Zarqawi is dead now, of course, but he was one of my patrons. Well into the Iraq occupation, he came to me in desperation. You saw him then, right? And like me you said to yourself, 'Too many visits to IHOP, my friend.' His 16-year-old wife was the same, ate like a pig. She resembled a Humvee. I had roughly six months to work with him before he died, but couldn't penetrate that thick skull of his. After all I was not his spiritual advisor, only his dietary one. 'A terrorist should show a certain restraint in his appetites,' I told him. 'You should lose excess flesh, just as your mind drops all nonessential thoughts and focuses on the crucial ones: jihad and cholesterol.' Recall that it took two 500-pound bombs to get through all his fat and kill him. If Zarqawi had followed my dietary advice, a mere grenade would have done the trick, since all his vitals would have been much closer to the explosion. I'm not sure that would have helped him, but still.

Saddam I no longer worry about. He's well taken care of. What with prison fare and the odd hunger strike, he's slim as Osama. But even before the Americans came, I advised him, 'Saddam, you show no mercy to the lamb shanks with olive sauce and those Tikrit fruit pies like your mother made. There's enough fat in one of those pies to poison a Kurdish army. You need to pretend you have been captured by the Americans and eat bread and water once or twice a week.' He looked me straight in the eye and told me, 'Zeki (not my real name), I don't employ a food taster so that I can eat soy and seaweed. I want the goodies.' Then he would slap me with a crescent-shaped sword and laugh. Oh the sense of humor on that tyrant! Recently I saw him after a day of trial as he was being led back to his cell, looking fit and trim. He winked at me and said, 'I'd kill you for an Arby's roast beef with cheddar.' He would, too. But I'm afraid it's too late for him now. He'll have to stay healthy.

I have to hand it to Ahmadinejad. Yes, he too is my client. I am well connected. The Iranian president's a little wacky on the subject of food, among other topics, but he's into his leafy greens, his nuts and lentils, his soluble fibers. He watches his Micky D's intake and seldom have I seen him supersize his fries. If he does succumb to his weakness for potatoes and even add a desert, afterward he plays soccer like a madman to compensate. A model client, and he gives me every credit. I tell him what a pleasure it is to compare him to Kim Jong-il, who I also train but who stubbornly ignores my guidance. Here's a dictator who has moo goo gai pan air-lifted to him every day from Beijing but whose starving people are in better shape. Add those Elton John glasses to that short, pudgy frame and you've got a badly dressed future coronary patient. I tell Kim if he gets any fatter, he'll be six times the size of the next biggest North Korean. He smiles, but I know he wants the menu options of Bush without the speed bike workouts.

It was Kim Jong referred me to Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela. Kim told me Hugo was getting so big he could no longer find red shirts his size. So I skied into Caracas from Pyongyang and told a breathless Chavez, 'Listen up. There is an axis of fat that runs from the Middle East to North Korea to South America. You're spending far too many petrodollars on fast food. Look at Castro. Fidel's a man I've taught well. Sure his rectum bleeds now and then, but the rice and bean diet I put him on didn't do that. It's those old Soviet suppositories he still inserts.' Hugo gave me a fine American watch dipped in oil for my advice. Also a Chinese missile dipped in oil, and some Russian rifles dipped in oil.

You can catch me these days on al-Manar TV in Lebanon hosting my workout and diet show. I come on at ten a.m. between a terrorist fund-raiser and a yoga show for stressed jihadists. Last week my special guest was the Secretary General of Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah himself. Now there's a tubby boy, Nasrallah. Massive love handles under a black turban, and he not fifty yet. On the air he told the story of how he kissed the hand of the cook at the Beirut KFC, signifying his pledge to eat only the Colonel's crispy planks for life. So I asked him, 'What are you gonna do? Keep eating that fried food until you break wind like Elvis Presley and die? Look at your followers. They dig tunnels and fire rockets in the heat with only a few onion sandwiches to eat. The only tunnel you've been in has air conditioning, cable, Internet access, and room service from a five-star eatery. You are on your way to five bypasses like Cheney, only he has better surgeons.' He admitted I was right, but then said he would never change his diet even if the UN ordered him to. Especially if the UN ordered him to. The show ended before I could change his mind. Ah well. Maybe he'll lose some weight running from Israeli air strikes. For his sake I hope so.

Right now I'm off to the gym with Muqtada al-Sadr in, where else, Sadr City. Al-Sadr's another cleric who resembles the Pillsbury doughboy. More junk in the trunk than even Nasrallah. I tell him on the B-ball court after we have bench-pressed and curled for twenty minutes to eat figs for courage, dates for fanaticism, and American cheeseburgers (one a month) for arrogance. Hope he listens. You should listen too, prudent reader. If you are getting too jiggly for the jihad, or too obese to oppress your citizenry, call me at my number listed on the Al Jazeera website and we'll tailor a food program just for you.