If you are going to lose excess weight permanently, if you are going to reshape your body, it’s probably best that you forget what you know about overeating and weight gain. I wrote this book to provide a beginning to a new way forward, away from what I perceive as outdated, irrational, ineffective, harmful, and even dehumanizing approaches to weight management. Don’t get me wrong. Weight loss is still a matter of eating less and exercising more, of taking in fewer calories and burning them up more effectively. And the hundreds, if not thousands, of diets out there in all their infi nite variety are, for the most part, sound.