In late 2009, The Costco Connection — the lifestyle magazine that arrives in millions of Costco households every month — asked me a question I’d wanted to be asked my whole career: what if we didn’t use models? What if we ran the challenge with actual Costco members, and printed whatever happened?
So that’s what we did. The magazine launched the challenge to its readership, members signed up, and I coached them through The Belly Fat Cure — the sugar-and-carb-swap method I’d just published. No gimmicks, no starvation, no five-hour gym days. Swap the sugar. Swap the carbs. Eat on a schedule. Move a little, every day.
The January 2010 issue put the results on the front cover under the headline “Beating the Bulge — Costco members shape up for 2010,” with the full story inside on page 34. Every person on that cover is holding a photograph of themselves from before. That picture is the whole point: those are not actors. Those are members.
Why Costco
My love of Costco is not a marketing position — it’s a shopping habit. Costco is where real American families actually buy their food, and any eating protocol that can’t survive a Costco run is a protocol that won’t survive a real life. That’s why Costco shows up by name in the book, and why the partnership made sense on both sides: they didn’t just publish the success stories, they launched the challenge that produced them.
Those members were then featured in The Belly Fat Cure itself. Cover, magazine feature, and book — one group of ordinary people who simply said yes.
I’m doing it again — September 7, 2026
The last time I ran a group like this was 2010. Fifteen years later, I’m assembling the test group for my 40th book, MORE TIME. Same idea, new protocol: the two-hour method — time-restricted eating supported by Zero Hunger Water® every two hours through the fast, plus the muscular-repair and circadian-repair bonus protocols.
It starts September 7, 2026, and it is free. Members of the group will be featured in the book, exactly as the 2010 group was. If you want in, write to me directly — not to an assistant, not to a form.