As most successful dieters know, what makes or breaks a person's weight loss efforts is all in your head. Even if we know fundamentals like what and how much to eat, what tends to sabotage us are things like poor motivation.

Nationally recognized weight loss expert and best selling author Dr. Ian Smith says the battle is 80 percent mental, and in fact, he devotes seven chapters of his latest book, "The 4 Day Diet," to teaching people "how to locate their own motivational engine."

Smith will impart wisdom like this and more when he speaks at Indiana University Northwest on Monday, April 6. He will talk about empowerment, setting goals and personal development -- a wide range of topics designed to give everyone a nugget of wisdom to better their own lives.

An orthopedic surgeon by design, it seems Smith woke up one day and found himself a nationally recognized diet and fitness expert.

While writing a column on personal health for Time magazine, Smith was inundated with e-mails asking for advice on nutrition, supplements and other "weighty" issues for which he had limited expertise.

So the doctor, trained at Harvard College, Dartmouth Medical School and University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine, set out to learn everything he could for the benefit of his readers. The result was five books, including the No. 1 New York Times best sellers "Fat Smash Diet" and "Extreme Fat Smash Diet."

The creator of the "50 Million Pound Challenge," Smith also serves as the medical and diet expert on VH1's "Celebrity Fit Club." He has appeared on "The View," "The Tyra Banks Show," "Larry King Live," and "Anderson Cooper 360" and has been featured on NBC's "Nightly News" and the "Today" Show.

Smith says his latest book came about on the discovery that the major reason people have trouble sticking with a weight loss program is boredom with eating the same food all the time. To increase the rate at which people comply with a program, he designed a modular eating style, in which people switch the food they consume every four days.

He combines his seven four-day phases with a combination of the three major weight loss strategies of decreasing calories, fat and foods with a high glycemic index, or those with white enriched flours, and focus more on whole grains.

WHAT: Free talk by nationally recognized weight loss expert/author Dr. Ian Smith at 5 p.m., Apr. 6.

WHERE: Savannah Center at IUN, 3400 Broadway, Gary

COST: Free

FYI: (219) 980-6800; 50millionpounds.com/