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There are thousands of diets, and just last month I removed a previous web post that linked to some five hundred diets. It linked to every last diet that I could locate that had a description that could be followed. My experience, and what I have garnered from the internet, is that every diet fails when I stop dieting. They fail because they require renewed mental effort every time I start eating. They fail because eating is enjoyable and to stop eating is to stop enjoying life, at least for the moment. I just don’t have the mental stamina to permanently stop enjoying life, and permanently maintain a diet.

So there’s the root problem! Eating is life-enhancing and my whole existence is based on eating. Survival and reproduction have been bred into my DNA for billions of years, and that is based on eating. To stop eating is to go against the most fundamental demand of life, and I am going to fail in the long run, at least until I get deathly sick and die. Failure is a nasty word, but until I am obedient to my natural needs failure is inevitable.

The answer to the problem is simple enough — just stop eating when I have had just the right amount for what my body needs to move toward my ideal health. A varied diet with lots of fruits and vegetables and a little meat and fish is what the government dietitians recommend and supposedly what my body wants. Okay. But they don’t give me a workable method for stopping at just the right moment for my ideal health. After years of searching I have finally found a way.

I can’t tell you what your ideal weight is, and it wouldn’t do any good. You must decide that, and you must decide when to stop eating, not someone else, and certainly not me. But I have a way you can choose to stop eating when you want to, and override external impulses to keep eating. Remember Monty Python’s pushy waiter skit, “Just a thin little mint?”  You must decide when to stop eating, and not the waiter! And, here’s the really difficult part — you must decide every time you are eating when to stop. For a lifetime of eating that is 70 years times 365 days times 3 meals per day and that equals 76,000 times you must decide to stop eating.

I have discovered an amazing thing, and it’s so obvious once you realize it. Gourmet jellybeans taste so good and are so strong that after you have slowly eaten five different ones, all other food tastes bland, even blechy. Good jellybeans overwhelm your taste buds with their vibrant flavors, and after slowly eating a few of them individually you lose all interest in eating anything until you are hungry again. So, …  “The one second diet that works!” is to eat what is good for you and then instead of eating more food, spend one second placing a jellybean in your mouth. Chew your jellybean slowly and savor it. If you discover by experience that one isn’t enough, plan to eat four different jellybeans, and as you start the last one go for a walk. Carry them with you at all times, but never eat them at any time other than when you should stop eating real food; even the tiny bit of sugar isn’t good for you, but you want to have them instantly available when you start eating, so you can stop!

When you have eaten exactly enough for perfect health, place one jellybean in your mouth and slowly savor it.