Health At Every Size: The Surprising Truth About Your Weight Read Online Free PDF

health or worthiness anyway, an incredible transformation occurred.
     
    In the end, the women participating in the Health at Every Size program emerged with better physical health, higher self-esteem, and a relationship with food that’s as healthy as their cholesterol and blood pressure levels. The women participating in the diet program experienced none of these benefits and regained the weight they initially lost.
     
    You’ll read more about the Health at Every Size study later in the book. I bring it up now because I want you to know that even if you picked up this book looking for a weight-loss solution, you may want to stick with it, even though you know up front that you won’t be getting the prescription you seek.
     
    I want you to read what Kelly wrote in her journal shortly after that first meeting:
    It was powerful to realize how hard we had all tried to lose weight, how humiliating some of those attempts were, to feel one another’s desperation. I so empathized with the other group members as we shared stories of our hopes getting dashed again and again.
     
    What motivates us to keep trying? I’m short and I don’t like that, but I don’t read growth books, attend heightening groups, or consider going to a salon to get stretched. That’s because I just don’t see my height as changeable. But weight is different: It seems like I should be able to change it.
     
    When I start a diet, I have a feeling of hope. I was on a real high on my way to that first meeting, I let the fantasies run wild. This is an actual government-sponsored university study, state-of-the-art. I’ll finally lose weight: Guys will notice me as I walk down the street, my mom will tell me how proud she is, I can have confidence when I apply for a job.
     
    And then I heard Dr. Bacon say that weight loss may not be possible and would not be a goal. I felt like I had just been popped, like she inserted a needle into my big balloon, and my insides were leaking out. Life didn’t seem worth living without the hope that I could be thin.
     
    But as this thought crossed my mind, it helped me to see the extent of my magical thinking, how much I have riding on the fantasy, why I keep trying so desperately to lose weight. Inside, I believe that weight loss is the only thing standing between me and happiness. So if I never get thin, I can never be happy , I can never become the person I want to be.
     
    In that moment, I understood: It was the dream of weight loss that clouded my ability to be happy with myself—not the weight itself. Perhaps Health at Every Size can finally help me feel better about my life and myself?
     
     
     
    The Health at Every Size program won’t ask you to give up on your dreams; it will help you to actually live them. It will give you the tools to realize those dreams, to live in a body you love, and to focus on things like feeling good and enjoying life—no matter what your weight.
     
    Decades of research—and probably your own personal experience—show that the pursuit of weight loss rarely produces the thin, happy life you dream of. Dropping the pursuit of weight loss isn’t about giving up, it’s about moving on. When you make choices because they help you feel better, not because of their presumed effect on your weight, you maintain them over the long run. You do it because you want to, not because you believe you should .
     
    When you stop trying to control your weight through willpower, your body starts doing the job for you—naturally, and much more effectively. If you stop fighting yourself, achieving and maintaining a healthy weight is effortless. Consider Kelly’s experience:
    Before participating in the Health at Every Size program, I never truly enjoyed food. Either I felt compelled to steer clear of my favorite foods, like potato chips and ice cream, or I ate them and felt guilty. And I felt like I could never get enough. But it’s different for me now. As much as I love pizza, when my