Frequently Asked Questions About
The "One Day Diet" Plan
A Weight Loss Program That Works.

Yes you can use the tasty Hoodi-Chews, if you think you need some extra help in controlling hunger on the Diet Days while using the One Day Diet plan - or when you have finished your diet program and are back to eating normally. Hoodia fools your brain into thinking it is not hungry, so you are not tempted to eat more food than is necessary. Test subjects in a double-blind scientific study were found to eat an average of 1000 less calories per day while taking Hoodia Gordonii, so Hoodia works great as an appetite suppressant. But please take careful note of the following warning...

On each and every Food Day, you "eat normally" and YOU DO NOT DIET - so it does not make sense to try to control your hunger on the Food Days or eat less food, when you MUST eat as many calories as would be "normal" for your body, based on your present height and weight and activity level. If you used an appetite suppressant like Hoodia on a Food Day and then did not eat as many calories as your body needs, then you would run the risk of having your body lower its metabolic rate and store fat, and resist any further attempts to diet or lose weight. It would be wise to take the Hoodia only on the Diet Days, and only if you need extra help with hunger control.

Most users of the One Day Diet plan do not have any trouble with eating just the Diet wafers and water and some optional raw fruit on their Diet Days. But everyone has a different body with a different metabolism and chemistry, so some may need to deal with feelings of hunger on the Diet Days. In that case, the Hoodi-Chews may be a helpful way to keep from feeling hungry when the Diet wafers and fruit just don't seem to be enough.

But even if you use the Hoodi-Chews to suppress your appetite, you MUST continue to eat the two Diet wafers every hour for ten hours on each Diet Day. You need the nutrition supplied by the vitamins and minerals, you need the carbohydrates to maintain your blood sugar level and prevent feeling fatigued or faint, and you need the protein they supply to prevent any loss of muscle cells while you are dieting.

When you have completed your weight loss program and wish to use the Hoodia Gordonii to help control hunger at the times you are most tempted to snack on fattening foods or to over-eat at meal time, then the Hoodi-Chews can be eaten on alternate days - but should not be eaten every day or you risk lowering your metabolism, as mentioned above. Do not consume more than 4 Hoodi-Chews per day.

The "One Day Diet" plan really IS a "one day diet". You diet for 1 day, called your Diet Day, then you stop dieting for one day, which is called a Food Day. If you want to lose more than a pound or two, you simply do another Diet Day followed by another Food Day, for as long as you want to or need to. You can stop and start again anytime you want. You just don't do two Diet Days in a row, without a Food Day in between.

The Original One Day Diet is a very special kind of low carbohydrate diet which does NOT cause your body to lower its metabolic rate when you reduce the amount of carbohydrates you are consuming. It also contains protein so you don't lose muscle mass. Other low-carb diets like the Atkins Diet or South Beach Diet literally starve your body of carbohydrates, and if this continues for several days it can cause your body to react by lowering its metabolic rate to survive on less calories. At that point it would resist any loss of weight, no matter what you do.

But the One Day Diet drastically reduces carbohydrates and calories for just one day, and then you always eat your FULL normal amount of carbs and calories the following day. If you follow the guidelines faithfully, your body will never sense an ongoing reduction in calories - and will NOT react by lowering its metabolic rate. The lowering of metabolic rate which often occurs on other calorie-reduced or "starvation" diets is the reason so many of these diet plans fail, and why some of them actually cause you to gain more weight than you started with.

You see, your body cannot know how many calories it is going to get tomorrow - it only knows how many it has been getting in the recent past. As long as you keep from lowering your usual calorie intake for three days in a row, it will not sense this as impending "starvation" - and so it will not try to protect you by lowering the rate at which it burns calories for energy.

Even though you get only 180 calories from the 20 Diet wafers you eat on Diet Days, this diet is safe to continue for weeks at a time because you are always eating "normally" every second day and getting your usual healthy diet. Your body won't even sense that you are "dieting".

A 24-hour "Diet Day" starts in the morning when you get up, and ends the next morning when you eat some food. You will be burning fat and losing weight, even while you are asleep all night. If you are on an unusual sleep cycle, such as when traveling by jet across time zones or when working night shifts, just start and end your Diet Day at whatever hour you wake up from your sleep period.

The "end" of your One Day Diet plan is when you have lost all the pounds and inches you wanted to lose. When you get to that point, you just stop doing the Diet Days - and every day becomes a Food Day again.

You could also do a period of "adjustment" when you are close to your ideal weight, in which you introduce an evening meal to your Diet Day. Eat the Diet wafers from breakfast time to late afternoon, then eat "normal" food for your dinner or evening meal. Continue eating "normally" on your Food Days, and eventually all your days will be Food Days after your adjustment period ends and you stop eating the Diet wafers.

You can "take a break" from your One Day Diet plan for a while by doing a series of two or more Food Days in a row, anytime you want. If you want to lose a few more pounds later, you just start with another Diet Day and continue until you reach your weight loss goal, even if it's only for one or two days. Some people can lose 1 to 2 pounds in just one Diet Day. Your One Day Diet wafers will last for a long time without spoiling, so keep them around in case you want to lose a few pounds quickly, or use them as a low-calorie "snack food" (9 calories per wafer) if you get hungry between meals, or keep some as an "emergency food supply". Keep the container tightly closed to keep the air out and avoid oxidization for as long as possible.

Just don't do two Diet Days in a row, and don't try to "diet" on your Food Days!

You can always do more than one FOOD Day in a row if you want, which really is the same as NOT being "on" the One Day Diet for a while.

You lose weight only on the Diet Days, and you can basically do a Diet Day whenever you want to lose one or two pounds - as long as you NEVER do two Diet Days in a row. You must never go "3 days in a row with reduced calories" or you will risk lowering your metabolism - which would result in not losing weight, and perhaps actually gaining weight later. (Going 3 days in a row without getting your usual supply of calories would be "starvation", and your body will react by storing more fat and lowering your metabolism.)

Please make sure you have read the "Warning" about eating "normally" on your Food Days, and why this is so critically IMPORTANT. Here is an extra link to the FAQ answer that provides this information...

What Is the MOST Important "Rule" For The One Day Diet, the Rule I Must Never Break?

If you want to lose a lot of weight, you can just keep up the "one day on, one day off" cycle for as long as necessary - or until you run out of Diet wafers.

NOTE: If your weight loss goal is to lose more than 15 or 20 pounds, you are going to need more than 1 bottle of One Day Diet wafers (a 14-day supply). You can save money by ordering a 42-day (6-week) supply in the form of 3 bottles of Diet wafers for US $99.99 (compared to 2 bottles for $79.90 you get the 3rd bottle for about $20). As soon as you have seen that the Diet really is working for you, make sure you re-order in time (at least a week ahead) so that your next bottle will arrive before your first bottle is empty! On the other hand, it may be a good idea to take a little "break" from dieting after you have lost 15 or 20 pounds. You can start again anytime, just by doing another "Diet Day" to start the "one day on, one day off" cycle again.

Here is the link to the Order page on my web site that shows how to order by phone (MON-FRI, 8 AM to 5 PM Pacific Time, or 11 AM to 8 PM Eastern Time) and how to order on-line anytime, 24/7. Affinity is located in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, which is in the same Time Zone as California. (There is no sales tax charged unless your order is shipped to a location in Nevada.)

Click here to ORDER ONE DAY DIET

In summary, just do the One Day Diet over and over again until you achieve your desired weight loss. It's as simple as that. But if you are going to be on the Diet for a long time, it may be best to "take a break" occasionally and just eat normally for a week or so. And if you are losing more than 7 pounds per week, it would be a good idea to take a break for a while to slow down the rate of weight loss and stay healthy.

Be aware that once you lose weight, your body mass is less than before. You'll have a different body which doesn't NEED to get as many calories per day to produce the extra energy it once required to move around the excess weight you just lost - so you should be eating less food per day now, or you will start to gain weight. Eating less may just happen naturally, but do be aware of this if you want to keep the weight off and not gain it back again.

When you get thinner, you get to start eating like a thinner person! Start to "see" yourself as that thinner person now, and it will help you "act" like the thinner person you really have become.

I lost over 40 pounds using the One Day Diet, and went from a 44-inch waist to a 38-inch waist pant size. (or size 36 jeans). Knowing I was going to be losing a lot of weight, I did not go out and buy new pants for a while - I just wore some of my older pants that started to fit me again as my waist size got smaller. That was nice to see!

I still wanted to lose 20 more pounds to get down to my "ideal" body weight. But one day I decided to just go out and buy some really nice new pants in my current size - and I am glad I did! I didn't really know what size would fit me right, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I could wear a size 38 dress pant, and it was even a little loose. But I also tried on some jeans, and I could easily get into a size 36. THAT made me feel even better!

Sure, when I lose that final 20 pounds, those new pants won't fit me any more - but it was worth the money just to KNOW and FEEL that I was now a "size 36" instead of a "size 44". It became more REAL to me that I was now this guy who wears size 36 jeans - because I WAS WEARING THEM. Now I am imagining myself getting into some size 34 jeans pretty soon. I haven't worn a size 34 for years! I think the last time I bought a size 40/34 suit was when I was in my early 20s!

But now I am even more determined to get into some size 34 jeans and buy a nice new suit with a 40 inch jacket and 34 inch pants. I should be looking pretty good when that happens. And, best of all, I am going to FEEL GOOD when I see myself in that 40/34 suit! In fact, I think I will get myself a tailor-made suit, no matter what it costs. It will fit better and look better, and really seeing myself as that thin person will make me feel better. As they say in the Master Card(tm) commercials... "Value: Priceless."

I hope that my little fantasy has helped motivate you to imagine yourself as a thinner person, and maybe promise yourself a nice "reward" when you finally reach your own weight loss goal. Don't be cheap with yourself. Give yourself something really GOOD - for YOU ARE WORTH IT! You DESERVE it. And you can HAVE it!

I'd like to hear about the amount of weight you lost, and what pant or dress size you were wearing "before" and what size you are wearing "after" you reached your weight loss goal. And I'd really like to hear what you bought for yourself as your own personal "reward". Send me an email, and enclose a digital picture file if you care to. I'll even put up a page on my One Day Diet web site(s) and show your picture to the world if you want.
(Then you could send the URL to your picture page and show off your new body to all your friends and family who aren't around to see it live and in person. And maybe to anybody who once made a disparaging remark about your old body. Maybe to an old boyfriend or girlfriend? They say, "Success is the best revenge!")

Here's my email address: michael@star-company.com

First, please understand that your REAL goal is not to lose "pounds".

What you really want to lose is FAT.

Think about this example... A champion body-builder ready for a competition may weigh 220 pounds, but have only 3 to 5 percent of that mass as fat. He is all bone and muscle, and very little fat, and his muscles show through because there is less fat to hide them. Now you would not say "He WEIGHS too much" at 220 pounds, would you? It's not the weight, but the FAT that counts. You want to lose FAT without losing MUSCLE. You want to look trim instead of flabby, and the less fat and more muscle, the more shapely your body will be.

And the more muscle cells you have, the more calories your body burns to feed those muscle cells, because they need a constant supply of fuel (glucose) even when they are not moving. On average, about 25 percent of your daily calories are used up by your muscles.

The same volume of muscle weighs nearly three times as much as the same volume of fat, so "weight" is not a very reliable indicator. If you were gaining as much muscle as you were losing fat, your overall weight would actually increase because of the muscle you add weighs more than the fat you lost - but you would look better and be healthier!

We are not talking about gaining muscles while on the One Day Diet (but it helps prevent losing muscle while losing fat). We are using muscles and body-builders to make a point about getting our priorities straight. Measuring your weight by the pound is convenient, but it is not the pounds that really matter - it's the INCHES!

Trust the inches on the waist of your pants, or the size your dress, as the best indicators of success with any Diet plan.

Now let's discuss your desire to have some reassurances that you can lose a certain number of pounds in a certain period of time. That's a reasonable desire, to have some kind of "guarantee" that you will succeed before you start. But unfortunately it's not realistic. It can happen in the fantasy world of advertising hype, but it really can't happen in real life. And here's why.

Please be aware that every individual has a different body, different body mass, different metabolic rate, and different eating habits. These things all affect how fast you gain or lose weight, so there is no way to make any blanket statements or claims about the expected weight loss in pounds that will be true for EVERY person. As they say... "Individual results will vary." And YOU are an INDIVIDUAL, so your results may not be the same as others'.

You can look over the testimonials provided on this web site to get an idea of how much weight SOME individuals have actually lost while using the One Day Diet. And I can tell you about my own personal experience with the One Day Diet, where I lost 20 pounds in 20 days in April 2003, the first time I tried the One Day Diet as a new customer. That was a surprisingly large weight loss for me, and I am not implying in any way that YOU will lose 20 pounds in 20 days like I did. I can only say that "I did it." THIS individual did it. But I'm not you, and neither are those people who gave testimonials about their personal weight loss.

There are several factors which will make one person lose more or less weight than another person, and I will list some of them here.

The most obvious factor is HOW you personally DO the One Day Diet. Are you going to follow the guidelines exactly, and not ever do anything or eat anything you are not "supposed to"? Will you get out and do some walking on Diet Days or get some other kinds of exercise to help burn off even more fat? Are you going to eat a healthy diet on all of your Food Days and not gain weight that day by over-eating? Or are you going to eat things that will just add more fat on Food Days that will have to be burned off on the next Diet Day?

All these things depend solely on YOUR choices and habits. They are going to affect how much weight you lose on ANY diet plan, and how FAST you lose the weight. Nobody can guarantee that YOU will follow the Diet plan instructions, so nobody can really guarantee that YOU will lose the amount of weight that others have lost on the same Diet. It depends on YOU and your own actions.

The second thing you should understand is that you will likely lose MORE weight the first time you do the One Day Diet, because the weight seems to come off faster when you weigh much more than your "ideal" body weight. As you lose some weight and get closer to your ideal body mass, the pounds seem to come off less quickly. The second time I used the One Day Diet, in January 2004, I lost 15 pounds in 20 days, which was 5 pounds less than the first time. So take that into account when you compare your own rate of weight loss to anyone else's.

The third thing you should know is that men tend to lose weight faster than women of the same body mass, because men usually have more muscle mass (more muscle cells in their body) than women, who have more fatty tissue than men. Muscle cells require energy at all times, whether they are being used or not, so they burn calories "just sitting there" and while you are asleep. Fat cells, on the other hand, don't burn calories at all, they just sit there and store energy in the form of fat. So the higher the percentage of muscle cells you have in relation to your overall body mass, the more calories those extra muscles cells are constantly burning for you. You can eat more food without adding fat, and you can lose fat more quickly by eating less food.

So men, with their higher percentage of muscle cells, have an intrinsic advantage over women, who have a higher percentage of fat cells than the average man. Because women bear children, they have those extra stores of fat in strategic areas - and that is a good thing! But it does make it harder for women to lose weight, compared to men.

And you should understand that because of this, women should be eating LESS food than a man of comparable body mass. If you are a woman who goes out for a restaurant meal, you are likely being served a "man-sized" portion of food, which is TOO MUCH FOR YOU. Don't be afraid to "just say no" to the extra food, and just leave it on your plate. Otherwise, you will eat more than your body really needs, and it will store the excess food as fat!

The fourth thing you should know is that when you are NOT drinking enough water, your body will STORE water to survive when it senses a shortage in the water supply. But if you follow the instructions for the One Day Diet plan, you WILL be drinking enough water, and this will cause your body to sense that there is no water shortage any longer, which will make it start to shed the stored water because it just doesn't need that emergency supply any more.

Thus if you were not drinking enough water before the Diet plan started, you will likely lose some extra pounds of "water weight" in the first week or so, which can make you think, "What a great diet! I am losing weight fast with this one." But once your body stabilizes the amount of water it is storing, you will lose that little "fast start advantage" you experienced in the early days on the Diet. So don't let a sudden slowing of the rate at which you lose pounds discourage you. It was a temporary shedding of water weight that made your scale show a larger loss of weight per day at the outset, but what you are seeing in the second week is the REAL rate of weight loss you are likely to experience. It may not be as great as you experienced in the first week or so, but it can still be a rapid weight loss, more than most diet plans will produce.

I bought an expensive scale that measures in one-tenths of a pound, and it shows that I typically lose 2.0 pounds from the morning of a Diet Day to the next morning on the following Food Day. Others I have talked to are losing 1 to 2 pounds this way too.

I should also mention that in the summer of 2004 I was often gaining back half a pound on my Food Days, but that's still a net loss of 1.5 pounds in 2 days. Yes, I went back on the Diet... not because I gained any weight afterwards, but because I still needed to lose another 25 pounds to get down to my ideal body weight. (I now wear size 36 jeans, not the size 44 I was wearing last year before the Diet.) It's harder now, being closer to my ideal weight - and wanting to get out and use the barbeque a lot during the summer months is not making it any easier! Those ribs and chicken wings are just too tempting (on Food Days only, of course).

The fifth thing you need to understand is that people who do any kind of "exercise" while on their Diet plan will lose even more weight, or lose it more quickly. You don't "have" to exercise for the One Day Diet to work, but it does work better if you can use your muscles on the Diet Days, for that forces your body to burn even more fat to create the glucose it needs to "fuel" your moving muscles. So even a 10 or 20 minute brisk walk on your Diet Days will help you lose weight faster. Walking is more effective for losing weight than running or jogging - and it doesn't have the high risk of stressing your heart and blood vessels and triggering a heart attack.

It's also good to exercise on the Food Days, but you don't get the same effect because your body will have enough carbohydrates available from the food in your system which it can burn to create glucose, so it doesn't need to go to its store of fat for energy.

So if you only have time to walk or exercise a few days a week, try to do it on the Diet Days if you can. Since the exercising increases the rate of weight loss, then you have to realize that others who exercise while on the Diet will likely lose weight faster than you, if you are not getting much exercise yourself.

The sixth thing you need to realize is that the only way to lose weight is to consume less calories than your body needs to create the energy it needs - and that you will gain weight when you consume MORE calories than your body needs that day, for it will store the extra energy as fat to be used later if you need it. On a Diet Day, you are only getting 180 calories from your 20 Diet wafers, plus a few hundred more if you eat a typical amount of fruit. That is a VERY low carb diet, but you do it for only 24 hours at a time.

The following day is always a Food Day, and the amount of calories you consume on a Food Day is up to you. You are SUPPOSED TO eat "as many" calories as your body was used to getting BEFORE you started dieting, for this is what prevents it from sensing a "food shortage" and then reacting by storing fat and lowering your metabolic rate - which you definitely do NOT want it to do! But if you eat TOO MANY calories, more than your body needs to supply its energy needs for that Food Day, the excess will be stored as fat.

So try to eat the amount of food and calories that is "just right" for your daily energy needs on your Food Days (and also every day after you finish your Diet plan), and you won't gain any weight. But if you indulge yourself too much on Food Days, you will slow your rate of weight loss on the One Day Diet Plan. Yes, you can have some of those tasty treats on your Food Days, but if you have TOO many sugary or fatty foods, or eat TOO MUCH food, you will gain some weight on your Food Days - the same way you were doing before you started dieting. And that will make your One Day Diet produce less than optimal results for you, compared to the dieters who eat a more healthy diet on their Food Days and don't put on any weight that day.

And there you have six reasons why "individual results may vary." And that's why we can't make any claims or predictions about how many pounds YOU will lose from 14 days on the One Day Diet (one bottle of wafers is a 14-day supply if you keep doing one Diet Day followed by one Food Day for 14 days).

We can only claim that the One Day Diet does work for the vast majority of people who follow the Diet plan faithfully. If they do that and are still not satisfied with the weight loss they achieved, then we will gladly honor the "30-day, money-back, satisfaction guarantee" which was promised at the outset. Nothing works for every person, but we can see that this Diet is working well for so many people that only a small percentage are claiming a refund under the satisfaction guarantee. All we ask is that you give it a fair try, and try to do it the way it was designed to work.

If you stick to your One Day Diet and follow the instructions exactly, I think you will be pleased with how fast the pounds come off, and how easy it is to do this Diet. You may not lose 20 pounds in 20 days, or 25 pounds in a month, but if you can lose even 5 or 10 pounds using one bottle of One Day Diet you are probably doing better than you did on your own or on some other diet plans you tried.

I know that I would still have been happy to lose 10 pounds in 20 days. I was suprised to have lost 20. But to me it is not how fast I lose the pounds and inches that is most important - but that I DO lose them. If someone else can do it faster, good for them! But I WILL lose the weight I want to lose, even if it takes me longer - and that's what really counts.

Here's a "twist" on an old motivational saying by a famous football coach, which we can adapt to losing weight.

"Losing is not the important thing - it's the ONLY thing!"

FAQ Index  |   PRICES and How To ORDER

FAQ:  What Are The Things I Should NOT Do While On The One Day Diet?

Here's a quick summary of what you should NOT do, if you are serious about losing weight...

(1) Don't eat ANY refined sugar, sucrose, glucose, or alcohol on your Diet Days. Just eat the 20 Diet wafers, some raw fruit (not vegetables) and drink lots of water. Nothing else. Eat as much fruit as you feel you need to be comfortable, but don't eat more than you really need - the less, the better. Don't try to "cheat" or make up your own rules and exceptions. It's only for ONE day. Many others have done it. I did it. YOU can do it too.

(2) Don't "diet" at all on your Food Days! Eat the way you were eating BEFORE the Diet. Don't skip meals, don't cut calories, and don't do any other kind of diet. Don't get too many LESS calories than is "normal" for you, but eat sensibly and don't consume too MANY calories on your Food Days.

Those are the two key things to watch for while doing your One Day Diet plan. Now here are a few other things to be careful about...

DO be sure to EAT BREAKFAST when you wake up on your Food Days, preferably just some raw fruit, not a lot of protein like bacon and eggs. And eat your 2 Diet wafers and maybe some fruit when you wake up on your Diet Days. You should ALWAYS eat breakfast, while on or off a diet. Skipping breakfast is only going to contribute to weight gain, not help you lose weight.

If you don't have time to eat breakfast, grab an orange or apple and eat it on the way to work or school. You need to eat SOMETHING nutritious, or you are going to be craving some sugar-laden snack food before lunch, like a donut or muffin. If you eat something with refined sugar, you will likely get hungry and want MORE sugar in half an hour.

Remember this... You may have gone 12 hours without any food (such as from 8 PM to 8 AM), and you need to "break your fast" in the morning. Raw fruits and unprocessed and unsweetened oatmeal or shredded wheat are good choices for breakfast foods if you want to lose weight.

You often hear that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but more recent discoveries now indicate that while it is important to eat some food to "break the fast" after your night's sleep, it should not be the typical breakfast of mainly proteins and carbohydrates - such as eggs and bacon and toast. Your body is still in its "elimination" cycle when you wake up after a night's sleep, and it is not really ready to start digesting and "assimilating" a new intake of hard-to-digest food for several more hours - typically not until 12:00 PM noon.

The only food which does not require more energy to digest than the energy it provides to your body is raw fruit, so your ideal breakfast food would be a piece of fruit or some mixed fruits, or a glass of natural fruit juice with no sugar added. The second best choice of breakfast food would be mainly carbohydrates and only a little protein, such as a bowl of all-natural, unsweetened oatmeal or shredded wheat WITHOUT any sugar frosting or sugar added, with a small amount of skim milk. Read the label on the box of cereal to check for sugar or sucrose content. The worst breakfast food would be too much protein (eggs and bacon), for proteins require much more energy to digest than they supply when digested. Hold off on those high-protein foods until lunch time or later.

And stop eating those sugar-coated, sugar-loaded cereals if you are serious about losing weight. Learn to like whole wheat or whole oat plain cereals with pieces of fresh fruit as the sweetener instead of refined sugar. Having sugar for breakfast just depletes your energy and makes you want to eat more sugar later on.

If you were to try eating just fruit for breakfast, and eat ONLY raw fruit before Noon for a week or more, by that time you would probably notice an increase in your energy level throughout the morning. Try it! And when you don't experience that "mid-morning slump" with fatique and hunger, you won't be tempted to grab that "double-double" coffee and donut or some sweet muffins or some sugary snack food. Remember, eating refined sugar (sucrose) just makes you feel hungry again in about half an hour, and it depletes your energy level after the initial "sugar rush" dissipates. (And excess sugar consumption can eventually lead to the serious disease called Diabetes.)

It is actually your mid-day meal which is the most important, and the one where you should consume the most food, for your body is starting its "assimilation cycle" and is fully ready to start digesting food at that time. Your evening meal should actually be smaller, since you are soon going into your sleep cycle. You should not eat any solid food within 3 or 4 hours before going to sleep at night.

According to some nutrition experts, the healthiest way to eat is for a man to have 6 small meals per day, and for a woman to have 5 small meals per day. This is the regimen many champion body builders use to get ready for a competetion, and they have become experts at reducing body fat while maintaining or increasing muscle mass. It's not healthy to have only 3% to 5% body fat - but you DO want to lose fat without losing muscle, so knowing their general method of dieting can be very useful to you.

By the way, your personal physician may not be the best person to give you advice on nutrition. There is very little education given in medical school concerning nutrition - less than half a day. Unless your doctor has further educated himself on nutrition or practices "holisitic" medicine which looks to prevent disease instead of just curing diseases with drugs, he may not know much more about nutrition than someone who has been on a diet. If your doctor is obviously overweight, you might want to take that into consideration when you get advice on what foods you should be eating.

Please understand that I am NOT implying that you shouldn't consult your personal physician before you undertake any kind of weight loss program or exercise program, for there may be medical considerations which require a doctor's expert advice or treatment or warnings, and things which could be harmful to you if you tried to diet without considering the effects of a change in personal diet or activity level. I am only talking about advice on "nutrition" and foods here, not professional advice concerning medical conditions. Just ask any Nutritionist or Dietician what he or she thinks about the level of nutritional knowledge held by the average medical doctor, and you might see what I mean.

Here's a general, all-purpose "DON'T" that can help you. Eating refined sugar or any processed foods which contain sugar are the worst things you can eat if you want to lose weight and keep it off. So DON'T eat so much sugar, and cut down on the sugar intake by cutting down on the number of processed foods you buy. Not only do they cost you a lot more money than preparing your own food, they almost all contain sugar that you don't really need.

The worst sugary foods are the soft drinks - the ones with the billion-dollar advertising budgets and the slick commercials you see all the time on television. One 12-ounce can of those "national brand" cola drinks contains 8 to 9 teaspoons of sugar! Can you imagine how much MORE sugar is in a large bottle of that stuff?

You can try to satisfy your need for colas or soft drinks or sodas by switching to the so-called "diet" versions, but did you know that all but one brand of those "diet colas" are sweetened with Aspartame? Do a little searching (or "googling") for the word "aspartame" and you will find many references to what medical doctors have said about the SERIOUS health risks this man-made substance exposes you to - the least of which is "weight gain"!

Yes, that stuff which you were led to believe would help you lose weight actually helps you GAIN weight. The application for approval of Aspartame was turned down by the FDA nine times in a row, until a new FDA commissioner (appointed by Donald Rumsfield on the day afer he took office in the Regan administration) suddenly railroaded through its acceptance single-handedly - and then shortly afterwards took a high-paying job with the very company that manufactures Aspartame! In spite of many complaints about conflict of interest, this allegedly dangerous substance still remains on the FDA approved list and is consumed by millions of people in thousands of food products under the brand names NutraSweet(tm) and Equal(tm).

If you are addicted to a certain diet cola, you might find the personal testimonies at this online forum called More Diet Coke Posts could scare you away from Aspartame and its many nasty side effects. The government of the European country Austria is aware of the dangers of Aspartame and does not allow Diet Coke(TM) to be imported into their country.

And if that isn't enough to convince you to stop drinking those unhealthy soft drinks and "diet colas", consider what a high price you are paying for a product that is mostly just water and sugar. Water is free and sugar is cheap, so why do you pay so much for a bottle of sugar water? It might be the cost of the billion dollar advertising budget that is coming out of your pocket, including the ridiculously high salaries for the latest hot celebrity to sing to you about the desirability of drinking one brand of cola instead of the other one. The two major cola brands spend a billion dollars each per year just to convince you to buy their brand instead of the other, and YOU have to pay for all that useless advertising when you pay those highly inflated prices for their cola product, even when you already decided which brand you prefer. You could have more money and better health if you decided not to drink colas and soft drinks at all.

A similar situation exists with those so-called "fruit drinks" which are only about 15 per cent real fruit juice and mostly water and sugar. It would be cheaper to just buy some healthy natural fruit juice for your children, and keep all that excess refined sugar out of their bodies. And those so-called "energy drinks" with the athletic-sounding brand names being touted by famous athletes are really just a lot of water mixed with some cheap electrolytes and sugar or glucose. Again, you are paying way more than those products are worth, and you would be better off to just drink some real fruit juice, or drink a free glass of water then eat a piece of fruit for energy. The fructose in fruit juice does not cause the "sugar rush" and the ensuing "insulin reaction" and energy drop caused by consuming refined sugar or glucose.

Remember, every time you eat refined sugar you will force your pancreas to release the hormone insulin to quickly metabolize the excessive amount of glucose produced from the sugar, and get your blood glucose level back down to a safe and normal level. Excessive sugar consumption has been shown to wear out the pancreas and impair its ability to create and secrete insulin to control hyperglygemia (a dangerous excess of glucose in the blood). When that happens, you will likely require artificial insulin injections because you will have developed "sugar diabetes".

Diabetes will make your life complicated and inconvenient when you have to constantly monitor your blood glucose level through small blood samples, and always have to eat a controlled diet and avoid certain foods. Diabetes often causes some very serious complications such as blindness and loss of limbs, higher risk of heart disease, and a shorter life expectancy. Please take the warning against consuming too much refined sugar seriously, because it could cause you some serious health problems! It's just not worth it to eat too much sugar, especially when there are alternative, safer sweeteners available to you. You could use the safe herb, Stevia (zero calories), or just use fructose ("fruit sugar") instead of sucrose (refined cane sugar).

Learn to live with much less refined sugar, and you may never need to diet again. Read the nutrition and ingredient labels on all the processed foods you buy, and learn to look out for the words "sugar", "sucrose", and "glucose", especially if they are near the top of the list, or if you see all three listed. Using different kinds of sugar instead of just cheap refined sugar is a sneaky way to avoid having to list "sugar" at the top, which would make you notice that sugar is actually the MAIN ingredient by weight. Then DON'T buy those sugar-laden foods which were specifically designed to make you want to eat more of them. The food manufacturers who knowingly add sucrose and glucose to foods which do not really need to taste so sweet are not looking out for your health - they are just looking to get you to eat more and buy more of their unhealthy products and take more of your money.

Those foods are not your friends! They are false friends, and they make you fat. And they could be contributing to the increasing epidemic of adult-onset diabetes that now affects even young children who are eating too many processed foods and too many soft drinks with too much sugar in them. Spend less time with those so-called friends, and you can have a better, healthier life without them.

Remember that on Food Days you "eat normally", which means eating all the foods you normally eat, and even some "treats" to reward yourself for doing another Diet Day successfully. The One Day Diet is not a "deprivation diet", for you only "diet" for 1 day, then eat your favorite foods the very next day. So enjoy yourself on those Food Days!

Now, let's list those things you CAN eat and drink on your DIET DAYS.

#1 - Eat 2 Diet Wafers Per Hour for 10 Hours. This is NOT optional! You NEED these on Diet Days, or you are going to feel hungry.

And if you feel hungry you will be tempted to "cheat and eat" and feel guilty. Or you will just give up and quit your diet plan altogether because it felt too uncomfortable to be hungry. So it is VERY important not to feel hungry at all, and the Diet Wafers are designed to keep you from feeling hungry - as long as you keep eating 2 per hour.

When you will be away from home on a Diet Day, put your 20 Diet wafers into a zip-lock sandwich bag and carry them in your purse or pocket or briefcase.

On your Diet Days you must start eating 2 Diet wafers each hour from the time you would normally eat breakfast - or from the time you get up if you usually skip breakfast (which is not a good idea, since it can contribute to weight gain, not loss). If you work nights or are traveling by jet to a different time zone, assume the time you wake up from a night's sleep is your "breakfast" time.

You can eat either the milk chocolate or French vanilla Diet wafers, or any mix of the two, since they contain the same ingredients except for the flavor (real cocoa or vanilla). You can eat one wafer every half hour if you want, as long as you get 2 per hour. But it is IMPORTANT to eat your 2 Diet wafers EVERY HOUR for at least 10 hours, and I'll tell you why...

The Diet wafers do three things for you. One is to supply the essential nutrients you need for one day, since you will not be eating "regular food" except for some raw fruit. The wafers contain vitamins and minerals and other things that your body needs to stay healthy, including a day's ration of salt. They do not contain refined sugar or drugs or anything that is not "natural". They do not contain any exotic herbs. They contain zero cholesterol, and contain only 1% saturated fat.

The second thing they do is supply some protein.

Proteins are long-chain molecules made from various combinations of smaller molecules known as "amino acids". There are about 22 "essential" amino acids which you must get from your food supply because your body cannot make these by combining other amino acids (you can get all of these essential amino acids each day by drinking an ounce or two of our tasty Sea Energy or triple-strength Sea Energy PowerMax product). All the other amino acids can be made from various combinations of some of those essential 22, and all the types of proteins in your body can be made from those amino acids.

An amino acid is a relatively short chain of molecules, and many combinations of these can be formed into longer chains of molecules to make many kinds of proteins. Your muscles are made mostly from protein.

Your body can store lots of fat for a long time (as you well know), and it can also store a small amount of carbohydrates - about a day's supply. But it cannot store proteins or amino acids at all. So while your body is continually building new cells of every kind to replace the old and worn-out cells, it needs a constant supply of amino acids (or proteins which contain those amino acids and can be broken down to get them) to use as the "building blocks" to make the proteins which form part of the new cells.

When your body goes for more than about four waking hours without an intake of amino acids (or proteins which can be broken down into various amino acids) then it will actually break down some of your muscle cells to get the amino acids it needs to build other kinds of cells. You can avoid this muscle loss by eating some protein at least every four hours or so - or by eating your 2 Diet wafers every hour, for they contain some protein in the form of "whey protein" and "condensed milk". (If you are concerned about the amount of protein you are getting on your Diet Days, you can eat a small amount of LEAN meat like skinless chicken or turkey breast meat on your Diet Day and it will not slow down your weight loss much.)

The third thing the Diet wafers do for you is keep you from feeling hungry.

They control your hunger by giving you just enough carbohydrates for your body to convert to glucose and maintain your blood glucose at a normal level (mainly "natural dehydrated cane juice" - and which does NOT create the problems that eating refined sugar or "sucrose" does). Eating the 2 Diet wafers each hour is what keeps your blood glucose at a constant level. If you don't eat the Diet wafers every hour, your blood glucose level keeps dropping down and you start to feel hungry. You definitely DON'T want to feel hungry while you are on a diet, so it's very important to eat those Diet wafers every hour!

You start eating your Diet wafers when you first wake up after your sleep cycle, and continue eating 2 per hour for 10 hours, which is 20 per Diet day. If you are a shift-worker or an international traveler, start eating your wafers after you wake up, whatever time that may be.

"Glucose" is a simple sugar which is the basic "fuel" for every cell in your body, including your brain cells, and it is transported as a component of your blood. If the level of glucose in your bloodstream drops below a certain level, you will feel hungry and crave food. This is definitely something you DON'T want to happen while you are on a Diet Day!

Now I don't mean to scare you, but it is a fact that if your brain does not get enough glucose, you will feel faint, and if it goes too long without any glucose then you will become brain-dead. Fortunately, your body will have stored enough fat in reserve so that your liver can convert it to glucose and get that glucose into your bloodstream to feed your brain, even if you have to go without food for several days. You will survive as long as you still have some fat in your body to convert to glucose - and if that's not enough, then your body will start breaking down your muscles and organs to convert them to glucose so your brain can survive a little longer.

Does that help convince you to keep eating those Diet wafers every hour? You don't want to start feeling faint or fatigued because your blood sugar level gets too low. After a while, you will learn to sense that your blood glucose level is low, by some strange feeling in your head or in your body. When you feel that, you should be getting ready to eat another 2 Diet wafers. (When you are NOT dieting, if you sense that feeling, you should immediately eat something "good for you" like a piece of fruit - or you will soon be craving a sugary or fat-laden snack food because you feel so hungry. And then eating that sugar or "sucrose" will just make you feel hungry again in half an hour. Eating the raw fruit which contains "fructose" will not have that effect.)

So you must eat those 2 Diet wafers each hour to keep your blood glucose level from dropping down and making you hungry, which would tempt you to "cheat and eat" and feel guilty - or cause you to feel frustrated and discouraged, which might make you want to give up on your weight loss plan the first day!

NOTE:  If you are used to eating at night after your regular dinner, you might feel hungry after you have already eaten your 20 Diet wafers in the first 10 hours. In that case, it's okay to eat another 2 Diet wafers per hour until you stop feeling hungry or go to sleep. You can try eating some raw fruit instead, but 2 Diet wafers have less calories - only 9 per wafer.

There is kind of a "trade off" involved between getting JUST ENOUGH carbohydrates to let your body convert them to glucose and maintain your blood glucose level to avoid hunger, compared to GETTING TOO MUCH.
Carbohydrates supply calories (a measure of energy) and too large an amount of carbohydrates on a Diet Day will slow down the rate at which your body burns off fat, so you won't lose as much weight. On a Diet Day, your body is burning stored fat BECAUSE it can't get enough carbohydrates to convert to gluose and supply your body's energy requirements for the entire day. So you don't want to eat too many carbohydrates with too many calories, but you do need some to avoid that hungry feeling all day.

There are two factors involved here. One is HOW MUCH fructose or other carbohydrates you give your body, and the other is HOW OFTEN your body gets it. The raw fruit contains fructose and other carbohydrates, but it is hard to measure the quantity in every kind of fruit and in all their varying sizes. By using the Diet wafers which all contain exactly the SAME amount of unrefined sugar, and eating the SAME number of wafers at the SAME time interval (every hour), you can carefully regulate how much your body gets, and how often it gets that particular amount. This way, your blood glucose level is carefully controlled and feelings of hunger will not occur - if you remember to eat your 2 Diet wafers every hour!

Each individual has a different body chemistry and body mass, and also a different metabolic rate (the rate at which your body needs to burn glucose for energy to survive). As an analogy, think of how much gas your car needs per hour to keep the engine running at "idle" speed. That would be similar to what is called your "basal metabolic rate".

The 2 Diet wafers per hour will work just fine for the average person on the One Day Diet, but some people may need more carbohydrates to avoid those feelings of hunger, so that brings us to the second thing you can eat on your Diet Days...

#2 - Eat some fresh raw fruit whenever you feel like it. If you don't feel like it, don't eat any.

Now this advice assumes that you actually LIKE to eat some kind of raw fruit. If you DON'T like to eat raw fruit... then perhaps the wording should be changed to "If you don't feel HUNGRY, don't eat any fruit." But if you DO feel hungry... sorry, but you are just going to have to eat some raw fruit to keep from feeling hungry. You COULD eat some extra Diet wafers instead if you just can't stand to eat any kind of fruit, but please TRY to eat fruit because it is healthy for you - and it can teach you to use fruit as your "snack food" instead of fattening snacks like potato chips, corn chips, or candies. When you get used to reaching for some healthy raw fruit while ON your Diet plan, you will develop a good, healthy habit of reaching for fruit instead of sugary or fatty snack foods when you have finished your Diet - and that will go a long way towards keeping the weight off!

You are not advised to eat vegetables, with one exception. Raw celery is mostly water and has very few calories. It is also very fibrous and takes a lot of chewing to eat, so it can satisfy your need to "munch" on some food without adding calories. You might also be interested to learn that celery is the most "alkaline" of all vegetables and serves as a very effective, natural, and healthy "antacid" to relieve heartburn or acid reflux..

I'm going to tell you something important about fruit and "antioxidants" and aging.

But I don't want to side-track you if you are just looking for a quick answer to that FAQ about what you can eat on Diet Days, so you can click here to SKIP the following paragraphs about feeling better, looking younger, and living longer.

Most raw fruits (and vegetables) contain a fair amount of antioxidants - unless they get reduced or destroyed by excessive heat in home cooking or in processes used by food manufacturers, such as canning and pressure cooking. The U.S. government recommends a certain number of servings of certain fruits and vegetables per day to ensure that its citizens are getting ENOUGH antioxidants - but only about 9 per cent of Americans are actually eating the recommended minimum quantities of these foods each day! No wonder we are all getting old before our time, and getting diseases we could avoid if we just ate a healthy diet with a sufficient supply of antioxidants. Some of those diseases include cancer, and they are avoidable!

In your grandparents' time, cancer was quite a rate disease. Nowadays one in two Americans will contract some form of cancer. What is the main cause of this recent epidemic? It is an ever-increasing amount of "free radicals" produced by our air, water, and food supply from pollution and pesticides - combined with unhealthy eating habits and the stress of daily living.

You don't "catch" cancer. You allow it to be created in yourself by not keeping your body's immune system at peak potential. In fact, the three leading causes of death from disease today are NOT something you can "catch" - they are CAUSED by unhealthy habits that weaken the body's natural immunity to disease.

So what ARE antioxidants? They are molecules which have an EXTRA electron or two available to "donate" to other molecules which are missing one or more electrons. And molecules which are MISSING an electron or two are known as "free radicals" - those "bad guys" which you may have heard about before. They are substances which act like tiny, tiny "terrorists" in your body, stealing electrons from the molecules which make up your body's cells, even from your cells' DNA! This damages your DNA, so when that damaged cell reproduces it makes an imperfect cell, not a perfect copy of an original healthy cell.

It's something like trying to photocopy a nice sharp picture, then using that less perfect copy to make another even less perfect copy, instead of using the original picture which is sharper. If you keep making copies from successive copies, eventually the copied picture gets so degraded it doesn't even look like the original. So when less than perfect cells (the ones with DNA damaged by free radicals) make new cells, they are less healthy than the original "parent" cells - and thus make your body less healthy and young-looking. Over time, your body cells just wear out and you die from old age - unless you die from some disease or accident first. But you could live longer and in near-perfect health if you can control those free radicals that damage your DNA.

You are continually replacing old and worn-out cells with new ones - in fact, most of your body is never more than seven years old! Even at the time you die of old age, most of your body's cells are less than seven years old. Brain cells are well-protected and not replaceable, but most other cells wear out or get damaged and are replaced within 30 days (all your blood cells) to 7 years (it takes about 7 years to replace ALL the cells in your skeleton).

So if your body is only seven years old, why do you look so old? Blame it on those nasty little free radicals! Your body was made to last at least 110 years, and in some isolated areas today there are populations where most of the people live in good health through old age, and many live to be well over 100 years in good health. What is going wrong here in North America? It's the free radicals, and our inability to control them. We are just not getting enough antioxidants to keep us looking and feeling young and healthy.

This is why you "age" and don't look as good or feel as good as when you were young. You are re-creating your body constantly... BUT if you create imperfect cells then you will have an imperfect body that looks "old" and worn-out - and IS wearing out! And those imperfect cells cannot re-create perfect cells, so you end up on a downward cycle towards aging and degenerative diseases and premature death.

Let's face the truth... when we don't take care of our health, we are killing ourselves before our time.

What is even worse about damage from free radicals is that some of those damaged cells become "tumor cells" or even "cancer cells" - and when they reproduce, they produce more cancer cells! Most serious diseases and cancer deaths are caused by free radicals which damage your body at the microscopic cellular level. What keeps these tiny terrorists in check is the "A-Team" of antioxidants, substances which are naturally found in fruits and vegetables and herbs.

The number of antioxidants per gram of a food can vary widely, so some foods and herbs are much better sources of antioxidants than the more commonly eaten fruits and vegetables available in grocery stores. There is a short list of common fruits and vegetables with the highest antioxidant content on the left margin of the AntiOxidant Specialist page.

Affinity no longer stocks the Antioxidant Specialist product, but is now selling an immensely popular bottled water contining alkaline and ionized water that actually acts as an antioxidant - Affinity Real Water. It is also sold in a concentrate form which can transform ordinary drinking water or juice or tea or coffee into healthy water that hydrates your cells much better than ordinary bottled water or tap water, letting them absorb more nutrients and eliminate more waste. Just a 1 milliliter droplet can transform an 8-ounce glass of water or water-based drink. Click here to learn about Affinity Real Water Concentrate and exactly how it works.

Antioxidants "neutralize" free radicals by giving them the extra electron the antioxidant carries in each molecule. Molecules are groups of atoms combined together. When the free radical atom or molecule gets its missing electron from an antioxidant molecule or any other molecule, it stops trying to steal an electron from the molecules in your cell or DNA. But when the "victim" molecule is NOT an antioxidant that actually has an EXTRA electron, that victim molecule ends up losing an electron and will then seek to steal one back from some other molecule! One free radical got neutralized, but now it has created another one! They are sort of like microscopic "vampires", you could say, where the bite of one vampire creates another vampire. But a chain reaction of millions of molecules stealing electrons can take place in just a tiny fraction of a second, and much damage is inflicted on the cells whose molecules are involved in this destructive cycle.

Only when a molecule has an EXTRA electron it doesn't really need does the vicious cycle end. And those antioxidants are special because they all DO have an extra electron. So when they come close to a free radical they neutralize it by giving up that extra electron to it - and thus keep it from spreading havoc among other molecules. It's like the "A-Team" antioxidant has captured a free radical "terrorist" and put him out of commission for good, by giving him what he needed most and turning him into a "good citizen" who doesn't want to do harm to others.

But now that antioxidant molecule doesn't have any more electrons to give, so it is "retired" from being a free radical fighter. More "replacement" antioxidants must now be called in to fight the next invasion of free radicals.

Every time we inhale air or eat food or drink water, we introduce more free radicals into our bodies - especially if the air and water is polluted with toxins from automobile exhausts and industrial waste products, and if our foods have pesticide residues or have absorbed toxins from the soil or water. So we continually need lots and lots of antioxidant molecules to keep things under control and protect us from the damage the invading free radicals do to our cells. Pollution is getting worse, not better - so we need to get more antioxidants, not less.

You can learn more about free radicals and antioxidants from Dr. Paul Ling Tai by visiting the AntiOxidant Specialist page on this web site. You will see that less than 10 percent of North Americans today are eating enough foods with antioxidants to get enough to neutralize all the free radicals that are invading their bodies through the polluted air we breathe, the polluted water we drink, and even the foods we eat which are poisoned by pesticides and other chemicals used in agriculture. It is far worse than it was for our grandparents, and we are starting to get diseases our grandparents didn't get in any significant numbers. Cancer was not a common cause of death for our grandparents' generation. Nowadays, about 1 out of 2 North Americans will have some form of cancer.

Basically, free radicals cause aging, degenerative diseases, all kinds of cancers, and suffering and death from those degenerative diseases and from cancer. We can reduce our risk of dying and being debilitated, simply by getting more antioxidants in our diet so that more get into our body.

We don't HAVE to suffer needlessly, or look too old, or die too young. We can DO something to prevent it. Antioxidants can help us stay looking and feeling younger, and living longer. The "A-Team" is on call for us at all times, but WE have to call them in!

These days, we really NEED to supplement our diets with things that supply us with A LOT MORE antioxidants than we are getting in our daily diet - even if we are one of the small percentage of people who actually DO eat a well-balanced diet. You can take a powerful antioxidant supplement like AntiOxidant Specialist to be SURE you are getting all the antioxidants your body needs to fight free radicals and slow down the aging process and prevent degenerative diseases, but you can also improve your health to some degree BY EATING MORE RAW FRUIT (and more raw vegetables too). So help yourself live longer and look better by learning to eat more FRUIT while you are doing the One Day Diet!

I know a man who is 94 years old, a good friend of my 86-year-old mother. He still looks pretty good, more like a trim 75-year-old, and he walks around without difficulty and even drove his own car up until his 93rd birthday - a sporty Honda Accord. He and my mother - who also is still pretty healthy and good-looking at 86, even though she has a pace-maker in her heart and broke her hip two years ago - are both mobile and almost fully functional at that advanced age. But many of the other people who live in that same retirement complex, including many who are quite a bit younger, are sitting in wheelchairs and unable to fully enjoy their later years.

A friend reminded me recently that we could be living 20 to 30 more years AFTER we reach retirement age at 65 (as my mother and her friend have done). So... do we want to keep living an active and interesting life for 20 or 30 more years? Or do we choose to be sitting in a wheelchair watching TV all day, or be sitting doped and drooling in the hallway of an understaffed nursing home?

I'm going to choose Plan A - to be active and healthy and younger-looking after I reach retirement age.

I know I will have to work on my health NOW if I want to be healthy later. So I eat my fruit, and I take dietary supplements like Sea Energy PowerMax to get the good nutrition I need to stay healthy and energetic. The Aloe Vera juice in this product is a strong antioxidant, and the Ginkgo Biloba herb in it helps maintain mental clarity and avoid senility. I'm 56 now but people say I look 45, probably because I have been taking supplements and lots of natural Vitamin C with bioflavonoids (not man-made ascorbic acid) since I was 30. This year I bought myself a brand new motorcycle. Soon I want to start playing squash again after I lose all the excess weight, and start getting back into shape.

I didn't work hard all my life to just sit down and vegetate when I finally get to retire. I want to live it up and be able to do all the things I couldn't do when I was too busy working to earn a living and build up a comfortable retirement income. Wouldn't you?

Surveys and statistics show that 95 percent of North Americans end up dead, dead-broke, or dependent on others at age 65 - and that's scary! The "American Dream" is a myth that your parents may have told you. The corporations you work for will not "take care of you" very well when you retire after years of faithful service. Some, like Enron, will even lose the pension funds you thought you could depend on. Nowadays, few people ever work for one company all their lives, and their retirement income plans and pension plans are often a "hit and miss" affair.

The only way most of us are going to have a really comfortable lifestyle after retirement is to work for ourselves and build up our own profitable business - or to invest a lot of our income into building up a million dollar pension fund (and not lose it on some risky investments). But when most people can barely pay their bills and have little left to save or invest, how will they build up a retirement fund to live on for the rest of their lives?

Becoming one of the OTHER 5% and having enough income to enjoy life is worth working for - but that is not going to much good unless you ALSO have a healthy body. So it's worth it to me to start working on that body now, before it's too late.

What is the point of gaining the FREE TIME and the GOOD INCOME, if you don't have the GOOD HEALTH to be able to enjoy it all?

So I eat my fruit, and I am losing all the excess weight I let build up over the years. How about you? Do you want to keep living a good life - and a longer one? Then eat your fruit. Take supplements to get the vitamins and minerals your store-bought fruits and vegetables and processed foods can't supply. Your body is capable of fighting almost any invading microbes, but only if you keep your immune system in an optimal healthy state. (End of sermon.)

See the FAQ below for details on what KINDS of fruit you should eat on your Diet Days, and why you should eat the fruit but NOT drink that same fruit's juice as a beverage on your Diet Days.

First, note that the raw fruit is "optional".

You don't HAVE to eat fruit if you don't feel hungry. And the less fruit you eat, the less calories you will consume. Any extra calories will need to be burned off, and that means there will be less stored fat being burned off on a Diet Day when you eat too much fruit. You will already be getting 180 calories from the 20 Diet wafers, and eating raw fruit will add to that number. The more calories you put into your body on a Diet Day, the more will have to be used up before your body goes back to burning fat. You only lose weight by burning off fat when your body is getting less calories than it needs at the time.

But in spite of the calories, eating some raw fruit on your Diet Days IS IMPORTANT if you do happen to feel hungry, or if you get thinking about food and feeling any frustration because you can't eat "regular food" on that Diet Day. The fruit is like your "Plan B" - "just in case" the Diet wafers don't work for you exactly as planned to keep your body's blood glucose at a level which prevents any feelings of hunger. Your body is not like everyone else's body, so you might need some extra carbohydrates, even if others don't.

And then there is the "psychological factor" to deal with too. You are used to eating bulky foods whenever you feel like it, so getting only 2 small Diet wafers to chew on each hour can take a little "adjusting" to. When you are just starting your One Day Diet, let yourself have as much raw fruit as you want on your first one or two Diet Days, and don't worry about the extra calories or how much weight you will lose that day.

It is more important that you feel comfortable with the One Day Diet - for if you don't, then you are not likely to continue your Diet plan. And then you won't lose the weight you wanted to lose. If you stick to the plan you WILL lose weight, but you don't have to lose it so fast in the early stages. You will get used to the wafers, and will need less fruit, so the amount of weight lost on Diet Days will increase soon enough.

I can usually eat just an apple on my Diet Days. I call it "dinner". I sometimes will also eat an orange or grapefruit for "breakfast" or "lunch". But on some days when I was busy concentrating on my work or just too busy with things to be "thinking" about food, I have gone the entire day without any fruit at all. I don't ever remember actually feeling HUNGRY - it is usually just the THOUGHT of food that makes me want to munch on some fruit, or have that delicious red apple for my dinner. It kind of "keeps me going" to know that I will get to eat that apple for dinner.

So you can always eat a little raw fruit of the type you like best, or any mix of fruits you like, whenever you feel a need for it. If you want to keep the calories down, then just "nibble" at a small portion of the fruit, and then only eat more if you really feel you need to. Eat slowly and enjoy what you are eating, and you may find you don't need to eat more. Try to distract yourself from thinking about food, and you may not feel a need for much fruit. The Diet wafers really do a good job of keeping your BODY from feeling hungry. It's your MIND that often makes you want a snack even when your body doesn't need it.

Here's a Diet Tip: wash and cut up your raw fruit in the kitchen, then put HALF of what you expect to eat on a plate and leave the kitchen to eat in another room. If you really need more fruit to eat, you will get up and go back to the kitchen to get it. If you don't really want it, you won't bother to get it, and you will end up consuming only half the calories!

Eating raw fruit as your "snack food" after you have finished your diet program will help keep the weight off, too!

#3 - Drink lots of good drinking water - at least 8 eight-ounce glasses if possible, plus one more for each 25 pounds you are overweight.

Here is where some dieters just want to "groan and moan" about having to drink more water. I used to feel that way too, so let me give you some "INCENTIVES" to help you WANT to drink lots more water than you may be used to. First, here's what happens when you DON'T get enough water every day - which you could call, "First, the Bad News" ...

(A) Just as your body will store fat when it senses you are not getting enough food, your body will also store water when it senses you are not getting enough water. So NOT drinking enough water each day will just add more "water weight". Drinking MORE water will actually cause you to REDUCE weight and bulk because your body doesn't need to store so much water now. Sounds kind of "counter-intuitive", doesn't it? But it does make sense when you think about it.

(B) Over the years, your body has used its fat cells to store away many of the toxins it has absorbed from foods, water, and the polluted air you breathe. When you start to burn off stored fat, some of those toxins in the fat will end up in your bloodstream, where thay can cause feelings of fatigue, reduce your ability to concentrate, and create other negative conditions. So while you are losing fat, you need to drink lots of pure drinking water to help your body flush out those toxins through your kidneys and bladder.

(C) When you don't drink enough water, your digestive system doesn't get enough water to keep things "soft" and moving along, so you get constipated and may have to pass some painfully hard stools, which can create some painful hemhorroids. Drinking more water helps avoid the pain. How's that for an incentive?

If you drink caffeine drinks, you need to drink even MORE water, because that drug caffeine acts a "diuretic" which causes your kidneys to flush out more water than you normally do through urination, and this will further rob your digestive tract of the water it needs, so you could gain more pain if you don't compensate by giving your body more water.

This is going to look like a "shameless plug" for another Affinity product, but I want to tell you about Dr. Tai's Digestion Specialist because it really worked for me - a formerly-constipated coffee consumer. To avoid embarrassing myself, I will just say that I used to have some of those problems related to "softness" and sometimes sufferred some quite unpleasant pain, and for most of my life I was not a "regular" guy. I was more of an "irregular" kind of guy, if you know what I mean.

This year I tried the new Digestion Specialist herbal formula to wash out the old and toxic fecal matter in my intestines and colon. I had read how people who are chronically constipated can be storing up to 40 POUNDS (!!!) of old fecal matter in their digestive tract. "Hmmm...", I thought to myself, "If I could get rid of even 5 or 10 pounds of old fecal matter with this stuff, that would sure help me lose weight the easy way!" So that was kind of an "extra incentive" to try the Digestion Specialist formula.

So I did try it, and within a day or two I achieved "softness" and have avoided that unnecessary pain ever since. Even though I still drink about three mugs of coffee per day, I am now a "regular guy" too - as long as I keep taking one pleasant-tasting drink of Digestion Specialist at least a few times a week. Thank you, Dr. Tai!

If you have food allergies, food cravings, irritable bowel syndrome, colitis, or chronic constipation, then you should take a look at Digestion Specialist to see if it may be of help to you. That toxic waste in your digestive tract can cause all kinds of problems if it gets into the rest of your body or your bloodstream, including some ailments which even your doctor may not realize are connected to the condition of your colon. Read what Doctor Paul Ling Tai has to say about all this.

I once tried that "other" product which is very popular with the "mature" crowd - the one that is supposed to add lots of fiber to your digestive tract and clean out the toxic fecal matter and make you "regular". Recent clinical studies have shown that it just doesn't work effectively - and never did. It didn't work for me, because it tasted so bad that I stopped taking it after one day! But Digestion Specialist tastes pretty good - like a sweet orange-vanilla drink. And I KNOW it works, because it worked for me. This product ADDS water to the digestive tract and makes things soft, which counteracts the effect of the caffeine which was REMOVING water and making things hard. It makes more sense to moisten and soften the stuff and wash it out, than to try to use fiber like bran to scrape out the stuff that is hardened and hiding in the little nooks and crannies of your colon. The impacted stuff is probably harder than the bran, anyway, so how can you scrape out something hard with something softer?

I also heard from Dr. Tai on one of his weekly conference calls that Digestion Specialist is also an excellent source of organic calcium and magnesium. The caffeine in coffee contributes to acid reflux disease, while calcium helps control it. (Eating antacid tablets is counter-productive, and prevents your food from being digested. Eating a stick of raw celery does a better job of stopping the burning sensation. Try it, then tell your doctor about it.)

Let's get back to our discussion of Water. "And now for the Good News"...

(D) Drinking water puts some "bulk" in your stomach and creates a "full" feeling, so you can drink some water whenever you start thinking about food, and this might help relieve any feelings of hunger, whether they are physiological (in your body) or psychological (in your mind). Just getting "something" into your stomach can help satisfy your "need to feed".

This is also a good tactic for keeping the weight off later. Just drink a glass of water about 10 or 15 minutes before a meal, and it can help you avoid over-eating. (By the way, when you are not doing a Diet Day, you shouldn't drink water WHILE you are eating, for it will "water down" and weaken the acids and alkalines you need to digest the food. Drink your water at least 10 minutes before eating, then don't drink while eating or for a while after eating, if you want your food to be digested properly.)

Incentives (A) to (D) can help you when you are "on" a diet AND AFTER you stop dieting. Now here's the BEST INCENTIVE for drinking lots of water when you are "on" the One Day Diet...

(E) On your Diet Days you will not be getting "enough" carbohydrates to convert to glucose to supply all your body's energy needs for the next 24 hours - just enough carbs to keep you from feeling hungry. When your body doesn't have carbs in the stomach and intestines to convert to glucose, it has to use "Plan B" and start converting stored fat into glucose to meet the demand for "fuel" for all your body cells. Converting fat to glucose, or "burning fat", is a function of the liver, and during this process there are always some partially-burned fats (called "ketone bodies" or just "ketones") being produced and circulated in the bloodstream. When there is an excess of ketones in the blood it makes the blood too acidic, and the body will try to rid itself of these partially burned fats by flushing them out through urination. (Your body monitors and seeks to adjust the pH level of your blood - the acid/alkaline balance - because TOO much acid or alkaline can actually be fatal. Many diseases are caused by too much acidity in the blood. And your body will actually take calcium from your bones in an effort to reduce excess acidity in your blood.)

So if you help your body do more "flushing" by drinking lots of water, you can rid yourself of some of those partially-burned fats - which you now won't even have to burn off completely! You can burn off some of the other stored fat instead, and lose more weight on your Diet Day. Is getting rid of that extra fat a good "incentive" for you to drink lots of water? I thought so.

Now let's hope that you are planning to make a valiant attempt at drinking eight 8-ounce glasses or more per day (and not just on Diet Days, every day - but at least do it on the Diet Days to help flush out those fats called ketones). So let's see if we can make this water drinking a more pleasant experience for you.

First, you could treat yourself to some really good bottled spring water that tastes better than your local tap water. Or you could invest in a water filter to take out the chlorine taste and any bad-tasting impurities from your tap water. Chlorine is toxic to you, but at least it will have killed off all the bad bacteria in your water supply. A charcoal water filter will remove most of the chlorine from your tap water, and leave you with a safe and nicer-tasting drink.

There is an Affinity product called "M-Water" which seems to make water "taste" better, and some people who don't like drinking water have reported that they do like drinking water which has been treated with M-Water concentrate (2 teaspoons treats a whole gallon of regular drinking water, so just one bottle makes over 50 U.S. gallons of treated water). The M-Water also helps "hydrate" your body cells and enhances the absorption of nutrients and the elimination of toxic waste material from inside the cells, which might have the effect of giving your body better nutrition and reducing the need to eat more food simply to get some minerals or vitamins you were not absorbing in sufficient quantities. Also, your body has deposited many toxic chemicals inside your fat cells over the years, so while those cells are losing some stored fat you need more water to flush out those old toxins that start getting removed along with the fat and carried into your bloodstream. (Look for the M-Water link on the left side of this page under "Affinity Products".)

I never drank enough water until I tried treating it with M-Water, but when I started adding a little splash to each 500 ml. water bottle as I filled it with cold tap water, I was surprised to notice that I seemed to be drinking more water than usual by the end of the day. It wasn't due to any conscious effort - I just seemed to reach for that handy water bottle more often without even thinking about it. The first time I tried this, I drank four 500 ml. bottles in one evening, which is 2 liters (close to half a gallon).

It seems that drinking M-Water also helps restore your body's normal "thirst mechanism", which gets weaker when you habitually don't drink enough water - which is why such large numbers of North Americans are chronically dehydrated at the cellular level. So now you can actually feel those thirst signals, and just naturally reach for another sip of water whenever a slight thirsty feeling arises. I suggest you give M-Water a try and see if it works for you too. It comes with Affinity's 30-day, money-back, "empty bottle" guarantee, so you have nothing to lose by trying. And since M-Water has absolutely nothing added to the natural Oregon spring water it is made from (by a patented "mechanical" process, not a chemical process), it's completely safe for adults and children, even if you drink the concentrate right from the bottle.

If you like herbal teas, you can substitute a mug or two of just about any herbal tea (without caffeine) for one or two of the glasses of water per day, since the herbal tea is mostly plain water and may only have a few calories, or none at all. It is also easy to drink without cream or sugar. Don't add any honey or syrup to your tea on your Diet Days!

Now would be a good time to start drinking Green Tea, which is an herbal tea that can help increase your metabolic rate as well as help protect you from cancer. If you were wondering why all the tea manufactures are now promoting their brand of Green Tea, there is your answer.

You can also drink decaffeinated tea or coffee, as long as you don't add sugar or coffee whitener. Sorry, tea or coffee with caffeine doesn't count as a water substitute because it makes you LOSE more water, which you will just have to compensate for by drinking MORE ordinary water, not less. But you CAN drink regular coffee or tea, as long as you don't add any sugar or coffee whitener.

By the way, the healthiest kind of "decaf" coffee or tea is one which was made using the "Swiss water process". Most other methods of removing caffeine use chemical treatments and often leave some chemical residues in the finished product - and those chemicals may be toxic to you.

If you really need to have your "caffeine drink" on your Diet Days (and I would suggest you DO keep drinking it if you are already addicted to caffeine - or else you will experience some "caffeine withdrawal symptoms" such as headache, fatigue, or drowsiness by the afternoon) - then it will not be too bad to drink regular coffee or tea, as long as you don't add ANY sugar, honey, syrup, or artificial coffee whitener (which contains refined sugar and/or "corn syrup solids" and/or sucrose or dextrose - so read the label before using, and then don't use it).

If you absolutely must have milk or cream in your coffee, then use a little bit of skim milk if possible. I have actually used 10% cream ("half and half") in three cups of coffee on a Diet Day, and did not seem to lose any less weight. (But don't tell anyone I told you that.) The most important thing is to NOT use any kind of sugar, or anything that contains sugar or corn syrup (like those coffee whiteners and cream substitutes).

You can use artificial sweeteners made from saccharin such as Sweet'n'Low(tm) (safer than cyclamates) or ones made with cyclamate such as Sugar Twin(tm), but I would suggest you avoid the types made with Aspartame, such as Equal(tm) or NutraSweet(tm), not because they will hurt your diet plan, but because there are too many concerns about possible health risks from ingesting Aspartame (which is also used in diet soft drinks and many so-called "diet" or "sugar-free" products). We don't use Aspartame or refined sugar in the Diet wafers or in any of the Affinity products. In our Digestion Specialist product for constipation (heavy coffee drinkers might want to check out this product because caffeine can contribute to constipation), the herb Stevia is used to sweeten the good-tasting vanilla/orange digestive drink (which tastes much better than Metamucil(tm), in my opinion).

While you might find it only in your local health store, this natural herb "Stevia" is healthy and safe - and much sweeter than anything else! Raw Stevia is about 300 times sweeter than raw sugar cane. It comes in liquid or powder form, and some brands are much better than others, so ask for advice or try more than one brand. You would be wise to use Stevia instead of any kind of "artificial sweetener" like Aspartame that may later be found to have some harmful side-effects (or already does). I have seen Stevia available in those little paper one-shot packets too, though it is hard to find. You might find Stevia useful as a sugar replacement in many other drinks and foods.

Refined sugar is not your friend, and may be the main reason you gained weight in the first place. If you ingest any refined sugar (or corn syrup or alcohol) on your Diet Day, it will quickly stop the fat-burning process and you will be wasting your Diet Day.

I would suggest you try to avoid too much refined sugar on your Food Days too, and after you finish your Diet plan. Stevia has an insignificant amount of calories, while refined sugar adds 15 calories per teaspoon. Stevia will not upset your blood glucose level and make you feel hungry again 20 minutes later, but refined sugar or corn syrup will. And that may be the reason the food manufacturers put sugar into almost every kind of processed food - because it gets you to want more and eat more and then buy more, which makes more profits for them.

It also forces your pancreas to secrete more of the hormone Insulin to control the elevated blood glucose levels caused by ingesting sugar, and this could contribute to eventually developing the debilitating disease called diabetes (also known as "sugar diabetes"). Diabetes can cause blindness and loss of limbs, and can shorten your life span, so you really don't want to do things which could cause you to develop this disease!

There is no refined sugar in any natural food, only more complex sugars like fructose. It's just not natural, and your body was not designed to deal with it. You don't really need refined sugar when there are other ways to make things taste sweet. Using fructose (it looks like regular white sugar) would be better, though it does have about the same number of calories per teaspoon as sucrose. But fructose does not cause the insulin reactions or "sugar highs" and cravings that sucrose causes. Being very close in chemical composition to glucose, sucrose can easily and quickly be converted to glucose right in your stomach, while fructose has to get into your intestine to be fully digested, and thus takes longer to be converted to glucose.

The "sugar rant" will end now. But you will hear more about sugar in another FAQ answer.

Yes, you should. There are some basic vitamins and minerals in the Diet wafers, but you really need to take a good vitamin and mineral supplement too, both while on the Diet and at all other times. The foods we get in our grocery store these days are almost devoid of useful mineral content because all the factory farms in North America are almost depleted of mineral content in the soil.

Were you aware that "hard" vitamin pills have two things going against them, which makes you wonder why they even offer vitamins in that form?

(1) Pressing the ingredients from a powder form into a hard "pill" form takes a lot of pressure, which generates heat, which can destroy some of the nutrient value. Enzymes are particularly sensitive to heat, which renders them useless. Without the proper enzymes, the processes in your body which require a certain vitamin or mineral just do not take place efficiently. All the fruits and vegetables you eat contain the enzymes your body needs to utilize the vitamins and minerals they contain, but many vitamin pills do not even contain any enzymes. What you really need is a "whole food" vitamin and mineral supplement that provides the natural enzymes along with the natural vitamins and minerals (such as Sea Energy and PowerMax).

(2) Hard pills are only 10% to 20% absorbed by the body. Most of the useful nutrients simply pass through you and are excreted with your bowel movements. In some cases, the entire pill is passed through the digestive system in its original state without being absorbed at all! You are just flushing most of your money down the toilet. In other words, 80% to 90% of what you paid for is wasted and does your body no good. As a result, you might think you have taken care of your minimum daily requirements, yet may not really be getting enough vitamins and minerals - and not even know how little is actually being absorbed.

But liquid organic vitamin and mineral supplements like Sea Energy are 92% to 98% absorbed by the body. Only 2% to 8% is wasted.

This is why we recommend our Sea Energy and Sea Energy PowerMax liquid vitamin and mineral supplement. They contain sea vegetation from the pristine ocean waters of northern Canada to supply 52 minerals and trace minerals, 16 vitamins, all 22 essential amino acids, and hundreds of natural enzymes, plus some health-enhancing herbal ingredients such as certified organic Aloe Vera juice (a powerful antioxidant), Ginkgo Biloba, Pau d'Arco (a.k.a. Taheebo), Ginger Root, Black Cherry, and Cranberry. The formula also contains some Affinity's M-Water to further increase the absorption of the nutrients into your body cells through their cellular membrane (which acts as a filter for each cell) and to increase the flushing of toxins from within the cells. Your energy can increase both from getting more nutrients absorbed and from getting more toxic waste flushed out of your system than before.

I personally drink some PowerMax every day to ensure I am getting all the essential nutrients I need every day, no matter what I eat or don't eat. If we are missing even one essential mineral, it will eventually cause a certain disease in our bodies. I'd like to avoid that! All you have to do is take a little drink from the bottle. Or you could pour 1 ounce into a shot glass or the bottle cap and drink from there. If you want to see if you can FEEL the difference in energy it gives, try taking 2 ounces per day for 2 weeks, then cut back to 1 ounce per day unless you need the extra nutrients to build up your immune system. But if you have a large body, then you should drink more ounces per day in proportion to your higher body weight. As a very rough guide, a 250 pound man may need twice as much as a 125 pound man or woman. Just as you would need to eat more food to support that larger body mass, you would need to take more nutrition supplements too.

When your body gets and absorbs all the vitamins and minerals it needs, it will not get you to crave certain foods which would supply the missing nutrients - like the way a pregnant woman sometimes is compelled to seek certain foods to get the missing nutrients for her baby's development in the womb. Not having those cravings to eat those extra foods with the extra calories can help you keep your weight down, which is probably why some users of Sea Energy report a spontaneous weight loss without even trying to diet.

So, by all means keep taking your vitamin and mineral pills while doing the One Day Diet, or try our Sea Energy liquid nutrition product when you start your One Day Diet plan.. If you are going to order 2 bottles of One Day Diet for a one-month supply, you could add a one-month supply (32 fl.oz. bottle) of Sea Energy PowerMax to your order for an extra $39.95. There is no sales tax unless you live in Nevada.

If you really want to feel more energy, take a look at Affinity's amazing Performance Specialist product too. Aside from all the other health benefits, it keeps me going even on days when I only got 3 or 4 hours of sleep the night before. The more alert and energetic I feel, the more I get done in a day - both business and pleasure - so it is definitely worth the price to me!

The main purpose of the fruit you eat on Diet Days is to give you something more substantial than the Diet wafers, if you feel you need it. The fruit is "optional" - and the less fruit you eat, the less calories you will have to burn off to lose weight that day.

Unlike other types of food, fruit generally does not take more energy to digest than it provides, so eating only fruit as your "real food" on your Diet Days will help you keep your energy level normal, so you don't feel lethargic or weaker than usual. There are SOME fruits, however, which do take more energy to digest than they provide when digested. If you are looking to burn more calories while still eating some raw fruit, try eating an apple, orange, grapefruit, pineapple, papaya, or mango, which are considered "negative calorie" foods.

NOTE: "Raw fruit" means fresh fruit "just as it came from the tree" - NOT "processed" by a food manufacturer, NOT canned or bottled, and containing NO additives whatsoever (especially SUGAR). And do NOT put sugar or any kind of syrup or honey on cut-up pieces of raw fruit. You can do that on the Food Days, but NOT on Diet Days!

The 2 Diet wafers you eat each hour on Diet Days will keep most people from feeling any real hunger at all, but since everyone has a different body chemistry and body mass, you might feel hungry occasionally - especially if you see someone else eating, or you get thinking about "real food".

It is more important to eat as much fruit as you need to avoid feeling hungry or "deprived", than it is to worry about getting a few extra calories.

During your first few Diet Days, you are encouraged to eat as much fruit as you want while you are getting used to not having "regular food" or any "snack foods" to munch on, and get used to eating the chocolate or vanilla Diet wafers all day.

You may not lose weight as quickly when you eat more fruit, but it is much more important not to feel deprived or discouraged and then be tempted to quit your Diet plan before you really see how easy it can be to successfully lose weight fast with the One Day Diet. Soon you will find that eating (for example) an orange for breakfast or lunch and an apple for dinner may be all the fruit you need on the average Diet Day. Many users of the One Day Diet (mostly men) have reported that they do not feel a need to eat any fruit at all on Diet Days.

If you are used to eating at night after your regular dinner, you might feel hungry after you have already eaten your 20 Diet wafers in the first 10 hours of the day. In that case, it's okay to eat some more fruit or eat another 2 Diet wafers per hour until you stop feeling hungry or go to sleep. It won't hurt your Diet plan to do this, but you may lose a little less weight on that Diet Day - and your bottle of 140 wafers will not last a full 14 days if you eat more than 20 per Diet Day. The Diet wafers contain only 9 calories each, so it's more important not to feel hungry or discouraged than to get a few extra calories.

It is always healthier to avoid eating within 4 hours before bedtime (both during and after your Diet program) so your body can finish digesting your last meal before you lie down to go to sleep. Not only will this help avoid any "heartburn" (acid reflux) from the acid which your stomach may still be secreting to digest that last meal, it also lets your body focus on its normal maintenance functions and rest cycle instead of having to use energy to digest that food you ate before bedtime.

By the way, acid reflux is not really helped by taking antacid tablets - the problem is not the hydrochloric acid, which is supposed to be digesting the food in your stomach, but the valve at the top of your stomach which is supposed to close tightly enough to keep the partially digested food and stomach acid from flowing into your esophagus. Drinking coffee can contribute to the problem. Getting enough calcium in your diet can help this valve work properly - and if you really need to neutralize the acid to avoid pain, just eating a stalk of raw celery works as well as any antacid tablet. I bet your doctor didn't tell you that. Maybe you should tell him about the celery. It is the most alkaline of all the vegetables, and alkalines neutralize acids. Stewed tomatoes are the most acidic, so avoid them if you suffer from acid reflux. Note that pizza sauce and spaghetti sauce are often made from stewed tomatoes.

Fruits with less "fruit sugar" (fructose) will have less calories. Apples and peaches and apricots are recommended because they have relatively few calories, contain lots of fiber which makes you feel "full", and are generally very good for your health and digestion. Pears and plums are also good choices for your Diet Days, but they contain a higher proportion of fruit sugar per gram than apples or peaches. Fruits like grapes, blueberries, bananas, and any fruit which tastes quite "sweet" contain the most fructose and calories, so don't eat too much of these on Diet Days.

Note that avocados have a surprisingly high fat content, and should be avoided on Diet Days. On Food Days and after you end your diet plan, remember that avocados and guacamole dip are VERY high in fat and calories. Tomatoes are actually a fruit (a type of berry) and not a vegetable. Eating tomatoes is up to you, since they are a fruit, but it may be best to avoid them on Diet Days. And "Hold the mayo!" Mayonnaise is also one of the most fattening foods. (So is bacon - so those BLT sandwiches with mayonnaise may be one of the reasons you gained weight.)

Avoid all CANNED or CANDIED fruit and any jams or jellies because they will contain refined sugar or syrup. Some FROZEN fruits such as cherries or blueberries may also have sugar added, so check the label for "sugar" or "sucrose" or "glucose" if you want to eat frozen "fresh" fruit, and avoid it if it has any of those sugary ingredients. Otherwise, frozen raw fruit (frozen fresh, as it came from the tree) is okay to eat on Diet Days.

Also avoid most DRIED fruits which may have sugar added, such as banana chips - but dried apricots and apples are usually okay if there is no sugar added. Raisins and dates naturally have a high fructose content, so don't eat much of those, or avoid them entirely on Diet Days. Those bright red Maraschino cherries (used in cocktails and sundaes) contain sugar and should definitely be avoided (they also contain a red dye which has known carcinogenic properties). Natural cherries are fine.

Do not drink much fruit JUICE on Diet Days because the juice contains too high a concentration of fructose, compared to the raw fruit. One 8 ounce glass of apple juice or grape juice contains about 180 calories, and fresh orange juice about 150 calories. Remember, you are only getting 180 calories PER DAY from the Diet wafers, so the calories in just one glass of juice could equal your entire day's supply of wafers.

But if you happen to be out somewhere and feel a need for more than your Diet wafers (or you forgot to take some with you) and you can't get any raw fruit, then drinking a small glass of 100% pure fruit juice like orange or grapefruit juice (not any "fruit drink" or any fruit juice with sugar or alcohol, such as apple cider) is a good "emergency" plan to avoid feeling hungry. Remember that consuming any sugar or alcohol will quickly stop the fat-burning process, so you won't lose much weight that day.

In summary, the fruit is "optional" and you may not need to eat very much fruit on your Diet Days. But eat a small portion of your favorite fruit if you feel hungry or get thinking too much about food, and then eat a little more if that was not enough to satisfy you. Stock up in advance with your favorite fruits so you can have a little variety to make your Diet Days more enjoyable.

A little "diet tip"... Clean and cut up your fruit in the kitchen, then only take a small portion with you into another room where you eat it. If you feel like eating more, then you will have to make the effort to get up and walk to the kitchen to get it. This can help discourage you from eating the extra fruit if you don't really need it.

Actually, you CAN drink 100% pure fruit juice (except "sweetened" apple juice or any sweetened juice, because it has sugar added). But don't drink very much. The juice of a fruit has a much higher concentration of "fruit sugar" (fructose) than the raw fruit itself, which means you will be getting a lot more calories from the juice than from the same volume of raw fruit. An eight-ounce glass of apple juice supplies about 180 calories. A raw apple has about 80 calories. Your entire day's supply of Diet wafers supplies about 180 calories, so just drinking two glasses of apple juice would mean that you are consuming more than double the number of calories on that Diet Day!

If you want to drink your favorite fruit juice, just drink a small amount on your Diet Days. Drink all you want on your Food Days. But this applies ONLY to "all natural" and "unsweetened" fruit juices - NOT to any kind of "fruit drink" or "energy drink" or lemonade or cocktail mix. Those products usually contain SUGAR, and you must avoid ALL sugar on your Diet Days (except the natural "fruit sugar" in the raw fruit). And beware that some brands of canned apple juice are "sweetened", which means they contain SUGAR. Natural apple cider usually contains too much fructose or sugar, so cider should be avoided. And "hard cider" contains ALCOHOL, which must also be avoided on Diet Days.

Remember that the rule for Diet Days is "eat only raw fruit" - fruit in the natural form, as it came from the tree. That does NOT mean things which are "fruit flavored" - especially products like soft drinks or KoolAid(tm) or Jello(tm). And it does NOT mean any kind of processed fruit or fruit that comes in a can or jar. They usually contain SUGAR, and consuming any sugar will mean the fat-burning process will stop because your body can use the sugar to make glucose instead of having to convert body fat into glucose.

It will probably not hurt your Diet plan to drink a soda pop which contains NO sugar, sucrose, or glucose at all - such as the ones sweetened with Aspartame or its brand names NutraSweet(tm) or Equal(tm). But be aware that Aspartame is regarded as VERY unhealthy by many medical professionals, and if you are going to drink or eat products that contain Aspartame, you would be well advised to do a search on the Internet and read up about the possible health risks attributed to the consumption of Aspartame. I suggest you start reading about the dangers of Aspartame here. Aspartame is also said to INCREASE weight and create a dependence on sweets, so you might want to check out the facts before you consume so-called "diet drinks" as a means of weight control.

Also see the CBS News July 28, 2005 story titled "Study Links Aspartame to Cancer" which describes some new medical research which appears to link low doses of Aspartame to lymphoma and leukemia.

On February 7, 2005, an Associated Press report stated that the Coca-Cola Co. announced it will begin selling a Diet Coke sweetened with sugar substitute Splenda(tm) (made from sucralose) in the spring. The report does not say exactly why, but you can draw your own conclusions (possibly it was to replace Aspartame with Splenda). It does say that they will continue to market the original Diet cola product, but also offer this new version. So if you wish to drink your diet cola and avoid Aspartame, look for the NEW Diet Coke in mid 2005.

Ordinary soda water should be okay, but if you flavor it with some fruit flavored syrup, you will be getting SUGAR in the syrup. You should avoid anything with "sucrose" or "glucose" or "corn syrup" or honey or molasses or maple sugar in it on your Diet Days, or you will not lose weight.

If you read the ingredient list for the One Day Diet wafers, you may notice that "dehydrated natural cane juice" is one of the ingredients. What's up with that? There is a small, measured amount of this in the wafers because you DO have to get SOME carbohydrates to maintain your blood glucose level and prevent hunger. What you don't need is TOO many carbohydrates or simple sugars, so don't ingest MORE in any food you eat on Diet Days. Natural fruit does not contain corn syrup solids or refined sugar (sucrose), but does contain fructose which is also known as "fruit sugar". Recent studies have linked continued consumption of fructose from corn to kidney disease, so the NEW One Day Diet formula contains NO corn syrup solids. It uses natural cane juic