Oprah's recipe for winning the battle of the bulge
Make the Connection -- Ten Steps to a Better Body and a Better Life; By Bob Greene and Oprah Winfrey; Hyperion, New York; 240 pp, 1996; Rp 69,600 (published simultaneously in paperback at Rp 59,000)
JAKARTA (JP): Oprah Winfrey has waged the most public of battles against weight.
Fat, thin, and back to fat again -- the talk show host's trials and tribulations with food have been the subject of public scrutiny for years. While other celebrities retreat to the discreet confines of health spas to shed the unwanted pounds, Oprah's saga of yo-yo dieting was played out daily in the living rooms of households around the world.
Through it all, Oprah has faced her diet demons with searing honesty. She has spoken frankly of bizarre eating habits, of embarking on exotic and medically unsold diets in a desperate bid to lose weight, only to have more pounds pile on when she returned to her old ways.
Today, Oprah is slim again and, shrewd businesswoman that she is, she is parlaying this most personal of fights into a resounding commercial success in the publishing world.
First came Cooking with Rosie, the hugely successful collection of low-fat but delicious recipes by Oprah's personal chef. Now there is Make the Connection, Oprah's diet, exercise and life philosophy written with her trainer Bob Greene.
Oprah's own entry in Make the Connection is limited to the first chapter, in which she details the root of her weight woes and her realization that she had to alter her approach to life to come to terms with food and her body.
Oprah does not hold back in describing her battle. She recounts losing 70 pounds on a liquid diet program but the weight, plus some more, steadily returned. Her inclusion of diary entries from this period, describing her escalating weight and her overwhelming feelings of frustration and helplessness, make for poignant reading.
Despite the pain, Oprah is not afraid to poke fun at herself. She writes of sitting ringside at a boxing match and her embarrassed realization that at 218 pounds she weighed as much as Mike Tyson, then heavyweight champion of the world.
Oprah writes that her life turned around after she adopted Greene's 10-step approach to weight and exercise. This combines self-awareness or evaluating oneself and recognizing the trigger factors in one's overeating (Oprah says she binged as a coping mechanism to deal with stress) with behavior modification and an aerobic exercise program.
Greene prescribes sensible nutritional advice, emphasizing fruit and vegetables, low fat meals, lots of water and cutting back or elimination of alcohol. Exercise should preferably be done in the early morning to increase metabolic rate and motivation to live healthily throughout the day. Greene writes.
His final step, and perhaps the most important, is to renew the commitment to healthy living each day. And in all, there is nothing revolutionary in Greene's approach; changing behavior and exercise have been the staple components of diet programs for years.
What is different about Greene from many diet and exercise gurus is that he does not stipulate absolutes. This is not a program of the ilk of all-the-boiled-eggs-and-water-you-can- drink, undefined by right dietary proscriptions or superhuman exercise requirements.
Instead, he offers guidelines for healthy living which can be worked within and adapted to as one sees fit. Greene's advantage is that he realizes that most people, including Oprah Winfrey, will fail in trying to adhere to strict dietary rules. Targeting a consistency health approach to diet and exercise for life, with the recognition that there may be occasional lapses on the way, is half the battle won for people struggling with their weight.
-- Bruce Emond