Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting part 1

Think Thin! Behavior Control of Dieting

By earl ubell

Don’t look in this article for menus, calorie counters or weight tables. here instead, is a scientific technique that can change your eating habits for the rest of your life and become the key to making that life last longer.

   the technique is called behavior control, and is based on the reward and punishment ideas of B.F. skinner and the many psychologists who followed him. I came upon it quite by accident. the year was 1956 . I weighed 190 pounds. for a five foot, ten inch man at the age of 30 i was 35 pounds when he died of a coronary heart attack in 1948, at the age of 44. his diet had been rich in high calorie, high fat foods, as mine was. as a science reporter, I understood well the real township between overweight and his misfortune.

   on the day my father died, I arrived a few minutes after his last heartbeat . the picture of his final agony was burned into my mind: jaw drawn back, mouth slightly open, skin gray . I shall never forget it.