed and on the go.
___ I’m tired. I haven’t had enough sleep.
___ I’m with other people who are eating.
___ I’m out at a restaurant.
___ I’m in front of the TV or computer and need something to do
with my hands.
___ I have a plate of food in front of me, and I feel I must clean my
plate.

Group B: I tend to overeat if

___ I’m depressed.
___ I’m lonely.
___ I’m feeling unattractive.
___ I’m feeling anxious or worried.
___ I’m having negative thoughts about my body.
___ I’m under stress.
___ I want to be comforted.

Rating Yourself
If all or most of the items you checked come from Group A, your trig-
gers are the easiest to overcome. You need to pay more attention to
your eating habits, but that should be relatively easy. You can catch

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 Why This Will Work for You 15

yourself eating when you’re not hungry because your main problem
is distraction. Once you focus on one thing at a time—the meal in
front of you—you will bring inattentive eating under control.
If all or most of the items you checked come from Group B, you
are hungry for something else besides food, and paying attention to
those things will be your best way to lose weight. One important
thing is not going on a diet. Your pathway isn’t deprivation; it’s to find
satisfaction in things other than eating.

Action Step:
Notice Your Trigger Before You Eat.

Now that you know your triggers, you can monitor them. You don’t
have to fight against your hunger, just give your brain enough time
to make a choice. Instead of robotically reaching for food, which is a
reaction that comes automatically, let yourself find a way to choose
what you really want. At first, this involves a simple moment of
mindfulness, or self-awareness, as follows:
Any time you are about to eat outside mealtime, go through the
following simple steps:

1. Pause and take a deep breath.

2. Ask yourself if your hunger is being triggered by a familiar pat-
tern, such as feeling bored, restless, or sad, or wanting a distraction.
You now know some of your most common triggers, so see if any of
them are involved.
3. Once you’ve identified a trigger, ask yourself if you really need
to eat. Maybe you can find an alternative activity, one that simply
postpones reacting to your trigger, such as:

Doing a household chore.

Calling a friend.

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 16 What Are You Hungry For?

Checking your e-mails and answering some saved ones.

Reading a book.
Drinking a glass of water.

Any harmless diversion will do. Your goal is to insert a pause

before you automatically react to a trigger. If you still feel hungry,
go ahead and eat. But get in the habit of noticing your triggers this
way—it’s a basic step toward overcoming them and giving yourself
more freedom to choose.
I promised myself one thing before addressing the problem of over-
eating: The solution should work here and now. A great fault in diet-
ing is that you make yourself unhappy today on the promise that you
will be happier tomorrow. But desire doesn’t work that way. “What
am I hungry for?” exists in the present moment. The impulse you feel
can be simplified into a few basic categories:

You’re hungry for food.

You want to fill an emotional hole.
You want to fill a hole in your mind (such as low self-esteem, bad
body image, or a sense of failure and frustration).
To these I would add a fourth impulse, which is spiritual. You want
to fill a hole in your soul.

These are strong motivations, fueled by desire. Once you turn de-
sire in the right direction, real transformation can take place. We
all follow the path of desire every day. The impulse to get more out
of life is natural and deep-seated. In this book we’ll find out exactly
what you’re hungry for. Once you know, you will have a clear path
that makes total sense in terms of mind, body, and spirit. Here’s how
you’ll be transformed:

You will eat only when you are hungry for food.

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 Why This Will Work for You 17

You won’t eat when what you’re hungry for is emotional, in terms
of comfort, security, love, bonding with others, or a feeling of joy.

You won’t eat when what you are hungry for is a life that is rel-
evant and meaningful, where you have a purpose and can meet your
goals. These are needs of the mind.

You won’t eat when what you’re hungry for is spiritual, such as
lightness of being or a higher vision of the soul.

Dieting: A False Escape

Some readers will say to themselves, “This all sounds well and good,
but frankly, I just want to know what to eat and what not to eat.” I
know exactly how that goes. Crash diets offer the ultimate tempta-
tion, a quick fix. But look at what really happens:
Karen is an attractive middle-aged woman who stands in front of
her mirror, frowning at what she sees. She wants to lose 10 pounds be-
fore her daughter’s wedding, which is two weeks away, but Karen isn’t
discouraged. When she was twenty, she could lose 5 pounds over the
weekend by going on a juice fast. If it worked then, it will work now.
And it does, almost. On her daughter’s wedding day Karen has lost
7 pounds. She nearly starved to get there, but now she can celebrate.
What she doesn’t realize is that she’s fallen into a trap. Her old eating
habits will return soon, and so will the extra pounds. You can see her
standing at the fridge the next day, as the following telegrams arrive
at the mind-body connection:

Thank goodness the wedding’s over. I can relax.

I worked hard. I deserve to treat myself.

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 18 What Are You Hungry For?

Look at all the leftovers.

I can’t starve myself forever.
I can’t let this good food go to waste.

There is little chance, with these messages urging her on, that
Karen will hold back from a nice big chunk of leftover wedding cake.
Excuses come to mind every time you decide to overeat. The fact
that Karen lost weight in a two-week sprint to the finish line means
little compared to a lifetime of eating habits that keep adding extra
pounds.
America is crazed over dieting. We’d all like to find a magic bullet
that will solve years of bad habits. This has led to a bipolar condition
in this country. At one extreme, McDonald’s is the epitome of fatty,
calorie-laden fast food, with 11 percent of all meals being eaten at
chain restaurants, while at the other extreme most of the country is
either on a diet or cheating on one. Crash dieting involves a voluntary
form of amnesia. You forget what didn’t work yesterday to plunge
into the next gimmicky fad.
When you stand back, it’s quite strange that people do exactly
the opposite of what they know is good for them. But you can see
it happening all around. Someone might say, “I’m trying to lose ten
pounds,” but then an hour later they reach for bread and butter in
a restaurant as soon as they sit down and then end the meal with a
warm brownie à la mode “just this once.” A report from the Centers
for Disease Control in 2013 found a small cutback in calories among
schoolchildren—between 4 and 7 percent—but no weight loss, which
was explained by a decrease in physical activity. Although American
consumption of fast food fell by about 2 percent in the past decade,
the people who were ranked as obese actually gained weight over the
same period. One large online support group for people who have
lost a large amount of weight takes the same “monkey on your back”
approach as Alcoholics Anonymous. Overeating is a disorder that al-

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 Why This Will Work for You 19

ways threatens to return. Once you know that you are an overeater,
you are resigned to living with cravings and must keep constant vigi-
lance to avoid succumbing. Thus every calorie must be counted every
day, and relapses are omens of impending loss of control. I am not
judging this approach, but my intention is to find an alternative to
the “monkey on your back.”
What has worked for me is steady focus: I kept my eye on what
I really wanted. First and foremost, I wanted to get back to normal,
healthy eating—and never slip again. We all know that the second
part is the real issue. Doctors call it noncompliance. The patient is
told the right thing to do—eat a balanced diet with lots of fruits and
vegetables, cut back on red meat, exercise regularly, give up smoking
and excessive alcohol—but after a few days, weeks, or months, old
habits are back in the saddle. Good advice about weight loss is every-
where, yet 70 percent of the adult population is either overweight or
obese.
People aren’t deliberately self-destructive. We don’t follow good
advice because, frankly, overeating makes us feel better than depriv-
ing ourselves or engaging in strenuous activity. A bucket of buttered
popcorn triggers powerful, primitive brain mechanisms; the pros-
pect of jogging three miles doesn’t. Sharing dessert with your friends
at a cozy restaurant feels convivial and comforting; running on a
treadmill by yourself at the gym doesn’t.

Dieters keep doing more of what never worked in the first place.

The slogan “Diets don’t work” has been with us for decades, and
it’s absolutely true. Every long-term study has shown that less than 2
percent of dieters manage to lose a significant amount of weight (20
pounds or more) and keep it off for two years. We aren’t a nation that
totally lacks willpower. Failure is built into the whole diet scheme.
What is a typical dieter’s first impulse? To deprive themselves. They

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 20 What Are You Hungry For?

drastically cut their calorie intake. They fight against their cravings
and vow to subsist on something like wheatgrass juice for a week.
But all that deprivation creates another hole. Instead of feeling sad
or lonely or unloved, you feel sad, lonely, unloved and starving at the
same time.
I fully understand why people deprive themselves. A physical prob-
lem must require a physical solution. The extra pounds are visible
every time you look in the mirror. The invisible holes aren’t. Also, if
overeating stands for lack of self-control, depriving yourself is a burst
of super self-control. “I hate eating broccoli with lemon juice, but I’m
forcing myself to.” But added misery only compounds the problem.
Keep in mind the classic moment in the movie The Producers when
Zero Mostel can’t calm down a gasping, panicky Gene Wilder.
“I’m hysterical! Once this starts I can’t stop!” Wilder cries.
Not knowing what to do, Mostel throws a glass of water in his
face. Wilder freezes in place.
“I’m hysterical! And now I’m wet!” he shrieks.
Still not knowing what to do, Mostel slaps him in the face.
Wilder wails, “I’m in pain! I’m wet! And I’m still hysterical!” A
good reminder that making yourself feel worse never works. So pur-
sue the next fad diet if you want to—you can even pursue it while you
read this book, because once you see that fulfillment is better than
depriving yourself, crash dieting will no longer be a temptation. The
fact that weight loss can be connected with increasing happiness is
the secret to why my approach works.

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