Goal weights are an invention of diet companies.

They are an unnecessary ‘motivator’ and do more harm than good. The more acute the distance between you and some magical number, the higher the likelihood you’ll agree to a plan with a 90% failure rate.

Goal weights allow diet companies to let you do the work of convincing yourself to accept unsustainable schemes. No carbs? Sure. Eat all your food in a 6-hour window, why not? Guzzle celery juice? Ok!

Every idea becomes reasonable in the face of that glittering number.

I lost 50 pounds without ever having a goal weight.

I started writing about my process because my experience (and…

Most of us understand that durable weight loss requires consistency.

What we forget is that motivation is highly inconsistent.

The question then becomes, how do we show up day after day for practices that result in a healthy weight?

I propose a radically simple answer. Choose joyful pursuits.

Yes, this means ditching workouts that you silently dread and have to psyche yourself into doing. There’s space down the road to intensify your movement practice when you’re ready for a bit more.

For now, today even, go do something that opens you up to joy.

In my case, that’s a walk. It's even better if it’s in nature, but a city walk with some parks thrown in does the trick. …

Hi Mary,

Thanks for weighing in.

Here's why I have EVOO in the green circle.

1) It's true that there is a process to get the oil product, but with EVOO it's fairly minimal resulting in a product with the nutrition intact.

2) Speaking of nutrition, it's loaded with antioxidants.

3) I advocate a daily salad in which you make your own dressing. Turns out without the fat from the olive oil you won't absorb the nutrition from the greens as well.

4) I've been consuming EVOO almost daily for 11 years since my 50-pound weight loss with zero issues. I use it as part of food preparation and it's been an ally to my overall health and weight.

5) It’s a heritage food that’s been consumed for thousands of years by many cultures. I always lean to heritage foods to fill my green choices.

“I want to eat naturally and be able to stop when I’m not hungry anymore.”

Seems reasonable. The daily struggle to keep yourself from eating too much is a depressing affair. So is letting loose pretending you don’t care but silently hating your growing body.

Food shouldn’t be a land mine, it’s nourishment. The good news is that you can eat to satiation and not beyond if you start paying careful attention to what has been done to the food.

The more it's altered, the less likely you’ll be able to stop.

Another way to think about this is that whole, unprocessed food is perfectly designed to work with your body. …

Noom has similar recidivism rates as the rest of diet industry. Why is that? Putting your food into an app is a great way to (be neurotic) lose weight straight away, but it teaches you little about how to live long-term at a healthy weight.

I'm now at 11 years losing weight and keeping it off and I think 1) it's a lot of more than in your head (whatever that means) 2) tracking calories is joyless and unnecessary.

A daily salad is the most impactful thing you can do to achieve and keep a healthy weight. Yes, really.

That’s because eating a salad every day is a keystone habit. Those are habits that have an outsized impact on the entirety of your life. I wouldn’t have believed it before last week but eating a salad most days is one such habit.

Here are a few of the reasons:

• it displaces other less healthy or dense foods from your day’s intake
• it forces you to shop for veggies on the regular
• you’re eating a nutrient-dense meal every day which…

My 50th birthday is tomorrow. Other than the AARP card I should have anticipated (but still startled me), I’m feeling very good about this.

In 2014 I was diagnosed with highly invasive breast cancer, with a small recurrence in 2017. I had serious doubts about making it to fifty.

Instead, here I am in a body I thoroughly enjoy, crazy about cycling and full of energy for this venture.

What does this have to do with weight loss? Quite a bit.

I discovered the lump early because a few years prior I’d lost fifty pounds and could easily palpate it…

It turns out the accountability of starting and completing together makes everyone work harder, including me.

“Yes. This is not just “another diet”. It is the opposite of that. It gets underneath the “diet” to look at what is real, what is happening in you. It gives you more than just tools, which I find limiting. It gives you purpose and a reason and a playbook for change. THANK YOU!!!” — Kate K.

First, let me back up a bit. The program I built is 9+ weeks long and covers a diverse array of subjects because these are the things…