Charles Stuart Platkin is one of the country’s leading weight-loss advocates and an author whose syndicated health-and-fitness column, “The Diet Detective,” appears in over 155 newspapers nationwide. He is the founder of Nutricise, the first program to offer individualized counseling by registered dietitians on the Internet (counseling more than 80,000 individuals in losing weight and keeping it off). Platkin has appeared in such publications as Newsweek, Men’s Health, and Fitness magazine, and on the Today show, The Early Show, CNN, and CNBC. His first book, Breaking the Pattern (Plume paperback, January 2005), was a self-help bestseller on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com. Platkin holds a master’s degree in public health and is also a certified fitness trainer. He lives in New York and Miami Beach, Florida.