AP Illustration/Jenni Sohn Where will you go to pick tonight's dinner spot? Look to the stars ...

There are no meal plans, no lessons on portions, calories, or protein vs. carbs.

Instead, "The Beck Diet Solution," which came out earlier this year, addresses something that most diet programs don't: how dieters think.

Author Judith S. Beck says the thought process is the missing and crucial component to losing and maintaining weight. After all, research has shown that 95 percent of diets fail.

"So many dieters have written me and said, 'I thought I was such a failure. I could never lose weight,'" says Beck, director of The Beck Institute for Cognitive Therapy and Research. "And they have to realize that it really has not been their fault. No wonder they haven't been successful. They just never really learned how to do it."

asap spoke with Beck, daughter of cognitive therapy founder Dr. Aaron T. Beck, about how to think thin, the emotional issues dieters face, and her six-week program to keep them on track.

asap: First, how does a thin person think?

Beck: "A thin person thinks differently from a person who has struggled with dieting. A thin person thinks that hunger is normal -- not something to be avoided, something that can be tolerated. If it's an hour before dinner and a thin person gets hungry, he or she thinks, 'Oh I'm hungry. Oh well. I'll just wait until dinner to eat.' Someone who struggles with dieting really thinks about this in a very different way. Usually people think that it's bad to be hungry, it's somehow not normal, that their hunger is going to get worse and worse, that they won't be able to tolerate it, and that really they should fix hunger by eating."

asap: What's one way you can train your brain?

Beck: "In terms of hunger, it's very important to demonstrate to yourself that hunger is not an emergency. If you don't have a medical problem, I recommend you actually skip lunch one day and rate how uncomfortable your hunger gets every hour on the hour, so you can find out that hunger never gets that bad, that it comes and goes and that it really is something we can tolerate."

asap: What makes your book different from the other diet books and programs?

Beck: "In 'The Beck Diet Solution,' people learn a different skill every day for six weeks. In fact, I encourage people to not even start restricting their eating until they learn the first 14 days worth of skills. They need to learn things such as, 'Exactly what do I do to motivate myself every day? Exactly what do I do when I'm hungry? What do I do when I have a craving? What do I do when I want to eat for emotional reasons? How do I get myself to plan my meals?' There has never really been a program that has shown people step by step exactly what they need to do. Most programs say, 'Eat these foods at these times and these portions and don't eat these other foods.' They don't tell people how do you get yourself to do that."

asap: Considering the diet industry is a multi-billion dollar enterprise -- and we're getting fatter -- how important is thinking thin?

Beck: "I use the example of learning how to play the piano. There are a few people who can sit down at a piano and teach themselves how to play. But most people need to have piano lessons so they can learn what to do. It's the same thing with dieting. People have to learn specific skills in order to be successful. Some are behavioral -- like eating slowly. A lot of them have to do with thinking, such as, 'I'm too rushed to take the time to eat. It's all right if I eat mindlessly standing up in the kitchen.'"

asap: Your book doesn't mention any meal plans or specific diets. What was the reasoning behind that?

Beck: "Both research and my personal experience have shown me there is no one diet that fits everybody. It is important for people to choose diets that are really well-balanced, healthy and nutritious that either include their favorite foods, or they need to modify the diet so they can eat their favorite foods at least some time in some reasonable portion size. I do find, though, that people do need to have very good nutritional advice because it is possible to count calories and still eat in a non-nutritious way."

asap reporter Megan Scott is based in New York.