Excerpt
Jenny Craig's What Have You Got to Lose
Program Overview:
The Fundamentals
Where does one start to thank you for this wonderful program you started? For the first time in my life I can’t think of myself as fat. Ever since I can remember I have always been overweight and clumsy and shy, but now it’s like I’m a whole different person. Just ask my husband and family. Besides the new thin me, I’ve also gotten health benefits. My headaches have gone away, I don’t get sick from what I eat because I eat all good foods now instead of snack foods. I know how to plan a day of good eating to feel good about myself and not feel guilty about what I eat. It’s just so different and simple and natural to feel this way about eating.… It’s like I’ve broken a barrier ten thousand miles high and am walking proudly through the rubble to a new bright future.
JILL ADAMS, LISLE, ILLINOIS
DOING IT WITH STYLE
The Jenny Craig Weight-Management Program is the result of many years of experience. By working closely with health professionals and thousands of clients, we have been able to design a program that lends itself to personalization while remaining true to the scientific models that are its foundation. In other words, we will show you how to make a healthy, scientifically based weight-management program work for you.
Please note that we are not offering you just a weight-loss program. Losing weight is only one part of the equation. In fact, you have probably already successfully “lost” weight and lost it again and again. Our objective is not just to help you lose weight. We want to give you the necessary tools to manage your weight. Weight management means getting your weight to, and keeping it at, a comfortable level for you—and doing so by living a healthy, comfortable life-style.
This book is really about style. We cannot, nor would we want to, change your life. Your interests, family, job, likes, dislikes, and so on make up your life. The way you express your interests, relate to your family, go about doing your job, et cetera, make up your life-style. That style often determines whether you are overweight or fit, stressed or relaxed, depressed or not. As you learn to adjust your style, your weight will comfortably come under your control.
To illustrate how the style of your life can have an impact on your weight, consider how you cope with stress. Stress comes in many forms—both positive and negative—and is one of the most common triggers of overeating. Whether you are juggling work and home or experiencing life changes like a job promotion, new baby, or divorce, you are enduring stress. Positive or negative, in large doses or small, stress is an ongoing fact of life. It follows, then, that knowing how to effectively manage your stress is a key factor in successfully managing your weight.
Module 10: Stress Management focuses on the importance of incorporating stress management into your daily activities rather than waiting for stress to build to uncomfortable levels. Listening to relaxing music on the way to work and enjoying a full body stretch before your midmorning meeting are small coping strategies that minimize stress buildup. People whose style includes these behaviors will experience considerably less stress discomfort than those who forge ahead through their day never stopping until their stomachs are in knots and their shoulders a mass of pain. Since so many overweight people overeat (and binge) when stressed, the advantage of diffusing stress as you go along is obvious!
STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK
Experience has taught us that the more people are involved in their own weight reduction, the greater their success. In other words, the more responsibility you take for creating your healthy life-style, the more comfortable and natural it will feel to you. To help you take charge of your program, we have designed this book to actively involve you in directing each change as well as controlling your progress. Throughout the book, space is provided for you to write your thoughts, record your goals, and outline your strategies. We strongly encourage you to write, write, write. Clients at the Jenny Craig Centres interact with us verbally and in writing. They complete worksheets and assignments, write down goals, and record progress. They consider their worksheets “maps” that chart their journey. Like any map, the worksheets not only lead to your destination, they show you where you have been and document your success. Clients tell us that in addition to making the weight-loss process easier, their worksheets are pleasurable records of how far they have successfully traveled.
Instead of chapters, we have organized the information into “modules.” Each module provides you with a critical component of the whole Jenny Craig Program yet does so in a fashion that will allow you to proceed through the material in the order that best meets your individual needs. Module 3: Personalizing the Program contains a questionnaire we call the Personal Style Profile, designed to prescribe the module order to best address your most critical needs first. Personalization will allow you to see results more quickly than if you were to follow a standard program designed for the “generic” overweight person. After all, you may be an emotional overeater while another person is not, and someone else may be a serious underexerciser while you are not. A generic program cannot possibly give both of you the most important information first. We can and we shall!
Module 2: Starting the Program: Basics of Nutrition will teach you a simple approach to planning nutritionally balanced menus. Our system, called Food Group Box, has helped literally thousands of clients to adopt an eating style that has all the variety and taste they crave yet very few of the calories. The real beauty of the system, as you will learn, is that it is flexible enough to accommodate your nutritional needs during weight loss as well as after you reach maintenance, so you have to learn only one system. Module 2 will also start you off on a good weight-reduction plan1 with two weeks of preplanned menus. This module is the only one we prescribe first for everyone, regardless of their Personal Profiles. Whether you are an emotional eater, an underexerciser, or a “chocoholic,” sound nutrition is the essential first step toward an improved, happier you.
The remaining thirteen modules each address a problem area common to overeaters. For instance, Module 6: Mastering Your Environment teaches you how to remove control of your eating behavior from the sights and smells of food and put control back where it belongs—with you. Module 8: Relapse Prevention teaches you how to keep your weight off beginning with the very first pound you lose. Curbing emotional eating is the subject of yet another module, while exercise strategies, assertiveness, and restaurant dining form the content of others.
The Assignments in each module are essential to your success. Reading the book is not enough. If you want to lose weight, keep the weight off, and enjoy a healthier life, you must actively work on breaking old habits and adopting a style of living that results in the body you want. The Assignments outline exactly what you must do to accomplish your goals. Habits are nothing more than well-practiced behaviors. So, it follows that to change any behavior takes practice. As the famous football coach Vince Lombardi once said, “Practice doesn’t make perfect, only perfect practice makes perfect.” Completing your Assignments will give you the perfect practice you need.
