The Punishment Program

The Bicycle Diet involves both carrot and stick. Getting out and riding a bike, eating proper meals and enjoying them and losing weight -- those are the carrots. This is the stick: burning money.

Each Monday, you need to take out three $10 bills and place them where you can see them when you record your basic measurements each day. On top of each $10 bill, you need to place a book of matches. As the weeks go by and you follow the diet, you will have large stacks of tens.

The first $10 bill stack is to remind you to follow all of the dietary rules, including what not to eat, when not to eat and how much time you must let pass between meals. If you violate any of the dietary rules (without the best of reasons), you must burn all of the $10 bills in your dietary stack. If you have not broken a rule for 10 weeks, the stack will have $100 in it. That will be a severe punishment for eating a bowl of breakfast cereal or downing a Big Mac which comes in a bun or eating ice cream.

The second $10 bill stack is to remind you to follow the exercise rule: get on your bicycle and ride for at least one hour each day. If you fail to ride your bike and you don't have a great reason, you will have to burn all the tens in the second stack. If you burned your stack 2 weeks earlier, it will only be $20. If you forgot to ride one day after 23 weeks, that mistake will cost you $230.

The third $10 bill stack is to remind you to take your three basic measurements (your weight; your time and distance of your bike ride; and your times of your first and last meals) every day. If you fail to write one or more of these metrics down any day -- and there is no good reason not to do so every day -- you will have to burn your third stack or tens.

The idea here is a harsh one: there is nothing worse than burning money. It's brutally painful and wasteful. Giving money away that you need is much less painful. Buying alcohol for a drunkard is less of a waste than burning money. It is a powerful incentive to stick to the requirements of the Bicycle Diet.

When your 52 weeks are up, and you have large stacks of cash -- $10 times 3 times 52 is $1,560 -- you should take some of that money and buy yourself some nice new clothes which fit your new body.