NEW YORK, Dec. 14 Josie Raper, a 29 year-old mother from Phoenix who lost 120 pounds (half her size) in six months with the help of the Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET® six-cookies-a-day weight-loss program and foods, appeared this morning on the Joy Fit Club segment on NBC's Today Show. The Joy Fit Club feature, hosted by nutritionist and author Joy Bauer, airs twice a month and salutes those who have lost at least 100 pounds. Raper lost the weight in 2007 and has kept it off for two years.
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"The first time I met Dr. Siegal he was doing a personal appearance at a mall in Arizona. This was shortly after I'd lost the weight on his diet," said Raper. "I walked up to him and pulled out a picture of myself when I was over 100 pounds heavier and I told him, 'This used to be me.'"
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Appearing on the Today Show with Raper was her mother, Yvonne Henderson, who admitted to being skeptical when she first learned that her daughter was following a diet based on a cookie.
"At first I thought she was insane eating cookies to lose weight. But soon I saw the weight falling off her. So after Josie lost a lot of weight I went on Dr. Siegal's diet and sure enough, it worked. I've lost fifty pounds so far," said Henderson.
After meeting Raper several times over the next year, Dr. Siegal was so impressed with her and by the determination she demonstrated by losing 120 pounds that, in June 2009, he dedicated his latest book, Dr. Siegal's Cookie Diet Book: How a Doctor and His Cookie Helped 500,000 People Lose Weight Fast (2009, Hyde Park Publishing Ltd., 320 pages, ISBN 978-0-9822728-3-19999), to her.
"A few months ago, Dr. Siegal sent me an autographed copy of his new book. At first I read the handwritten message on the dedication page but I didn't notice what else was on the page," continued Raper. "But the next day I was showing the autograph to my husband and that's when I saw that that Dr. Siegal had dedicated his book to me. It said, 'To Josie Raper, who is half her size yet twice the person for sharing her story with the world and inspiring others to change their lives.' I couldn't believe it. I was so happy I cried."
Sanford Siegal, D.O., M.D., is a practicing physician, author, and weight-loss expert who conceived the idea of a diet based on a hunger-controlling cookie in the early 1970s while writing a book about natural food substances that are particularly effective at satisfying hunger. He set out to engineer a food to control hunger and enable his patients to stick to the low-calorie diet that he favors. After a number of years of experimentation, Dr. Siegal developed a formula for a particular mixture of amino acids that resulted from combining certain food substances. He baked his formula into a cookie and tried it with a few patients. Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET® was an immediate success. Soon, his South Florida medical practice had expanded to include 14 clinics and he was supplying his cookies and other foods to hundreds of other doctors throughout North America.
In 2007, Dr. Siegal began offering his cookies, shake mixes, and other products through www.CookieDiet.com (which has more than 112,000 members) and retail stores.
Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET® is continuously in the news. Recent profiles include:
ABC's Good Morning America http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9fuI9yzx4o
WPXI-TV Pittsburgh http://www.wpxi.com/news/21582364/detail.html
KNBC-TV Los Angeles http://www.nbclosangeles.com/station/as-seen-on/Cookie_Diet_Los_Angeles.html
KTNV-TV Las Vegas http://www.ktnv.com/global/Category.asp?c=164911&clipId=4295545&flvUri=&thirdpartymrssurl=&topVideoCatNo=0&autoStart=true&activePane=info&LaunchPageAdTag=homepage&clipFormat=flv
The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/22/fashion/22Skin.html?_r=2&hpw
ABOUT DR. SIEGAL'S COOKIE DIET®
Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET® is a profitable, 100% debt-free, family-owned business comprising several companies with corporate locations in the Miami, Florida, and Washington, DC, metro areas. Under license from Dr. Siegal's SM Licensing Corporation, Dr. Siegal's Direct Nutritionals, LLC operates the web site CookieDiet.com (112,000 members) and distributes products directly to consumers and resellers including GNC, Walgreens, and Samsclub.com.
ABOUT SANFORD SIEGAL, D.O., M.D.
Sanford Siegal, D.O., M.D., is a practicing physician whose South Florida medical practice, Siegal Medical Group, has treated more than 500,000 overweight patients. Although he has achieved notoriety for his books on subjects including high fiber diets, hunger control without drugs, and hypothyroidism, he is best known as the Cookie Doctor® behind the popular Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET® weight-loss program and hunger-controlling foods. Dr. Siegal is perpetually in the news and has been profiled by dozens of media including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, ABC's Good Morning America, NBC's Today Show, Toronto Globe & Mail, and Forbes.
Media Relations: Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET(R) (CookieDiet.com) 877-377-4342 (North America) 703-677-8068 (Elsewhere)
SOURCE Dr. Siegal's COOKIE DIET (CookieDiet.com)
