How to stay thin and maintain your foodie status

What makes a diet successful, if you discount any of the pseudo-scientific babble about blood-groups, star signs, or the evolution of our digestive tracts? A successful diet gives its followers a framework for eating less, allows them to spend their entire time thinking about food and gets them to consume fewer calories.
Unlike most fashionable diets, my favoured method of staying thin has no claim to be backed by any scientific theory (although if pressed, I could probably come up with some improvisation about it using the principles of cognitive behaviour therapy). But it does allow, or rather command, you to eat delicious food.
The principle is that any food you eat should be delicious. It works if you concede a number of underlying assumptions: freshly prepared food is better; seasonal food (often organic) tastes nicer; with most foodstuffs, if you pay more you get better quality. Most importantly, once you have eaten more than a small amount, even caviar will slip from the pinnacle of deliciousness to being just very nice fish jam. The one thing forbidden by this diet is excess of quantity.
With this diet, you can eat whatever you like, whether it be foie gras or fried egg sandwiches, provided it is truly delicious. There are several ways in which this guards against over-consumption. First of all, you can’t afford to eat enormous amounts, because even a frugal-seeming plate of antipasto for two can blow a week’s budget if you’re buying the very best San Daniele prosciutto and marinated artichoke hearts.
Then, you will spend so much time choosing and preparing the food that you will have less time to munch as distraction from being bored.
Both of these factors are limiting in themselves, but they will also result in your having a more respectful attitude to the food that has cost you such an effort. You will appreciate it more, savour the flavours more carefully and eat less for more pleasure.
The only danger is that you become obsessed and start spending your time doing things like making flaky pastry or stuffing almonds into olives. Life is full of risks.