The Dieter's Paradox: Why Dieting Makes Us Fat

Alexander Chernev

Cerebellum Press,  August 2011

Why despite the increased popularity of weight-loss programs and the greater availability of healthy options, are Americans getting heavier? Does dieting make us fat?

In The Dieter's Paradox, Northwestern University psychologist Alexander Chernev describes decision fallacies that make us gain rather than lose weight. Bringing to life the latest research in psychology, decision sciences, and behavioral economics, Chernev cleverly reveals the irrational ways we think about eating and dieting and identifies seven decision traps we frequently fall into in our zeal to be fit.

Paperback | ISBN: 9781936572106 | Publication Date: August 2011

Reviews:
"The Dieter's Paradox shows us why our most noble attempts to lose weight often fall prey to classic human biases. Alex Chernev takes a potfull of interesting experiments and boils them down to create a dieter's consomme, an elegant but easily digestible collection of resrarch in behavioral sciences that illuminates our irrational eating decisions."
-- Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational and The Upside of Irrationality

"Want to turn around your mindless eating? One place to start is with The Dieter's Paradox. It shows that our best intentions can trip us up and teaches us how to rewire our thinking to avoid decision traps such as health halos and the no-choice fallacy"
-- Brian Wansink, author of Mindless Eating: Why We Eat More Than We Think

"With this book Alex Chernev has provided something of immense value. He's shown us how to manage something we all care about by giving us great information hardly any of us knew about"
-- Robert Cialdini, author of Influence: Science and Practice

"Alex Chernev has discovered that many people believe they can cut a meal's calorie count by an ingenious method -- adding more food!"
-- Scientific American

"The Dieter's Paradox is a must-read for anyone who has tried to manage their weight and does not understand why they failed, and for anyone who has succeeded and wants to know what they're doing right"
-- Psychology Today