Jackie Wicks was slim her whole life. So when she gained 65 pounds during her pregnancy, she assumed she would quickly shed them. She lost 20, but then she plateaued and couldn’t drop more no matter how much she tried to diet. A friend advised her to stop torturing herself and give up. She’d have to get used to being overweight. “Throw out your old clothes,” she said. “You’re a mom now.”

Wicks recalls thinking that she couldn’t accept that. Wicks got together with a few of her friends who also wanted to lose weight, and they began an informal Internet support group, emailing back and forth about their progress and what worked or didn’t work to lose weight. The group quickly grew, the Newsmax Health reported.

The next year, Wicks established a website, PEERtrainer.com, which has become an online community that has grown to more than 300,000 active users. It has been featured by The Dr. Oz Show, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and People magazine. Now Wicks has consolidated the site’s most successful weight-loss practices in a new book, The Cheat System Diet: Eat the Foods You Crave and Lose Weight Even Faster.

Wicks’ system involves two separate lists for eating. “Eats” are foods that help people lose weight. “Cheats” are foods that hinder weight loss. In general, dieters are allowed unlimited amounts of foods on the “Eats” list, and they are limited to a certain number of portions from the “Cheats” list.

“Eats” are fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins, “which have a high density of micronutrients that are the key to feeling full and improving health,” she says. Unlimited “Eats” include artichokes, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, summer squash, zucchini, strawberries, blueberries, grapefruit, and more. She also allows limited amounts of “eats” in the form of “good proteins,” like beef, turkey, and chicken.

On the other side, the “Cheats” are “the foods that you still want, need, or crave. But those foods are kept to a small part of your diet.” Cheats” include bread, pasta, cheese, sausage, and bacon.

Her diet system also includes indulgences like a glass of wine, or an occasional dessert, along with an exercise plan.

Here is diet advice from PEERtrainer.com:

​ Eat lots of vegetables. “Vegetables are the best diet pill because they have tons of nutrients, are low in calories, and they keep you feeling full.”

​ Eat three meals a day and avoid snacking. Don’t skip breakfast. “We’re addicted to snacking and there are many diet experts who say that it’s better to eat several small meals a day, but while that works for some people, like athletes especially, it will not help you lose weight,” says Wicks. “You can wean yourself off snacking by expanding the time between meals, bit by bit.”

​ Don’t eat during the two or three hours before you go to bed.

​ Don’t overdo exercise. “Pain actually equals weight gain, because when you exercise too much, your body produces too much cortisol, which is the stress hormone, and this leads to overeating as well as the accumulation of abdominal fat.”

​ There is no such thing as diet failure. If you cheat on your diet, don’t give up.