When I was in middle school, high school and the first few years of college, I was SO unhappy with my body and my weight.

I didn’t want to just “accept my body” because I knew I would be more confident and comfortable a few pounds lighter.

I would look at my friends and be so jealous. Why couldn’t I just look like that? They were eating chocolate and pizza and takeout. It felt really unfair.

Hey, vanity is allowed!

But I couldn’t find a way to lose those pounds without starving myself, or without having to cancel plans with friends in order to stick with “my plan”.

I tried a number of diets – but, as I’m sure you can imagine, they lasted about a few hours, or a few days at most. They just weren’t sustainable.

It seemed like a real lose-lose situation. It got so bad that I actually had to take time off from college to focus on my relationship with food, and focus on self-care.

During this time at home, I knew something drastic needed to change. I knew I needed more nutrition knowledge about what exactly would help me get to, and stay at, the weight I wanted.

I started taking some nutrition classes at a community college, and when I went back to my university, I switched my major to nutrition.

I’d like to tell you it was smooth sailing after that… but I was a work in progress for another few years!

It took getting my PhD in behavior change, and coaching hundreds of women, and seeing what worked, and what didn’t work, to come up with a customizable system that kept me, and my clients, at our ideal weights, for the LONG term!

And, most importantly, I finally was able to figure out what I really wanted – true happiness and bliss, and a mind free of food thoughts.There is so much more to life than constantly thinking about food, SO MUCH more!

First and foremost, let’s talk nutrition science. The most important thing to me is that you are full and satisfied.

Research does show that protein & fats are more satisfying that carbohydrates. Here are some excellent, well researched articles on the subject:

However! Starchy foods, while they may not be as physically filling, are physiologically satisfying!

Here are my rules of thumb for weight loss

1. One starchy food per day

Starchy foods include grains like bread, rice, pasta, and quinoa, but also starchy vegetables like potatoes, beans, peas, corn, hummus, French fries, etc.

Here’s a list of starchy foods and non-starchy veggies

Sticking with 1 serving of starchy foods is ideal – so 1 piece of bread, or 1/2 cup of cooked rice or starch veg like peas.

2. One fruit per day

For the same reason we’re limiting starchy foods, fruits have 2, 3, 4, 5 times as many calories as non-starchy vegetables, and they’re not really any more filling.

And I want you to be as full as possible!

3. Don’t drink your calories

If we had some fruits, and then we blended them up and made them into a smoothie, research shows you’d be psychologically, and physiologically less full on the smoothie.

Along the same lines, chewing nuts is typically more filling than nut butters. It’s too easy to eat half that jar of peanut butter, but if you had try to chew on all the peanuts that made that same amount of peanut butter, it may be difficult.

And finally, in this same bucket, I’d recommend choosing low calorie salad dressings instead of higher calorie ones. Salad dressing isn’t filling itself, but the taste is often needed!

Getting the food under control is of course incredibly important, but other items are equally, if not more important: