The Amen Solution

The Amen Solution

INTRODUCTION

In my book Change Your Brain, Change Your Body, I wrote about how you can use your brain to improve the health of your heart, skin, energy, focus, memory, sexual function, and weight. In it, I revealed that based on our brain imaging work at the Amen Clinics with tens of thousands of patients from eighty different countries over the last twenty years, we have discovered two of the major secrets why most diets  don’t work. And contrary to what you might think, they have nothing to do with your lack of desire to lose weight or your willpower. In fact, for some people the harder they try to lose weight, the worse it gets.
The first secret is that most weight problems occur between your ears. So stapling your stomach may, in fact, be working on the wrong organ. Not to mention that ten years after gastric banding surgery, the success rate is a disappointing 31 percent. It is your brain that pushes you away from the table telling you that you’ve had enough, and it is your brain that gives you permission to have that second bowl of ice cream, making you look and feel like a blob. If you want a better body, the first place to always start is by having a better brain.
The second secret, based on our brain imaging work, is that there is not just one brain pattern associated with being overweight; there are at least five different patterns. Giving everyone the same diet plan will make some people better and a lot of people worse. Knowing about your own specific brain will make losing weight and keeping it off a whole lot easier.
The response to these revelations has been amazing, and the book vaulted onto the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for months. I knew people would respond to the message that their brain and weight are intricately connected and that if you boost your brain you can have a better body. What I  wasn’t prepared for, though, was the deluge of desperate requests from readers asking for more specific help on how to use their brains to lose their bellies.
Ever since Change Your Brain, Change Your Body hit cyberspace and store shelves, people have been calling and  e- mailing our clinics; posting comments on my blog; and talking to me at book signings, speaking engagements, and other events. What the overwhelming majority of them were begging for was a simple  step- by- step  brain- based program for weight loss.

The Amen Solution: The Brain Healthy Way to Lose Weight and
Keep It Off is that program.

I like to call it weight loss for thoughtful people. This is definitely not weight loss for dummies. As you know, there are a lot of dumb ways to try to lose weight. You may have even tried some of them.

Reprinted from THE AMEN SOLUTION Copyright © 2011 by Daniel G. Amen, M.D.
Published by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc.