Product Description

We all know that losing weight is the easy part.
It's keeping the weight off that's hard. In Get with the Program! Bob Greene, bestselling author of Make the Connection, gives you the keys to losing weight and staying fit for a lifetime.

The four-phase plan in Get with the Program! is like having your own personal trainer take you through the psychological, physical, and emotional challenges that are keeping you from weight-loss success. There are no arbitrary deadlines here: you move forward at your own pace, making lifestyle and dietary changes and increasing the intensity level of your exercise when it's right for you to do so. Journal entries, worksheets, and questionnaires let you establish, track, and evaluate your fitness goals.

In Phase One, you'll make the commitment to yourself to Get with the Program, and change the way you think about diet and exercise. Phase Two will show you how to rev up your metabolism using aerobic exercise. In Phase Three you'll take control of emotional eating, the eating you do to satisfy your emotional, not physical, hunger. You'll also see the positive results of your efforts. Phase Four is all about building muscle, making sure you're making the best food choices, and making your new habits of health, activity, and good eating a continuing lifestyle. Included is a week-by-week diary for you to track your progress.

Get with the Program! is full of anecdotes and stories of women and men who met their personal goals, further helping to inspire you to move on to the next level of health and fitness.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #350066 in Books
• Published on: 2003-12-23
• Format: Bargain Price
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Amazon.com Review
Lose weight, get in shape, understand your emotions, and feel good about yourself. These are the interrelated goals of Get with the Program by Bob Greene, best known as Oprah's personal trainer and coauthor of Make the Connection.

Using this book is like having a personal coach working with you on emotional and behavioral changes as well as diet and exercise. Greene realizes that if you've had trouble losing weight, you need to understand your attitudes and obstacles before any diet or exercise program will work. So phase one of the program is a self-examination regarding changing your life, including written exercises to help you understand your emotions. Phase two adds aerobic exercise, without changing your diet, to rev up your metabolism. Phase three focuses on the emotional connection to eating habits, including identifying emotional eating triggers and working to overcome them. Phase four adds strength training and dietary changes.

Get with the Program is conveniently spiral-bound, so it's easy to fill in the written exercises and view instructions and photos of the physical exercises. It’s highly recommended for people who have had trouble losing weight and are serious about getting in shape--physically and emotionally. --Joan Price

From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-Greene's offers exercise regimens, photographs, and useful training tips for beginners or experts, and concentrates on how readers can reach their physical and mental potential. The plan is divided into four phases, and there is a section on journal keeping. The author explains how to set up a good exercise-and-conditioning program, how to increase metabolism, and how to improve one's appearance with a little mental preparation. Throughout, he emphasizes the importance of attitude, eating high-quality food, understanding the connection between food and emotions, and drinking lots of water. Readers who follow his advice could learn to "live the best life possible," and become hooked on feeling good, looking good, and being good to themselves.
ayo dayo, Chinn Park Regional Library, Prince William, VA
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Exercise physiologist and certified personal trainer Greene presents a four-phase self-paced weight-loss and shape-up program that emphasizes realistic, achievable results arrived at gradually. Basic and almost homespun, this work is good for those weary of the "blow-off-a-gazillion-calories-by-eating-only-this-and-not-that" type of weight-loss book. No magic, no miracle, just one-day-at-a-time common sense reinforced with worksheets, questionnaires, and a daily journal.

Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Realistic advice on how to get fit
Let's be clear up front: there are no major breakthroughs or miracles in this book. Most every American alive knows what it would take to get fit (exercise) and lose weight (eat less fat and junk). To a certain extent, therefore, "Get with the Program" is just a re-formulation of the hard facts we all know. What Bob Greene has devised is a realistic and relatively painless way of adopting those healthy practices into your life on a long-term basis. There are 4 incremental stages to the program which are simple and designed for each person to follow at their own pace. This means that you don't have to wake up tomorrow morning, starve yourself and run out the door for 2 hours at the gym. Step 1 is simple: start a minimum of aerobic exercise, basic stretches and some abdominal exercises a couple of times a week. Easy enough. Once you've thoroughly incorporated that into your life, you move on to stage 2 where exercise picks up a little. Not until you reach stage 4 do you begin to actively change your eating habits; that can be months or years later. This is a fitness program that isn't intimidating and isn't going to require you to drastically change your whole lifestyle immediately in order to get results and start feeling better about yourself. This means that a lot of people who haven't been successful in weightloss or exercise programs before are finally going to succeed in making long-term changes to their lives. Again, this isn't a radical fad diet (in fact, the nutritional advice is rather skimpy - follow Greene's principals, but don't hesitate to supplement the nutritional info if you need to)- it's about making gradual changes at a pace you can live with.

Easy, practical advice for better health
Greene's concept of physical fitness and health is simple: eat less, move more, and you'll lose weight and feel healthier. It's time to throw away stupid fad diets which cannot be maintained for life. Greene is candid and honest about what it takes to lose weight and increase fitness. This is not a diet, nor a strict exercise plan. Rather, the phased approach to gradually increasing health and fitness makes it easy for even a sedentary individual to make a positive lifestyle change.

Although my level of cardiovascular fitness is decent (I already do the amount that Greene suggests for the final phase), I have always struggled with emotional eating. So much of this book is devoted to simple, easy-to-understand discussion of why people are emotional eaters, and what can be done to change. It has been so helpful; I have completely curbed my emotional binge eating. It hasn't been easy, but Greene's recommendations on a healthy diet have really made a difference.

This book is intended primarily for those who are looking to begin a lifestyle change, but I believe it is appropriate even for those who are already working towards their fitness goals.

Focus on Daily Little Victory
Interesting. When I picked up Bob Greene's GET WITH THE PROGRAM, the guidelines look familiar-this is almost exactly what my fitness friend told me to do few years ago to lose weight. GET WITH THE PROGRAM is a reiteration, reformulation of the basic "double E" principles we all know-eat healthy and exercise. So there is nothing new. But unlike another recent hot pick EAT MORE, WEIGHT LESS, Greene's program is more practical and will stimulate those who want to make a difference in their physique and lifestyle.

GET WITH THE PROGRAM has 4 stages that emphasize gradual change in eating and exercise habit. Phase 1 is easy but very little people will even try because of laziness and procrastination. Phase 1 includes exercises that get us going: some stretches, some aerobic exercises, some situps, and curls for couple times a week. By doing these exercises couple twice a week, we formulate a routine which builds a mindset not to give up. I call these daily little victories. We certainly can't just go to the gym and start lifting 300 pounds hoping to change our body metabolism. But aerobic and cardiovascular excersies can help retune our strength. Start with maybe 10 situps and curls then increase to 15, 20, then 25 a set and do 2 reps of sets. These are daily victories.

Phase 2 picks up the exercise and let you perform more sets. As the program progresses toward Phase 3 and 4, you will start changing the diet and watch what you're eating. Many people misunderstood about working out as burining fat. When you work out, you burn calories. Until you create a deficit of calories in diet, you will never get rid of body fat. When all calories from food have been consumed, then the body will go about the fat stored. So incorporating a diet to workout/exercise is the key. Greene's program will help you achieve this balance. I'm excited about how GET WITH THE PROGRAM has put into a written account of what my fitness friend had told me to do. From 195 lbs (5 feet 8 inches tall), I alternated between aerobics and cardiovascular execises with increasing repetition (the daily victories), changed the diet around to create deficit in calories (about a deficit of 600 calories a day, but 1 pound of fat equal 3500 calories), I started jogging after 2 months of aerboic and cardiovascular, I lost a total of 52 pounds and got down to 143 lbs in 8 months. Focus on the little victories, start the exercises and gradually increase the repetition to create endurance and strength. Change the diet completely, cut all high-fat food like junk food, McDonalds, desserts, high-carbohydrates like pasta and rice. Cut processed sugar products like sodas and ice cream. Drink lots of water and natural freshly sueezed juices. Many programs are out there in the markets like GET WITH THE PROGRAM, success depends on personal determination and perseverance.