Last night I was abruptly interrupted by a tall, gangly, fit man who tapped me on the shoulder before I stepped into the sauna.

I whirled my neck slightly to locate the offender who stood in place, nervously smiling out his ears.

“Uh, I just wanna say ‘hi’ and shake your hand,” he says. “My name is Ben and I got your books and videos years ago and they made a huge difference in my life.”

I began scanning all the customers I’ve had over the years with the name Ben, then gave up and asked, “What’s your last name?”

He told me his last name with a complete sentence, as in, “My last name is…” instead of just blurting out a single word.

I made a note. He’s not a dumb-dumb.

“How you enjoying all the smoke from these fires?” I asked.

“It’s not so bad. It was way worse three years ago.”

“Really? I guess so long as we’re not in Spokane, eh?”

We rapped a bit longer and then I entered the sauna for a prolonged schvitz.

One of the characters in the hot box was a lumberjack-looking fellow with curly hair and a beard. He’s well over the six-foot mark and I overheard him say he weighs in at 295 in the morning, then rounds the figure up to 300.

I sat with my head bowed and my fingertips angled downward together, as though I were praying – and maybe I was, but the position of my hands is mostly a simple funnel for me to observe how much sweat is pouring off me.

“I’m currently running on a 1,500 calorie deficit,” he said to a lady sitting several feet away. “I figure if I keep doing this I’ll be down a couple pounds a week and be fit enough to join the French Foreign Legion.”

Huh?

He continued, “I want to get some advice on what to do on my weight training routine and diet, but I also want to make sure that the person I speak with has a college degree and knows what he’s talking about.”

I wanted to chime in and say, “Don’t count on that,” – but being he wasn’t paying me – I kept my yap shut.

On and on I heard the lumbering man discussing calories as though they were the key to something grand and spectacular – not realizing what he’s missing when his focus is on units of heat instead of how many meals he eats per day.

If I were to give him advice, which almost assuredly he would NOT listen to, I would have told him to stop shoving food in his mouth so often, regardless of the caloric content.

And if I wanted my words to really punch him in the guts, I would have said, “If you want to see your abs anytime soon, why not ab-stain?”

Ab-stain? From what?

From calorie counting, for starters, and from eating 18 or more small meals per day.

I’d have said, “Instead of all the counting, measuring and aggravation, close your pie-hold for 24 hours, then celebrate with a feast. Fast and feast, that’s all there is to this round tuit.”

Kyle Newell, aka The Panda Man, and I call this method OFAD – meaning, One Feast a Day.

I’ve been on this for over three months now, and if I can do it, pretty much anyone can.

The best news of all is you get to eat whatever you want when you feast.

When you fast everyday – you’re entitled to a feast.

There are so many benefits, physical, psychological and spiritual, that you’ll enjoy when you ab-stain daily.

You’ll get stronger, faster, leaner, and more flexible. And you’ll smarten up enough to see the diet wizards behind the curtain who have you confused.

The best news of all is that all the results you seek from your exercise programs will come far easier when you “stop dieting and start living.”

Die-iting doesn’t work – and everybody ought to know this by now, and yet the treadmill to nowhere continues.

One feast a day, on the other hand, works, whether you believe in the calorie boogeyman or not.

I’ll probably do a YouTube video on this fairly soon, as it’s been 90+ days since I did my last one. I think you’ll be surprised by the changes you see.

By the way, I haven’t done any videos for my YouTube channel lately because I channeled the majority of my focus into applying the finish to my newest book, The Zen Zone: Be the One Who Gets It Done.

You can follow my videos on Instagram – @TheZenZoneBook – for updates on when it will be released, first as an E-book – then as a hard-hitting softcover.

In the interim, let’s lift the weight of the calorie-counting whirld off your shoulders so you can breathe a sigh of release – and start seeing those abs again.

Take Names – Kick Ass!