When it comes right down to it, for any diet to work, you need to change your behavior. But, changing your behavior is not so easy. For many of us, we've changed our behavior and had some success on diets, but ultimately, we fall back on old habits and gain the weight back. The Beck Solution attempts to address the deeper issues that drive us. It give us tools to avoid cheating and resist eating foods that we know are bad for us.

The Beck Solution gives us mental tools to cope with stress and other negative emotions that lead to hunger cravings. It teaches us how to deal with our issues in non-destructive ways, even ultimately constructive ways. So, you'll not only learn how to avoid eating too much or for the wrong reason, but also to motivate yourself to exercise and eat healthier foods. You just need to change the way you think, to think like a thin person as Dr. Beck says.

Many of us who struggle with weight issues have deeply ingrained behaviors. They are part of our mindset, our lifestyle. But, many of these habits sabotage us, despite us really wanting to change and become thinner. We tell ourselves things like "I'll just have one piece of chocolate." or "It wont matter if I cheat this one time. But, this just leads us astray.

Dr. Beck is an expert in Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) which has been used by therapists to help patients with all kinds of mental struggles, minor or major. It makes perfect sense to use CBT to also change behavior that lead us to be overweight.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy isn't kooky or magical. It's actually a very practical, straight-forward approach to change our behaviors. It gives people the tools and strategies to get past their bad habits. In many cases, out bad behaviors are the result of social pressures or perceptions we have that we don't have time to eat right, or that it would be rude not to eat, or just using food as a stress relief. The behaviors can have a cascade effect such that once we make the mistake, we feel bad about it, then use food more to make up for our failure. It can become a negative cycle that's hard to get out of without changing the underlying behaviors that trigger everything.

Beck talks about how willpower and our best intentions can only take us so far with dieting. Most of us have experienced this. We start a new diet, we're excited, we follow all the rules, and we lose weight. But, as the weeks go by, we eventually give out and fall back on our old habits. Usually, it's some stress in our lives that knocks us off track.

Beck uses muscles in opposition as a metaphor to make her point. One muscle is our resistance to going off our diet while the other is the muscle that gives in. She teaches that we need to build up our resistance muscle. If we're overweight, out give-in muscle has become too strong.