Dr. Ian Smith has helped thousands of people lose weight, including several rappers. In hip-hop, oversized rappers get respect by their lyrics and by playing to their size (Notorious B.I.G., Heavy D., and Rick Ross). While the Big Fella still get his props in this industry for his rap skills, we want him around for a very long time and fitness is a big step toward a longer life.

A friend of this website, Dr. Ian sat down to talk to us about his new diet plan, Shred. The plan, which Steve Harvey is currently using, is a 6-week cycle that “shreds” pounds using a system of careful meal spacing, portion control, and food variety. And it works. While writing the book, Dr. Ian tested the plan out on some of his 30,000-plus Twitter followers. They tweeted him and asked for the plan and it was emailed to them, one week at a time. Utilizing social media, Dr. Ian was able to have a real life focus group, and his fans were able to experience healthy weight loss.

Diet plans get a lot of attention around the first of the year. Televisions are flooded with commercials for Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, both good programs, and Dr. Ian did think of the “resolutionists” when he released the book, but the important thing about any plan is making it, but sticking to it. Shred helps make that easy because EVERY meal is planned in the book, down the time it should be eaten. Even exercise is planned.

 A month after the start of 2013, how are you sticking to your resolutions? Exactly. Well, if getting in shape was one of the items on your list, Dr. Ian and AllHipHop.com are here to help you reboot.

AllHipHop.com: One of the ways, Dr. Ian, you got people to test out the diet was through social media. I saw you using Twitter to send people the diet via email, how did that work out?

Dr. Ian Smith: Tremendous. People were losing the average of 3-4lbs a week and they didn’t even have the book. They were just doing it on Twitter from the things I was tweeting them. To be honest with you the success of the Twitter challenge and the Facebook challenge (FB page: Shredder Nation), really is what propelled us to get the book out quickly because so many people were losing weight so quickly and they wanted the full program. We tested over 5,000 people and the average weight loss was either 20lbs, 4 inches or 2 sizes. So the results were just amazing.

AllHipHop.com: It sounds really exciting and the plan seems very “do-able”.

Dr. Ian Smith: Well that’s the idea. The idea behind this plan is that it’s a very, very accessible plan. It’s an easy plan to follow, the foods are inexpensive and it’s not complicated. People don’t want things that are hard to do. That are expensive that require you to eat in restricted food categories. This is a very open, easy to follow plan and more importantly it’s not just a diet. It’s about teaching people better lifestyles. So by the end of these 6 weeks and even before the end of these 6 weeks people have learned a lot about portion control, about how to make smarter choices, and so it really is about teaching people the strategies to weight loss beyond just following a specific plan.

While cleansing is incredibly important, I have both of your previous books and I think one thing for me that made it hard to the plan was having the cleanse upfront. It was so intimidating physically and sort of mentally. How different is this plan from The Fat Smash Diet?

Well, it’s a different plan for several reasons. One: Each meal in this plan for the 6 weeks is specifically detailed for people. So it tells you every meal for 6 weeks which means that people are also able to make some substitutions based on their allergies or food preferences. Maybe they’re vegan or vegetarian. So that’s one difference.

Another difference is that the book insists that you consume 4 meals a day. A very important concept of this book is called “Meal Spacing,” where you’re eating every 3-4 hours. So you have to eat 4 meals a day and you have the option of eating a snack. The idea is we’re eating smaller portions but more of them and we’re preventing ourselves from eating excessive calories at once, which can cause a spike in our hormone level which can be damaging when we’re trying to lose weight.

Another part of that is “Diet Confusion,” which is a term that I have coined. The idea behind Diet Confusion is that you are keeping your body off kilter, keeping your metabolism boosted by constantly changing the types and the amounts of the foods that you’re eating within the day, day to day and week to week. So these three principles really are the main reason why it’s different from Fat Smash.

What I also realize is that there is no such thing as one diet fits all. A lot of people have done Fat Smash and lost a significant amount of weight and they were looking for something a little different. That’s really how I started developing Shred, to help people break through that plateau but what I found out after testing it on all these people was that Shred is just not only good for being trying to lose 15lbs or 20lbs but it’s also great for people trying to lose 100lbs or more or in between.

A friend of this site, Dr. Ian Smith is a world-renown dietician. He was also appointed the President’s Council on Fitness, Sports and Nutrition in 2010. Follow him on Twitter @DoctorIanSmith and join the “Shredders” worldwide on Facebook.com/ShredderNation