1. Please sum up your views in relation to weight loss to our moms and other visitors. 

Weight loss, and more importantly fat loss, is a highly individualized thing that requires a customized plan of action to make it happen. Although a high-fat, low-carb diet was extremely successful for me to shed 180 pounds in one year back in 2004, I am completely in favor of people finding the proven and effective plan that will work for them. Follow that plan exactly as prescribed by the author, and then keep doing that plan for the rest of your lives. If you find success doing something about your weight, then why would you ever eat any other way again?

2. Tell us a little more about your book, "21 Life Lessons From Livin' La Vida Low-Carb." 

This book has been five years in the making ever since I lost my weight. In the years since my dramatic transformation from a 400+ pound man into who I am today, I have learned so many lessons about not just diet and health, but in life too. I wanted to share just a few of those lessons with people who desperately need to hear about them. While people oftentimes look at low-carb diets as a means to an end for weight loss, my book shows them the science as well as the anecdotal evidence supporting this wonderfully healthy way of eating for so much more. Everyone who has read the book so far has shared with me that they learned something brand new they had not heard about before.  Mission accomplished!

3. What advice do you have for "disorganized eaters?" 

Organize your diet ASAP!  Include lots of fresh, local foods and don't fear eating fat. We've become so conditioned to equate dietary fat with being unhealthy, but nothing could be further from the truth. When you reduce your carbohydrates in your diet, foods like grass-fed beef, full-fat cheese, eggs, nuts, butter, and more all become an essential part of your life along with organic non-starchy vegetables. Embrace food as a means for healing your body from the years of punishment you've been giving it eating incorrectly. This can and should begin immediately.

4. One concern people have is gaining weight once they've lost it. How can one maintain the right weight once they bring it down? 

Here's a reality check for you:  weight gain can and probably will happen even after you lose weight. But it is how you respond to that weight gain after losing it that determines your long-term success. If you get discouraged and stop doing those things that helped you lose the weight initially as a result of gaining weight back, then it should come as no surprise when the pounds start packing on again. However, slight weight gain should snap you back into a serious mode to figure out what is going on. Sometimes you can be doing everything exactly the same way you did when you were losing weight the first time and the scale refuses to budge. Get tested for thyroid issues and other hormonal barriers to weight loss. Keep an eye on your health markers and let those be your final determination about whether your eating plan is truly effective or not.

5. Please give us some insight on diet planning, shopping and cooking the right kinds of meals required by most weight-loss diets? 

Most weight loss diets say you need to cut out fat, increase your grain consumption, reduce your calories, and exercise on the treadmill for hours on end every single day to burn a greater number of calories than you take in to shed the pounds. But what if ALL of that conventional wisdom advice was dead wrong? What if all you need to do instead is INCREASE your fat consumption (even saturated fat), significantly lower or eliminate the whole grains in your diet, RAISE your caloric intake, and do high-intensity interval training for small periods of time just a few days a week? It's counterintuitive to what we've always heard, but countless numbers of people are changing their lives forever utilizing these basic principles of livin' la vida low-carb.

6. If you had to give only one piece of advice to anyone who strives to lose weight, what would it be? 

No more excuses -- MAKE IT HAPPEN!  Something out there will work for you and it's your responsibility to find what that is, do it, and keep doing it forever and ever amen. You'll be around for many more years to come and feel better than you ever thought possible!

7. Some people have trouble finding supportive physicians to help them with their low carb diets. Do you have any suggestions for them? 

What a fantastic question and I understand the dilemma since I didn't have a low-carb friendly doctor when I began low-carb in 2004. Find support online from blogs like mine, join a forum like my http://www.livinlowcarbdiscussion.com to meet up with like-minded people who are also on this journey, and then check out my "List Of Low-Carb Doctors" blog (http://lowcarbdoctors.blogspot.com) for a listing of the low-carb physicians in your area who will support you in this journey. You do not have to be alone in your endeavor to lose weight and get healthy the low-carb way. The time is NOW and it's yours for the taking!