Using GL to sort the good, the bad and the suicidal 138 The second group of people who need to look at MRs, after those who otherwise tend to eat fast, fattening meals, are people who need to lose weight more rapidly because of medical complications. MRs can allow us to do this more safely than crash dieting. The first goal of weight loss is developing a healthy eating lifestyle. Do not, I repeat do not, use MRs without working on your new healthy eating lifestyle. If you just rely on MRs without fixing the underlying eating problem you will end up in the dastardly and demoralising diet-regain-moreweightthanyou-lost cycle. What is an MR? There are a number of varieties on the market of varying quality. Look for brands designed by health professionals especially those designed by dietitians and pharmacists. These are the professions with expertise in creating nutritionally balanced MRs – even better if they offer a psychologically aware program with their product. Basically, the good brands are a low calorie, nutritionally balanced drink or soup. They come in sweet and savory forms. You need to try a few to find those that you like. This is critical. As you now know, if you start to deprive yourself of good taste experiences you have just placed your first foot on the slippery slope to rebellious, rebound over-eating. As a general rule, I see no need to have more than two MRs a day. Some people, particularly men, find that a further MR for afternoon tea is needed to avoid the afternoon mini-binge. That is fine as long as they are having a real breakfast to start the day. So think about how to fit MRs into your day. Use them to replace those meals that you tend not to be mindful of, need to eat quickly, or worse, are likely to skip altogether. If you can have lunch as the main meal of the day then having an MR instead of dinner is a great solution. Finally, MRs make great‘ backup foods’. Backup foods are foods that we keep on hand, at home or at work, in the event that our primal foraging or hunting drives kick in. The other danger time, as well as afternoon tea is after dinner. The worst time we can possibly eat energy rich foods is before bed. This is a good time to have even just half an