Hello!

Well, I believe you've now heard from a number of medically and scientifically approved methods of losing weight. All I can now present to you is a completely home-made, self-devised method that just happens to work (for me, and maybe for you).

When I needed to lost weight I started with all the big name, published diets, including McDougal, South Beach, Atkins, etc., etc. None of them worked for me. I also read plenty on nutrition, went to a nutritionist, etc.

So finally I just decided to throw them all out, including the nutritionists, and set up my own diet plan based on my own ideas as to what would work.

1. My first rule was NEVER to eat if I wasn't hungry. Even if it was meal time. And even if the meal had already been cooked.

2. My second rule was NEVER to eat to please someone else, meaning my wife. And I told her of this so she wasn't taken by surprise.

3. My third rule was NEVER to eat any snacks between meals.

4. My first PRINCIPLE was that however hungry I might be, if I waited twenty minutes the hunger would go away.

5. My second PRINCIPLE was to alternate one and two meal days: on day A I'd skip breakfast and lunch, eating only dinner; on day B I would eat lunch and dinner, skipping only breakfast. (The first principle worked very well for skipping lunch on A days.)

6. My fourth rule was never to have second helpings of carbohydrates.

7. My fifth rule was to eat only as much as it took to be basically satisfied, even if that meant leaving something on the plate. This meant eating very slowly so that I'd have a chance to know when I was satisfied instead of overshooting the goal.

And that was it. In two months I'd lost thirty pounds. I went back to two meals a day to maintain it. And it worked.

This diet was inspired by that Japanese nutjob responsible for the cult that sprayed poison gas in the Tokyo subway. He was terribly overweight and decided to diet by fasting every other day. And that worked very well, apparently.