Giovanni Lemm, 34, currently divides his time between teaching and competing in the division of kickboxing known as Muay Thai, the national sport of Thailand. Although his training background consisted of Muay Thai, Jiu-Jitsu, Judo, Jeet Kune Do, boxing, and wrestling, Giovanni found his niche in the aggressive sector of Thai boxing. He's been competing for six years, has 15 fights under his belt, and is a member of the World Kickboxing Association.

In January of 2002, Giovanni's diet got a big kick:

"I have a friend who'd been doing the Warrior Diet for about two years - he's the one who got me involved in the program. He told me that he loved it, that it was great, so I read the book. It took me about a month after finishing the book to really decide that I wanted to do the diet. You know, it was difficult at first to be quite honest. I was accustomed to eating seven times a day - big meals. I was just hungry all the time (I'm 150 lbs., can eat whatever I want, and never gain an ounce.) When I started the Warrior Diet, it took me a week or so to get used to not eating so much during the day. You know, when you eat a lot, the body has to use a lot of blood to digest the food, so you get tired. That's why people are always tired after a big meal. Well, I was tired all the time.

When I started the Warrior Diet , I would eat once or twice during the day, small amounts of food. And I noticed that I actually had a lot more energy, because my body wasn't needing to be constantly digesting food.

My wife started to tell me that I was losing weight - I was training six days a week - so I read the book again, and it said that as an athlete I should eat more. I actually found it hard to increase my food intake because I had started to enjoy the fact that I didn't need to eat every hour or two hours. That can be time-consuming - having to prepare stuff all the time, or just find food. So I found it difficult to increase my food, but now I've reached a kind of middle point. Now, I eat a few times during the day. I just finished a banana, and I might have a handful of nuts or a hard-boiled egg a little later. I'll also eat sausage, bacon, and occasionally a protein bar, but I don't eat any kind of bread or cookie during the day. I try not to eat before I work out, because it tends to drag me down. I like to have just enough to get me going, like a juice or protein drink.

Sometimes at my job, I go for five to six hours without eating anything, but I don't always notice because my body's gotten accustomed to it. And then at night when I get home, I'll eat the equivalent of anywhere from four to five meals. Like last night, I had tons and tons of chicken and rice, broccoli, and lo mein (I love Chinese food). Usually, I'm still hungry afterwards, but I get to a point where I say, 'I don't need anymore,' and I stop.

The way that I'm eating, some people might think that I should be getting fat, but I'm not. I find that by morning I'm hungry again, and I don't feel bloated. I feel like I'm just as strong as I should be. And I don't feel that tiredness thing that most people who eat all day long and on top of that eat big meals at night feel. I do try to stay away from certain things now, like fried foods, tons and tons of sugar, donuts, and processed foods. The book tells you that you shouldn't eat that stuff at all, but I have to admit, I do cheat a little. I'm a chocoholic, and I like to have chocolate almost every night after dinner. But even that now, I'm starting to notice that I don't have such a big craving for it. The reason people have sugar cravings is because their bodies are out of balance, and the diet has balanced me out."

Giovanni won the Excalibur Extreme Fight Challenge last May, four months after starting the Warrior Diet , and he says that his energy level remained high throughout the competition. Preparing to beat his opponent silly wasn't Giovanni's only challenge, though. "I had just come off a major knee surgery, and to be honest I think being on the diet helped my healing process. They told me that it would take over a year for my knee to really heal, but within two months after the surgery and right after I had started the Warrior Diet, I started training again. And by May, I was ready for the fight competition. My doctor said that I made an amazing recovery, and I've had two more fights since then, with no problems.

I'll preach the diet off to anybody, but most people don't believe it. They're stuck in the traditional ways. Everyone asks me how I stay so thin, and I tell them, and say that they should try the diet. But they say, 'Oh, that doesn't make any sense.' And I say, 'If it doesn't make any sense, then why does it work for me?' The thing is that people have a hard time trying new things.

Just like everybody else, at first I didn't think that the diet would be beneficial to me in any way, but I proved myself wrong just by trying it. Now, I don't see myself going back at all to my old way of eating. I plan on sticking with it as long as humanly possible."

Giovanni believes that the Warrior Diet has the potential to work for everyone, athletes and couch taters alike, but that no one will know unless they give it a chance. "Give it a try. Don't keep yourself in a box. Don't constantly believe everything that all these other books are telling you. Be open-minded to experiment with different things and see what works for you."