Book Review: The Four Day Win

We are programmed to go on fad diets that don’t work. We lose a few pounds, but then the body starts reserving fat as it enters starvation mode. Long-term weight loss cannot be achieved through this type of dieting. In fact, the opposite ends up happening and we actually gain weight while “dieting.”

Martha Beck describes this as famine brain in her new book, The Four Day Win. The more we tell ourselves we can’t have something, the more desirable it becomes. Extreme calorie reduction often leads to binge eating because we feel so deprived and the food cravings become so strong until we snap and return to our old habits.

Beck also explains how important the 7 steps of change are to losing weight effectively.

7 Steps of change:

1. Pre-contemplation
2. Contemplation
3. Preparation
4. Action
5. Maintenance
6. Relapse
7. Termination

Beck also says that skipping one or more of these steps of change is common and, therefore, is the reason so many people fail at dieting.

The main premise of Beck’s book The Four Day Win is how important four days really are. Four days is the amount of time it takes for a change to become natural. She suggests that we implement change in four-day increments and string them together until it becomes a lifelong habit. This works especially well with exercise. The first few days you may have trouble getting started and you may have to talk yourself into doing the exercise. But by the end of the fourth session, you will start to feel the results, and it will become a natural feeling for you to participate in the exercise every day.

Tips from The Four Day Win:

• Reduce your daily calories by 100 every four days until you see results.
• Connect your mind and body.
• Discover your dieting style.
• Change the way you think to change your body.
• Use past experiences and failures as reasons and motivation to change.
• Link four-day patterns together to develop healthy lifelong habits.
• Think yourself thin.
• Find support and define your social structure.
• Stop fad dieting and find “thinner peace”.

Beck’s book is a useful tool for anyone struggling with their weight and losing the battle by experimenting with fad diets and calories restrictions. Each chapter ends with a psychological exercise to help you lose your diet thinking and break old habits, while forming new healthy habits. She also teaches you how to get your brain and your body to work together and make weight loss a reality.

The other nice thing about The Four Day Win is the jump-start program Beck offers. If you are like most dieters, you want to see results immediately. With this program, you can. She tells you exactly what parts you need to read in advance to get started and see results within four days. She then advises that you return to the beginning of the book and work through the entire program to find lasting change and discover a new, healthier, and thinner you.

Print Article

Email Article

View All Articles

How to subscribe to feeds