I've been seeing a lot of talk on this list about what to eat and how to lose weight. (Don't get me wrong, the talk is good.) Anyway, here's something I do, which I like a lot, and which may help one of you, too. Please don't flame me if you see something about it that you find antithetical to the precepts of this group. Get some lettuce, some fresh parsley, a carrot or two, and some celery. These will be the "must-have" ingredients. Clean all of them well. Use a LOT of parsley, not just a sprig or two. (I.e., at least as much as anything else.) You can add other stuff like the fancy salad stuff that some natural food stores have, like aragula, etc., if you like. But it all has to be RAW. Get a really big bowl, and put all of the cleaned and dried-off stuff in it. In the meantime you should have been frying 4 or 5 strips of good politically correct bacon. Fry the bacon just enough to kill all the parasites in it. (I don't know exactly how long that is, I just guess at it.) Don't fry it to a cinder, though -- leave some good fat on it. It's a good idea to cut the bacon strips up before you fry them, into smaller pieces. In the meantime, get 1/2 of a lime, and squeeze all the juice out of it into a small jar. Add about twice as much olive oil as lime juice. Now add whatever spices you like, like cayenne or whatever. Add some sea salt if you think you may need it. By now the bacon should be done, so transfer it to the top of the veggies in the bowl. Feel free to put some of the rendered bacon fat into the salad dressing jar. Put the lid on the jar and shake it well. Then pour the mixture onto the salad. Make sure the salad is big enough to fill you up, because THAT IS THE WHOLE MEAL. You may drink your favorite beverage with it, but that's *it*. Eating the above once a day (at least, whenever I can, seems to help me stay thin. Regards, Mark Farley