How to Survive Your Diet and Conquer Your Food Issues Forever

I waited a little over a year to write my review; I wanted to offer solid evidence in favor of this book and approach to losing my disordered eating (binge eating/compulsive overeating in my case). I read this book about 11 months ago and quit dieting after having gained 20 more pounds on my diet last winter (bingeing my way through it). I have been implementing normal eating ever since to the best of my ability. What changes have taken place in my less than perfect attempts to eat normally? -- I am losing weight. -- My blood pressure is perfect when it was high (140/90) a year ago before non-dieting/normal eating. -- My cholesterol is normal (I suspect it too was high). -- I am exercising everyday without hating it. -- I am eating foods I love with no fear of calories, carbs, or fat grams. -- I am enjoying life again, no longer in a pit of despair asking myself all day long, "what can I do to quit eating and lose weight?" Linda's book gave me perhaps the most important tool in my life (and in my eating struggles): the ability to think in shades of grey. I have always been a perfectionistic, all or nothing, black and white sort of person. No more-- I am free from dieting prison and all other prisons. Now my eating matches up with my other philosophical and personal leanings toward free thought and focused action. I urge you to read this book, and if you need more support, come on over to dietsurvivors' yahoo group, Linda Moran's group. Thank you from the bottom of my heart, Linda.

I've suffered from eating disorders for three years, I'm tired of unsuccessful dieting and eating foods that taste chemical: this book has given me a choice. Linda's sensible approach gently encourages the reader to take responsibility for their eating habits, to learn to recognise the body's signals and to take control of their food mentality. Anyone who has ever experienced a helpless or out-of-control feeling about their diet or their weight needs to read this book, because it is such a relief to know that there is another way.

I've lost over 100 pounds on the South Beach diet, so what am I doing here talking about a book that isn't about diets? After two years I just couldn't diet anymore. And I was very frightened that I was going to gain all that weight right back, and more to boot, because that is what 95% of the successful dieters out there do. I like this book because it isn't a new diet plan. It isn't about giving up everything you learned while you successfully dieted. It is about keeping all of the good stuff you learned, and moving on to new good stuff, so you can keep off the weight you've already lost, and maybe even get the weight loss moving again, if you still need to lose, or accepting you've reached your correct weight if you don't need to lose anymore. And it looks like that is happening to me too after almost a year of very slow weight loss I've begun to lose again. This book is about learning to listen to your body and finding out just how much you really need to eat to be happy and satisfied. And just how little you really want can be a shocking experience when you've always been afraid of being hungry on a diet. This book is about NOT beating yourself up. But what if you haven't already been successful on a diet. This book is for you too. It is very likely that with this book you don't ever need to go on a formal diet. You probably just need to learn these lessons we all were born knowing, and forgot.

Linda Moran's book is a must read for anyone who is fed up with dieting as a way of controlling their weight. Linda's viewpoint is that instead of focusing on what you eat or how much you exercise, your focus should be on listening to you what your body is telling you it needs to sustain itself, to guide your eating. It has been my contention for a long time that behavior therapists, like Linda are the best resources to go to for anyone who struggles with their weight, not to a diet or exercise guru. Because overeating, the source of weight gain, is a learned behavior. We all started out with our innate connection to hunger (eating barometer) in tact, until we learned to disconnect from it, override it and gain weight. Dieting keeps us disconnected from our bodies...because we keep listening to someone else's advice about what, when and how much to eat, NOT to what our own stomachs are telling us we really need at any given moment. Our bodies only really want enough food to satisfy our physical need for more fuel, and no more. When our thoughts or emotions dictate our eating, rather than responding to what our stomachs are telling us we actually need to sustain ourselves, we overeat and gain weight. And if you really tune in and listen to your stomach, instead of your head or emotions, you'll discover it doesn't take a lot of food to make your hunger disappear. We learned to adopt overeating behaviors, like emotional eating. So we can learn new behaviors around food and eating, like eating to satisfy physical hungers, not emotional ones, which will have us be thin. I highly recommend you read Linda's book. It will give you the possibility of weight loss without dieting. And you'll discover new freedoms around food and eating that you never before thought possible.

For dieters about to embark on their next "miracle" diet, I recommend that they first read and digest this eloquent and potentially life-changing book. In this stunning book, author Linda Moran reveals the naked truth about dieting: that, in the long run, restrictive eating doesn't work for most dieters. That when dieters deny themselves delicious and full-fat foods, they are fighting an innate and ingrained biological drive designed to help the human race survive--a battle dieters are not likely to win. So if a potential dieter wants to lose a few pounds, forget about it, accept one's fatness, and move on, right? Maybe not. Moran, owner of the Yahoo! Dietsurvivors: Non-dieting for Intellectuals Health Group, offers an alternative to dieting: intuitive eating. In the chapter "How Children Eat," Moran asks the reader to observe children at the table: intuitively, they eat when they're hungry and stop when they're satisfied. They'll leave a cookie on their plates without feeling guilty about starving children in some third world country. Moran says that former dieters can train themselves to eat like children, to enjoy what they really want of that cookie and throw the rest away, without feeling deprivation or guilt. In a dispassionate tone, the author analyzes some of the currently popular diets and discusses the pros and cons of each program. She never tells the reader to forego all diets. Indeed, in her introduction, Moran says, "I'm not saying, `Don't diet.' Rather a diet is a lion to be tamed by YOU." Too often, the diet becomes the Truth, an all-or-nothing proposition resulting in black and white thinking. Moran concedes that diets do work for a few dieters, but emphasizes that "a diet works best if the dieter doesn't take it too seriously." In other words, a diet should not be worshiped as the "god" of the moment, but, rather, be used as a tool for helping the dieter make effective and sustainable life change. The author questions conventional dieting wisdom and proposes some seemingly paradoxical ideas for consideration: --Weight-loss diets can actually promote greed --All foods should be "legalized" --One should give into food cravings. --One does not need to exercise to lose weight --Stress can be positive --Small portions of delicious food will satisfy --Naturally thin people are not immune to serious food issues Moran does NOT --Include recipes --Offer any calorie-counting programs --Tell readers to eat specific foods --Scold Moran doesn't claim that the work of intuitive eating will be easy, recognizing that it takes time to unlearn old diet rules and incorporate new thinking. Furthermore, she offers her own story only to establish her credibility and to show her own path to eating enlightenment, not to impose new rules on the reader. Most importantly, the author respects the intellect of the reader. In her conclusion, Moran says, "This book is not about rules, but about your thinking. My suggestions may or may not