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When it's hot out (and it's been HOT out!) I don't feel like cooking. I don't feel like cleaning up afterward, either. But I have to eat, and my family has to eat, so I have to do something. And since they refuse to eat off the floor and with their fingers (picky people that they are), I have to come up with new ways to minimize the cleanup.

Every now and then I get a success story letter that leaves me saying, "I can't improve on that." This is one of those cases. Here is a letter I received from Dee in Iowa about her and her husband Lee’s low carb success.

I have recently (like, last night) become aware that I have a serious forgiveness problem. I carry grudges forever. It's something I've always done. So my mother paraphrases to me in the midst of a mild emotional conflagration of yours truly, "You will be judged as you have judged others." And I said to her, "Do you really think I am any less hard on myself than I am on anybody else?"

Amazingly enough, you can find mazes of maize, and walk through them, searching your way from one end to the other, with nary a kernel passing your lips.

I've been on low carb many times in my life, but when I started trying to lose weight in 1996, I finally stuck with it. I weighed 208 when I started. In December 1998 I got down to 137. I've been maintaining ever since then.

Myrna from Pennsylvania is 46 years old, 4 11" tall, and follows the Atkins program. When Myrna wrote to me, she wanted to share with our readers not only her Atkins success story, but also how she fell from grace, and has rebounded after making her goal weight, then regaining from her first time around with low carbing. Myrna started her low carb journey in Sept. of 2001 at 165 pounds and a size 12. She achieved her goal of 125 pounds and a size 6 after only four months low carbing.

We've been discussing the history of diets and dieting. It may seem obvious to you that the idea of the calorie, at least as it pertains to dieting, must have been with us since the beginning of dieting. However, such is not the case. As we discussed last time, it wasn't until the 1890s and early 1900s that chemists Wilbur Atwater and Russell Chittenden did the initial work of measuring food as units of heat that could be produced by burning it. But from the get-go, the calorie concept has never been nearly as scientific as it may appear.

Barry Groves is the author of Eat Fat, Get Thin! He and his wife, Monica reside in Oxfordshire, England, and have been eating "the way we have evolved to eat, mostly carnivorous", since 1962. Barry is 65 years old, 5 9" tall, and currently weighs 156 pounds from his starting weight of 190 pounds. Monica is 63, 5 6" tall, and holding at 126 pounds. Monica's starting weight was 161 pounds.

Anne from Tennessee is 54 years old and 5' 4" tall. She has been following the Atkins program for six years.

I had already determined that Christmas Eve would be an allowed cheat day for me, but I was dreading it - because I knew I'd be fighting cravings for the next two months, just as I did after Thanksgiving.