Phen-Pro criteria - Dr Anchors

[Anonymous]

oh c'mon. Practically every kind of medicine--prescription as well as over the counter--comes with similar warnings. It says there's a rare chance. Yep. There's also a rare chance that aspirin will kill you. (No, seriously, there is.) That doesn't mean that it's reasonable to say that a drug that is necessary and beneficial to someone for a particular need is "too dangerous" and shouldn't be taken.

Advil is way more dangerous to humans than phentermine is. Heart attack and stroke risk increase even with short-term use, and the risk may begin within a few weeks of starting to take an NSAID like Advil.

Stop fear-mongering. If prescribed by a doctor to a person who has no reason in their medical history not to take it, it is overwhelmingly safe. That's the same odds as thousands of other prescriptions that people take every day when they need them.

[Anonymous]

PP can you share the advice he gave? I would love to hear it as well.

[Anonymous]

All of his diet advice is on his website.

[Anonymous]

Yes, a lot of it is on his website, but here are some of the ones to focus on:

Just eat less food. It's simple. We have trained our bodies to eat more than we need. Start training your body to eat less.

Use small DARK plates--many of us eat off of a "larger than average" dining plate that is white. We fill the need to fill all that space with food, thus leading to larger portions.

Ignore the "food" pyramid. It's not scientific. You should eat more fruits & vegetables than anything else. Followed by high-protein foods. Carbs should be the smallest percentage of your overall diet.

Don't "balance" meals, as in don't feel like you need to have a meat, plus a veggie, plus a starch. Give up that kind of thinking; it leads to more consumption than what you need. If you want a steak, eat a steak. But don't purposefully add potato and a vegetable. This "balancing" idea that was taught to our parents isn't scientific. (I guess if you WANT to eat all 3 things together, than that's different (but you need smaller portions of it) but if you are adding things to your plate because of some idea that you have to "balance" the types of foods you are eating at one time, then abandon that idea. He also thinks that you should avoid mixing white flour carbs with meat and cheese, i.e. don't add chicken to your pasta dish. Eat the chicken for lunch and the pasta for dinner.

Eat less white flour carbs (i.e. rice and potatoes aren't the enemy) and less sugar/sugar substitutes. (Natural sugar in fruits is fine.) I love that his list of foods to avoid is relatively small. He isn't "anti-carb." He is anti-white flour.

Drink more water. Way, way, way more water.

Weigh yourself every morning.

Eat some breakfast, a slow lunch, and a smaller supper.

Eat more slowly. And with friends/family as often as possible. (The idea being that we eat more when we are alone.)

And, for me, this last piece of advice was key. No snacking. Just don't do it. Eat 3 times a day at most. Nothing in between. This means literally nothing (except water). I would have said I wasn't a "snacker" because I don't eat junk food. But I WAS snacking--eating several small meals a day is, essentially, snacking all day. I have been on a very low calorie diet for months and losing at a snail's pace, but that's because I was following the misguided advice of spreading those calories out throughout the day in several small portions. So I'd eat a yogurt, then 2 hours later a piece of cheese, then 2 hours later a pile of almonds, at night after a small dinner if I was hungry a few hours later I would eat a handful of berries, another handful before bed, etc. All day long. And I was so frustrated and in tears that I was living off so few calories a day and the weight wasn't dropping. Apparently, every time you eat, your body's insulin switch is turned on and when that's on, your body can't be focused on the "fat-burning mode." So I was effectively continuously eating and keeping my body from going into fat-burning mode, which it would have done given the low calories I was eating. So I now eat 3 times a day. I take the same amount of food I was eating and clump it together into 3 meals and the pounds are dropping off me. A few days ago, I even added in some more calories and I'm still losing weight. It was miraculously good advice--at least for my body. Right now, I'm taking it to an extreme because weight loss is my goal but seriously, I won't let anything in my mouth in between the meals no matter how healthy or how low cal. Example: A few times a month, I would have a diet soda in the afternoon to give me a caffeine boost and b/c it was refreshing and bubbly (and no calories). I've completely stopped. It's not worth it to disrupt my fat-burning. This weekend, we stopped and bought strawberries from a road side stand. My DH tries to get me to eat one. I refuse. It was the middle of the afternoon. I waited until dinner and then enjoyed some. When I pack my kid's lunch, I do not pop a raspberry into my mouth. I know this might sound a little extreme but the truth is, taking in so few calories a day isn't fun and I just want to focus on losing the weight and not drag out the process. I'm sure once I'm at my goal weight, one strawberry isn't going to send me off the rails, lol. But it's been mind-opening to me to change my focus from just number of calories and types of food I'm eating to also include WHEN I'm eating those. And my body is truly responding. Now, when I'm bored at my desk or feeling at all hungry, I grab a water (flat or bubbly to make it more fun) and just wait until the next meal. It's a hard habit to break but it's no different than any other habit. And it's interesting, I told my mother all about this (someone who has never struggled with her weight) and she was like "no duh." As she put it, her generation just didn't spend the day "grazing," like we do. Meals were specific moments. You didn't keep food in your purse. Or your office drawer. Or on your office desk. Or whatever. I guess I had fooled myself that because WHAT I was eating was "good" for me (as in nutrition wise) and that I was eating less of it, that I would lose weight. I feel like I've read a million times that several smaller meals is "better" for you than 3 meals. I don't know what that's based on, but my body obviously didn't agree with that approach.

Dr. Anchors' general philosophy is to live like a French person. It's not like you can't eat a croissant. Eat a croissant. But then reign it in for the rest of the day. Basically, be more mindful of what should be thought of as "indulgences" (and for him, that appears to be basically only sugar and white flour carbs). Sit down and eat actual meals, a few times a day, instead of "grazing" all day. Drink more water. Generally eat less than what you have been eating. Don't let the size and color of the plate dictate how much of something you are eating--be mindful and just give yourself a normal portion of something.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yes, a lot of it is on his website, but here are some of the ones to focus on:

Just eat less food. It's simple. We have trained our bodies to eat more than we need. Start training your body to eat less.

Use small DARK plates--many of us eat off of a "larger than average" dining plate that is white. We fill the need to fill all that space with food, thus leading to larger portions.

Ignore the "food" pyramid. It's not scientific. You should eat more fruits & vegetables than anything else. Followed by high-protein foods. Carbs should be the smallest percentage of your overall diet.

Don't "balance" meals, as in don't feel like you need to have a meat, plus a veggie, plus a starch. Give up that kind of thinking; it leads to more consumption than what you need. If you want a steak, eat a steak. But don't purposefully add potato and a vegetable. This "balancing" idea that was taught to our parents isn't scientific. (I guess if you WANT to eat all 3 things together, than that's different (but you need smaller portions of it) but if you are adding things to your plate because of some idea that you have to "balance" the types of foods you are eating at one time, then abandon that idea. He also thinks that you should avoid mixing white flour carbs with meat and cheese, i.e. don't add chicken to your pasta dish. Eat the chicken for lunch and the pasta for dinner.

Eat less white flour carbs (i.e. rice and potatoes aren't the enemy) and less sugar/sugar substitutes. (Natural sugar in fruits is fine.) I love that his list of foods to avoid is relatively small. He isn't "anti-carb." He is anti-white flour.

Drink more water. Way, way, way more water.

Weigh yourself every morning.

Eat some breakfast, a slow lunch, and a smaller supper.

Eat more slowly. And with friends/family as often as possible. (The idea being that we eat more when we are alone.)

And, for me, this last piece of advice was key. No snacking. Just don't do it. Eat 3 times a day at most. Nothing in between. This means literally nothing (except water). I would have said I wasn't a "snacker" because I don't eat junk food. But I WAS snacking--eating several small meals a day is, essentially, snacking all day. I have been on a very low calorie diet for months and losing at a snail's pace, but that's because I was following the misguided advice of spreading those calories out throughout the day in several small portions. So I'd eat a yogurt, then 2 hours later a piece of cheese, then 2 hours later a pile of almonds, at night after a small dinner if I was hungry a few hours later I would eat a handful of berries, another handful before bed, etc. All day long. And I was so frustrated and in tears that I was living off so few calories a day and the weight wasn't dropping. Apparently, every time you eat, your body's insulin switch is turned on and when that's on, your body can't be focused on the "fat-burning mode." So I was effectively continuously eating and keeping my body from going into fat-burning mode, which it would have done given the low calories I was eating. So I now eat 3 times a day. I take the same amount of food I was eating and clump it together into 3 meals and the pounds are dropping off me. A few days ago, I even added in some more calories and I'm still losing weight. It was miraculously good advice--at least for my body. Right now, I'm taking it to an extreme because weight loss is my goal but seriously, I won't let anything in my mouth in between the meals no matter how healthy or how low cal. Example: A few times a month, I would have a diet soda in the afternoon to give me a caffeine boost and b/c it was refreshing and bubbly (and no calories). I've completely stopped. It's not worth it to disrupt my fat-burning. This weekend, we stopped and bought strawberries from a road side stand. My DH tries to get me to eat one. I refuse. It was the middle of the afternoon. I waited until dinner and then enjoyed some. When I pack my kid's lunch, I do not pop a raspberry into my mouth. I know this might sound a little extreme but the truth is, taking in so few calories a day isn't fun and I just want to focus on losing the weight and not drag out the process. I'm sure once I'm at my goal weight, one strawberry isn't going to send me off the rails, lol. But it's been mind-opening to me to change my focus from just number of calories and types of food I'm eating to also include WHEN I'm eating those. And my body is truly responding. Now, when I'm bored at my desk or feeling at all hungry, I grab a water (flat or bubbly to make it more fun) and just wait until the next meal. It's a hard habit to break but it's no different than any other habit. And it's interesting, I told my mother all about this (someone who has never struggled with her weight) and she was like "no duh." As she put it, her generation just didn't spend the day "grazing," like we do. Meals were specific moments. You didn't keep food in your purse. Or your office drawer. Or on your office desk. Or whatever. I guess I had fooled myself that because WHAT I was eating was "good" for me (as in nutrition wise) and that I was eating less of it, that I would lose weight. I feel like I've read a million times that several smaller meals is "better" for you than 3 meals. I don't know what that's based on, but my body obviously didn't agree with that approach.

Dr. Anchors' general philosophy is to live like a French person. It's not like you can't eat a croissant. Eat a croissant. But then reign it in for the rest of the day. Basically, be more mindful of what should be thought of as "indulgences" (and for him, that appears to be basically only sugar and white flour carbs). Sit down and eat actual meals, a few times a day, instead of "grazing" all day. Drink more water. Generally eat less than what you have been eating. Don't let the size and color of the plate dictate how much of something you are eating--be mindful and just give yourself a normal portion of something.

Excellent advice!

[Anonymous]

Do you gain weight after stopping the pills? Assuming you are not eating junk- but healthy (non diet) meals?