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, VACopyright 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.


From AudioFile
With clarity and respect for the struggles most of us have with living healthy lives, Greene spells out an encyclopedic array of common sense lifestyle practices. He gets listeners involved with the core principles of good eating, exercise, and stress management. At every step in the program they feel invited to consider the suggestions, rather than hearing them as the products of medical or spiritual authority. In this audio Greene is a wise and experienced friend who offers sound ideas about healthy living, especially weight management. This essential health audio is both a comprehensive resource and a supportive motivational tool. Includes a bonus CD-ROM with printable exercise and dietary guidelines. T.W. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine


From Booklist
Greene, best known as Oprah's personal trainer and the author of the best-selling Make the Connection (1996), offers another inspirational self-help guide. The requisite philosophy anchoring most contemporary diet books remains in place here--the need to first change one's thinking about weight, diet, and exercise and then change behavior--but the hook this time is Greene's four-phase plan: make a commitment to exercise and diet; change emotional eating habits and raise metabolic rates; add strength and aerobic exercise; incorporate new habits into a more positive lifestyle. If that all sounds pretty familiar, despite the "four-phase" rhetoric, it is. On the other hand, Greene is a well-known name, and he does deliver practical advice along with a heavy dose of personal stories. A good part of the text is devoted to fill-in-the-blank worksheets, but librarians don't need to worry too much about patrons defacing this book: Who wants to write down such personal information as weight and dress size? The book's many photos were not available for review, but it's a safe bet they will include shots of Greene with some celebrities. Bottom line: the Oprah connection guarantees demand. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved


Book Description
Losing weight is the easy part; it's keeping it off that's hard. In Get With the Program!, bestselling author Bob Greene 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 to 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 emotional, not physical, hunger. You'll also see the positive results of your efforts. Phase Four is all about strength training, 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 to help you 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.


Download Description
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.


About the Author
Bob Greene is an exercise physiologist and certified personal trainer specializing in fitness, metabolism, and weight loss. He has been a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show. He is also a contributing writer and editor for O The Oprah Magazine, and writes on health and fitness for Oprah.com. Greene is the bestselling author of The Get With the Program! Guide to Good Eating, The Get With the Program! Daily Journal, and The Get With the Program! Guide to Fast Food and Family Restaurants.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Put away your scale, but pay attention to how your clothes fit -- permanent weight loss is less about quickly shedding pounds than about gradually burning fat.

So says Bob Greene, the bestselling fitness guru and Oprah's personal trainer. In Get with the Program!, Greene makes the case for a "slow and steady wins the race" approach to losing weight and divides the process into Four Phases: Truth, Commitment & Self Control; Revving Up Your Metabolism; Getting Real About Emotional Eating; and Securing a Life of Health & Happiness.

Part workout manual, part journal, part pep talk, the book gives as much weight to overcoming emotional obstacles to getting in shape as it does to specific types of exercise or what to eat for breakfast. That's not to say, however, that it's short on detail. In addition to all the talk of inner-self, Greene provides some excellent and easy-to-understand information on the physiology of weight loss. One example is his close look at why power walking and running are the best aerobic exercises for burning fat, whereas swimming is one of the worst. Other points of interest include his thorough explanation of the key role drinking enough water plays in maintaining a strong metabolism, as well as his take on why heart-rate monitoring during workouts doesn't really work.

Serious gym rats may find the material too basic, but if trendy diets have let you down in the past, or if you're more at home on the couch than the treadmill, Get with the Program! offers a refreshing mind-body formula for losing weight by changing your life, instead of just counting calories and taking another spinning class. (P. L. Jennings)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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.

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.

FROM THE CRITICS

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 2001 Cahners Business Information.

School Library Journal