Learn how to Lose Weight for the Final Time: Mind-Based mostly Options for Everlasting Weight Loss

Ditch Diet Mentality
Katrina’s book, How to Lose Weight for the Last Time: Brain-Based Solutions for Permanent Weight Loss, covers a lot of ground. With the experience she has accrued explaining medical terminology and concepts to her patients and their parents, she reviews some of the basic body chemistry of eating and hunger. This is important to understand because as part of her advice to readers is to give up flour and added sugar in their diets. The reason is to reduce the effects of frequent insulin release and allow the body to access its own fat stores. Katrina uses the words, “fat-adapted” and the goal of getting there is to mitigate the effects of feeling hungry. I can concur, when you are in that state on a low carbohydrate intake plan, you will not experience hunger as intensely.
Katrina goes on to explain why people over-desire food and have become totally dissociated from their natural sense of when to eat and when not to. She also discusses the way many people use food to distract, divert and entertain themselves from some uncomfortable emotions or traumatic events. The goal is to become aware of some of the bad habits we have acquired and start to change our thoughts and think with more intention about how to eat and drink.
All along, the author includes examples to illustrate her points and make them more accessible to her readers. I had heard and read many of the ideas in Katrina’s podcast, but I still found some new nuggets to explore. The chapters are long and many will require a re-read, particularly if the material is new to you. Reading her text could easily be supplemented by listening to the corresponding episode of her podcast, Weight Loss for Busy Physicians. (She has recorded over three hundred episodes and access is totally free.)
The point of this book, which has been lost on some of the folks who have given her low ratings, is not the actual protocol for the foods that you eat. Katrina does make some recommendations on dietary modifications that are similar to some other well-known diet plans. The difference here is the imperative to understand why one is overeating or over-desiring various foods. The recommendation is to parse out some on the unhelpful thoughts in our brains and the uncomfortable emotions that accompany them. Katrina makes several recommendations regarding how people might experience or process their negative emotions. Since everyone processes pain, anxiety, frustration, and fear differently, we may require different techniques to help us feel the feels.
With more self-awareness of the thoughts that start the cascade towards over-eating, we can start to change the thoughts and NOT over-eat. This process takes practice and Katrina makes several suggestions regarding journaling, meditation, and other techniques. Her recommendations are to plan your food intake, plan your exception items or treats, and then write down all your intake in a journal. Committing to your own plan becomes part of the program of learning to trust yourself and showing yourself the utmost love and respect.
For those of you looking for some magical solution or dietary alchemy, this is not the book or solution for you. If you can accept the premise that by listening to your body’s elemental hunger signals and reducing your over-desire for food, you will actually lose weight. The emotions that come up when you don’t succumb to the urges will be strong. The work to process and feel emotions will let them pass without the need to dive into a bag of chips or a sleeve of cookies.
I recommend Dr. Ubell’s book for those of you struggling with weight loss on the typical diet plans that fail to address the emotional aspects of eating. Typical diets rely on willpower and most of us know that willpower will eventually fail us. When we have a car accident or our friend dies or our kid fails a chemistry test, we don’t have to eat. As Katrina writes on p. 187, “Whatever the problem is, the solution is not in the fridge.”
The book is a great start for those who are looking for a thoughtful and compassionate approach to weight loss. Once you understand the concept of thinking with more intention, you can apply the principles to other areas of your life. Understand that you can think whatever you want right now, and those thoughts will help you attain better results. If you believe that you are a person who can lose weight, you will. What thought would you have to feel to become confident and committed? Katrina Ubell has quite a few suggestions to get you started.
Written by Joan Naidorf DO, author of Changing How We Think About Difficult Patients

It makes a lot of sense
Something about Katrina Ubell’s way of talking about weight loss has worked for me. She has done her research and I like the way she uses nature, theory and culture to write about obesity and the struggle with weight loss. She is sensitive to the stigma and shame that people have endured but her mission is to help people find some relief and freedom from losing and then gaining weight back. She has put together a good plan that feels workable not just for dieting but long term. Previously a pediatrician Katrina Ubell now has a professional weight loss coaching program for women physicians only although many of her resources are available for free on line. Her podcast is wonderful because she is a great motivational speaker and has a good sense of humor. Katrina is a weight loss coach and to my thinking she is not trying to be an expert doctor on obesity as much as she is a well read experienced weight loss coach and doctor who cares and can help. I’m not a medical doctor but reading her book and listening to her podcasts have helped me a great deal. I’m glad my doctor told me about her book.

Very useful
Seems like a few stick to the practices in this book you’d be healthy forever

Finally the most practical and best insight into losing weight, this book is very promising and I can’t wait to use all the tools to lead to my last and final journey to weight loss. Thank you for this book.

Dr Ubell has this program to help women physicians lost weight. But reading this book, and listening to her podcasts, I never felt like I am excluded from her wisdom and knowledge. She puts it all in here, with compassion and humour, helping the reader recognise her own reasons for not losing the weight, helping her make a plan that suits her own life.
I think this is because she addresses the emotional reasons we pack on the weight. I’ve been sugar and flour free for 5 months now and feeling fitter, healthier, stronger and happier – and the 6 kgs I’ve lost haven’t come back on!
Definitely recommend this author and her book and podcasts.