I’m not in the habit of weighing myself, but after ten days in Amsterdam, I’m sure I lost weight. And it’s not an isolated incident: this happens on every trip. It also happens to Peter, who was the first one to identify this seemingly contradictory phenomenon.

Here are the apparent components of this miraculous weight-loss system:

1) Beer, and lots of it
Amsterdam, like everywhere else until the late nineteenth century, had no reliable drinking water, so everyone drank beer. Looking at the canals today, I’m still not sold on tap water. So, beer it is, with nearly every meal.

2) French fries
Or Belgian fries (vlaamse frites), as they’re called. So good, they’re twice-fried. And served with garlic mayo. Sometimes I get the satay sauce too–y’know, for protein.

3) Herring
The only remotely “healthy” thing in the diet: raw filets of this luscious fatty little fish. If you think herring only comes in pickled, think again. In the Netherlands, you can get it at street carts, served with diced onions and sort-of-sweet pickles, on a squishy white-bread bun. Carb-fearers can go bunless, but it’s harder to get all the things in your mouth together.

4) Fizzy water
OK, I lied. It’s not all beer, all the time. I take an occasional break with Spa Rood (Spa with a red label), the best fizzy water ever because the bubbles are HUGE and almost violent. And maybe they keep me feeling full.

5) Stroopwafels
Feeling low? Give yourself an insane sugary boost with a caramel-filled crispy cinnamon cookie. Then go pass out when the sugar disperses. Or you can keep the high going with a little…

6) Koffie verkeerd
Coffee with tons of steamed milk. I actually can’t drink too much of this because it gives me flashbacks to the summer of ’95, when I nearly killed myself with coffee. I worked till about 2am every day, then shot the shit with my fellow bartender, Ed Coughlin (Ed, where the hell are you?), till 5 or 6am. Then we woke up around 2pm (handily, we were sharing this totally dodgy attic apartment with no bathroom, just two mattresses on the floor and an Ikea leatherette couch we’d scrounged) and drank coffee till 5pm, when we went to work. Oddly, I was nauseous almost every single day. Then one day, I didn’t drink any coffee. And I felt great. Hey, stomach lining: Sorry I’m such a slow learner. But I think I was really skinny that summer, between all that coffee and the menthol cigarettes.

7) Whoppers
Burger King is a Dutch chain, right? I’ve never eaten so many Whoppers as I have in Amsterdam, always in pursuit of the elusive Free Whopper after consuming ten, but always misplacing my punch card. One bite of a Whopper gives me a little Proustian flashback to 1994, when there was still a flower vendor on the Leidseplein, and the weather was bizarrely hot and all I did all day was make sandwiches and try to keep my arm cast from getting wet.

Alongside this daily menu (consume in any order, in any quantity), you must do one thing:

**Bicycle everywhere.**

I think the biking covers a multitude of sins, though why biking should work better to keep you fit in Amsterdam than in NYC (where I also bike everywhere, and for longer distances) is beyond me. Maybe all those little tiny bridges add up to more effort in the long run?

Also, I think it helps significantly if you:

**Sleep until after noon.**

This way, you end up eating only a couple of meals a day, because it’s impossible to find anything to eat after midnight except for at the Texaco (which, for the record, is the only place to buy cans of Heineken in the wee hours…or did Rod say they quit that?).

You may notice that I don’t really deal with pot, which, honestly, is all anyone thinks of when you say the word Amsterdam anyway. Marijuana was an integral part of the Amsterdam Diet back in 1994 and 1995, but now it’s barely a factor. In any case, I think it’s fine to incorporate it into your plan as long as you can be either 1) so jaded about it as to not yield to the munchies (never, ever buy anything but frites from Febo) or 2) high only after midnight, when there’s nothing to eat. As for all the other drugs you think of when I say Amsterdam, they’re all of the naturally slimming variety anyway. Dancing is very, very good for you.

I can’t say I’m proud of the way I eat and drink in Amsterdam, and occasionally I do eat really good and proper meals at nice restaurants or cooked at people’s houses (in fact, there’s a whole book floating around out there with my restaurant recs).

But I can’t argue with weight-loss success. I could publish a detailed book on the Amsterdam Diet, but for you my friends, special price of free. Just let me know how it works out for you.