TONY DEAN, known as The Meanest Man of Dieting, and the author of The F.A.S.T. Diet (Families Always Succeed Together) lives with his family in Omaha, Nebraska. After the Dean family of eight had lost 500 pounds, they decided to make an impact on their community and helped a group from their home city lose 4,000 pounds. Now the Dean family is taking this crusade from city to city, helping people lose weight using The F.A.S.T Diet.

Guest Blogger Tony Dean--

Like most people I love the show "The Biggest Loser," especially how it demonstrates how hard one must work out to lose weight. What I don’t understand is how such a seemingly credible source can sometimes give such terrible advice. On the last show, Bob Harper, who I respect completely said something like, “On The Biggest Loser we have a cheat day after each weigh in to shock the body and recharge the metabolism.” Sounds great right?

This comment was wrong in so many ways, but as a viewer I can only imagine that it made perfect sense – let me explain. The average dieter is already a professional cheater and has spent an entire life cheating on exercise and food. One of the biggest obstacles dieters have to overcome is the creation of new positive patterns that includes consistent exercise and improved food choices. Experts say a habit takes at least 14 days to form, how can interrupting this process every 7 days make sense? It doesn’t. By choosing this strategy you never get a chance to permanently learn the discipline of control. Instead, you are just buying time to get to your next cheat.

But let’s say for a minute he’s dead on. The way this cheat day was characterized was a free-for-all. There was no instruction on how little or how much to cheat. Most people dieting are hanging on by a thread. Encouraging a cheat day would be like offering an alcoholic a drink once a week because he has remained sober. I think that since 10.1 million people watch the show it might have been prudent to say, “Eat an additional 1000 calories” or whatever else they meant. As a result, I assure you, there are thousands of people thinking, “What a great idea, I will make my cheat day, today.” Due to this huge error, "today" will probably be the last day they diet successfully THIS YEAR!

On the same show they said the participants workout as much as 6 hours a day. How can their strategy compare in any way to yours? Having a cheat day for them may make perfect sense in those conditions; certainly though, you are not working out 6 hours a day and you definitely don’t have the accountability they have in place either. It is amazing to me that with all their doctors and specialists, they can give this kind of advice and not see its detrimental effect to the watching public.

When I wrote my book, The F.A.S.T. Diet, I wanted to make it about real life and how to overcome real life situations consistently--showing how to lose the weight fast, while mastering the stills you will need to maintain. After that you can enjoy the rest of your life without having to count on tips and tricks that may or may not work. Last year we helped 100 volunteers use our program and they lost 4000 lbs. Now groups are springing up all over the country using our simple plan mixed in with an ironclad accountability program that will help you get past the next piece of horrible advice. Remember, The Biggest Loser is a TV show, what we teach is how to make this happen in Reality!

Don’t lose focus, you can do it!

More From Tony Dean--Dieting Is All Or Nothing!