A lot of people ask me how I can maintain such a manly and well proportioned physique. Excercise and diet of course...but then the obvious questions arise: Which workout routine? Which diet? In today's installment, I will discuss diet (my workout routine is proprietary and patented...as soon as I can get it down to 10 minutes a week performed while sleeping I will come out with the long awaited infomercial).

Much has been written about the South Beach diet. Proponents go out of their way to point out it is NOT a low carbohydrate diet, else they be chastized by the politically correct anti-Atkins medical community which we suspect is secretly funded by the wonder bread people. In the South Beach Diet you only restrict your carbs in "phase 1" and afterwards (phase 2?) you consume only the "right" kinds of carbs (such as whole grains, only CERTAIN fruits, and tree bark). Hmmm...sounds a lot like a low carb diet...but I digress...

I like to call my diet the Manila Bay (tm) diet in acknowledgement of the location where it was devised. Its beauty lies in its simplicity - from noon on, one eats as much of the following as they like:

• Lechon Kawali - A Filipino dish consisting of large pieces of pork belly. Pork belly is what bacon is made from, and a single serving of lechon kawali is like eating an entire package of bacon at once. For health reasons, this dish is often deep fried.
• San Miguel Light -San Mig Light is the Philippines’ first and leading low-calorie beer. In North America, "Light" usually means less alcohol...In the Philippines it means less calories. The San Miguel people were able to keep all that healthy alcohol where it belongs - in your liver.

In the morning, one eats Tosilog which stands for Tocino, Singangag at Itlog (Tocino, fried rice and eggs). Filipinos are usually not fond of abbreviations and contractions, but they made an exception in this case. Tocino is cured pork, and for the health conscious, several (i.e. most) brands have at least 50% pork fat. But don't worry, it's that "low carb" pork fat. San Mig is optional, but encouraged in one's morning meals.

A serving of Halo-Halo following any meal guarantees a coma. And as we all know, sleeping is the best exercise our bodies can get, especially on a full stomach.

Although seemingly counter intuitive, the worthiness of the diet lies in the results. I pretty much lived on this diet exclusively for the past month when I was in Manila. During my stay I lost over 10 lbs! Of course the biggest problem, as anyone who has been on a diet is well aware, will be maintenance. With all that "organic", and vegetarian stuff at the grocery stores here in Canada, it is going to be hard to keep the weight off.