By the end of 2001, I weighed 207 pounds and hated the shape of my body. Today I weigh 180 pounds and am still in the process of losing weight. I don’t starve myself, I don’t abuse myself, and I haven’t used drugs in order to accomplish this weight loss.

There is a billion dollar industry in the United States built on the dreams of fat people to be thin. Turn on any late-night television and you’ll see endless commercials for weight-loss chemicals and sit-up machines and cross-trainers and a bunch of other bizarre stuff. Intuitively you probably know that all this stuff either doesn’t work very well or doesn’t work at all. So why do these companies remain in business?

The fact is that it’s very easy to make money off people who want to be thin.

It’s very easy to make money based on people’s dreams. Everyone in the United States wants to be thin and beautiful. Look on any magazine stand and you’ll see very thin, very healthy-looking beautiful people. They have perfect teeth and perfect bodies. The part the magazines don’t show is that these models spend a major part of their lives preparing their bodies to look like that! We see the results and we don’t see the process.

And here’s the key difference between my process and whatever other fad diets or pills or powders you’ve taken in the past…

You didn’t pay anything to read this.

I’m not going to try to sell you anything. I don’t want your money. I don’t want to make a fifteen-percent commission off anything. Send your money to someone else!

The unifying theme of all modern fad diets is that they charge fees for fancy caffeine pills or concentrated juices or bad medical advice. I’m not going to charge you anything, ever, not now, not in the future, for this information.

Consider that the next time you pay good money to fail on yet another fad diet.

The modern American diet is steeped in fats, from the pounds of French fries we consume to the chocolate shakes and fried chicken and cheese pizzas. Fast food is a terrible source of fat in the American diet and, on my plan, you’re going to have to be damn careful when you eat out to count fat. It IS possible to eat out, but it’s going to be necessary to count everything you do.

Here are the key elements to my plan:

• Exercise moderately six of seven days for at least forty-five minutes.

• Track all your protein, fat, carbohydrate grams, exercise, and daily weight in a daily personal log.

• Eat when you get hungry, not after. Five or six small meals a day is reasonable.

• Emphasize protein, track carbohydrates, and eliminate fats.

• Reduce or eliminate alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs to “one per week.”

• Lose weight slowly but consistently, one or two pounds per week.

• Deal correctly with guilt.