Forget South Beach, Atkins, Perricone, Pritiken and stomoch stapling. This simple program allows you to eat all you want, anything you want, while you hike to the top of Mt. Kilimanjaro, the world's highest free-standing mountain (from base to top), located in Northern Tanzania.

The program begins in the rainforest on the western slopes of Kilimanjaro at 7,500 feet on the Lemosho trail. For the next 9 days, you'll eat as often as you want as you hike and hike and hike. After about 7 days, you'll reach Kibo, the summit of Mt. Kilimanjaro at 19,340 feet.

Along the way, usually around 14,000 or 15,000 feet, you'll completely lose your appetite. Take it from Sasha Cohen, the pixie pre-pubescent physically stunted figure skater, starvation is the ultimate weight control device. Personally, I've always had the appetite of a dog, rain or shine, sick or healthy, before a meal or after a meal, I can always eat more. Who besides Sasha Cohen doesn't like to eat?

Look mom, no breasts! Sasha is 21 years old and has the body of a malnourished starving child. The finger-down-the-throat Sasha diet is not recommended. Come on, Sasha, eat a burger!

Anyway, as anyone with a couple pounds to drop can attest, one of the biggest hurdles to overcome as you try to reduce your weight is how to curb that insatiable appetite. Welcome to the Kili cure. I hiked the mountain with 6 other trekkers, and nearly every one of us lost our appetite for at least a couple days at altitude. But don't get me wrong. I don't recommend not eating on Kilimanjaro, because the Kili Diet doesn't rely on starvation to work its magic. In fact, all of us who lost our appetites were trying really hard to eat, it just wasn't possible.

A couple of us performed some high altitude vomiting as well (oh, how soon I wish I could forget), which is another way to lose weight if you chose the Sasha Cohen diet, though I viewed it as an unfortunate unintended consequence of high altitude adventuring. Vomiting is not the secret to the Kili diet.

Others also suffered some diarrhea, unfortunately as common on the Kili diet as it probably is on the Sasha diet. But for most a little Immodium solved the issue. Diarrhea is not the secret to the Kili diet, and I recommed avoiding it at all costs.

Calorie burn is the secret. For each day of the ascent, you'll climb between 2,000 and 4,000 vertical feet. As the altitude rises and the barometric pressure falls, your lungs lose their ability to pull oxygen from the air. As a result, you breathe faster and your heart pumps faster and works harder to maintain oxygen levels. Remember, most of us burn about 2,000 calories a day just sitting on our butts. So add that to the fact you're hiking up a really steep mountain, and you'll burn anywhere from an extra 2,000 to 4,000 calories a day by my estimate. Funny, that works out to about one calorie per foot of altitude gain. And 3,500 calories burned depletes about a pound of fat.

That's me on the left, with my college buddy Mike. Friends have commented that my face looks puffy in this picture. It was. Probably because I'm at 19,340 feet. What the picture doesn't show is that I ended this hike about 10 pounds lighter. I highly recommend the Kili diet. You eat all you want as you hike the mountain, and you still burn almost a pound of fat per day.