What if the journey to a permanent weight loss only takes four days and it is not about what you eat or do not eat and how much you exercise, rather, it is all in your head?

Sounds like another fad diet with a new age spin to boot? That is what I thought when I first heard of The Four Day Win.

My suspicion turned to shock when I saw the name of the first chapter – “Why Are You So Damn Fat?” Holy frakking donut! Actually, I am not fat, but if I were, I would probably blame my excess weight on questions like that.

As it turns out, one has to read the chapter – not just the name of it – to get the point. Note to self: Premature judgment – bad. Reading – good. Duh!

There seems to be a trend emerging in the world of dieting. Okay, maybe dieting is an unfortunate word here, because these books are not your typical diet books.

They are not about diet plans, exercise routines, and nutrition. Sure, many of them cover that information, but the main focus is to take fresh, outside-the-box approach to weight loss and lifetime weight management.

The Four Day Win is one of those books and it is awesome. So why four days and not eight? Martha Beck, a Harvard-educated PhD and author of The Four Day Win explains:

“Noticeable weight loss is not the only factor that seems to make a 4-day period significant. I’ve known for a long time that when I can get a client to do anything consistently for 4 days-writing, exercising, getting up an hour earlier than usual-an internal barrier seems to fall.

The new behavior starts to feel normal; life without it seems odd. It takes less discipline to repeat the action. As I was pondering this one November day, an anchorwoman on CNN reported that the stock market was about to close for Thanksgiving-but only for 31/2 days.

Wall Street stays up and running until noon every Thanksgiving, she says, because “they don’t like to keep the market closed down for 4 days.” She doesn’t explain why, but I’m convinced it’s related to the 4-day weight-loss phenomenon.

Four days is the period of time it takes for something to feel like “business as usual.” Three-day events are anomalies; something that lasts through that fourth day is a new status quo.

The Rule of 4 seems to be hardwired into the human brain, which comes equipped with a few basic numeric rules. One of these rules is that we can instantly recognize small quantities; if I show you this many dots (…) you can see at a glance that there are three of them. But if I show you a few more, say (……), you have to stop and count.

This is why we break phone numbers into three- or four-digit clumps, a practice called “chunking.” Some people can remember chunks of seven units or even more, but the norm is between three and five. Obscure tribes who don’t utilize verbal counting still recognize (and have words for) one, two, three, sometimes four, and then many.

We have common terms for today, tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow-a 3-day period-but the day after that is just “the future,” disconnected from now. Three is a trend, three is the fairy-tale number of king’s sons or magic boxes or days before the spell can be broken. Day 4? That’s when “happily ever after” begins.

When I started exploiting this little bit of psychological numeracy in my coaching, I found that people who had trouble starting a week-long program of change jumped right in if I asked them to sustain a new behavior for just 4 days.

I also discovered that after the 4 days, the inertia that had been keeping them locked into a pattern of action-or inaction-had changed and was now actually pushing them forward.

Even though I specified that they were free to stop making a change after the 4-day period, they often said they’d rather continue, because they’d already blasted through the initial resistance and were now starting to see positive change. This happened with so many clients that I began to refer to it as “the 4-day win.”"

The Four Day Win does not recommend a specific diet to follow. It lays out simple techniques that can be used with any diet plan, which makes it an extremely versatile tool for anyone who needs to lose weight. As for exercise, its approach is also unorthodox.

Using real life examples and latest research, Beck carefully reviews a number of exercise options that are usually available to most people – the rest is up to you.

There is an element of surprise, thought. The 4-day exercise principles are communicated effortlessly. She does not say “do this” or “do that”, yet it is clear what type of exercise is probably best suited for your situation and why. Genius!

At over 300 pages, The Four Day Win takes a little longer to read and digest than my daily ramblings on iFitandHealthy, but given the fact that the book is engaging, informative and most of all, practical – it is time well spent.