cover
story
Getting to know
Dr. Oz and Dr. Roizen
want YOU to better
understand your body YOU
BY DR. MEHMET C. OZ AND DR. MICHAEL ROIZEN
SAY WHAT YOU WANT, but here’s an
undisputed fact: Americans are the best-edu-cated people in the world when it comes to
health information. We know a lot about
medicine and nutrition, and we can rattle off
the difference between an ACL and an MRI.
But here’s what one look at the size of our
collective waistband will tell you: We may
know a lot, but few of us act on it.
Why the disconnect?
Is it laziness? Lack of motivation? Or just
the overwhelming urge to gulp down a dozen
jelly-filled fat bombs when the mood strikes?
We say it’s another reason. People may be
good at the knowledge phase of learning—
that is, having the laundry list of “do nots” on
the locked refrigerator door—but we’re not as
good at the understanding phase. It requires a
deeper insight to really believe that you have
the answers.
That’s why we wrote YOU: On a Diet—
The Owner’s Manual to Waist Management.
Sure, we want to give you the formula for the
foods, exercises and best prescriptions for
losing weight and shrinking your waist. But
more important, we want to teach you about
how your body works, so you understand
why your body stores fat, why your body
burns it, how your body reacts to certain
foods and how everything from your genetics
to your physical activity plays a role in the
way your body works—and looks.
See, we think that the big roadblock to
successful waist management isn’t the fact
that you don’t know what’s best for your
body or because you think you’re not mentally tough enough to resist a multi-cupcake
onslaught. The roadblock, more likely than
not, is because you probably don’t intimately
understand your body—and how you can
make it work for you, not against you.
Better living through science
Here’s what science has taught us in the
last few years: There are specific ways you can
turn off your hunger and turn on your fat
burners. You have to go through a process of
reprogramming only once. (We tell you the
steps; you have to devote a little bit of time to
such things as dumping out your fridge and
stocking it with waist-friendly foods.) And
then there’s no more yo-yoing ever.
The fact is that the human body is so
often viewed like the back room of a video
store—a place with a huge stigma where
few people venture. In our previous
book, YOU: The Owner’s Manual,
we wanted to de-stigmatize the
body—by making it OK to talk
about such things as waste, sexuality and the fact that everyone
(yes, everyone) has the daily
intestinal equivalent of a 14-piece
trombone section.
The problem with stigmatizing the body is that you don’t get
to know your body. If you don’t
know what’s supposed to happen
to it, what it’s supposed to feel like
and how it’s supposed to react to
certain situations, there’s a fear in
trying to change it. So what we
want to do is take the stigma away
from your body, from blubber
and from all the guilt and shame
that’s associated with dieting.
How do we do it?
With science. Cool science
that gives you the insights, und
standing and YOU-reka mome
that will help you make changes
your body and your life. er-
nts
to
CHRIS CRISMAN
Tour de corpus
We want to take you through a
tour of the body and show you how
each organ and system plays a contributing role in the size of your
waistline. For example, did you
know that chemicals from your
intestine (called CCK) can send a
signal to your brain, telling you that
