My weight-loss guru pal Robert Ferguson sent me the most updated version of his Diet Free Life system. I've long been a fan of his extremely common-sense approach to losing weight, first with the original Food Lovers' Fat Loss system, then with his Diet Free Life system. 

The upshot of Robert's plan is to eat nutritionally balanced meals and portion-controlled snacks every few hours to keep your insulin and other hormone levels stable throughout the day. 

Boom -- that's it. No restrictions, no eliminating entire food groups. 

The only caveat to that is the 3-Week Clean Start plan, which cleans up your eating and cuts out a few things like alcohol, added sugars, fried and breaded foods, sodium and white flour.

I'm already a pretty clean eater so this part of the plan won't be a big stretch for me, plus I've been test-driving a meal-delivery plan the past few days,which makes meals super easy -- they're waiting for me in the fridge and they're very clean (more on that Friday).

But the thing that really has me nervous is this -- you weigh yourself on Day 1 (which was Monday) and you don't weigh yourself again until Day 22.

Can I do it? 

This would mean having to "trust the process," which is a favorite phrase of mine. Heck -- I even have a coffee mug that says it!

(OK, coffee mug, I will trust the process.)

It's hard out there for a control freak. 

So I'm going to put my faith (and weight) in Robert's hands and log my clean meals and snacks for 21 days.

So far so good but I still tend to go overboard on my afternoon snacks -- I need to keep that 100-200 calorie range in mind and not go all "endless buffett" (A banana, and some Greek yogurt to balance that out, with perhaps some nuts on top, and some green juice ... you get the idea). 

Diet Free Life is radical in its "unradicalness" (don't think that's a word), but that's the point. I felt myself getting too wrapped up in devices and apps and books and widgets and gimmicks, and I needed to "unplug" from all that -- or at least most of that -- and just eat healthy foods that I enjoy and that what my body needs. I need to unlearn all the "crazy making" habits that have done absolutely nothing to make the scale move. 

I need to lose weight but I also need to live diet free, and I think the two needs can coexist.