Your body hears you.

Your body is your constant companion. 24 hours a day. 365 days a year.

When you give yourself a hug in the morning and say, “I’m strong and powerful,” your body hears these words.

When you catch your reflection in the mirror and think, “Ugh, I hate my stomach rolls,” your body hears this, too.

Everything you do, your body is the witness. 

Your body is influenced by every word you think and say.

Many people don’t realize that your thoughts (aka: the words you say inside your head) initiate a chemical reaction that cascades through your entire body. 

For instance, let’s say you hear a strange rustling sound. You suspect someone’s outside your window. You think, “Oh my gosh. Who’s there?” This fearful thought triggers a chemical shift in your body—a spike in your adrenaline levels. 

Or, let’s say you’re daydreaming about your sweetheart. You think about the sound of...

Back in the days when I used to obsessively track and resist my food intake, I spent a lot of time worrying about eating “too much.” 

In those days, I felt very preoccupied with eating “just the right amount.” Not too much. Just enough.  

Just enough to not be uncomfortably hungry. 

Just enough to get through the day. 

Just enough to maintain my weight and never gain an ounce.

Just enough to adhere to what’s recommended for a woman of my height and age according to the U.S. Federal Government Food Pyramid Guidelines, or some other chart I found in a book or pamphlet or on someone’s blog.

Nowadays, I understand the amount I used to eat was not enough. 

Not even close.  

It was not enough to satisfy my physical hunger needs.   

It was not enough to be satiated emotionally, either.

It was not enough. Period. 

Now, I allow myself to have enough.  

I no longer rely on charts,...

Some people are known by their first name at bars.  

I’m known by my first name at the UPS store thanks to 5 kids and amazon living.  

Our neighborhood UPS location is not my favorite, because the parking spaces are super tight. (Even the nice woman who works at the store agrees—it’s the worst parking lot ever.)

As I mentioned, I have a big family—one husband and five kids—so I’ve got a big car that fits seven people. Let’s just say, I’m not exactly driving a teeny VW bug! 

I carefully squeezed my car into a space. A tight fit, but I made it! Phew. I exhaled with relief, zipped into the store, and quickly dropped off my package. I was inside for sixty seconds, at most. 

As I came back out, I noticed a woman getting into the car next to mine. She was irritated and grumbling under her breath. (You know when people pretend they’re mumbling something, but they’re doing it jussst loud enough to...

It's the cool thing to do these days.  Cut out dairy, gluten, sugar and processed foods.  The wellness rhetoric goes something like this....eliminate x, y, z and follow me to the promised land of health.  

Years ago—back when I was constantly preoccupied with my weight—I used to justify changing my diet because I told myself, “I’m doing this to be healthy.” 

Back then, I thought that losing—or carefully maintaining—a certain weight meant I’d be “healthier.”  It meant that eliminating certain foods or whole food groups was also done in the name of "health."

When I ran a yoga and Pilates studio, many clients told me the same thing. 

“I want to lose fifteen pounds so I can be healthier,” they’d tell me. 

“It’s not really about vanity,” women would assure me. “It’s not about my appearance. I’m doing this for my health.”

...

Hello, Mr. Ed.  

Would you ever sit back quietly and watch your child get bullied on the playground? 

If another kid was screaming derogatory insults at your child (“you’re lazy, ugly, worthless, disgusting, you’ll never succeed!”) throwing things at their face, hitting them, putting them in physical or emotional danger, would you sit back, sip your latte, and do nothing?

I’ll assume that you answered, “No.”

You wouldn’t just sit there passively. No way! If your child’s safety is being threatened, your mama-bear (or papa-bear) instincts fire up and you intervene—right away.

But what about the bully who lives inside your own mind?

When that bully starts hurling insults at you—do you intervene? Or do you sit back and take the abuse? 

If you have a history of dieting, restricting your food, or orthorexic behaviors (which means an excessive preoccupation with eating healthy foods), this is like having...

I used to do this all the time. 

"Wow! You look great. You’ve lost a lot of weight! How did you do it?”

I hear moms all the time commenting to other moms, saying, “Ohhhh, you look so skinny! You look amazing!” "Have you seen her lately, she's lost so much weight!" The verbal high-five, slap on the back, atta girl words of praise. 

Years ago, those kinds of compliments always fueled me to work even harder to maintain my “perfect physique” so I could continue to receive compliments from friends, family, clients, or strangers. 

I would dole out those kinds of compliments to other people, too. 

I now realize the extraordinary amount of pressure that weight-related compliments place on people. Praising someone’s appearance might seem like an encouraging, supportive, or nice thing to do—but it’s really not.

Why? 

So many reasons. 

Firstly, you don’t know how—or why—she lost weight.

...

“Swimsuit season” is an exceptionally profitable time for the diet industry, which already rakes in more than $60 billion (not a typo) per year.

Just a few months after the New Year, swimsuit season provides the diet industry with yet another opportunity to prey on people’s fears and insecurities about their bodies. 

And now that it’s July, I’m sure you’ve already seen the magazine headlines, blog posts, Instagram sponsored ads, and commercials everywhere:

“Drop 10 pounds fast and get bikini ready.” 

“There’s still time to slim down for summer.” 

“Learn how these A-list celebrities went from baby-body to beach-body…fast!”

If someone asks you to go swimsuit shopping, would this be the equivalent of asking you to go spend an entire day at the DMV, or attend birthday parties for screaming toddlers back-to-back for eight hours...

But what should I eat?

Right now, at millions of restaurants and kitchen tables and grocery stores around the world, women are anxiously wondering, “But what should I eat?”

Women often wonder…

“Should I eat this?”

“Is this on my meal plan?”

“Am I allowed to eat this?”

“If I eat this, will it make me fat?” (Or: “will this help me maintain my weight” or “lose weight”?)

These are not the greatest questions.

These questions typically leave you feeling worried, paranoid, and excessively preoccupied with food and with your body. It’s like a hamster wheel spinning continuously in the back of your mind. “Am I allowed...?” Spin spin spin. “Is this okay...?” Spin. “Should I…?” Spin. “But I already had a bagel earlier, so…?” It’s all very stressful and distracting.  This hamster-spinning clogs up your brain, making it harder to focus...

Weight is not a moral issue.

When you’re wandering through the grocery store, have you ever noticed how many food products are labeled “guilt-free”? There’s even a new line of ice cream called Halo with an angelic halo, of course, as the logo.

Essentially, these products are saying: “Eat this reduced fat, reduced sugar, lower calorie option... and then you can feel guilt-free! Eating this means you are a virtuous person! Eat this and then you can feel good about yourself… instead of feeling shame and disgust like you usually do!”

he diet industry is a multi-billion-dollar industry that has managed to convince millions of people that “thin” is “good” (desirable, virtuous, moral) and “fat” is “bad” (undesirable, lazy, even immoral).

But this message simply isn’t true. In fact, if we break it...

Are you on a diet.. without even realizing it?

I’ve met a lot of women who insist, “I’m not on a diet.”

These women are not doing traditional diets—like Atkins, Weight Watchers, or Jenny Craig. Instead, they tell me...

“I’m going Paleo.”

“I’m going gluten-free for while.”

“I’m doing the Whole30 program.”

“I’m on a detox juice cleanse right now.”

“I’m cutting out refined sugar and carbs. But it’s not a ‘diet’, it’s more like… a new lifestyle.”

But the thing is… all of these trendy new programs, systems, detoxes, cleanses, and “new lifestyles”? They’re all DIETS! They might not be called “diets,” but that’s exactly what they are.

Even Weight Watchers has come up with a catchy new name, WW, to...