Dr Phil McGraw

If emotional pain or problems have cropped up in your life, you must insist on getting closure. Closure means you don’t carry the problem or the pain. You address the issue, then you slam shut the book and put it away.

Your feelings? To hell with your feelings!

People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. You should be an open book, be transparent.

The difference between winners and losers is that winners do things losers don’t want to do.

If we were all just alike, one of us wouldn’t be necessary.

The number one need in all people is the need for acceptance, the need to experience a sense of belonging to something and someone. The need for acceptance is more powerful in your family than anywhere else…. If that need is not met by your family, trust me, your kids will go elsewhere to seek it in order to find approval and acceptance.

Obesity has overtaken cancer as the No. 1 cause of avoidable, preventable death in American society. It’s an epidemic-level problem.

Reality check: you can never, ever, use weight loss to solve problems that are not related to your weight. At your goal weight or not, you still have to live with yourself and deal with your problems. You will still have the same husband, the same job, the same kids, and the same life. Losing weight is not a cure for life.

Food is a coping mechanism; people are afraid of giving it up because then they’ll feel confused and lost.

A year from now, you’re gonna weigh more or less than what you do right now.

I don’t care how pumped up or psyched you are to start a new diet or a new program – that emotion will fade.

Now, my body fat runs around 18 percent, which is normal and, you know, kind of in the middle of normal, actually.

You’re FAT – and don’t try to sugarcoat it, because you’ll just eat that, too.

The time is coming when man will be able to determine the length of his lifespan by controlling his diet.

First, you’re going to have to stop using food for anything other than nutrition. You cannot continue to use food to celebrate, or as a companion, or for entertainment, or comfort. You cannot medicate yourself, your mood, or pain with food.

Get up each morning, look at yourself in the mirror, and see yourself not as someone who is overweight or out of shape, but as the someone you will become.

Now ask yourself if you’re really going to spend the rest of your life on one of those ridiculous diets. The honest answer is, no, you won’t. So, that means you might lose weight while you’re on it, but you’ll probably gain it back when you’re off it because you haven’t made any real lifestyle changes.

What I want people to do is what’s healthy for them.

Experts indicate that you should aim for consistent weight loss of about one to two pounds per week, so you should remain realistic—you aren’t going to lose 40 pounds per week (no matter what any diet product claims).

Successful weight loss takes programming, not willpower.