Those familiar with Dr. Shapiro's bestsellingPicture Perfect Weight Lossknow how simple and effective his Food Awareness Training approach is, especially for grab-and-go eaters or people who just can't deal with the usual deprivations of dieting. Virtually foolproof, the Picture-Perfect program reinforces your choices of healthy foods with strong visual reminders that stay in your mind long after calorie counts and portion sizes have become a blur. Now, Dr. Shapiro works the same Picture-Perfect magic in your kitchen. Whether you are a passionate cook who gladly spends hours stirring, chopping, or kneading, or a noncook who can't wait to get out of the kitchen, the recipes in this book allow you to prepare delicious low-calorie meals the whole family will love. Imagine enjoying these flavorful dishesandlosing weight. * Yukon Gold Potato Pancakes with Sausage * Stuffed Portobello Mushrooms * Chili Shrimp with Fruity Relish * Grilled Pork Chops with Georgia Peach Chutney * Garlic and Chive Mashed Potatoes * Chocolate Mousse * Creamy Lemon-Lime Cheesecake There's even a chapter devoted entirely to cooking for families with children. Kids will rave over dishes like Fruit Pizza, Turkey Burgers with Secret Sauce, Summer Fruit Pops, and Carousel Ice Cream Cake. They may even want to start helping in the kitchen! To appeal to the gourmet in all of us, Dr. Shapiro also includes recipes from 13 of the nation's top chefs. From Michael Romano of Union Square Cafeacute; in New York City to Jesse Ziff Cool of the Flea St. Cafeacute; in Menlo Park, California, these are the best of the best. You also get real-life bites from New York City firefighters who have used Dr. Shapiro's program to shape up. Real men do cook-- and well! And this book proves that they evenenjoyit.

Cooking for Picture-Perfect Weight Loss: From the Firehouse to Your House

Afirehouse may seem a funny place to start a cookbook. But the fact is that all firefighters are cooks. They have to be. It's part of the job. Since most firefighters work a 12- or 24-hour shift, they obviously have to eat several meals while at work. And since the job requires being on the spot in the firehouse, ready to move at a moment's notice, there's precious little opportunity for a leisurely restaurant lunch and not much sense in ordering an expensive take-out dinner that you might not get a chance to eat. That's why part of being a firefighter is taking your turn buying, preparing, and cooking the Food for everyone on the shift.

So when a bunch of New York's Bravest asked me to help them achieve Picture-Perfect Weight Loss, it meant that they not only had to embrace a whole new way of eating but also had to undertake a whole new way of cooking. You can, too, and this book will help you do it.

Why This Cookbook Is Different: Thin for Life

Picture-Perfect Weight Loss is unlike any "diet" you've ever been on, and this cookbook is unlike any other cookbook you've ever seen. Why? Because Picture-Perfect Weight Loss is not about "dieting"; it's about changing your relationship with food, once and for all. The Picture Perfect Weight Loss Cookbook shows you how.

Most diets are about deprivation, avoidance, and eating dull food in restricted portion sizes. Not Picture-Perfect Weight Loss. Thumb through the recipes in the pages that follow. Every taste is represented here: sweet, salty, sour-you name it. Every kind of meal is here-breakfast, lunch, dinner, snack. Every occasion is accommodated, from a lavish dinner party for a dozen guests to a quick lunch that you eat by yourself. Like seafood? It's here. Think of yourself as a meat-and-potatoes person? Your meal is here, too. Want some suggestions for cool eating in the heat of summer or for warm comfort foods on a cold winter's day? Look no further. What about side dishes? Appetizers? Soups? They're all here. All delicious, all healthful. And if you want proof that you don't have to give up desserts to achieve Picture-Perfect Weight Loss, the case is convincingly made in these pages.

Chances are that some of the foods in this cookbook are new to you. Good! Picture-Perfect Weight Loss is about expanding your food options. I hope you'll be inspired to explore even further. An important part of changing your relationship with food is looking beyond your current food "vocabulary" to entire new "languages" of eating.

What all these recipes have in common is that they represent a healthful, low-calorie way for you to enjoy everything you eat, every meal of every day, so that you eat till you're satisfied in a changed relationship with food. They are examples of a way of eating that can keep you thin for life-healthfully and deliciously.

The recipes also emphasize the importance of food. Of course, we all know that food is essential for life. But I mean something more than that-food as an essential aspect of culture. It has been that throughout human history, which is why many of these recipes contain notes about the history or folklore of a food or ingredient.

It's also why the way a food is presented can be so powerful, as the beautiful photographs in the book make clear. They clearly demonstrate that we can and should enjoy the food we eat. And that means paying attention not just to filling the stomach but also to the aesthetics of a recipe-to how it looks and smells, to the mingling of textures and tastes, to the way a food or combination of foods appeals to all the senses. Because above all, cooking remains a creative act. That's why I've included recipes in this book from some of the most celebrated, inventive chefs of this generation. And it's why you'll hear from creative artists in other fields-sculpture, dance, painting, theater-who will tell of their own attitudes toward cooking and their personal food passions.

I've also included recipes from some of the scores of firefighters and police officers who have benefited so greatly from Picture-Perfect Weight Loss.

Of course, the most important creativity in cooking is your own. If you're a dedicated cook, the recipes, tips, and nutritional information in these pages should prove a launching pad for your own imagination and inventiveness. In no time, you'll be concocting your own Picture-Perfect Weight-Loss recipes, making the lower-calorie choices expertly in your kitchen.

If you're a dedicated non cook, you'll probably want to pay particular attention to the quick-and-easy recipes in this book. Look for the QUICK icon as you browse the pages that follow. They point the way to easy-to-make recipes that can be on the table in 30 minutes or less. In fact, if you make this book your cooking primer, you will soon find that the principles of Picture-Perfect Weight-Loss cooking are second nature-easy and effective, every time.

Changing Your Relationships with Food

The new way of cooking you'll find here is essential for changing your relationship with food. And that's what you're about to do. You're not "going on a diet" that you'll try once and then forget. You're not undertaking some short-term overweight "remedy" that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Nor is Picture-Perfect Weight Loss a regimen of meals or a prescription of special foods. You don't lose weight following such tactics, and you certainly don't maintain weight loss that way.

Let me say it again: The only way to lose weight and keep it off is to change your relationship with food .

Think about it: How would you characterize your current relationship with food? If you're someone who's frequently watching your weight, chances are that any number of the following would apply.

* You fear food, and you crave food.

* You avoid some foods you love, and you force yourself to eat some foods that you don't like.

* You eat like a bird during the day, then eat a blow-out dinner that leaves you feeling overfed, sluggish, guilty, and a failure.

* You diet in January, gain the weight back by June, crash diet before summer, and just "let it go" for the holidays.

Do you see the common thread in all these reactions to food? Food is the enemy! Somewhere along the line, a necessity of life that should also be one of life's great pleasures has become your foe. You're afraid of food. It's your nemesis. You may run a business, control a budget of millions and a staff of hundreds, operate complex machinery, or manage a contemporary household -the kind with multiple people and multiple personal schedules-but when it comes to food, you find that you're up against an opponent you want to beat, but can't. Eating is controlling you, not the other way around.

Picture-Perfect Weight Loss teaches you the other way around. It trains you in what I call Food Awareness. By this I mean awareness not just of how and why you gain weight-and how and why you can lose weight-but of food itself, of the great variety of food options there are in the world, and of the consequences of eating different foods.

Specifically, Picture-Perfect Weight Loss makes you aware of the calorie consequences of food. The reason is simple: Calorie reduction is the key to weight loss. When you take in fewer calories than you expend, through a combination of eating choices and exercise, you will lose weight. Awareness of the calorie consequences of foods equips you to make lower-calorie choices. And awareness of the range of other possibilities for satisfying your appetite empowers you to choose lower-calorie foods that are tasty, satisfying, and filling,

Are you a chocoholic? Life is too short to forswear chocolate forever. In fact, as Picture-Perfect Weight Loss teaches, there are plenty of ways to enjoy chocolate and still lose weight, without beating yourself up for sneaking a piece of candy. There's no more sneaking; you're not "dieting," so you can't "cheat."

Or maybe you're someone who needs a snack in late morning-what the British call elevenses . By all means, listen to your body and have the snack. In fact, have something delicious and completely satisfying. Just choose mindfully, making a conscious decision from among a range of snack options-without feeling like a failure or being consumed by guilt.

One more thing: When you eat with awareness, there's no such thing as eating too much or depriving yourself or measuring portions. In fact, since you'll be making lower-calorie choices, you can actually eat more food than you're now eating and still lose weight and keep it off. That's Picture-Perfect Weight Loss, and that's what the Picture Perfect Weight Loss Cookbook is all about.

As a doctor, I give a simple prescription for the recipes in this book: Eat your fill. As I'll explain in the next chapter, it's a great way to lose weight. And if you don't believe me, just ask the chefs at the firehouse; they cooked up a loss of 1,854 pounds for their fellow firefighters-deliciously.

Losing Weight and Keeping It Off: What Works

Diets don't work. Period. If you've ever been "on a diet," you know what I mean. Have you ever lost weight on a diet? Of course you have. You starved yourself, made a superhuman effort to avoid foods you loved, ate only when the diet book said you should, and carefully measured out the mandated portions of the mandated foods, whether you liked them or not. Two weeks later, you had actually lost weight, maybe even a lot of weight.

And then what happened? How long did it take to gain the weight back? And how many additional pounds did you eventually put on? That's what happens with diets, as many studies and vast research show, and as your experience no doubt confirms.

There are two basic reasons why diets don't work (nor do pills, fasting, food combining, eating according to blood type, or any other fad weight-loss gimmicks). First, diets don't work because they are extracurricular. In other words, they represent a temporary departure from normal life, and once you go back to normal life, you also go back to normal eating and to the weight gain that the normal eating caused.

Second, diets don't work because they're tantamount to deprivation. You deprive yourself of foods you love, of eating when you feel like eating, and of the amount of food you want. Physiologically, all those deprivations are a signal to your body to stop losing weight and start gaining weight.

You don't believe me? Let's look at a few facts.

Making Sense of Metabolism

Obviously, food is essential to life. It's our fuel. It's what produces energy, stimulates growth, repairs tissues and muscles and sinews, and quite literally keeps us alive. The combination of what we eat and what our bodies do with what we eat determines our weight-and both what we eat and what our bodies do with what we eat are determined by genes and environment. Put it this way: We are dealt a particular genetic hand of cards, metabolically speaking, but we can play that hand of cards in different ways.

So what is metabolism? It's a process. Actually, it's a lot of processes. It's the sum total of all the interactions by which the body changes chemicals into the energy needed to live, breathe, and move. Along the way, these interactions, helped by the particular environment in which you live and the things taught to you by upbringing and experience, influence your eating.

Your metabolism is as individual as your fingerprint and just as indelible. Right now, in fact, your metabolism is relaying messages to your cells, blood, intestines, even your brain-messages that shape how you think about food, how different foods taste to you, when and where and how your appetite acts up, and how your body processes the food you eat.

Some bodies are more efficient food processors than others; they take needed energy from food immediately, then store the excess and keep it stored for longer than other bodies. Those bodies are more likely to gain weight than others because they store more calories than they expend. To lose weight, therefore, those people have to take in fewer calories or expend more of them through exercise-preferably both.

But how can you do that if some of your metabolic interactions, egged on by that ad on television and your almost subconscious memory of your mother's cooking, are making you crave certain foods, in certain amounts, at certain times? Isn't the obvious answer to defy appetite, to close your ears to the messages it sends through your body?

No. Absolutely not. Here's the reality about metabolism: When you defy your appetite, it fights back. In fact, the irony is that when you refuse to respond to all those messages that your metabolism keeps sending to your appetite centers about when to eat and what to eat and how much to eat, you actually lower your chances of being able to lose weight. All the scientific evidence culled from years of study confirms what anyone who has tried to lose weight already knows: If you battle your own metabolism, your metabolism wins. An old advertising campaign back in the 1970s warned, "It's not nice to fool Mother Nature." Well, fighting your metabolism is trying to fool Mother Nature, and she responds with an equal and opposite reaction. Those chemical interactions in your body aren't a problem that can be "fixed"; they're part of your genetic code. That's why depriving yourself of foods you like, or going hungry, or living on pills and shakes eventually backfires. In the end, you actually add pounds. The bottom line: You can't change your basic metabolism.

Say No to Deprivation, Yes to New Choices

Just because you can't permanently change your metabolism doesn't mean you're condemned to remain overweight for life. While there's nothing you can do about the genetic hand of cards you've been dealt, there's plenty you can do to play that hand of cards a different way. Simply put, you can empower yourself to deal with your metabolism, and that's exactly what Picture-Perfect Weight Loss is all about.

I'll provide more details on the principles of Picture-Perfect Weight Loss in the next chapter, but there are a few basics you need to understand right at the outset.

You're not going to give up foods you love because there are no bad foods with Picture-Perfect Weight Loss. You're not going to measure portions or eat at set times because there are no "correct" portions or "right times" to eat with Picture-Perfect Weight Loss. And you're not going to change your life or your lifestyle. Instead, you're going to reduce your calorie intake without feeling deprived and without defying your urge to eat. You can eat as much food as you're eating now-you can even eat more than you're eating now-and still lose weight.

Continue...

Excerpted from Dr. Shapiro's Picture Perfect Weight Loss Cookbook by Dr. Howard M. Shapiro Copyright © 2002 by Dr. Howard M. Shapiro
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.