Yes, I do eat cake for breakfast. It's no secret. Ask anyone that knows me. So, what's the deal? How do I eat cake for breakfast and not gain weight? My dieting secret: I don't diet. It's simple, really, and it's called the "non-dieting approach."

What's the Non-dieting Approach?

If I'm not hungry, but suddenly I think of some food. I remember the leftover cake, pie, or anything else that jumps in my head -- in the absence of any actual hunger -- then I tell myself I can have it in the morning, for breakfast. Delaying it is then acceptable as opposed to simply attempting to tell myself, "No, you shouldn't have that," or "No, you're already too fat," or anything else I might say to try and talk myself out of eating it. That never works. If I tell myself, "No," then I've just set myself up to fail. Now, I've got to have it. I've never been one to accept being told I can't do or have something. This way I can have my cake and eat it too, I just wait until morning, and that's not so hard to do.

Riding the Hunger

Interestingly, the waiting, not having something the instant I want it, but choosing to wait, gives me a good feeling. I can ride my hunger for awhile -- because it does start to feel like hunger. Thinking about food causes your body to salivate, and salivation causes your digestive juices to start rolling. Once everything gets ready for food, well, it just waits, and waits, occasionally sending a gurgle or something to remind you. Those sensations are not always hunger though, and unless you occasionally ride the feelings, you won't ever learn to distinguish between real hunger and wanting hunger.

At first the desire to eat is so strong it takes quite an effort to overcome the knee-jerk response of getting up and satisfying that urge. The initial impulse to eat which suddenly appears out of thin air is rarely hunger, which is why you can learn to tell yourself, "No. I can wait until I'm hungry." Since actual hunger may not arrive when it is most convenient (like in the next 10 minutes since you want it now), then setting an agreed upon time in the future when you can eat, or deciding you'll have it at your next meal, works well. This is simply changing a habitual response from instant gratification to delayed. It has nothing to do with willpower, and it is not dieting.

Once you start waiting, you'll find yourself eating less, and naturally your weight will start to fall as well. For example, last night about 6:00 PM my son asked me to fix him nachos. I had bought all the ingredients for nachos a few days before because I wanted them. I had eaten a big meal just an hour or two earlier.

My husband also wanted a plate so I fixed them both a nice, huge homemade killer nacho platter, and then cleaned it up. "You're not having any?" asked my husband. "No, I already ate," I said sadly. I did have a moment of wondering whether I might just go ahead and have a plate myself -- after all, they're delicious and I was the one that wanted them in the first place after all (I love nachos), but I realized I had no hunger at all. I decided to let it pass. I'll have them next time. This isn't "Last Chance for Nachos Day." The lesson? I'm okay, and I can choose not to have any and the world won't stop revolving. The sky won't fall. It's okay to sometimes choose to say no.

Why Fad Diets Doomed to Fail

Dieting is simply a foolhardy approach, plain and simple. Would watering my plants a little less make their stalks less wide? No, it would make them all scrawny and perhaps kill them.

If you fill a balloon with 10 cups of water it will expand to a certain size. Now, if you only fill it with 8 cups of water, it will expand to a smaller size, but if you then go back to 10 cups, what will happen? Doh! Back to the first size, straight away. It doesn't take a genius to see the folly in this approach yet people fall for the promises of fad diets everyday. Lose 10 lbs in one day! Lose weight while you sleep, or the ever popular, eat all the meat, fat, eggs, cheese and crap that you want, just skip the bread and potatoes and you'll be svelte in no time!

Fad diets are not only dangerous but insane from the standpoint of human nutrition.

How to Gain Weight: Try Fad Diet

A popular approach for someone who's too thin to gain weight is to put them on a fad diet for a week, then back to normal eating for a week, then back on the fad diet for a week, then back to normal, and repeating this for a month or more. After that, our poor "once too skinny person" will now find themselves with a healthy helping of jelly roll around their middle, thanks to the "teach your body how to gain weight," process known as dieting.

The worst thing for your health is to continually gain and lose 20 lbs. Being 20 or more pounds heavier than the height/weight charts suggest is healthier than the weight loss/weight gain cycling that so many people seem addicted to. That is a true recipe for disaster.