It is not that the information available to you is garbage.  In fact, it is often quite good…just not useful to YOU!  Think:  How has it worked for you so far?  As I walk by magazine racks in the airport or grocery store, as I look at the offerings of daytime TV, as I glance over the newspaper lifestyle section, as I see the TV news teasers for human interest stories to come—I am amazed by the fact that all anyone seems to want to know and talk about is how to eat right, control her weight, “lose that last 10 pounds” and get back in shape.  It seems that if we got rid of these topics, no one would have anything to talk about.  No tabloids, or star profile magazines would be sold, that’s for sure.  So what do you need to know?

Here are some dieting realities:  It is well-known that the most successful diet programs have maintained weight loss in only 20% of their subscribers.  Only one in five people “succeed”.  In my patients, before they have bariatric surgery, the success rate of voluntary weight loss efforts is at best 5% over five years.  That is awful.  Then, when you consider the over-the-counter drugs for weight loss, many are approved with only an 8 to 12 pound average weight loss in three months.  Not a huge improvement over what you can do and have done on your own.  And they do not “reset your genes.”  They have no impact on where you are genetically.  So, when a person quits the weight loss drugs, they go right back to where they started by gaining back the lost weight…sometimes more.

The weight loss secrets and guides available today are pretty good in terms of the information and guidance they give you.  However, as a weight loss surgeon, I feel obligated to give you a better way.  I don’t want to preach about to you the details of dieting and exercising.   You have gotten enough of that.  I want to start by giving you six essential diet tips that you need to start the weight loss process.  These are what I teach my patients.  Now as you can imagine, my patients have done everything before coming to see me.  I cannot really teach them anything new.  Instead, I re-teach them basic things that they can apply daily in their lives.  I always think that simple is better.  As I often joke with my patients, I like a diet plan that can be summed up in a few inches.

But first I have to make it simple…or else who would remember it?  So, here are the only rules you need:

1.  Keep hydrated.
2. Minimize “white stuff.”
3. Make protein 50% to 75% of each meal.
4. Eat five to six meals per day.
5. Drastically minimize or eliminate sugared sodas, juices, fancy coffees, and sport drinks.
6. Don’t avoid fats…but don’t add them either.

In the coming weeks, I will be contributing articles that discuss each of these rules in detail.  I know that if you do these, your health and diet will be dramatically improved.  Now, this seems amazingly simple.  But isn’t this just about all that the previous guides have told you to do?  I’ve read just about all of them and they are a repackaging of the same stuff again and again.  I have found that whenever the plan is simple, people can actually do it.

Dr. Michael A. Snyder, a bariatric surgeon at Rose Medical Center in Denver, is founder of Fullbar and leader of the BeFull Solution movement.  To learn more about Dr. Snyder and the products that he suggests please visit

http://www.fullbar.com/fullbars.aspx?f=pn