You’ve probably seen the advertisements for the new diet bars sold under the brand Fullbar®, which were developed by Dr. Michael A. Snyder, a weight loss surgeon. According to Dr. Snyder’s website, people who eat two of these bars every day lose an average of 40% of their excess body weight in just three months.

Do they really work?

There’s really only two ways to find out -

• spend almost $200 to buy a case of real FullBar cookies all wrapped up in fancy wrappers,

• or just make some yourself.

You can find my recipe for “Fake FullBars” here. They use the same ingredients as the real ones, but cost a fraction of the price of Dr. Snyder’s diet bars.

And after you try your first batch, come back here and tell us if they worked. And we’d like to know what you think of the real FullBar diet bars too, if you’ve already tried them.  So far, the reviews of the real FullBar diet bars on the blogosphere have been mixed – so we’d really appreciate your opinion.

Few people really look forward to dieting, but most of us decide at one time or another that we absolutely have to lose a few pounds.

At that point we’re faced with making a very big decision – of all the different diet plans available, which one will we choose?

After years of helping other people lose weight, I believe there are three criteria that everyone should use when choosing a diet:

Is it an easy diet to follow?

In other words, will I be able to quickly understand exactly what I’m supposed to eat, and when, or will I need to study a book or charts and recipes for a long period of time before I start my diet.

An easy diet will get you started faster, (so you don’t lose the momentum), and it will be easier to stick with it long enough.

Is it healthy?

There’s no point in ruining your health in order to lose weight. Many fad diets fall into the unhealthy category, because they limit the variety of foods (which also limits the vitamins and other nutrients), and they limit portion sizes so much you literally starve for the few days you manage to stick with it. A truly good diet should actually improve your health, while allowing your body to let go of your extra fat.

Is it satisfying?

In other words, does it leave out the foods that make people automatically overeat, and does it include the foods that satisfy the appetite, so you are able to eat less?

In order to be satisfying, in spite of reducing the calories you normally eat, no weight loss diet should include simple carbohydrates, like sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, white rice, noodles, and most breads and pastries, because these foods cause cravings that make it almost impossible to eat right.

Unfortunately, many of the prepackaged diet meals, which should make it easy to diet, include some of these inexpensive empty-calorie foods. That means the few calories that the meals contain are made up, in part, of foods that will make you want to eat more food.

The foods that help control cravings are the saturated fats that you find in beef, lamb and coconut milk. Many people gasp at the very thought of eating these fats, because the propaganda against them has become “common knowledge” over the last 50 years. However, we have also gotten fatter and fatter over the same number of years, and many experts believe that out growing rate of obesity is caused, in part, by our insistence on eating low-fat diets.

According to Mary Enig, Phd, one of the nation’s foremost experts on dietary fats, “fats as part of a meal slow down absorption so that we can go longer without feeling hungry. In addition, they act as carriers for important fat-soluble vitamins.”

Almost anyone would agree that it makes more sense to eat foods that satisfy your hunger than to eat foods that leave you hungering for more. It also makes sense to eat the foods that contribute to good health.

And most importantly, if you want to start a diet that you can actually stick with as long as you need to, you’d have to agree that “the easier, the better.” Simplicity can be one of the key secrets to successful weight loss.

Great review of the my once-a-month cooking/easy portion control ebook by Rosalie Robles Crowe, food writer for the Arizona Daily star. Read it here: