My Weight Book

Annick, you have a distinctive character trait shared by many people predisposed to weight issues. You are an all-or-nothing person, drawn to extremes — with everything that implies in terms of excess, in one direction as easily as the other. You never do anything halfway, and when it comes to dieting you operate entirely in all-or-nothing mode, excessive in everything — for better and for worse. You might heroically follow the strictest of diets and then abandon it abruptly, sinking without a trace. This tendency toward extremes makes for a fascinating personality, but it makes your weight battles very difficult.
This way of functioning leads just as easily to rapid, significant weight loss as to lightning-fast weight regain.
Instability and progressive weight gain are — sadly — the most frequent outcome. It is in your interest to choose tools that help you lose weight while taking this character trait into account: your diet, your support system, your physical activity.
My advice:
Given your all-or-nothing temperament and your decisive way of thinking and living, you will lose weight more easily with a plan that matches who you are and respects your specific nature.
The method I developed takes into account this way of being, which is the most frequently found in people who are overweight. I believe it is the one that will suit your psychology best. Why?
1) It's a plan that gets off to a fast start — and you are someone who cannot be kept waiting or disappointed.
2) It's a plan that works, just like you, on the all-or-nothing principle, and with which you will feel in harmony. In this plan, everything that is permitted is permitted COMPLETELY (quantities, combinations, timing...). And what is not allowed is NOT allowed AT ALL.

3) It's a plan whose great advantage is that it is adaptable through its four phases and adjustable to most situations.
4) Finally, and this matters greatly to me, it's the most structured and clearly signposted diet plan available today. A structure, signposting — this may seem pointless or far removed from your concerns. Don't believe it!
A structure is the guiding axis of a diet plan, its backbone, a handrail that is easy to hold so you don't slip. It is what gives the plan its driving force, its power to channel and pull you forward.
As for signposting, it's everything that allows you to navigate without getting lost in a diet. It shows you the path and the instruction to follow. Structure and signposting form a pair of intangible guides that mark out a great diet plan.
It was in search of such structure that I built my method: a four-stage plan packed with milestones and checkpoints, a signposted, directive path that leaves you no choice but to move forward — or stop. It's a plan that, after a consolidation phase of ten days per pound lost (not one more, not one less — here is an example of structure), lets you stabilize on the basis of one fixed diet day per week. I chose Thursday (another example of structure) — a non-negotiable day that nonetheless leaves you free the other six days of the week. Six days yes, one day no! Given your personality, I believe this is the plan that suits you best, because you will follow it in harmony with yourself.

Patrick, I would like to address with you a point in your equation that is of paramount importance in better confronting your weight problem. To the question posed about your ability to lose weight, you told me that over the years you have found it increasingly difficult to lose weight compared to before, and that you have therefore become resistant to dieting.
This is a frequent phenomenon related to the evolution of your metabolism. When you follow a diet and lose weight, your body has no idea that you made this decision voluntarily. It is not programmed to understand it. No animal has ever voluntarily tried to shed its reserves by restricting its food. For your body, things are very simple: if you are not eating, it means there is nothing to eat, that you are going through a period of scarcity. It then tries to adapt by reducing calorie expenditure and especially by making the most of every food ingested.
Under these conditions, your body becomes a calorie trap, which explains your difficulty stabilizing and the dispiriting yo-yo weight regain. It is known that this resistance is all the stronger the longer the diet or diets followed. Indeed, the duration of a diet induces more resistance than its intensity or speed. This means it is better to follow a tough and effective but short diet rather than an easy but long one — because by doing so you give the body time to organize its defenses and put in place a resistance so firmly anchored that it can prove permanent.
Low-calorie diets responsible for slow weight loss force you, in order to keep losing weight, to progressively reduce your calorie intake to the point of becoming unsustainable. On the contrary, brief and intense diets produce a surprise effect and rapid weight loss. They have, very often, achieved their goal before the body has had time to build up resistance.
The diet and method I recommend makes use of this property and prioritizes the two great food families: proteins and vegetables.

Do not confuse it with protein powder diets which, despite their striking effectiveness, are in no way a solution. Indeed, the absence of real, natural food and their natural satiety signals, combined with the disappearance of the mealtime ritual, makes any hope of stabilization impossible. In the months following these powder diets, one very often sees massive weight regain associated with vengeful cravings.
My advice:
For men who, like you, are "vaccinated" or resistant to dieting, I use in my method, when weight stagnates, what I call short "knockout" operations — no more than four days — perfectly followed, with a diet rich in dietary proteins. This must be combined with plenty of low-mineral water and fifteen minutes of physical activity: walking or any other sustained activity.
Such a coalition of actions surprises the body, which has no time to adapt and surrenders its "easy pounds" without much resistance. In these cases, once you have broken through this plateau of stagnation, you should return to the basic model. In your case, as I have told you, if you follow your diet well, you will lose your 37 pounds in three months — 15 pounds the first month and 11 pounds per month the following two months. Since you are resistant to diets, you will need to add 45 minutes of walking per day and drink your two liters of water. But in the second part of this book, I will describe to you in complete detail the plan I have chosen for you — know already that you will need to start with a five-day attack phase.
Once the weight is lost, in your case of diet resistance, you must be careful not to neglect phase 3 and then phase 4 of my method to consolidate and stabilize this new weight over the long, very long term. But patience — I first want to fully analyze your case to give you the solution adapted to you and you alone.