Welcome to phenpro.com

phenpro.com is a new interactive site dedicated to helping both patients and doctors with weight loss.
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The old website is more oriented toward patients and people unfamiliar with blogging. If you don't know about phen-pro, the safe effective treatment for obesity, you may go to the old website for a more traditional introduction to the subject, although most info can be found by clicking on the buttons at the left.
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Afterwards, please return to this site often to join the national conversation on the best way to deal with the country's number #1 problem, obesity. Any honest question or comment on any aspect of obesity is welcome.
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Michael Anchors, M.D., Ph.D., manchors@aol.com

Why Public Eating Reduces Obesity

Lesson #6 commands you to eat with friends as often as possible. You should (almost) never eat alone. I learned this lesson from the Italians in Italy, who are almost all lean & happy. Public eating is a major cause. There are four reasons. Read more...  |   Email This Article

Symbolic versus Real Behavior

Although the majority of my patients lose a lot of weight and keep it off forever, I spend a lot of time talking about the few patients who don't succeed, because it is there that I and other doctors can improve our treatment. The chief impediment for patients and doctors is the substitution of symbolic behavior for real behavior and unwillingness to see the difference. Read more...  |   Email This Article

Was Obesity Nixon's Fault?

In 1972 the U.S. shipped 30 million tons of wheat to Russia. As a result by 1973 the price of food in the U.S. had risen to record levels and Nixon worried the public backlash would threaten the Republicans in the next election. He ordered Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz to "fix it". Butz canceled the loans-to-farmers program and the national granary reserve that had been in place since 1933, replacing them with direct payments to large farmers to grow corn. Small farmers were driven out. Corn produces the most food per acre, and Butz famously urged farmers to plant corn "from "fencepost to fencepost". Corn now sells for less than the cost of production, the difference made up by payment of taxpayer dollars to farmers, 40 billion a year. Bumper crops are sustained with fertilizers from oil. Read more...  |   Email This Article

The Two Humps

Examining the records of thousands of my patients who lost a lot of weight and kept it off, I see two humps, two places where the rate of loss slowed down and picked up again. The unsuccessful patients got stuck on one side of one of those humps. Clinicians should give advice appropriate to the specific hump blocking the patient.
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Personality and Overweight

I'll get a lot of hate mail for saying this, but I find that the more overweight people are, the less variation exists in their personality. There are many types of lean people, but only one type of very obese person. There is a spectrum between the two extremes. The first two reasons are trivial. Obese people spend more time seeking things to eat, less time for hobbies, people or study. And obese people are sleepy (THAT is published).
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Eating with the TV

Nutritionists inveigh against eating in front of the TV, but the matter needs more thought. There is nothing wrong with eating a meal while watching TV. Anything that slows down eating helps weight control. Nutritionists say TV distracts attention from what you are eating. Like that is a bad thing. But I say it's a good thing. Think about it. They didn't. Read more...  |   Email This Article

David Kessler's book

I have read David Kessler's new book The End of Overeating. You shouldn't bother. His thesis is that U.S. obesity is caused by food companies filling our food with sugar, salt and fat to make the food addictive. (Replay of the tobacco company story.) But it's another example of finding someone to blame other than the person(s) at fault--the consumer-- because making Americans feel good, blaming someone else, is a convenient way to sell books. And the food companies can't defend themselves because they lack a common spokesperson. Read more...  |   Email This Article

Patterns

Here are patients who generally do well, and those who generally do poorly. Read more...  |   Email This Article

Upgrading Lesson #6

To the Lesson #6 sign on my wall reading,"Real happiness comes from people, not from things", I have added "Eat with friends" to make the connection between real happiness etc. and obesity more obvious. I saw that, in Italy, eating with friends inhibits overeating, for two reasons. First, people are embarrassed to overeat in front of their friends. And second, the Italians like wearing nice clothes. Their clothes are made in Europe, expensive, fit well, and they wear them over and over. If they gained weight, their clothes wouldn't fit, and the Italians don't like shopping and buying so often. Read more...  |   Email This Article

The True Standard of Living

Lesson 6 has been an important, and timely, addition to my teaching program. Lori K wrote as follows: "What a refreshing pleasure to meet you on Monday. The six lessons have been doing great! I'm weighing myself every morning . . . I went grocery shopping with my Mom and spent time talking with our neighbors. What a difference when you focus on people and not grinding away at my business. So far no snacking, no cravings . . . " Read more...  |   Email This Article

Food Eaten Late Does Not Go To Fat

Among the many things people-believe-for-no-reason-other-than-hearing-other-people-say-it is that food eaten late at night is more likely to "go to fat" than food eaten earlier. I even included that fallacy in my first book Safer Than Phen-Fen, before looking for the scientific basis of the statement. I looked. There is no scientific basis for it. Read more...  |   Email This Article

Fantasyland

Why are Americans, given a permissive environment of wealth, so uniquely prone to obesity? because of the complete, comfortable substitution of wishful thinking for real thinking. Consider the following. "All men are created equal", Disneyland, George Bush (either), the Cold War and its iterations, Superman & superheroes and many repetitions, Barbie, movie stars, baseball, drugs, the NRA, Congress, TV ads, Hummers, subprime loans, supersizing, "more for your money", "no child left behind", 1000 religions passionately believed, bariatricians debating whether a 400 calorie or 800 calorie diet is better. Is it any wonder each American generation, growing up here, is less realistic than the preceding generation? Any wonder so many fat Americans think they don't eat too much? Any wonder bariatricians, in general, have so little effect? "The Wizard of Oz" is our national epic, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" our national song. Think "There's no place like home. There's no place like home."  |   Email This Article

Stop Bustrophedonic Shopping!

You'll know what the word "bustrophedonic" means when I tell you that "bos" in Greek means 'ox' and "strophon" means 'plow'. So bustrophedonic shopping means going up and down every aisle, the way an ox plows a field or a person knits a sweater. Up one row and down the other. Cool word. Egyptian heiroglyphics and some ancient Greek inscriptions were written this way. An efficient way to write, but boy, it takes a mind to write backward and forward with equal facility. Read more...  |   Email This Article

The Recession

Has the recession affected my weight-loss practice? It sure has. In the following ways... Read more...  |   Email This Article

Priapism

Some doctors using phentermine add trazadone as a second medicine to (A) make phentermine work better & longer and (B) to help patients sleep. A very rare side-effect of trazadone is priapism (pry'-uh-pizm), i.e. prolonged penile erection. In women, priapism consists of prolonged genital congestion. I have now seen priapism twice. In a woman in January and a different woman yesterday. They had to put cold compresses on their genital area and take Tylenol. Read more...  |   Email This Article

French Fries

At least one quarter of Americans get a meal at a fast food restaurant every day, based on self-reporting, so I'm sure the real percentage is higher. The worst thing about it is french fries. In my office I have a small sign regarding french fries. It says, "What's wrong with french fries? High starch, high calories, high fat, saturated fat, trans fat, high sodium, no protein, no vitamins, acrylamide linked to cancer. Read more...  |   Email This Article

Are All Diets Equal

Tonight the ABC Nightly News (mis)reported a scientific study, showing (they said) that "all diets are equal". What the study really showed was that in subjects on different low-calorie diets in which the calorie intake was VERIFIED to be equal, the weight-loss was equal. ABC said the study showed that "all diets are equal", and "it doesn't matter which diet you follow" as long as you really follow the diet. ABC edited what the researchers SAID to make it sound that way. But I am sure the researchers did NOT state their conclusion in such terms. I have more respect for the scientists. I have no respect for the journalists. Read more...  |   Email This Article

Referring Patients to Dr. Anchors

Many of my successful patients refer patients to me. Such referrals are my single best source of new patients. Thank you. A couple of words of advice however. Don't nag or badger friends or family members to go see me. People who require badgering won't perform, because they come only to get you to stop nagging them. Besides, nagging friends loses friends. Your fat friends are still your friends. You must realize, as I did, we can't save everybody.
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How to Cook Vegetables

According to my food pyramid, dieting people, and most others too, should eat more fruits (other than bananas) and vegetables (other than potatoes). It is amazingly difficult to get people to do it. Patients give three reasons for disobeying me. Read more...  |   Email This Article

Why The Pope Cancelled My Talk

I was supposed to talk at Bus Boys and Poets Bookstore on Thursday, Jan. 29 in their Educator series, but as soon as they found out my talk would include "diet pills", I was cancelled. Why?
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Vegetarians Without Vegetables

I have met several persistently obese vegetarians. Without exception they have not lost weight in the phen-pro program. (I have never met an overweight vegan.) It is easy to figure out why. The overweight vegetarians are eating some vegetables and lots of cakes, candy, cheese and cookies. They are "vegetarian" only in the sense that they don't eat meat. They don't lose weight in the phen-pro program because (1) phentermine reduces hunger but does nothing about candy and (2) anyone so deluded about the point of vegetarianism is likely to mess up the Six Lessons, too.
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Sit Ups

Sit-ups are a useful way to flatten the abdomen. As a doctor interested in health, I am concerned only about excessive fat in the liver and around the intestine. Most patients, on the other hand, especially women, are concerned about the cosmetic appearance of the round belly.
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Americans are Overgrown Children

Often I hear Americans say, "I couldn't help myself", "I had to have it", "I couldn't resist" and it occurred to me to think, this is NOT how real adults talk; this is the way children talk. Such childish thinking is universal in the U.S.
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Once A Year Monitoring—Can't Do It

Some out-of-state patients have noted that Congress just passed a law requiring patients to be really seen by the physician once a year to receive prescriptions from the physician. The patients ask if I will see them once a year instead of more often. I tell them that the once-a-year national standard is a minimum. States are allowed to require more frequent visits, and my state, Maryland, does.
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Thanksgiving Dinner

Although every bariatric patient has the capacity to figure out how to handle Thanksgiving dinner, it is important for the physician to give specific advice, because, otherwise, the it's-okay-to-do-what-everyone-else-does error takes over. The idea of Thanksgiving gives people warm, fuzzy feelings, leading directly to fuzzy thinking. No, you may not overeat on Thanksgiving to any great degree. Gluttony is gluttony on the last Thursday in November as much as any other day.
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Back to the Media

I will be speaking at Bus Boys and Poets bookstore 2021 14th St., N.W. from 3-6 on December 18. Other book stores too, and I'm going back to radio. I have a press agent. Are you reading this, Sheryl? My successful patients are eager to go on, with me.
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Confusing Size with Quality

Americans have terribly confused size with quality. They think anything is better if it's bigger. Food certainly. But also cars, TVs, houses, breasts, theaters, stadiums. Europeans, on the other hand, appreciate quality, the best they can get, but as for size--things should be only big enough and no more.
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Report on Group Lessons

My first session of group lessons is now finished. I began with six intelligent, overweight women who had nevertheless not learned the Six Lessons or read my book or lost weight. My initial idea was that (1) they were visual, not verbal learners (2) motivated to make changes and lose weight; and (3) they were victims of oversized meals, plates, pots, pans & packages, and (4) NOT significantly snacking on cakes, cookies & ice cream.
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C Words Redux

It's amazing how much of the bad stuff starts with the letter "C".

• Cakes
• Candy
• Cookies
• Chocolate
• ice Cream
• Cane Columbus
• Childishness

Two Lessons Learned

As said before, the majority of my patients listen to my speech and read my book and do well, losing weight, but I have a small group that do not. I am developing programs for them. For the women I have introduced group sessions; for the men, the e-mail-every-day club. In each case I have learned an important lesson.
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