If you go out to buy a diet book and you spend any time, any time at all, looking for a parking space closer to the door of Barnes & Nobles, you are a premature failure. You should skip the diet books and buy “The Idiot’s Guide to Being Fat and Lazy” or at least “The Idiot’s Guide to Being an Idiot” because you are a breathing example of futility.

If you buy a diet book, you’re part of a select group of people doomed to failure. The failure rate for dieting is almost 100%, but why shouldn’t you be an exception? After all, you’ve learned that other language, earned that promotion, nurtured that healthy relationship, so why can’t you conquer this too? Oops, didn’t mean to depress you. Please see the self-help page for help. That’s right, the diet book industry is built on the hopes of people who believe for a few bright moments that once in their lives that they can beat the odds, and do it easily.

In every diet book, for no reason other than keeping their butts from being sued off by class-action attorneys, there is a section (never, ever featured on the cover or dust jacket) involving -- wait -- exercise. Exercise! The very thing you probably hate.

Here is the dirty truth about dieting. Dieting involves self-control and effort. If the federal government requires warnings on everything else in the world, it should require one on the front of every diet book that says, “If you cannot exercise substantial self-control and put forth sustained effort, this book cannot help you.”

Would you buy a book if it said that? Probably not. Well, now you know the truth and I’m saving you money. Maybe someday there will be a pill that works to make you skinny. But for now, avoid sugar where possible and exercise regularly. Please forward me $14.99, which I hereby waive if you exercise five times by the end of this month.

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