The secret is to associate dieting with abundance, and not lack. I call it flooding. If you know you can have all you want to eat of something, you are going to feel much more encouraged to lose weight than if you are meted out tiny parcels on a scale. You can be excessive. Isn't that why we are overweight in the first place?

The idea is to come up with infinite good stuff to flush away the bad stuff. For instance, I am now doing it with cantaloupe. I know that no matter how weak I feel, or hungry, or frustrated, or excited, or angry or deprived, I can always pig out on slice after slice of cantaloupe. I can have all I want until I am sated. I even cut them up ahead of time removing the rinds so that I will have this luscious bag of succulent fruit just waiting to stuff into my needy system whenever I feel the urge. And I get to have all I want.

Once I come up with my flooder, and it can be salads too, I have something to hang on to. Then, the rest of the day I am satisfied just to pick on target sources of nutrition. These might include sardines, eggs, a bowl of Wheat Thins or plain yogurt. I never realized how enticing plain yogurt is until I found a brand that reveals its creamy taste. Now I even look forward to lolling that yummy stuff around in my mouth.

So, the idea is to look forward to eating, enjoy it immensely, and not get fat from it. All you have to do is have that flooder handy and start stuffing it into your mouth every time you feel you are losing control with the other things. Soon you will be so full and satisfied that you will, for the moment at least, not want those things.

Think abundantly about time. See it passing, day after day, week after week, month after month. Think of how fast it goes, and how soon Friday comes right on the heels of last Friday, and associate each one of those days with a little bit of progress. Once again, you feel you are accumulating rather than sacrificing. You are getting time under you belt just like a collector gathers objects and you delight in the sheer quantity of it.

They say that if you live in the problem, the problem increases. If you live in the answer, the answer increases. Nothing could more accurately describe the success of losing weight so painlessly.