Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

Renowned psychologist Joseph J. Luciani dives into the root causes of overeating and reveals that lose weight and keep it off, you have to retrain your brain.

The research is in: The next fad diet will not work! Of the millions of people every day battling temptation and trying to drop unwanted pounds, only a small percentage are successful. And of those, a whopping 80 percent quickly pack the weight back on! So what went wrong? The answer won't be found in whatever the next new diet is. The answer to lasting weight loss can only be found from within.

Combining insight and inspiration with powerful cognitive tools, Thin from Within enables you to:

Embrace change Strengthen your self-discipline Resist the lure of comfort foods Free yourself from destructive thinking Replace even the most stubborn bad habits with positive ones Learn from setbacks

Complete with simple self-coaching techniques proven to control cravings and break the cycle of self-sabotage, Thin from Within puts the decision in your hands. Will you try yet another fad diet and fail--or deal with the root problem within and find a permanent solution?

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Acknowledgments (p. ix)
• Introduction (p. 1)
• Part I The Essentials of Weight Mastery (p. 7)
• Chapter 1 What You Need to Know About Weight Mastery (p. 9)
• The Key to Psychological Resilience: Self-Coaching (p. 10)
• Weight Loss Nuts and Bolts (p. 14)
• Weight Maintenance Nuts and Bolts (p. 22)
• The Big Three Challenges to Weight Mastery: Your Enemies (p. 24)
• Chapter 2 Why It Is So Hard to Just Say No! (p. 28)
• Do Habits Have a Life of Their Own? (p. 29)
• The Importance of Ambivalent Moments (p. 31)
• Self-Coaching in the Real World: Identifying the Enemies (p. 34)
• Chapter 3 Why You Crave Food, and What You Can Do About It (p. 40)
• The Power of Biological Forces (p. 42)
• The Biology of Your Brain (p. 43)
• Enlightened Habit Re-Formation (p. 51)
• Part II The Path to Weight Mastery (p. 59)
• Chapter 4 Getting Tough with Your Impulses and Cravings (p. 61)
• Creating Your Enemy Checklist (p. 62)
• Self-Coaching in the Real World: Creating an Edge (p. 64)
• Building Your Self-Discipline Muscle (p. 74)
• Chapter 5 Adopting the Food Journal Advantage (p. 76)
• The Journal: Keeping a Self-Coaching Connection (p. 77)
• The Top 10 Reasons for Keeping a Journal (p. 78)
• Developing Hunger Awareness (p. 81)
• Making Your Journal Work for You (p. 84)
• Chapter 6 Cultivating a Resilient Attitude (p. 89)
• Changing Your Pessimism to Optimism (p. 90)
• Pessimism: Bracing for Failure (p. 99)
• Part III Three Crucial Steps Toward Weight Mastery (p. 107)
• Chapter 7 The Self-Talk Approach to Dismantling Stubborn Habits (p. 109)
• Becoming More Active in Your Thought Process (p. 110)
• Winning the Control War (p. 112)
• Self-Coaching in the Real World:
• Recognizing Who's Doing the Talking (p. 113)
• Starving the Habit of Impulsivity (p. 116)
• Chapter 8 Step One: Separate Facts from Fictions (p. 119)
• Self-Coaching in the Real World: Taming Your Monkeys (p. 121)
• Two Other Reasons Why You May Become Confused (and What You Can Do About It) (p. 126)
• Self-Coaching in the Real World: Taking Quasi Facts to Task (p. 131)
• Chapter 9 Step Two: Say No! to Ruminative Thoughts (p. 137)
• Nipping Mind-Tasting in the Bud (p. 138)
• Building Your Self-Awareness Muscle (p. 140)
• Checking In with the Self-Talk Advantage (p. 141)
• Techniques for Dodging Compulsive Thinking (p. 143)
• Self-Coaching in the Real World: Harnessing the Power of Yes! (p. 149)
• Chapter 10 Step Three: Let Go and Self-Trust (p. 153)
• Getting Beyond the Struggle (p. 154)
• A One-Two Punch Combination (p. 156)
• Self-Coaching in the Real World: Changing Channels on Your Internal Dialogue (p. 159)
• Changing from Negative to Positive Channels (and Back Again) (p. 161)
• Learning to Be Still (p. 162)
• Letting Go and Risking Self-Trust (p. 167)
• Part IV Lifelong Success with Weight Mastery (p. 169)
• Chapter 11 Liberate Yourself from Anxiety, Depression, and Emotional Sabotage (p. 171)
• Understanding the Basics (p. 172)
• A Self-Coaching Perspective on Anxiety and Depression (p. 177)
• Self-Coaching in the Real World: Breaking Free from Emotional Struggles (p. 179)
• Dismantling Anxiety and Depression (p. 184)
• Chapter 12 Food Addiction or Compulsion: Where Do You Stand? (p. 189)
• Are You an Addict? (p. 190)
• Are You Really Powerless over Your Food? (p. 195)
• Self-Coaching in the Real World: Addressing the
• Psychological and Physiological Aspects of Food Addictions (p. 198)
• Chapter 13 Beyond Weight Loss: Achieving Lifelong Weight Mastery (p. 204)
• Acknowledging That There Are No Free Lunches (p. 205)
• Learning to Be More Conscious (p. 215)
• Your Toolbox Is Complete (p. 220)
• Looking Ahead (p. 221)
• Index (p. 223)

Excerpt provided by Syndetics

Chapter 1: What You Need to Know About Weight Mastery

An optimist is a person who starts a new diet on Thanksgiving Day.

--Irv Kupcinet

There's a reason why long-term weight loss is so elusive, and I'm willing to bet you already know the answer: Successful lifelong weight mastery has more to do with your mind than it does with your mouth. Losing weight and keeping it off has less to do with what you eat and just about everything to do with why you eat it. In other words, unless you can deal with stressful emotions, physical cravings, or food addictions, ultimately no diet in the world will bring you the lasting change you seek. But, as I said, I bet you already knew this.

From the start, let's get one thing straight: Thin from Withinisn't a diet book. I leave that to Weight Watchers, South Beach, Atkins, Zone, Jenny Craig, Dr. Joel Fuhrman's nutritarian lifestyle, or one of the more than 70,000 (!) diet books offered at Amazon.com, all of which present methods to lose weight. You don't need more information on calories, points, portions, or carbohydrates. If you're really serious about losing weight and keeping it off, what you do need is a progressive, psychological solution that can answer such common frustrations as: Why can't I handle stress without resorting to food? Why do I feel too tired to exercise? Why can't I tell when enough is enough? Why can't I just say no to self-destructive impulses? Why can't I keep the weight off?

So before you embrace that next miracle, eat-all-you-want-and-still-lose-weight diet, recognize the simple truth that the last thing you need is another diet. What you do need is another perspective--a perspective that will never again allow you to be victimized by impulsive cravings, self-sabotage, or mindless emotional grazing.

The Key to Psychological Resilience: Self-Coaching

Losing weight is, of course, why you diet, but as you know, that's only half the battle. The other half is keeping it off. And for many, it's the keeping it off that seems so impossible. Although the challenges you face in the losing phase (i.e., dealing with long-standing destructive eating habits and crippling compulsions, handling the discomfort of a reduced-calorie diet while sustaining motivation, self-discipline, and so forth) can persist into the keeping-it-off phase, this time you're going to have an advantage to keep you on track. By blending powerful cognitive, psychological insights with motivational coaching, the Self-Coaching method that I systematically describe over the course of this book goes beyond simple slogans and one-liners and gets to the emotional core of mindless, compulsive, or even addictive eating. Once you are liberated from faulty perceptions, insecurities, frustrations, and even anxiety or depression, you will be empowered to handle life's challenges--not sidestep them through food.

As anyone who has ever yo-yoed with weight loss/weight gain can tell you, given time, your old habits can (and will) attempt to undermine your resolve, which is why you need to establish a totally new relationship with food--a relationship in which you, rather than your desires, compulsions, or addictions, call the shots. One in which you stabilize your mind, your physiology, and your behavior to embrace a new philosophy of learning how to eat to live, rather than living just to eat.

Take a moment to think about the times in your life when you felt invincible, able to walk away from temptations, the times you felt totally confident and in control. Maybe it was a time you stepped onto a scale and saw a significant drop in your weight, or perhaps when you declined a particularly tempting piece of birthday cake, or even the moment you decided,

No more procrastination. I'm going to lose weight! These were empowered moments of psychological resilience, times when you felt motivated and focused on your intentions. Unfortunately, as you will most likely agree, these times were often fleeting, as old habits inevitably reintroduced themselves.

What if you could harness that same resilience and motivation and allow this strong, confident, self-disciplined mindset to become your new, steady state? You can. And this is where Self-Coaching has you covered.

Excerpted from Thin from Within: The Powerful Self-Coaching Program for Permanent Weight Loss by Joseph J. Luciani All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Psychologist Luciani (The Power of Self-Coaching) maintains that in order to lose weight and keep it off, dieters must retrain their brains. He then offers advice to help readers understand how to reform habits, build the self-discipline muscle, and develop hunger awareness. Luciani proposes a three-step program involving separating fact from fiction (e.g., I'm addicted to chocolate vs. I need chocolate right now), nipping mind-tasting in the bud, and letting go of toxic ruminative thinking. Visualizations, exercises, techniques, and quizzes permeate the text. Verdict Chronic dieters will find in this book ways to stop their self-sabotaging behaviors and develop a healthy relationship with food.-Deborah Bigelow, director emerita, Leonia P.L., NJ © Copyright 2016. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

From clinical psychologist Luciani (The Power of Self-Coaching) comes a valuable self-help guide aimed at those who are struggling to lose weight. Luciani shares what he has learned from his own eating battles and discusses the information and skills necessary to free oneself from unhealthy habits in general. The book is carefully divided into four parts, tackling both the essentials of weight loss and how to sustain successful results. Part one covers psychological resilience, the key to a self-disciplined mindset that can break poor habits. Luciani explains, in easily comprehended terms, the biology of the brain and the science behind hunger, sprinkling helpful tips throughout, such as having a glass of wine as dessert instead of with a meal. Part two describes how to attack cravings through food journaling and cultivation of a resilient attitude, and part three details Luciani's honed "self-talk" technique. Finally, part four will help readers maintain psychological and physical gains by making them more cognizant of entrenched patterns of thinking and of emotional issues such as anxiety and depression. This book is a crucial primer for anyone who hopes to eat well and enjoy a healthier lifestyle. Agent: Linda Konner, Linda Konner Literary Agency. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Author notes provided by Syndetics

Joseph J. Wciani is a practicing clinical psychologist and author of the internationally bestselling Self-Coaching and The Power of Self-Coaching. An in-demand speaker and expert, Dr. Luciani is featured frequently in major media, including MSNBC, CNBC, Hallmark Channel, Discovery Channel, NPR, USA Today, Cosmopolitan, Redbook, Fitness, Health, Shape, and O, The Oprah Magazine. He lives in Cresskill, New Jersey. Connect with him at: