This page is here to help you get started using Your Designer Diet (YDD). It's easy to be a little bit overwhelmed at first when you hit the front page of a new site for the first time, there's so much going on. But don't worry, it's really pretty simple once you learn the secret of what's where and why.

The Big List of Pages You Might Want to Read

If you are the type of person who just wants to get down to business, here are the major offerings of what you'll find on this site. We'll talk more about what's on the site in later sections.

1. What is Your Designer Diet? - If you want to see if YDD could be for you, then read this one document. Everything is all there in one place. I agree, it's too long, but I really wanted a single place where all elements of the diet could come together. Of course, the book adds a lot more detail and most importantly talks about exactly how to use all the information to control your weight.
2. Read YDD on Amazon - Take a look at the content and the formatting of the book on Amazon using their Search Inside feature. If I do say so myself, I think the book is laid out attractively and in such a way that it actually helps you get better results from the book.
3. About the Author - Learn a little more about me and why I wrote YDD.
4. Testimonials - Some readers actually like the book!
5. Support Tools - All the useful sites and tools mentioned in YDD. Plus, new ones are being added all the time.
6. Strategies - All the strategies you can use to control your weight.
7. Threats - A list of all the reasons why losing weight and staying on a diet are so hard.
8. Sample Book Chapters - Many chapters from the book are on-line for you to read.
9. YDD Book Store - All the books used in writing the book and any new books that may help you control your weight.
10. Search References - A search engine to search all the references used in writing the book and any new references that may be helpful.
11. Contact Us - Email a real human being who will read your mail.
12. Buy the Book Your Designer Diet Book - Here's how you can buy Your Designer Diet.
13. General Discussion Group - A place we can all talk about how to control our weight.
14. Add New Weekly Spin or Daily Check Support Group - A place where you can plan this weeks spin and enter your daily check.
15. Table of Contents - YDD's Table of Contents. It will give you an excellent feel for what's in the book. If you like what you see there you'll probably like the book.
16. Introduction - YDD's Introduction. It will give you an idea what the book is about and how it may help you control your weight.
17. Chapter 1: Why is Losing Weight So Hard? - If you want to know why losing weight is hard, why it's not all your fault, and what you can do about, then this chapter is for you.
18. Chapter 2: The 10 Designer Principles for Controlling Your Weight - An overview of the big ideas that are used throughout the book.
19. Chapter 13: The Designer Way - This is the heart of the book. In it you learn a really cool way to really control your weight that doesn't depend on you being perfect or giving up the foods you love.
20. Conclusion - This chapter wraps up the whole book and tries to put what we just read in some perspective.
21. Index - The index is excellent and does a good job at making it easier to find stuff you know is there, but don't remember quite where it is.
22. Register as a User - Become a registered user of this site.

Why does this site exist?

This website supports the book Your Designer Diet. Books are a great way to be introduced to something, but books can't live and breathe and change. And that's exactly what a website like this will do. New threats (things that make you fall off your diet) are being discovered all the time. New strategies (ways to counter the threats) are being developed all the time. A book simply can't keep up and website can.

The other purpose of this site is to supply the resources promised in YDD. At many points in YDD it promises to provide links to a lot of helpful resources. You'll find all those links here Support Tools. Happy reading! All the books and references used in making YDD are available in Search References and YDD Book Store.

How much does it cost to use this site?

Absolutely nothing. Your wallet will feel no pain. I would appreciate it if you bought Your Designer Diet, it's not in anyway required. If you can learn everything you need to control your weight from this site I'll be perfectly happy for you. That's what really matters.

Who is this site for?

This site and book are for you if you have a problem controlling your weight and you are wondering what you can finally do about it. This site and book are especially for you if you ever wondered why losing weight is so hard. That's a question we'll try to answer and in answering that question there's hope. Hope that you can control your weight. If you're interested, there's a whole chapter on trying to explain why it's so hard to lose weight.

What can you actually do with this site?

Here are a few things you can do on this site:

Read the Book. A Lot of YDD is Available on this Site

You may notice that quite a lot of the book is available on-line for free. Take a look at the Sample Book Chapters section for all the content. What's missing is the full text for many of the strategies and threats. Over time more and more of the book will be put on-line. The reason so much of the book is on-line is because I want you to able to use this website to help control your weight. You can't do that if you don't have the information in the book, so most of it's here for you to use.

Get and Give Support Through a Helpful Community

One the most successful and effective of all weight control strategies is for people to help support each other. With constant support you never go far off track. Support is like a weight control little angel sitting on your shoulder helping combat the giant weight gain devil on your other shoulder. And part of the power of community is that you can be someone's angel too. You've learned a lot in your life. You have a lot to share. And we all have a lot to learn. See how nicely that works?

If you would like to ask a question, talk to other like minded people, or participate in the Designer Way, then the support groups are the place for you. You can find the link to the support groups in the top menu under Let's Chat and Ask Questions.

Read About New Strategies and Threats

We'll be publishing new threats and strategies all the time. You won't want to miss the newest shockingly surprising reason you find it so hard to lose weight or miss the newest strategy that may help you control your weight.

Read and Post in Comments

Every post on the site has a place for comments. You can make a comment to any post you like and participate in the site that way.

Sign Up for the RSS Feed

If you would like to participate in this web site by reading RSS postings then just paste the following URL into your favorite RSS reader: http://yourdesignerdiet.com/index.php?format=feed&type=rss

Control Your Weight Using the Designer Way in the Support Groups

A live interactive website like this can really breathe life into one of the major innovations of YDD, the Designer Way. Here's a picture of the Designer Way process:

The Designer Way uses innovations from the empirical process control world to build a step-by-step method of exactly how to control your weight. That may sound complicated and tricky, but it's really not. Here's one way to think about that may help.

The Designer Way is like your home's thermostat that keeps your house a constant temperature versus just plopping a space heater in a room and letting it blast a way. I know this is a little strange, but just stay with me.

When you use a space heater it sends out heat no matter what. It doesn't care how hot or cold your room is, the space heater always sends out the same amount of heat. On a cold day the space heater won't know that it should use the highest setting it has. And on a hot day when the space heater should shut itself off it won't. The space heater has no idea of the current temperature so it can't make smart adjustments to the real life environment it is in.

By comparison your household thermostat is a genius. It's smart because it's uses an empirical method to keep your temperature constant, no matter how cold or hot it is out side. Empirical just means "guided by experience or experiment." So your home thermostat pays attention to the current temperature so it can make subtle adjustments to keep the temperature constant. This may seem simple, but it's not. Raise the heat too much and it's too hot. Don't raise the heat enough and it's too cold. Getting it just right as the temperature is constantly changing is pretty hard.

Your typical diet is the space heater. You just do a few things and that's supposed to control your weight no matter what happens in your life. Well, that works about as well as a space heater in August. Your Designer Diet is like your home thermostat. It helps you control your weight no matter how crazy your life gets.

So the core idea of YDD is to continually improve your diet by making small changes in direct response to real events in your life. Over time these changes add up to amazing differences in your weight, and powerful changes in your life. The Designer Way has three major steps: start spin, daily check, make a move.

Every week in the support groups we'll start a new spin. The start of a new spin is a time for reflection. It's where we check how well we met our weight goals. We then use the results from the last spin to do better this spin. We are always improving. This is where a community of people can really help each other figure out how to do better on our diets. There's a whole script of how this process works that's covered in YDD, but you'll also see it covered in the support groups.

Every day there is the daily check. A daily check is a time for quick response. Every morning we perform a quick check to see if any weight has unexpectedly been gained. If there has then you quickly respond by adjusting your strategies to remove the reasons for the weight gain and then figure out new moves you can make to take the weight off. A community of people can really help make the daily check work. It's not always clear why we gained weight or what we can do about it, but if you have enough minds on any problem we can work it out.

Every moment you try to make a move. A move is a time for immediate action. You are always looking for opportunities to prevent slip-ups, exercise more, eat to your diet and find more joy you in your life. Take any opportunity to implement a strategy. What moves can you make? That's where the strategies in the book and community support come in. By making smart moves during the day you control your weight.

Please visit the support group for more information on how to run your weekly spins and daily checks.

Consider the Many Benefits of Registering as a User

OK, to be honest, there aren't that many benefits of registering as a user. We hate sites that make you register before you can do anything useful. We've made it so you can do most everything interesting without registering. But if you register you can:

1. Access some basic social network features like having your own profile, the ability to link to other users, and you can upload a nice avatar of someone who looks nothing like your real self :-)
2. Help us develop a real community of users who can help each with weight control. That's a lot easier when people have an identity on the site. We realize stuff about your weight is personal, so you certainly don't need your real identity on the site. Yet the site will be a lot more useful if people register with some identity. So please consider registering.
3. Help us brag about how many registered users we have.

Contact Your Designer Diet

If you would like to contact a real live person you can follow the instructions on this page.

Disclaimer

Your Designer Diet Does Not Provide Medical Advice. All content in the book Your Designer Diet and this website is the opinion or information of its author. They are not a substitute for medical advice. Always contact your own doctor or other professional health care provider if you have a question concerning
your or your family’s health.

RELIANCE ON ANY INFORMATION IN YDD OR THIS WEBSITE IS AT YOUR OWN
RISK. THE AUTHOR AND PUBLISHER ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE OR
LIABLE FOR ANY ADVICE, COURSE OF TREATMENT, DIAGNOSIS,
DRUG AND DEVICE APPLICATION OR OTHER INFORMATION,
SERVICES, OR PRODUCTS THAT YOU OBTAIN FROM THIS BOOK.