Well, here you are, searching for a book on how to lose weight. The number of such books is staggering; this is just one in a vast ocean. Some of the others are written by doctors, some by nutritionists, others by fitness gurus. You may even have read one or more of them. If you have, why are you looking for another? Didn't it work? Was it too hard to put into practice, too hard to maintain? Were you always hungry? Grouchy? If you did lose weight, did it return? Since you are here, one must conclude you're searching for something that works. Why should SHRINK! offer more success than any of the others? SHRINK!'s author, Bruce Michaels is not a healthcare practitioner, research scientist or fitness buff. Instead, he's an average, reasonably intelligent American man who joined the millions of baby-boomers struggling to control their ever-increasing girth. At its peak, his weight had increased by nearly 38% from his early 20s! Difficult-to-adhere-to diets and diets combined with exercise provided him with limited success. Worse, any success was short-lived, and was followed by the all-too-familiar phenomenon of gaining it all back. Then he discovered some information that led him to call a long-time close friend, one who also happened to be a family practice physician. Guided by his doctor friend, Michaels was led to additional information in print and online which finally gave him a non-healthcare professional's understanding of how the body burns fuel and stores fat. Armed with this information, he put in place new eating rules. These new rules resulted in three profound results: 1) The extra pounds shed his body in just 5 months, allowing him to again fit into old pants and shirts he'd worn at age 22; 2) Compared to previous methods he'd tried, it was easy! No grueling exercise campaign, no hunger pangs; 3) 40+ pounds lighter, and over two full years later, those extra pounds remain off. Eureka! Delighted to get his "old," thin and trim self back, the author often found himself asked, "Hey, what happened, where did your belly go? How did you do it?" Whenever so approached, he'd readily tell his story. But how he'd tell it is worthy of note. Bruce Michaels has had many disparate careers. A former broadcast news director, he's able to assemble cogent sentences and explain things clearly, so yes, he can tell a story. But he's also been an entertainer and lyricist; combining these talents, he crafts a story that contains the need-to-know facts in a way that's delightfully lighthearted, filled with anecdotes and self-deprecating humor. Asked why he wrote SHRINK!, he replied, "Because I'd see overweight people, perhaps morbidly obese people, and I'd want to tell them two things. One, I get it, I understand just how tough it is to lose and then keep off the extra pounds. Two, here's what I did that worked so well, and more importantly, worked so easily." Bruce Michaels makes no claim of genius, of invention, or of having any deep, unique insight into the issue of weight loss. Nor does he believe the knowledge he found, his "secret," is really a secret at all. He readily acknowledges the information is available elsewhere, and fully cites those credentialed authorities whose message he is so grateful to have found. But, aware of the growing obesity epidemic facing this country and indeed the industrialized world, he could only draw the obvious conclusion: while the information is out there, far too few have found it. This book is his effort to help spread the word. If you or someone you know has desperately struggled to lose those damnably stubborn extra pounds, this book may be exactly what you're looking for. It contains science but it isn't a tedious science book, nor is it a hard-to-understand medical book. It is, though, a very readable book, one that clearly explains the "secret" and could very possibly change a life - yours? - forever. How valuable is that?