Your Stress-Free Guide to Stop Dieting, Start Living, and Lose Weight

I found this crazy note while I was reading in bed at my parents over the holidays, looking for some chapstick in my nightstand.

OY.

Serious blast from the past and gave me incredible perspective on how far I’ve come.

Now I could write a stack of novels about the foods I eat, because I eat everything (except seriously processed, toxic junk) and still feel great in my body and energized.

The post-it was attached to an email printout of a cell phone picture of my “unacceptable” stomach. I was gonna show you but thought that might be taking it a little too far. I will show you if you really want to see – it’s “safe for work” and all.

I thought only eating the safe foods combined with looking at the “gross” picture and shaming myself was sure to help me lose weight, right?

Nope, not so fast.

I was seriously restricting my intake to only diet food and hated my body. Yeah, I lost weight temporarily, but I was never thin enough for myself and I was still full of anxiety.

Oh, and all the weight came back plus more.

It’s totally cool to want to lose weight. Not a bad thing. There’s just two very different ways to go about it, and only one of them works long-term.

If you’re feeling frustrated with your body, at war with food, and ready to feel sane and happy, take a deep breath and follow these five steps.

This system will help you ditch diets, reach your ideal weight, and stay there:

1. Love where you are and get grateful. This is the most important step and it’s non-negotiable. Start actively changing your internal dialogue by treating your body as if she’s a sweet, innocent child. Love yourself even if you want to change your body, because you can’t make change from a place of self-hatred. You’ll shame yourself, go on a restrictive streak, then end up binging at night after having a “perfect food day.” Love yourself now and you can easily make changes from that place.

Start saying out loud in the mirror, “You’re beautiful.” Your subconscious will catch up when it starts hearing these loving statements.

Write a gratitude list of all the things you love about yourself, in detail. Pour yourself a glass of wine or some tea. Enjoy this process.

When negative thoughts creep up, laugh at them and let them go. They have no power over you unless you let them. Exercising, meditating, and treating your body with care by eating the foods you know work for you most of the time will also help you recreate a loving relationship with your body. I say recreate because you’re naturally full of love for yourself, and you lost it somewhere along the way – whether you were 6 or 16 – and you can reclaim it anytime you want.

I know COUNTLESS women who couldn’t drop a pound until they truly started to love themselves – hips, stomach and all. Even when they were eating “perfectly” and working out every day. So take this self-love thing seriously and do the action steps outlined here.

2. Identify what you want. Next you’re gonna get real about what you really want. Not what your boyfriend, best friend, or mom wants.

Do you actually want to lose weight? Feel more energized and focused? Build muscle? Make more friends?

Take a loving look at your physical, mental, and emotional bodies and write down what you love and what you want to shift. Then look at your relationships, work, exercise, and spirituality. Are you feeling disconnected or depleted in any of these areas?

It’s SO helpful to identify your desired feelings too, a la Danielle LaPorte and her brilliant Desire Mapping system. Keep it simple and just choose a few words that describe how you want to feel in 2016. Perhaps light, connected, free, happy, focused?

Choose words that feel 100% true for you – not what someone else or the media tells you to feel.

3. Map out your action steps. Review your list from the following step, breathe, close your eyes, and choose just ONE action step to take this week to start feeling more fulfilled. Then put it on your calendar and do it.

Play with brainstorming 5-10 other action steps that will bring you toward your goals and feelings, but only focus on one per week.

If you’re SUPER psyched to move forward, take on a maximum of 3 at time. The less you do at once, the more sustainable and permanent the shifts will be.

4. Gather a support team. Everyone who’s doing big things in the world and living their best life has some form of support. You need a network of friends, family, and colleagues who are rooting for you. Whether you’re training to run a marathon or wanting to lose 10 pounds and feel free in your body, you’ll get there faster and it’ll stick if you build a support team.

Share your goals with your friends and family, listen to theirs, and hold each other accountable. The simple act of voicing what you want makes it much more likely to happen.

You might also choose to bring in expert guidance from someone who’s been where you are and is now on the other side of it – an Integrative Nutrition Health Coach like myself, a nutritionist, RD, or functional medicine doctor. Or you might hire a few different people to support you – none of the roles I just mentioned are anywhere near the same. Take time to interview experts and find the people you truly connect with and feel supported by.

5. Celebrate. This is crucial. So many people – especially the super ambitious ones – tend to shrug off accomplishments as just another check mark on the to-do list. When you reach a goal or feeling you’ve been working toward, take the time to slow down, breathe, and celebrate. Go out to a fabulous dinner, take a refreshing walk in nature, treat yourself to a dance class, or anything else that makes you feel like you’re truly celebrating.

I want 2016 to be the year you truly step into your full potential and start having FUN in your life, stop dieting, start living, lose weight (if that’s your goal), and feel great.

This is the exact system that helped me FINALLY feel excited to sit down to meals (rather than terrified I’d overeat and get fat), reach my ideal weight, and feel energized, happy, and focused in my relationships and at work.

This ONLY works if you’re truly ready to stop dieting and start living your life rather than simply going through the motions.

If you’re looking for another cookie cutter plan to quickly drop a few pounds, this isn’t the place to find it. And oh how I truly wish those worked because they’re so simple. But they don’t.

They leave you miserable, and usually overweight in the long run.

I don’t want you to fall into the mentality that you have to follow a strict regimen, because they don’t work.

Doesn’t it sound much more fun to master the art of curating a deeply satisfying life and naturally losing weight by eating food that tastes amazing?