The Undiet Revolution

No one wants to be overweight
I don’t.
Do you?

Why are we overweight?
I lead a fast-paced, heavy-travel, regular business
dinner lifestyle. I don’t mind working out, but it’s
hard to find time to fit it in sometimes. I love food
and drink. I hate giving them up.
Do you suffer from some of the same problems?

“Conventional” Diets Suck
They’re extreme and involve major sacrifices in
terms of my routine or preferred foods or extreme
amounts of exercise. No fat, no carbs, no booze,
run 40 miles a week. Yuk.
All of them work to lose the weight. None of them
is sustainable, and the weight you lose comes back
each time – with a vengeance.

Who Are You To Say?
I like food. I like meat, cheese, alcohol, and potatoes in
particular. We have now been trained by society to think
of all of those food as “generically bad.”
That’s actually not true. What is true is that those things,
and many others, are “bad if you have too much of them.”
Now that, I get. But why not leave it to me to regulate
how much of them I eat, rather than tell me to just cut
them out?

The Undiet Revolution
The Undiet bears little if any resemblance to
most conventional diets. It doesn’t proscribe any
kind of fixed regime – low this, high that. It
doesn’t come with recipes or a cookbook, and it
never will. You don’t have to eat frozen meals,
drink protein shakes, or go to meetings with
strangers. It’s not a diet so much as a way of
thinking.

Why is the Undiet Great?
I read in some diet book once (I’ve read a lot of
them) that “nothing tastes as good as thin feels.” I
say that’s a bunch of B.S. Nothing tastes as good as
a cheeseburger with fried onions, except for a
cheeseburger with fried onions and bacon. And a
beer.
The Undiet lets you eat and drink as you wish – just
not all the time.

The Theory Behind the Revolution
The Undiet draws on simple business principles
such as budgeting, reporting, simplicity,
managing the numbers, and finding a couple of
shortcuts to winning.

The Seven Principles
Keep score, but don’t count calories
1.
2. Figure out your balance point
3. Track progress vs. a weekly budget
Don’t deprive yourself, don’t overdo it
4.
5. Ignore what everyone else tells you
6. Hold yourself accountable
7. Find a trick to win

1. Keep score, but don’t count
calories or grams of anything
• -1 point per 30 minutes of exercise
• 1 point if a meal is healthy and a normal portion
• 1 point per alcoholic beverage
• 2 points if a meal is healthy but a large portion; or
unhealthy but a normal portion
• 3 points if a meal is unhealthy and a large portion
• Half points are ok
• Max out any meal at 3 (just not too often)

2. Figure out your balance point
How many points per week can you handle
without gaining or losing weight? Experiment,
and you’ll find it out.
For me it’s 42 points of food and 6 of exercise,
or net 36 total. If I’m in weight loss mode, 32-
33 does the job.

3. Track progress vs. a weekly
budget
What gets measured, gets managed. Keep a running
total of points in your head. Make sure you close
out each week hitting your budget or beating it.
Track it vs. par if you’re a golfer.
Do not create a food log unless you consistently
miss budget and want to understand why.

4. Don’t deprive yourself, don’t overdo it
Eat and drink as you wish. Just not at every single
meal. You’ll have enough yummy food and drink
each week, I promise.
Regular exercise is important to systemically speed
up your metabolism, but you can’t exercise your
way out of a hole, and you can eat less to make up
for missed exercise once in a while.

5. Ignore what everyone else tells
you
“Points? You just made up Weight Watchers for Men.” “You skip
breakfast? That’s the most important meal of the day.” “You had three
drinks and a cheese steak last night, and you call that a diet?”
I’m not a doctor, and if I asked 20 doctors their opinion of the Undiet,
I’m sure I’d get 100 reasons why it’s horrible. Did I mention that my
cholesterol dropped from 196 to 170 after the first four months of the
Undiet and has stayed low?
Ignore them all and lose your weight.

6. Hold yourself accountable
If you have half a pizza one night, that’s a 3, you
know it’s a 3, so why argue to yourself that it was
thin crust, so you only get a 2? Give yourself a 3,
take your lumps, have a salad for lunch tomorrow,
and move on.
As mom says, the only person you’re cheating is
yourself.

7. Find a trick to win
Plan out the week ahead of time. Figure out when
you will have time to work out and which lunches
or dinners are going to be in the “no deprive” zone.
Be under par through Tuesday or Wednesday of
every week to create slack in the system.
Otherwise, you will feel like you’re digging out of a
hole as the weekend approaches.

All diets have one thing in common
You end up eating fewer calories.

The Undiet does that, too
The Undiet is a way of doing that which puts you
in control of your program, not a doctor or a
nutritionist or a book or a web site or a group of
perfect strangers.

Go forth and conquer
If your brain has produced a successful career in
business, or in any profession that’s goal oriented
(including running a family and household),
apply those basic principles to your eating,
drinking, and exercising with the Undiet. Join
the Revolution. The only thing you have to lose
is a bunch of weight!