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Recently, when I was trying to describe what Half Size Me is all about, one of our HSM Community members* said that I’d just given them “The Half Size Me Manifesto”.

So, that’s what this is: a manifesto.

And I’m sharing it because I feel it’s important for you to understand what Half Size Me is all about.

So, what is Half Size Me?

Well, one thing to understand is that it is not about me…

• giving you a pre-prescribed program that you will fix all your problems.
• telling you what to eat or what to do for exercise.
• telling you which plan is best.

The truth is I view all of these issues as the “outer crust” of weight loss. But it’s also where many of us get stuck and bunched up.

You might say you’re confused.

Or you say you’re overwhelmed.

Maybe you even say you don’t know what to do. Therefore, you do nothing.

However, what really matters is that you redefine your relationship with yourself and your relationship with food. You begin putting in healthy boundaries. You learn how to prioritize your time, and you find what foods you like and enjoy. The foods you are willing to eat within a certain energy balance based on your goals.

I have never attached Half Size Me to any diet plan. I often get requests from people who would like me to advertise for them. It doesn’t matter if it is Noom, Weight Watchers, or supplement companies — I refuse to attach Half Size Me to any of them. Why? Because if I do it could start to make you question your decisions.

You might start asking yourself, ‘Is the program I’m on the correct one? Because Heather says…’ or ‘Heather recommends that diet so maybe I need to stop what I’ve been doing…’

Remember: It’s not important what I or anyone else says. It is only important what you say. What you think. And what you do.

The reason that none of the weight loss attempts you’ve tried in the past have been truly successful (success meaning that you 1) lost the weight and 2) kept it off) is because you weren’t willing to go deeper into this whole process.

You did not want to really reevaluate how you speak to yourself, how you care for yourself, or how you start to prioritize the things you need. You did not see your own value. Or you weren’t willing to let go of toxic and unhealthy relationships. Perhaps, you didn’t treat yourself with respect when it comes to food.

This journey is so much deeper than counting calories or points or what app you use to track your food.

That’s why I teach you lessons so you can learn about yourself.

The Half Size Me Program consists of four Freedom Modules. I use these as tools to teach you, but they are not a formulaic plan for you to follow.

Every community challenge, teaching toolkit, and coaching cast I’ve created is not about me giving you an answer. I’m a teacher at heart; I know that giving you answers is not a way to give you life-long skills.

If I give you the answer, I make you dependent on me.

However, if I teach you a lesson or a concept that will help you start to formulate your own answers and learn about yourself, well, now we’re on to something.

When you better understand yourself it will help you create a new way that will be uniquely your own.

In our current culture, it is so easy to “be busy”. But if everything else in your life is keeping you busy (i.e. distracted), then you are not learning about yourself.

So, what works for you as a unique individual? Only you can find the answer to that.

Now, I will be the first to tell you that if your goal is weight loss, then, yes, you must be in a calorie deficit, but how you go about achieving that calorie deficit can be as unique as your thumbprint. It could mean you alter when you eat, how you eat, or what you eat.

But how you go about it is really about your relationship with yourself. And that has to be forged during this journey.

I often see people wanting to put all of their focus into something outside of themselves. In a way, it keeps us content and detached. But what if you were forced to take a look at yourself? A real look?

That is transformational. As long as you know yourself and what works for you, then you can start to say no to the things that will distract you in your journey.

You can also start testing new approaches to weight loss. However, it’s important to realize that “testing” something does not mean it will become a permanent solution. You will need to modify any plan, program, or approach to fit you and your lifestyle.

I am a huge fan of this Bruce Lee quote:

“Take what is useful, discard what is not, make it uniquely your own.”

That’s what I want for you. And THAT is what Half Size Me is all about.

I want you to go through the content we offer in our program modules. I want you to learn about yourself and take what is useful. But be willing to discard what is not. You need to make all of this uniquely your own.

If you ask me what leads to long-term weight loss and maintenance, I would say it is a willingness to take a look at yourself honestly (without judgment), accept your current reality, and build a program or a plan that fits your lifestyle.

Not a plan or program that works for someone else, but one that works for you.

I view Half Size Me and all of the resources I make available to you as tools. Tools for you to build a program of one.

A program for you.

And the HSM community is here to support you.

All of us are working on building our own plan but we can learn from, encourage, and offer support to one another while experiencing our own journeys.

We are more alike than different. All of us are struggling with many of the same mental burdens and obstacles. We are in this together, offering support to one another along the way.

That’s why I say it is “a program of one supported by many”.

Please join us — we would absolutely love to have you as you start to discover the plan and program that would work best for you. And we are now open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so you can join us at any time.

In my last post, I discussed how important it is to be positive about your body during and after weight loss. 

Now, let’s dive into what it means to lose weight and still be body positive.

If you have listened to the Half Size Me Show podcast, you’re aware that I do not encourage people to take drastic measures to achieve weight loss. 

If you search Google or social media, you’re going to find many different approaches to losing weight, some of which are very restrictive. With many of these approaches, you probably won’t be losing weight from a place of respect or love for your body. 

Removing entire food groups, doing extreme exercise, taking supplements and pills, and eating very little is not showing kindness to your body or a healthy, long-term approach to weight loss. 

When you start making healthy habit changes that produce weight loss over time, you’ve found the right number of calories and amount of exercise for you that still allow you to enjoy your life. This concept of finding what is “just right” for you is explained beautifully by Dr. Yoni Freedhoff in his book The Diet Fix—I encourage you to read it. 

Most diets do not encourage concepts like enjoyment and sustainability. Instead, they focus on getting you quick results. It’s almost never about if you can sustain your effort forever. This is why I encourage you to take back control of your weight-loss journey and make it one unique to you, with a focus on your enjoyment. 

In the past, you might have said, “I want to weigh X pounds,” and then tried to do whatever was necessary to get you there. And you probably made yourself miserable in the process. You need to reserve the order of your thinking. Don’t focus on the outcome—on how much you’ll weigh when you’re done. 

What you want to do is think of two roads merging into one: 

• Road A: This road represents the way you are willing to eat, for the rest of your life, to lose weight and then keep it off.
• Road B: This is the road that represents the amount and types of exercise you are willing to incorporate into your life and stay consistent with for the long term.

The place Road A and Road B converge is where you’ll find your happy, maintainable weight. It’s important to realize that this ‘place’ may be nowhere near the goal weight you once had in mind. However, it is going to be a much (physically and mentally) healthier place than where you are now. 

The way to lose weight and be body positive is to begin from a place of autonomy. 

Don’t aim for a goal or follow a diet plan that were dictated by someone else. All the changes you make and the body weight you achieve should stem from what you want to do. It’s about what you are willing to change without resentment. You have free will and can make the changes and decisions that are best for you. 

So, find where the two roads meet for you.

You may say, “I will not stop eating carbs. I love them so I am not willing to give them up. Wherever that takes me on Road A is fine with me.”

And if you have no interest in working out like a beast in the gym, but you want to walk most days, then see where that takes you on Road B.

You are establishing autonomy by creating your own plan.

When I lost weight for the final time, my focus was on maintenance. I had to like everything I was doing to lose weight. I did this because I knew I would be continuing these habits after I lost weight. 

You know how many success stories there are online. All the great before and after photos. But those are just one moment in time. I’ve been on my maintenance journey since 2012. It would have been difficult to maintain if I felt miserable and restricted. 

As I was losing weight, there were certain things I called ‘non-negotiables’. These non-negotiables had to be a regular part of my life. They included:

• Pizza has to be in my life (which meant I wasn’t going to cut out all dairy or carbs).
• I need to have treats daily, or I will resent the process.
• Exercise has to be pleasurable and something I look forward to (meaning no running for me!).

Once you clearly define your non-negotiables and know what you refuse to give up, you will start making real progress.  Just ask yourself what you are honestly willing to add in, or take away, without resentment. 

I’ve created a way I am willing to eat for the rest of my life, and it has kept me within a certain weight range. This range, by the way, is not my recommended weight based on BMI. I have been maintaining happily at 150–160 pounds since 2012. This is a much healthier weight range for me than when I was over 300 pounds, and, more importantly, I am able to live the life that I truly want—one without unnecessary pain and the freedom to make choices that are not limited because of my weight.

I encourage you to ask yourself, “What am I willing to do for the rest of my life?” Let that be your roadmap to success. Stop searching for what others are doing and start looking at what you are willing to do. 

It’s time to start changing your own life. 

If you need help figuring out what will work for you, please check out my coaching cast, Stop Dieting and Start Losing. Through this engaging and exciting program, I work with you to break the enchanting spell of diets and the yo-yo diet cycle. You’ll learn to build healthy habits into your life over time. 

You will start your weight-loss journey from a place of gratitude and self-respect, so you can reach a place that is healthier, sustainable, maintainable and full of love.

Right now there seems to be a divide between the body-positive and health-at-every-size camps and those who want to lose weight. 

Many argue that if you love yourself, you shouldn’t try to change yourself or your body. Or if you do lose weight, you can’t, or don’t, love yourself. 

My advice is don’t pick one side or the other.

I lost weight without learning to love my body. I also tried learning to love my body without losing weight. 

What I discovered was that, for me, neither of these two approaches produced the happy, balanced results I wanted. 

Let me be clear: There are positive ideas to be taken from both of these extremes. However, I believe the truth is found somewhere in the middle, merging weight loss and learning how to be body positive together. 

When I lost 170 pounds, I wasn’t body positive or grateful for my body. So when I reached my goal weight, I was miserable. I still didn’t see a body that looked like the ones portrayed in media. All the lines I told myself, like—”I will like my body once I lose weight, once my body is “fixed”—turned out to be lies.

So was weight loss the reason I wasn’t body positive? 

No. I wasn’t body positive because I never chose to be.

It never occurred to me to like my body where it was in the moment. The idea of “liking my body” was always a future destination: I will like my body when…

So was losing weight wrong? No. My poor health and lack of mobility were making me miserable and preventing me from living life the way I wanted to. I needed and wanted to lose weight to help with chronic back and foot pain. At the time, I knew that as someone in my early 30s, I shouldn’t be having problems getting up and down from the floor while playing with my kids. 

I needed and wanted to lose weight. I stand by that decision and I’m thankful every day that I did it. However, I do wish I’d known that even though losing weight would help with my physical limitations, it wasn’t going to help me love, respect, and be positive about my body. 

In my podcast, The Half Size Me Show, I always ask my guests what advice they would give their younger selves. For me, the answer is this: I would go back to the 30-something me and tell her to build in a daily body-gratitude practice. I’d do this so that no matter what my body looked like in the future, I’d be able to love it. 

I have learned that to love and respect your body is a choice. It doesn’t magically happen from achieving a certain weight or being a certain size. When I got to my goal weight, I fell into a depression for a while because I still saw sagging skin, fat rolls, and cellulite. I’d lost all that weight but I didn’t have a “magazine beach body”.  

But I started changing how I viewed my body. I realized I had a body that didn’t hurt anymore. A body that could do all the amazing things I’d always wanted to do. I shifted my focus to maintenance and to feeling positive and grateful for my body. I started a daily practice of sharing my gratitude. 

This daily act of gratitude helped make me feel more neutral about my body. I was less hateful, less negative, and I stopped obsessing over every “flaw”. 

I made myself a promise: If I couldn’t say something positive about my body, I would say nothing at all.

I’ve taken baby steps toward my own body positivity (and two of these steps I’m still working on): 

• Step One: Gratitude. It is not about how my body looks but what it provides me, my family and the world. (It took me 1 to 2 years to accept this.)
• Step 2: Focusing on the areas I like. I choose to not allow my eyes to go to the areas I find “flawed”. (I’m still working on this one.) 
• Step 3: Learning to like and appreciate those areas I find “flawed.” This is the trickiest step for me. I can and do practice this now. I’m grateful for the rolls on my stomach that housed my three beautiful boys. Thankful for my larger limbs because they are powerful, and my larger calves because they have supported me at all stages of my journey. (I’m still working on this step too.) 

I believe you can lose weight and still be body positive. 

In fact, if you do want to lose weight, I believe you should learn to be body positive throughout the entire process.

If you are limited in mobility, in pain, or saying no to activities you would really love to do because of your weight, then weight loss can help. You should never feel shame for wanting to improve yourself or your life.

Losing weight does not have to be negatively charged. You can choose to be grateful for your body at any weight because without it, you can’t live life. 

Focus on being body positive by showing gratitude and treating your body with respect throughout the process. 

In my next post, I’ll share how you can actually lose weight and be body positive.

Everything—trends, diet programs, fashion—happens in cycles and waves. 

As I write this, it’s popular to give up on the goal of weight loss. The current message is that if you love yourself, you will not diet or attempt to lose weight. I understand the sentiment, but I disagree with the conclusion.

When I set out on my own weight loss journey, it was from a place of love. However, it wasn’t a love of myself or my body. At that point in my journey, I didn’t love my body or myself. It’s sad, but true.

Actually, the love that helped start my journey was the love of the life I wanted to live— love of my future self. It grew from the love I had for my children. I knew the kind of mom I wanted to be and at over 300 pounds, I was limited in what I could do with my kids. 

But instead of approaching my weight loss from a place of harshness and unrealistic expectations, like all of my past attempts, I was finally willing to start from a place of love and patience. 

I committed to do nothing drastic, or painful, or unsustainable. I would only change things that I really believed I could do forever without resentment. And this simple shift in my approach was full of love and self-compassion. 

All of my earlier attempts were about punishing myself to reach the goal, no matter what. I was super restrictive. I didn’t allow myself treats. I’d beat myself up, and withhold food to make up for perceived mistakes. 

This last (and final) time losing weight, however, I decided to be kind. To make smaller changes. To find the middle ground between wanting to lose weight and treating myself with respect.

A Parent’s Love

I see losing weight and building healthy habits as a type of parental love. I love my kids, so I don’t allow them to do whatever they want, whenever they want. My husband and I have created healthy boundaries around computer time and treats. We encourage good habits like daily movement. These types of boundaries aren’t to punish. They come from a place of love. 

People thrive when some boundaries are in place. When we are allowed to do whatever we want, whenever we want, it doesn’t lead to a balanced life. For example, consider college students who are finally on their own as legal adults. They explore their new limits. Many will gain weight, abuse alcohol, try drugs, stay up too late, or party excessively. Of course, not all do this, but many do.

It is totally normal to test our limits. But as we mature, we realize we can’t continue to live that way. 

If you want to actually make progress in your life—financially, physically, emotionally—you actually have to work at it. This realization and the establishment of healthy boundaries is an act of parental love—for yourself.

It’s unrealistic and unkind to expect perfection and immediate change from yourself. But what if you start from a place of love, looking at your current habits and behaviors?

Are you treating yourself with love? 

Do you have healthy boundaries?

Think like a parent. Would you let your kids or pets eat whatever they want, whenever they want? Would you let them not do their homework because they don’t feel like it? Would you let them wear the same clothes every day because they don’t feel like taking a shower?

You need the same loving boundaries that kids and pets need. Boundaries like:

• setting limits (but not bans) on treats
• planning nutritious meals to help you perform your best all day
• taking time to cook for yourself
• getting enough sleep so you can thrive the next day
• knowing what you need to feel pleasure or happiness, and 
• making sure your needs are met so you don’t get burned out

A successful balance between weight loss and self-love is consistently doing a little something every day so you make a little bit of progress. This will lead to big changes. 

Focus on treating your body with love and respect by feeding it well, giving it enough rest, and caring for your emotional needs. 

You can have both weight loss and self-love.  

You can build a weight-loss approach that combines and balances self-love and the desire to change your body. But you need to slowly build in healthy habits and loving parental boundaries with yourself. 

If you find this idea challenging and you need more help with it, please check out my Stop Dieting and Start Losing coaching cast. I will work with you to start building these healthy habits and a loving relationship with yourself.