When we were first born, we were in touch with our bodies and felt the natural body sensation of hunger. We innately knew the difference between thinking about food and the feeling of physical hunger. Back then, food’s only purpose was to satisfy our body’s need for more fuel. We knew exactly which foods we liked and which ones we didn’t like. We only ate the foods that tasted good to us and never ate any foods that didn’t taste good to us. We were also aware of the moment when our bodies had enough fuel, which is precisely when we stopped eating. These sensations and responses to food and hunger are all natural and all given to us by nature. Our bodies were designed to work in harmonious accord with nature, from that day and forever.

But for many of us, there came a point in time when we stopped listening to our bodies. We started listening to our heads or to what other people said about when, what and how much we should eat. We mistakenly believed that someone else knew something more than we did about our bodies. We began to listen to and learn from them, rather than stay connected to our own natural birthright to be thin or what I call honoring our own thintuition.

The highly profitable diet industry has lured us away from trusting our own bodies for the answers on how to be thin. Losing weight can be a natural process. It doesn’t have to cost you a dime. In fact, the act of spending money is rooted in the belief that going outside of your body will give you the answer about how to be thin. Those solutions are all artificial and not designed to have you succeed long term. If you succeed, permanently, they will forever lose you as a customer. You’ll fail in time, just as you have always done, because their artificial solutions are not in alignment with how your body was originally designed to operate, at maximum efficiency. Then they’ll blame you for failing. That way, you will keep coming back to them for more solutions. Once you’re hooked, it’s hard to get off the merry-go-round of diet mentality.

The education available to you from thintuition will return you to a natural state, when you had the innate ability to listen to your body, not your head, with regard to food and eating. Naturally thin people have retained this ability, which they inherited from birth. The good news is that you can relearn to have it too. You are fully capable of learning new behaviors around reconnecting to your own body, because you learned new behaviors from the diet industry that took you away from listening to your own body. They just gave you the wrong information because it created behaviors which caused you to gain weight instead of losing it. If you are heavier now than before you went on your first diet, that’s all the evidence you need to convince you that diets don’t work and never will, long term.

In the past, you learned the eating behaviors of overweight people. Now, you can learn the eating behaviors of thin people, who give their bodies just enough food (fuel) and no more. You can relearn to become the thin person you started out being when you were first born. It can become as natural as breathing. It can become as natural as noticing when you are thirsty and honoring your thirst by drinking just enough to make your thirst go away, and no more. It doesn’t have to be hard, unless you want it to be hard. That is, of course, your option.

In order to succeed in learning how to reconnect to your body, and retrain yourself to follow your natural thintuition, you do need to be committed to keeping your word to yourself. Beyond commitment, it takes time and practice, just like learning any new skill. You will be motivated to keep going because you will start losing weight naturally, without help from anyone or anything else.

By following your thintuition, reconnecting to your body and to your hunger levels, and allowing them to always guide your eating you won’t have to worry about your weight ever again. Its beauty lies in its simplicity. The structures for your success are all designed into an amazing online education program at thintuition.com. Your success will be based on your commitment to honoring your body by not overfeeding it. You get to make your own guarantee, taking pride in your accomplishment. Your body is very smart. All you have to do is start listening to it and allowing it to guide your eating, and nothing else.

Diet Mentality vs. Thintuition
1. Birth to age 1: Diet Mentality
Your mother listens to doctors, authors and weight loss experts about what, when and how much to feed you. You start listening to them instead of to your own body. The cycle begins.

1. Birth to age 1: Thintuition
Your mother trusts that you will let her know when you are hungry. She lets you decide what tastes good and when you have had enough. She doesn’t make you eat anything you don’t like or encourage you to eat more than you need.


2. Young Child 2-3: Diet Mentality
Mom makes the decisions about what and how much you should eat. She starts teaching you that she knows better than you what your body needs. She starts training you to eat foods that you don’t really like because they are foods she thinks you should have. She also teaches you to finish everything on your plate and not to waste food.

2. Young Child 2-3: Thintuition
Mom is relaxed about food. She gives you a variety of foods and starts noticing and accepting which ones you like and which ones you don’t like. She offers you lots of new tastes, textures, smells and colors and lets you decide what you like eating best and what you want to leave on your plate. Throwing away food is no big deal.


3. Child 4-9: Diet Mentality
One or both of your parents continue to push certain nutritional foods on you and start to play games to get you to eat when you are not hungry or eat more than you physically want or need to eat. You also start to learn that if you eat the foods you don’t like, then you will get the foods you do like, especially dessert. You are convinced that Mom knows better than you about what and how much you should eat. So in order to please her, you give in to her and mind her. It’s a lot easier to give in than to deal with disappointing her. (Most of these Moms are either overweight themselves or compulsively thin)

3. Child 4-9: Thintuition
Your parents are liberal about giving you a variety of foods and not overly focused on giving you foods based on their content (calories, fat grams or carbs.) They let you decide how much you should eat. They teach you that food is simply fuel for your body and how more nutritious foods will make your body run better. There is no pressure about food. They teach you that food has no power to do anything other than provide you with needed nutrients, energy and sustenance. You know that pleasing your parents has nothing to do with what is or is not on your plate or what you do or don’t eat. Food is rarely a major topic of family discussion, merely playing another part of everyday life. (These parents have had very few issues with weight and seem to simply enjoy a variety of foods without obsessing about them.)


4. Youth 10-12: Diet Mentality
You start realizing that you can get away with secretly eating the foods you really want (like chocolate) rather than eating the healthier foods your parents push on you. You start using food as a way to communicate your independence and power. Your parents start noticing this and exert more power over you, laying down family laws like enforcing membership in “the clean plate club” or some variation on that theme. While you know that can get away with many things, you also know that you must keep your parents happy, so you try to abide by their rules. At the same time, you notice that by exerting independence and power, by sneakily eating “bad foods,” that your waistline is starting to grow. This is starting to become a problem, as is fitting in with others.

4. Youth 10-12: Thintuition
Your parents let you make more of your own decisions in life, unrelated to food, and this feels good. You have no emotional attachments to food and feel no pressure from your parents to please them with regard to eating or not eating certain foods. They trust you to be in touch with what your body needs, eating when you get hungry and stopping when your hunger is satisfied. You understand basic nutrition, but give it very little thought as you just eat whatever sounds good-- whenever you get hungry enough to eat. The focus in your activities and with your friends is not on food but on the people you are with. Food and eating take very little thought.


5. Early Teen 13-16: Diet Mentality
You are starting not to feel good about your body. You are not doing all of the things you want to do in life. Your size is starting to effect your decisions about what activities you participate or don’t participate in--especially not doing some of the things that the other, thinner kids are doing. Your parents are concerned for your well being and want to help. So they recommend that you go on a diet to help lose weight. Or they send you to your family doctor, who recommends that you go on a diet. He tells you that if you don’t do something soon, you will get even larger and it could become a health issue. Food, eating and your weight are now a major concern and your eating habits are now primarily based on following a weight loss diet. This is the time when you first start to be disconnected from listening to your body to guide your eating. Your eating starts being dictated by external sources, not internal ones. It becomes your way of life for the rest of your life.

You can’t understand why some of your thin friends are not having similar weight issues though they are eating the foods they love--foods you miss eating because you are on a diet. You start learning about good and bad foods, low fat foods, carbs, proteins, fat grams, calories, etc. while your thin friends don’t focus on any of these things. You believe that dieting is the way to get thin. You believe that the harder you try to stick to your diet, the more success you will have. Your parents acknowledge you for doing well on the diet and express disappointment when you don’t follow it. Your emotions fluctuate based on your success or lack of success with your diet. Food and dieting are taking a huge amount of time and thought.

You are also told you have to exercise, even though you hate it, because your parents or the doctor say you must. You begin the roller coaster ride of weight loss and weight gain. You’re either on a diet, or off a diet. You’re always looking for the next best diet or exercise program. Your weight is becoming an increasingly difficult problem to solve.

5. Early Teen 13-16: Thintuition
School is your major focus. You are making friends and developing your personality. Food and eating are left in tact, as a natural function of living. You are beginning to be interested in a larger variety of foods and are left alone to enjoy these new foods. Food is just food to you. Food has no good or bad connotations. You have very little understanding of the content of food. You just know that when you are hungry, there will be food, and you will eat whatever sounds good to eat at that time. In socializing with your friends you are beginning to make up opinions about your friends who are getting fat and are wondering why they are getting this way. You are active and enjoy playing outdoors. You have the freedom to exercise whenever you feel like it, and it's fun. You don’t equate exercise with losing weight because weight is not an issue for you.


6. Teen 17-19: Diet Mentality
You are in a set pattern of diet mentality. Your life has shifted, as many of your decisions in life are filtered through your issues with weight. Your weight frequently stops you from doing what you really want to do in life.
Life feels like it’s gone off course: you feel a lack of satisfaction and wholeness in many areas of your life. You also start making compromises to compensate for the problem with your weight. You might not go after the education or career you really want because fat people can’t do that. Or you date people below whom you desire just because they accept you. Your happiness is reflected by the size of your clothes or the numbers on the scale. You feel little power to change this problem without the help of someone or something else. And the diet industry is your saving grace. You can’t have the life you want being fat. But the diet industry will help you attain the life you want because their programs all sound so fast and easy. Others succeed at them so why not you? And people tell you how cute your face would be if you would just lose weight. You are always either on or off a diet, starving or bingeing. This cycle continues for the rest of your life. Even so, you believe that some day you will find that perfect diet, program or pill and lose all your excess weight, keep it off for good and have everything you ever imagined--just like all of those happy people you always see on those weight loss commercials.

6. Teen 17-19: Thintuition
You are deciding on what education or career sounds interesting, while enjoying new friendships. Many of your relationships seem healthy and satisfying. Your focus is on friends and meeting new people and learning what interests you by testing your boundaries. Still, food and eating occupy little space in your head other than to ask yourself what really sounds good whenever you get hungry. Your family does not impose pressure on you or acknowledge you for what you are eating or discipline you for eating something you shouldn’t. Food has no emotional charge and is not used as a tool for power or manipulation, nor do you feel the need to hide whatever you enjoy eating.

No food is off limits and you dislike feeling full (feeling pressure in your stomach) from overeating. You are discovering that your physical appearance has a lot to do with how you are being perceived. You take responsibility for how you look and know you can manage this. Being thin feels good and healthy. You are optimistic about the future and the endless possibilities it holds. You wonder why some of your friends are always dieting, or constantly obsessing about food or their weight. You feel compassion for them but are perplexed why you eat what you want and stay thin while they always diet or eat healthy foods and stay fat. You think that maybe you were just born with the thin gene and they were just born with the fat gene.

7. Young Adult 20-35: Diet Mentality
The roller coaster ride continues as you spend thousands of dollars on diets and on exercise equipment or programs. You get endless opinions and advice from doctors, nutritionists, friends, etc. Your weight is the major issue in your life. Even if you are not constantly talking about it, it’s always on your mind. You can’t seem to figure out why you have so much success in some areas of your life and yet you have no long-term success in managing your weight. Even when you manage to lose weight successfully, keeping it off becomes nearly impossible. And you can’t figure out why this is so, no matter how hard you try. You start believing that this is a problem you will have to deal with for the rest of your life. This desperation causes you to start experimenting with potentially dangerous drugs or wacky diet programs, regardless of their potential health consequences. The larger issue is just getting the weight off, no matter what, once and for all.

People begin to tell you that they love you either way. They just want you to be healthy and happy. You begin to feel overwhelmed with all of the information about food, exercise and the best way to lose weight. Everyone has a different opinion. You start adapting your personality to compensate for not being able to control your overweight condition, like becoming the funny person, or the over achiever, or acting like you are happy being fat. You use food to reward or punish yourself, or to help you deal with your emotions, even though you know that food will never really solve your problems, only add to them. You also get a lot of attention from being overweight, complaining about how hard it is, commiserating with your overweight family and friends. And food is generally the major focus of any get together.

Since you can’t solve the problem permanently, you start resigning yourself to just accept being fat. You try modifying your clothing or hanging out with people who are also fat or those who are on a lower playing field than you are, to make yourself feel better. You start creating a reasonable dramatic story about why you are fat, such as a reaction to the hardships you suffered as a child, or finding an effective way to keep others at a safe distance. Still, you believe that once you find the right weight loss program, you will have the life you have always wanted. It’s all about someday when this weight issue is over with. You wonder why all of those people on the commercials seem to be able to do it, and it’s so easy. What’s wrong with you?

7. Young Adult 20-35: Thintuition
Your career is starting to blossom. Your professional life is consistent with your vision of a happy future. You still have some issues from your past. Some of them you have dealt with, and others remain in place. But eating to deal with those issues or not to deal with them doesn’t cross your mind. You deal or don’t deal with your issues in ways other than by going to food. Some of those ways are healthy and productive, like communicating with others or asking for help. Other coping behaviors may be more destructive or addictive like explosive anger, drinking, smoking, gambling, shopping or sex. Still, food remains neutral for you, even though life is throwing you some curve balls. You are connected to your body; you eat what you want whenever you get hungry, and you stop eating when your hunger disappears-- because you simply don’t like feeling full.

You enjoy getting a compliment from someone who admires how good you look. You are concerned about how fat some of your friends or family members are getting but fear that trying to help them might be considered offensive. You think that maybe they might envy you for having a faster metabolism. You might enjoy playing sports or exercising or neither and still you remain thin. You might eat healthy foods or you might eat junk food. Neither ever affects your weight.

Everywhere you go you see how much focus our culture places on weight loss. You see all the low carb, low fat, low calorie menus. You read about all the lawsuits, watch endless diet and exercise commercials and infomercials. Sometimes it even becomes kind of irritating to have all of this advertising thrust on you when you have no interest in it whatsoever. It seems so unnecessary for our culture to place so much emphasis on food and eating when food should just be enjoyed not obsessed about.

When you are with family, you enjoy some of the memories associated with various foods from childhood and it's fun. Your parents are still thin and active. They like treating you to meals out at your favorite restaurant or making you the foods you have always loved. Food and eating are a natural part of your every day life, not any more nor any less.


8. Adult 36-50: Diet Mentality
You are still dieting, having successful weight loss, followed by weight gain, which leaves you even fatter than you were before your last diet. Or you have just accepted yourself for the way you are, telling people that you are happy being fat. But deep down, this is really a lie. You surround yourself with others who share your beliefs about how to lose weight, through diet and exercise, and support your efforts to do so. Your doctor has told you that your weight is becoming a medical issue and that it could cause more serious health problems. He recommends seeing a nutritionist. The nutritionist moderates your diet and you have short-term success. But the weight comes right back. You may begin to consider getting involved with a fat acceptance group or overeaters anonymous because these people will understand and accept you just the way you are. Still, you are intrigued by what the diet industry keeps telling you. You still listen to the latest weight loss theories from the best selling author/doctors, especially the ones who propose diets that allow you to eat unlimited amounts of this or that food. Or you believe the scientist who says that being overweight is genetic and not your fault.

Even though you are extremely frustrated with your body and your weight, you are learning to cope with accept your persisting weight issue. All the while, you hold on steadfastly to the hope that someday the magic cure will come. Or you might be considering gastric bypass surgery as a last resort, especially if you are obese enough that your doctor recommends it. “After all, obesity is a disease and it’s not my fault. If my insurance will pay for it, why not do it? After all, look what it did for Carney Wilson and Al Roker. It could just be the answer to all my problems.”

8. Adult 36-50: Thintuition
You are enjoying your career and focusing on the quality of life. Your health is important to you, so you may choose to eat healthier foods because they fit into your healthy lifestyle and your commitment to maintaining a healthy future. Sometimes you eat some really wild, fun or exotic foods. You continue to eat the way you have always eaten, only when you are hungry and stop eating when you are comfortable and satisfied. You have no issues around throwing away food or saving it for later. Food is very satisfying when you are hungry and dining out at nice places is very enjoyable after a long week.


9. Mature Adult 51-65: Diet Mentality
You are staring to have some health issues, like diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, joint pain or other pains in your body. Attractive and stylish clothes are harder to find. While it appears that your weight does not restrict you, the truth is that it is costing you in many areas of your life. You keep trying the latest diet and exercise program, do well on it and then gain it all back, plus some. You really got dealt a bad hand in the genetic or metabolic gene pool. The thought of strangling one of those thin people, who must all come from another planet, sounds like fun.

Yet hope still springs eternal that the answer to all your prayers lies in modern science or medicine, or in the billions spent on research, or in the next product that famous diet and exercise gurus are all working on discovering that will finally give you the long term results you so desperately desire. “They have to be getting close to coming out with a safe, healthy and effective pill, with tolerable side effects, that will melt away the pounds as I sleep, so I will have everything I want in my twilight years. Well, I didn’t get to have it when I was young; but hey, it’s all about enjoying the older years.” Or, “I accept myself as I am, and no one is going to tell me what to do. I’m fine the way I am and it’s certainly not my fault. After all, I was born with big bones. And it’s no secret that after women go through the change, weight gain is just inevitable.”

9. Mature Adult 51-65: Thintuition
This is the time when you can finally enjoy all of the effort and hard work you have put into everything that has been important to you. You notice how your body doesn’t seem to want as much food as it has wanted in past years. You just seem to have more left over on your plate at the end of a meal. Or, since the portion sizes in restaurants are so huge, you often split or share your yummy meal with your dining companion when you dine out. Still, your weight has never changed much over the years. You feel compassion for others in your circle of friends and family who continue to struggle with their weight or are having health issues from being overweight. But you are fed up with listening to this incessant talk of dieting, of good and bad foods, of exercise, etc. and you start limiting the amount of time you spend with these people.


10. Senior 65 and up: Diet Mentality
You are done with diets, at this point, and you are simply surviving all of the ailments associated with your overweight condition. You are on more than one medication and it’s very costly. You would like to do more activities and enjoy these retirement years, but it’s just not possible. So you begin collecting Lladro® figures and have over 100 pieces in your collection. QVC is a priority in your life and spending money is your association to fun. Yet you still like talking about special foods and diets. You tend to patronize places that offer lots of food for a low price. You are not as concerned about your weight as you once were. “After all, my days are numbered now and I am going to enjoy food and stop worrying about my weight. If I couldn’t do anything about it all my life, I’m sure not going to do anything about it now, especially since my metabolism has slowed down to a crawl. Besides, I have a good insurance plan to cover my medical expenses. Joan Rivers® has a new jewelry collection on QVC, and then it’s off to the Chinese buffet.” The annual Richard Simmons® Cruise to Lose becomes your annual vacation and lets your friends and family know that you are still trying. Yet you come back having gained 6 pounds on the cruise, but you got to tell everyone on the cruise your horrible story of rejection as a child, which they listen to with glazed eyes from hearing it so many times over the years.

10. Senior 65 and up: Thintuition
Life is good. You finally have the freedom to do what you want to do, when you want to do it. Traveling is fun. You finally have the time to take up those beloved hobbies you didn’t have time for when you were working so much in your younger years. Still, eating is just fuel for your body. And although you have some issues with your health, they are not related to your weight. You’re planning a hike through the desert this winter as part of your winter vacation. The idea of hiking 30 miles at age 70 sounds delightful, especially since the tour company brings along some of the most amazing food.



Your Diet History
Now it’s time for you to construct your own life’s history with diet mentality. Start outlining the major events in your life that had you start disconnecting from your body and stay disconnected as you listened to others instead of yourself. This will help you to relearn how to follow your thintuition. By getting to the source of the behavior, behavior change is possible. Sustained behavior change occurs with commitment, time and practice.

Take out some paper or open up a word file and write down the following headings. Fill in the details from your life. What patterns do you see? How could you change these behaviors now, to get the body you most desire?

Diet Mentality

1. Birth to age 1

2. Young Child 2-3

3. Child 4-9

4. Youth 10-12

5. Early Teen 13-16

6. Teen 17-19

7. Young Adult 20-35

8. Adult 36-50

9. Mature Adult 51-65

10. Senior 65 and up:


Thintuition or Diet Mythology. Which life do you choose to live?
It is possible for you to return yourself to a natural state. It starts with forgiving yourself for all of the crazy things you did in the past to lose weight. It begins with a strong commitment to yourself. And it continues by keeping your word in the face of any obstacle that comes your way. Each day can bring you closer to following your thintuition. It’s not your fault that you’re fat. You just got the wrong information from the wrong places. You cannot fail at thintuition; you can only fail to pay attention to it.

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