Listen & Lose With The CD Diet

Learn how losing weight can be as easy as hitting the play button on your CD player.

I’m sure you’ve noticed: life, as we know it, is conspiring to make us fat. Weight loss can seem futile in the face of all the powerful forces beyond our control, from super-size me portions to crazy-busy schedules that leave little time for exercise and healthy food preparation.

When you consider that global warming may also be making us fat, the situation can feel down-right hopeless. Against one conspiring force too many, curling up on the couch with a pint of Hagen Daaz may seem like the only sensible strategy, especially if your genes are also against you.

No joke, my favorite weatherman says global warming is probably contributing to our gross national weight gain. The math is disheartening -- if the world were suddenly warmer by just one degree Celsius, each of us would require 16 fewer calories a day. Not that the weather’s that predictable, but if it were let’s say, seasonably warmer by one degree this year, you’d need to consume 5840 fewer calories or by year’s end, you’d be 1.5 pounds heavier.  Global warming alone could pack on 10 pounds each decade.

I’m underscoring depressing realities not to further depress you, but to join many of you where you’re at – kinda hopeless about weight loss. Nobody needs another upbeat feature on weight-loss. Of all the depressing realities, hopelessness itself is the biggest obstacle to permanent weight loss and needs attention before you can take effective action. Choosing a weight-loss strategy or a fitness plan when you expect yourself to fail is pointless.  Why bother?

If you’ve tried and failed on more than a handful of diets, you are well acquainted with hopelessness. It’s reasonable to expect a new weight-loss plan would only deliver more of the same.  But hopelessness can feel safer than getting your hopes up and having them dashed again.

I can recite the grim weight-gain statistics, but as a psychotherapist who specializes in eating disturbances, the range of eating issues falling short of eating disorders, from yo-yo-dieting to compulsive overeating, I prefer to renew hope. Of course, you can choose to abandon all hope after reading this article; that’s your prerogative. But before you make a beeline for the ice cream scoop, here’s some hopeful news: resurrecting hope and losing weight can be as effortless as flipping a switch, even in the face of global warming.

Seriously, many of my clients have been losing weight and keeping it off by hitting the play button on their CD players. OK, some of them put on headphones first. Losing weight can be as easy as listening to a weight-loss recording 15-20 minutes a day. 

The CD Diet is a program I developed with my clients’ encouragement to ensure their long-term success. When I first lay out my weight-loss recommendations, you can almost see cartoon light bulbs shining over their heads. But that illuminating moment doesn’t last. Repeating my recommendations over and again, however, helps keep them fresh in mind. CDs, it turns out, are an efficient, cost-effective way to refresh these positive suggestions. I don’t have to keep repeating myself, and they don’t have to keep paying me.

While the CD Diet sounded too good to be true to Mindy, an extreme dieter who once trained for a marathon on 600 calories a day, figured she had nothing to lose… but weight.   Crash dieting wasn’t working – she’d lost some and gained more on every diet under the sun.  Her rigorous exercise regimen was only fueling her ravenous appetite. So she invested in my weight-loss CDs, and dropped two pants sizes in three months. She was delighted to discover that she could listen and lose without counting carbs or points or calories, without feeling deprived as she had on every weight-loss plan from Atkins to the Zone. Without consciously working at it, she found herself choosing fresh fruits over processed snack foods and altering her exercise plan to include more pleasurable activities, like tennis. 

Not every client is as successful as Mindy, and some certainly, need more personalized help than a recording can provide. However, many CD buyers find listening to “Eat to Live & Lose Weight,” among my other CDs, reliably jumpstarts their weight loss, if not spurs them on to their desired weight.  The CD Diet works because it elicits three essential responses that most dieters overlook: relaxation, hope & positive thinking.

1. RELAXATION

When you listen to my CDs, you’re eliciting the relaxation response – you’re purposefully slowing your heart rate, your breathing, and your pulse. When you’re relaxed, you’re calmer and wiser and it’s easier to make healthier choices, like choosing a handful of peanuts over a Snicker’s bar. When you’re stressed, you’re more impulsive and, well, stupid. Stressed to the max, three Snickers bars can seem an entirely sensible snack.  

2. HOPE

Just as important, listening to a CD you can borrow hope when you’re feeling little or next to none.  It’s one thing to read a diet book and find inspiration in a new plan, but people don’t generally have the time or the inclination to reread the same book every day.  Most, however, have 15-20 minutes to listen to my voice once, even twice a day. You may not believe you can lose weight, but I do, and hearing me say so resurrects hope. Even after you turn off the stereo, my voice goes with you and continues to inspire you to make healthy choices throughout the day.

3. POSITIVE THINKING

The power of suggestion is not to be underrated. The mind is a sponge for both negative and positive suggestions. When your friends remind you how impossible it is to stick to a diet, how they can’t stomach one more slice of low-carb bread, permanent weight loss can feel like a losing battle. Conversely, when you receive positive suggestions like, “Fresh fruits and vegetables are becoming more and more appealing,” or when you allow yourself to try that yummy low-fat recipe from your favorite cooking show, the battle of the bulge becomes an adventure for the senses.

Ideally, each of us would look beyond our own dinner plates and consider the societal factors contributing to the obesity epidemic, advocate for change where and when we can.  But political activism, if the ‘60s taught us anything, doesn’t bring about change overnight. It’d be naive to expect that our righteous protestations could shrink super-size me portions tomorrow or slow our crazy-busy lives next week. Hoping we could reverse global warming anytime soon seems similarly unrealistic.

What’s more realistic is settling into a comfortable chair, putting on headphones and listening and losing with the CD Diet. Good health and mindful eating, it turns out, is contagious. Taking charge of your eating can inspire others to follow suit, and, in the best case scenario, could reverse our gross national weight gain.

 For more information about my weight-loss CDs, visit the CD page on this website.

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