Jim Punkre

Seems like almost anything can be cooked into a diet these days (Big Mac for breakfast, anyone?). And every year, a whole new wave of weight-loss books is unleashed upon the millions of Americans looking to lighten their saddlebag load: The self-improvement book market, fueled largely by diet books, raked in about $695 million in 2005 and is expected to grow by 8.3 percent a year, according to independent market research publisher Marketdata Enterprises.