THE LAST DIET BOOK YOU’LL EVER NEED   With so much conflicting weight-loss advice out there to confuse your efforts, it’s no wonder you haven’t been successful losing weight and keeping it off. But with Bob Harper, superstar trainer and co-host of NBC’s hit show The Biggest Loser as your personal authority and coach, you can and will finally shed the pounds—whether you want to lose two or two hundred!   Distilling Bob’s vast knowledge of nutrition, weight-loss strategy, and human nature down to twenty simple, nonnegotiable principles, The Skinny Rules will help you step away from a reliance on processed foods and the need for so much sweet and salt and step into a newly thin lifestyle. And Bob’s methods couldn’t be more straightforward.   Taking the guesswork out of implementing the Skinny Rules , Bob offers a month’s worth of menu plans and more than 90 delicious, rule-abiding recipes for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks to keep you cooking and eating skinny for life. You’ll be happily astounded to see the variety and volume of the tasty food on your plate! He also includes terrific tips for what to stock in your fridge and what to prepare every weekend in order to set yourself up for success during your too-busy-to-cook weekdays.   A virtual GPS to your weight-loss goals, The Skinny Rules takes the mystery out of the process, offering the fastest route to your skinny destination.   LOSING WEIGHT IS NOW AS SIMPLE AS 1-2-3 . . . AND 3-15-18-20 TOO!   Rule #3: Eat protein at every meal, making some kind of fish your go-to protein as often as you can. Take your weight and divide it by two—that’s more or less how much protein you should be eating in grams every day.   Rule #15: Eat at least ten meals a week at home (and cook them yourself). Restaurant portions are usually 40 to 50 percent bigger than what you’d serve at home—the more you eat out, the more you overeat. Set yourself up for success by preparing my turkey meatballs, hummus, and roasted vegetables on the weekend so that you will have go-to staples and no excuses!   Rule #18: Go to bed slightly hungry. Denied fuel for more than five hours, your body will start burning its own fat and sugar. Make a point not to eat after dinner and you’ll be burning fat while you’re sleeping.   Rule #20: Enjoy a splurge meal once a week. Unlike episodic bingeing, splurge meals are an ingredient in your diet. When you plan something, you are in control. Bob Harper is a world-renowned fitness trainer and star of the NBC reality series The Biggest Loser, which finished thirteenth season in 2012. With several bestselling fitness DVDs, his own line of supplements, an online fitness club, as well as the inspirational book Are You Ready? to his credit, Harper still teaches a local spin class where he resides in Los Angeles with his dog Karl.   Greg Critser is a longtime science and medical journalist. The author of the international bestseller Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, he lives in Pasadena, California. RULE 1 DRINK A LARGE GLASS OF WATER BEFORE EVERY MEAL—­NO EXCUSES! This has got to be the easiest rule there is. Which is a good place to start. But it’s also one of the most important rules there is. You simply must stay hydrated. At a minimum I want you to drink a large glass of water before every meal. But I’d prefer that you drink at least five glasses of water a day, the first one within fifteen minutes of waking. Now, do I really need to harass you about this? I do. Because during the process of losing weight, nothing is so crucial to your success. Water keeps your organs healthy while you’re sweating, keeps food moving through the system, and makes you feel full. Let me put this plainly: drinking water helps you lose weight. You can see this most vividly in very overweight children. Recently, a group of Israeli researchers examined the resting energy expenditure (REE) of twenty-­one obese children. REE refers to the rate at which you burn calories when you are sleeping, watching TV, or just simply sitting there and staring into space. The researchers gave the kids a large serving of cold water, then began measuring the REE every 10 minutes. The reaction was more robust than anticipated. Within 24 minutes, REE began increasing. By 57 minutes, REE had increased by 25 percent, and this effect lasted 40 minutes. Did you get that? Just by drinking water, your body increases its burning of calories. The scientists estimated that, if you just do this, you’ll burn off an extra three pounds over the next year. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but I’ll take it. Won’t you? The contestants on The Biggest Loser are usually chronically dehydrated, and their collective experience shows another reason to drink lots of water. They are usually pretty big consumers of salt before they come on the show. They eat it unknowingly—­in the fried and highly processed foods that are their usual