The When Diet:

The Decision Process and Diet

For a decision to be made there must be two alternatives from which to choose. If there are not two alternatives, there is no choice. With that in mind, a person can settle on solving the diet problem. The first step in solving a problem is to define the problem. A person's weight is determined by many factors but to lose weight, a lifestyle change must take effect. Given alternatives, a decision maker chooses the alternative that has the best outcome for that decision maker at that point in time.

With the problem being an overweight person, that person can evaluate different diets to see which will have the best outcome. Todd Easton says the optimal diet in his book The When Diet, would have the minimum dissatisfaction required to lose a pound. By using this theory, diets can be compared even though they may require different sacrifices.

Easton also discusses that dissatisfaction is personal. Dissatisfaction will be different for each individual. Each individual will have a different optimal diet.