Introduction
 
 
I am so amazed and delighted by the number of people who have picked up The G.I. Diet, followed its advice and slimmed down to their ideal weight. In a world of fad diets and bad advice, hundreds of thousands of people have chosen the best and healthiest way to permanent weight loss — hooray! The book has become a national bestseller in Canada, the United States and Britain and is now available in over twenty countries in seventeen languages. And every day I receive readers’ letters and e-mails telling me how much weight they’ve lost and how it’s changed their lives. This truly has been my greatest reward and satisfaction, because this is exactly what I set out to do when I first wrote the book: to help people get healthy and feel good about themselves.
 
I know what it’s like to be overweight and to try one deprivation diet after another with no success. Several years ago, as a result of a lower back disc problem, I had to give up my regular morning jog. Well, it didn’t take long for me to gain 22 pounds and — even worse for my vanity — 4 inches on my waist. As president of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, my job was to raise funds for research into heart disease and stroke and to promote healthy lifestyle choices to reduce people’s risk for those diseases. And there I was, overweight myself! All of a sudden I had to practise what I had been preaching for ten years — a sobering experience. I tried about a dozen different leading diets, which were far too time consuming and complex for my busy schedule. Finally, I felt unhealthy and lethargic.
 
Luckily, when I was just about at the end of my rope, I happened upon a way of eating that changed my life. I finally lost the weight that had been plaguing me for so long, and it was a revelation. You can imagine how excited I was; I wanted to tell everyone about it, end their dieting frustrations forever.
 
The result was the G.I. Diet, and the question of whether it works has been answered by the tens of thousands of e-mails I’ve received. Readers told me that they were losing weight without feeling hungry or deprived. They loved not having to count calories or points, and were finding new energy levels that they hadn’t experienced since their youth.
 
Included in this overwhelming reader response were questions and suggestions about how the G.I. Diet could be further refined to meet various lifestyle or health needs. This encouraged me to undertake additional research, which resulted in a series of G.I. Diet books targeted at meeting these needs — for example, The G.I. Diet Cookbook for those who wanted more green-light recipes; The G.I. Diet Guide to Shopping and Eating Out, which conveniently fits into a pocket or purse; and, more recently, a series of books based on actual e-clinics I conducted, namely The G.I. Diet Clinic directed at ”Big People“; The G.I. Diet Menopause Clinic and The G.I. Diet Diabetes Clinic.
 
 
Having accumulated a great deal of new knowledge from the preparation of these books, I decided it was time to revise and update the original G.I. Diet. This book includes updates on the red-, yellow-, and green-light food listings, as well as health supplements and exercise. I’ve also added new text on eating out — both restaurants and fast food; changing behaviours; emotional eating; staying motivated; falling off the wagon; and getting off a weight-loss plateau. All this and a host of personal stories will motivate you with your own weight-loss goals. I look forward to receiving your comments and suggestions through my Web site, www.gidiet.com.
 
The greatest achievement in life is to believe that you have made a difference. I’d like to express my appreciation to those readers who have made this dream come true for me!