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bags of chips lined up
    on the counter, a cookie jar, and nine boxes of popsicles. If you don’t
    have all that available, then you’ve set up your world to support your
    “sobriety.” The truth is, you don’t break a bad habit; you must replace one behavior with a new one. And the new behavior should meet two
    criteria: it must be healthy, and it mu BOOKS,
    st be incompatible with the pre-
    vious behavior.
    That first criterion means you’ve got to replace the chips, cook-
    ies, and popsicles that you’re removing from your environment with
    healthy alternatives that you actually enjoy eating. On this plan, you’ll never, ever get caught with nothing to eat. You’ll have the right foods
    available to you because as I’ve said, hungry people eat and they eat
    what is there, and you should never feel guilty about eating!
    The second criterion means you need to adopt new habits that
    crowd out bad h STREET
    abits, because they cannot be done simultaneously.
    If you have a habit of coming in through the kitchen and consuming
    thousands of calories in “snacks” before you even take your jacket
    off, then let’s figure out something that is incompatible with graz-
    ing around the kitchen. Go through the front door instead, or go
    directly to the gym right after work—do whatever it takes to get
    ou BIRD
    t of that old space, that old way of doing things, and into a new
    activity. I think you will be really surprised by how big of a role your environment is playing in your weight loss failure and how simple
    it will be to reprogram it so you set up habits to last you a lifetime.
    Result: Success.
    What Makes This Diet Different | 21
    Inconsistent results and plateaus
    There you are, first thing in the morning, standing in front of the scale just hoping, praying, that all your hard work over the past week is going to pay off. You think about all the times you white-knuckled your way
    through cravings and fought off light-headed moments of sheer starva-
    tion, making for the world’s longest month, and now, right now, you’re
    going to see if it was all worth it. You squeeze your eyes close INC.
    d, step on
    the scale, exhale, open your eyes and—WHAT?!—you gained a pound?
    How can this be? You fol owed that stupid diet chapter and verse! You
    turned down your grandma’s apple pie at the family get-together and quit drinking soda cold turkey. This is an outrage! Impossible. Unthinkable.
    And, you’re done. Diet is over. No payoff, no results right out of the
    gate—forget it. And then you wonder, “Is there any of that pie left?”
    Or maybe a diet actual y works for a little while but then suddenly
    you hit a screeching halt and the needle on the scale won’t budge, no
    way no how. You’ve hit the dreaded plate BOOKS,
    au, which sends you into a tail-
    spin, causing extreme frustration and destructive self-doubt. You start
    to think, “It’s me. I’ll never weigh one ounce less than I do right now. I might as well accept this fate, stop this insane diet, and go back to wearing muumuus full time and eating frosting straight from the container.”
    Whether it’s the last five pounds or the last ten, if a diet doesn’t
    offer a solution for getting over that hump, that diet is going out the
    window. And pretty soon, that muumuu looks like a minidress—it
    now goes sideways instead of down. Result: Failure.
    If I’m going t STREET
    o keep you motivated, I know I have to be honest
    with you about weight loss. Experts indicate that you should aim for
    consistent weight loss of about one to two pounds per week, so you
    should remain realistic—you aren’t going to lose 40 pounds per week
    (no matter what any diet product claims).
    But I’ll help you create healthy intermediate goals so that you feel
    BIRD
    good about what you’re accomplishing along the way.
    As for plateaus, part of the reason they occur is because when you’re
    eating the same food and doing the same exercise day in and day out,
    you