As you might have gathered from the title, I'm writing a book. This is something I've wanted to do for years, and now I am.

It's the anti-diet, pro-weight mastery manifesto that refuses to engage with diet culture nonsense.

Instead, I've collected nearly two decades of practical insights, doable practices, and crucial mindset shifts to share so that you can finally set down dieting and learn how to care for yourself. 

The working title is:

How To Never Diet Again

Without Giving up on Your Healthy Weight.

I lost 55 pounds at 40 and kept it off without counting a single calorie, cutting carbs, or going hungry, while reclaiming the joy of eating, and you can too.

Here's the introduction. Hit reply and let me know what you think.

Introduction- The War is Over

If you've ever thought, "Why is this so hard for me?" or "I'll just start fresh on Monday" or "Maybe my body is just broken," you’re in good company.

I did too—many times.

From my late teens until my late 30s, I struggled with obesity and everything that comes with it. Gut issues, skin issues, exhaustion, reproductive health problems. By my thirties, I hated how I felt most days.

I felt stuck in a body that didn't work.

Those years shattered my confidence. I worried I was lazy and undisciplined, that I lacked willpower or any ability to stick to something.

I also love food, right down to my bones. I love making it, finding it, eating it, and sharing it. I love discovering new flavors, trying new dishes, and pushing myself to eat weird stuff.

I owned a restaurant back then, and I still cook every day. In other words, I was (and still am) around food a lot.

I won't blame you for thinking that was the source of my problems (I did too). It's the lie we've been sold to keep us profitable consumers of diets and now, drugs.

Loving food is not the problem. 

Eating is not the problem. 

Your hunger is not the problem.

I know this because in 2008, I began a gentle, methodical process to restore my self-trust and reach a durable, healthy weight that still let me take real pleasure in food.

Tall order, but I did it.

I lost 55 pounds from age 39 to 40. I'm now 55.

Fewer than 4% of people who lose a significant amount of weight keep it off over a decade. I'm one of them, and now I understand why it's so hard for so many of us, and what to do about it.

Here's what I didn't do to accomplish this:

I didn't count a single calorie. I didn't cut carbs, fast, or track my macros. I didn't go hungry. In fact, that was a rule of mine. Never again would I endure painful bouts of hunger. I didn't work out like a maniac or force-feed myself protein.

To boot, I don't have amazing willpower. I eat before bed. I love potatoes and eat them often.

I lost this weight during perimenopause and kept it through menopause. You know, the years when it's supposedly impossible because of a tanking metabolism. That's mythology, and I'll cover it.

A few other things were supposed to stack the deck against me. A long history of chronic obesity, and the raised setpoint that comes with it. A low-performing thyroid. No HRT because of my history of breast cancer, and I take tamoxifen, an estrogen blocker, on top of it. Every one of those was supposed to make it impossible for me to reach a healthy weight. They don't, because of the understanding I'm about to share with you.

This book is for every woman who sought help and was told to "eat less, move more," handed protein powders, or pointed to "the Mediterranean diet" as if she'd never heard of it.

Those suggestions fail because they ignore the realities of modern living and modern food.

What's actually keeping you stuck is friction: the thinking, the practices, and the food triggers that reward either extreme methods or inaction. This book is about removing that friction, piece by piece.

This gentle approach set me free. I ended the mystery, the worry, and the angst. I'm at peace with food. I know exactly how to care for myself. There's no running calculator in my head at every meal, no starting over on Monday, no grading myself good or bad at the end of the day.

Almost sixteen years later, what I know for sure is that I was fine all along. I needed clarity, agency, a strong dose of self-compassion, and to center my care.

The gift I treasure most is the body I've forgotten about. Now, it just works. I no longer scrutinize it, hide it, or think much about it. A body you can rely on is what's needed for a bigger life, whatever that means to you. 

That's what this book is for.

I kept it to quick, short chapters so it really moves along. It's designed to change your thinking and self-concept as you read it so that behavior change feels natural and doable.

My mission is to end generational diet culture by making a healthy weight clear and achievable. Like so many of us, I inherited dieting from my mother, along with all the body worry that came with it. We're passing that same worry to our daughters and granddaughters, but it can stop with us. 

The chain breaks with what you believe you're allowed to have. So before we begin, let me put a few things on the record.

You deserve a body that functions well and feels good.

You deserve to eat when you're hungry and to choose food without a running calculator.

You deserve to delight in food and take real pleasure in it.

You deserve to be able to stop eating when you've had enough.

You deserve to stop worrying about growing older with chronic health conditions.

You deserve the big, open life that feeling well most days can offer.

If any of that list made you flinch, I understand.

One of my members described her lifetime of weight loss this way: "I honestly do not remember ever thinking of weight loss as something fun or joyful. EVER. It's always been that tension for me, like speeding on the highway and then slowing down when you see a cop."

Another, Susan, said the quiet part out loud: "It was like, who cares if I eat? Who cares if I get fatter? I'm not so wonderful anyway. And that went on for many, many, many years."

That tension has a vocabulary. Listen to how we all talk about weight: struggle, battle, regimen, challenge. It's the language of war, and the war is with our own inner critic, fed by culture. Your body doesn't need to be shoved into submission. It needs to be cared into calm.

Your body is a miracle. As-is, right now.

It's a vehicle for pleasure, intimacy, and expression. It can carry you into the ocean, hold someone you love, dance in the kitchen, catch the smell of rain. It has done its best for you. It has shown up for you.

You aren't good after you lose weight. You’re good right now.

Health at midlife is closer to an apprenticeship than a plan

–and it's definitely not another diet.

1. Don't diet. COOK! — A no-recipe, modular cooking system that teaches you to make real food every day without gadgets, meal planning, or hours of prep.
2. It's The Food — A method you can learn in one day to quickly identify if a food is overprocessed junk, regardless of what the package claims.
3. Hey Sugar — Teaches the fundamentals of having sugar without letting it rule and upend your life.

Yours in joyful living,

Rebecca

PS. I'm mystified as to why this reasonable, evidence-based piece got so much vitriol. As a woman who's felt left out of the MHT party (cancer x2), it's good to know they aren't a miracle fix.

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