San Diego – Americans spend billions of dollars every year on weight loss products and services while $93 billion per year goes to treat the heath problems of people who are overweight. With a large percentage of all Americans overweight or obese, a leading health and fitness expert is urging Americans to GET REAL.

“When I began studying weight management, I had always assumed anyone could lose or maintain weight with enough exercise and appropriate diet. I was working off a strict ‘calories-in/calories burned’ model. But my clients often just ‘weight cycled,’ quickly regaining the pounds they’d lost and more. It finally struck me that something was missing and that the key lies in lifestyle issues,” says Daniel Kosich, PhD.

The realization of the powerful link between emotional health and body weight gave birth to Dr. Kosich’s groundbreaking book, GET REAL: A Personal Guide to Real-Life Weight Management. While most weight management books focus on diet and, to a lesser degree, exercise, GET REAL’s central tenet is that successful weight management begins with attitude — not self-defeating attitudes like denial, frustration and despair, but self-acceptance, self-esteem and a positive body image.

“Think of regular activity, healthy eating and positive attitude as the legs of a three-legged stool,” says Dr. Kosich. “If one leg is longer or shorter than the others, the stool doesn’t balance. And if one leg is missing, the entire stool topples over. But if you can consistently balance these three healthy activities, you can win the weight management battle for life.”

GET REAL: A Personal Guide to Real-Life Weight Management is published by IDEA Health & Fitness Association, the world's leading membership organization fitness professionals, and serves as a weight management program for the YMCA of the USA.

The GET REAL philosophy also emphasizes what Dr. Kosich terms the “80/20 Principle.” Eat what you know you should 80% of the time and leave 20% for acknowledging and accepting that you are not perfect. That way you won’t set yourself up for feeling guilty or testing your willpower against cravings for foods you don’t need much of.

“People, especially young women, become obsessed with a certain body image, weight goal or dress size,” says Dr. Kosich. “But what’s most important is that a person determine and reach a weight that’s healthy for them. Not a number from a simplistic height/weight chart. Not something they’ve read in a magazine. But a healthy weight they can achieve and maintain.”