Trim Healthy Mama Plan

Copyright © 2015 by Pearl P. Barrett and Serene C. Allison

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Harmony Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Harmony Books is a registered trademark, and the Circle colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

ISBN 9781101902639

eBook ISBN 9781101902646

Cover photograph by Kris D'Amico Photography

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The material in this book is for informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for the advice and care of your physician. As with all new diet and fitness regimens, the nutrition and fitness program described in this book should be followed only after first consulting with your physician to make sure it is appropriate for your individual circumstances. The author and publisher expressly disclaim responsibility for any adverse effects that may result from the use or application of the information contained in this book.

We dedicate this book to our families—our husbands and children who put up with us so patiently while we poured our guts into this project.

“I'll take you out on a special day when this book is done.”

“We'll go camping when this book is done.”

“We'll make time for fun stuff when this book is done.”

They heard lines like these every day and took them with a smile even though completing what was supposed to be a little…but grew into a medium-size book took much longer than we expected.

“Can you change the baby's diaper while I am writing the end of this chapter?”

“Honey…can you go grocery shopping for me because there's just no way I can fit it in?”

They all stepped up to the plate and worked hard to keep our homes running smoothly. The sweetest part was their loving understanding when we became less than sane burning the candles at both ends with hours of research and writing marathons together. We love you guys!!!!

Food freedom! Are you ready for it?

What a comfort when the realization hits: Discovering your trim and healthy self does not have to feel like a brutal sprint you must endure. It can be a relaxing, lifelong journey you'll actually enjoy. There are no number goals to be met by a certain time. No self-scolding if weight doesn't come off according to someone else's patterns. No scale obsession. No strict portion sizes to adhere to. Good riddance to all of that! You don't need it.

The key to finding and maintaining “your trim” for life is not mustering up more self-control. It's not found in obsessively measuring portions and counting bites. Our own willpower fails most of us in the end. The key is finding a simple, slimming way of eating—a way of eating you would actually prefer, day in and day out, over your old way of eating. Once you start enjoying your healthy, slimming foods so much that you feel sorry for everybody else who is not eating like you, that's when you know you've found the answer—you've got the recipe for lifelong success right there, baby!

Our motto: Treat yourself to goal, then keep on treating for life.

It wasn't our Creator's plan for it to be a miserable, almost impossible feat to have a trim figure after the age of twenty-five and a couple pregnancies under your belt. It just takes some understanding. Gain the right knowledge and you'll never look at your plate of food in the same way. Your body will begin the mystifying Trim Healthy Mama shrink!

This is the gentle and fun road to trim and healthy. It is not just for crunchy health food types. You don't have to be an exercise fanatic to make this work. Whether you love to cook from scratch with the purest of ingredients or you can barely boil water, come as you are.

Once upon a time (well, three years ago to be more exact), something incredible happened. We self-published a book
about how we had found our way out of the maze of diet fads, food fear, and miserable food bondage. We shared the concept of Food Freedom: a way of eating that is naturally slimming, healthy, and so indulgent and tasty that it makes you look like an idiot because you can't stop trying to force it onto your friends and family. Shamelessly, you don't care about your new dorky reputation because you want others to experience this freedom, too.

We knew nothing about book publishing, blogging, or marketing so we thought we might give away (force) some copies of the book on friends and neighbors and possibly sell a few on a homemade website. We were compelled to throw this lifeline of hope out there since it had revolutionized our own lives.

Somehow, the message caught on.

The Trim and Healthy versus skinny and deprived approach to eating resonated deep in diet-weary souls. Mamas shared the message with other Mamas and our ridiculous-looking homemade website started humming with hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands of orders. Soon, families, women's groups, churches, and entire communities ditched the diet fads with us and the Food Freedom movement was born.

Gotta confess, we felt special for maybe a minute or two but then quickly realized the spread of Trim Healthy Mama was not due to any genius writing skills on our part. Our readers were the reason this message became a movement. They caught the bug and would not stay quiet.

We're not doctors, certified nutritionists, or dieticians wearing sterile white coats. We are stay-at-home Mamas with stains on our T-shirts; crazy, chaotic lives; and eighteen children between us. We are
homeperts
not experts, but amazingly women all over the globe gave us a little bit of baby-step belief. Those seeds of faith grew into huge life transformations. That way-too-big, 640-page book, written by diet guru nobodies, became a
New York Times
bestseller without a cent spent on advertising—spelling mistakes and all! (Spelling
piza
instead of
pizza
, among other errors, is a tad unprofessional—blush.)

It would be impossible to get tired of reading all the messages, Facebook posts, and e-mails that stream in daily from people who half expect their scale to go up due to the decadent food they get to thrive on on the plan. There's often a lot of disbelief at first:
Chocolate? Coffee and cream? Butter? Pancakes? Muffins? Ice cream?
You mean I get to eat all that and the scale moves down? Where's the catch?

We can almost hear the laughter in their messages to us, “It's working!”

Hope.

It zings out of their words.

And we laugh, and sometimes cry tears of joy, right along with them. Because we know the feeling—we remember well that first glimpse of food peace and freedom. The constant confusion about what to eat for both health and weight began to fade into the past.

Ahem…scuze us while we clear our throats for a second before coming clean. Okay, we admit it, not
all
our fan mail has been perfectly rosy. We were flooded with daily messages asking us to write a smaller book, one that teaches the plan in a more concise manner, one that a guy might actually want to pick up and read; and some even asked us to nix all our (awesome) sisterly chitchat.

THE NERVE!!!! Nah, we actually get it: Even (riveting) chitchat like ours can be too much at times.

We also heard from thousands of people who took our book to office supply stores and
(GASP!)
had it cut up. They separated the recipe section from the plan itself because they found the enormous book much too cumbersome to have in the kitchen—and they were serious about making our recipes.

“Give us the plan—keep it simple. Give us a cookbook—keep it separate.” We heard those two requests over and over.

So here you have it, a much smaller, more concise book that teaches you the basics of the plan in a simple way. This book is a mere pipsqueak in size compared with the first Goliath of a book, as we don't want you spending your hard-earned money chopping this one up.
Trim Healthy Mama Plan: Keep It Simple, Keep It Sane
also includes lots of tips to help you get started, along with menu ideas for your unique situation. We also have new information we've been burning to share for the last year or so. For this reason we couldn't get 'er done in one hundred pages or less, but we think you'll agree you'd rather be fully informed than have a speedy read.

Is this book one a guy will want to read? Honestly? Jury's out on that one: Our own husbands never read our first book despite loving all our THM foods and we doubt they'll read this one, either. While thousands of men have lost weight and gained health the Trim Healthy way (including our own guys), we are women who write to women, that's our thang.
But we did include one chapter for men. Hopefully the male species won't need to read too much more than that one small chapter to get the gist of what this is all about. And don't ask too much from us; we did our best to suppress most of our (enchanting) chitchat but we couldn't help letting a few exchanges slide.

The companion cookbook, the
Trim Healthy Mama Cookbook
, is chock-full of new recipes along with some of our most popular recipes. It includes lots of beautiful color pictures to inspire you to get cooking. The recipes are easy, fast, tasty, and family friendly, and we've also included many recipes for people who are sensitive to gluten or dairy. If your budget is tight and purchasing the cookbook is too much of a stretch, don't fret, there are hundreds of free Trim Healthy Mama recipes on Pinterest, on hundreds of blogger sites, and on our own Facebook fan page and website. Ask for the cookbook for your birthday or Christmas or reserve it at your library, but in the meantime there's no reason you can't get started without it. In fact, while new recipes are fun and tasty, you don't actually need them to do this plan. Once you understand the principles you can simply tweak your own family's favorite meals to make them Trim Healthy Mama friendly or come up with your own simple ideas.

While we were blown away at the response to the Trim Healthy Mama message, once that surprise wore off we began to realize—no wonder!—Mamas relate to being stuck in an awful place called “done.” That place where you throw your hands up because you have had enough of the fads, enough of the seesawing of weight loss and weight gain. It is a huge relief to know there is a way out. For too long we had been stuck there ourselves.

If the Trim Healthy Mama approach is new to you, perhaps you're currently in your own state of done. You are tired of hearing all the conflicting and confusing noise about what to eat and are doing your darnedest to avoid all the diet nonsense that keeps cycling around. You're so “done,” you'd rather tune it all out, thank you very much.

Hanging out in Doneville has its downsides but the alternatives are even less appealing. Like us, you've been on so many different food fads that you're gun-shy about dramatically changing your eating habits once again. You've tried the diets that leave you hungry, leave out food groups, leave out calories, leave you out of pocket, leave out the rest of the family, and worst of all, leave out practicality and basic common sense.

You're so “done” trying to do better and discouraged that it has to be so difficult that you're almost willing to live with extra pounds and health issues rather than try another weight-loss plan.

Just hearing the words
new diet
makes you do an inward grimace. Roll eyes. Been there done that—no thanks! Yet the headlines and advertisements continue to scream ridiculous promises:
HOW TO LOSE TEN POUNDS IN TEN DAYS
, or
DROP TWENTY-FIVE POUNDS IN YOUR FIRST MONTH ON A DOCTOR-APPROVED PLAN!

Here's our promise to you: We guarantee zero pounds lost in the first month!

Yep!

Are we nuts for making this claim? What
is
nuts is the same old dietary boot camp approach that is continually pushed on us Mamas. Nuts is doing something miserable and unsustainable just so you can force a new low number on the scale by a certain date.

In your first few weeks on Trim Healthy Mama, you will probably lose a lot more than zero pounds (most people do), but if you don't lose any weight in the first month that is perfectly fine. Why allow a number to rob your joy? There is no need to throw in the towel or feel like a failure if the scale doesn't move much at first. Some people don't lose weight initially because their bodies have some healing to do after all the metabolism-destroying diets they've been on. And hey, it takes a little while to learn to live a lifestyle versus a strict diet. Others don't lose weight because weight is not the issue; they want to do this plan for blood-sugar stability and health rather than a number on the scale. Others are doing this plan to nourish a healthy pregnancy, and weight loss is not the goal during this time.

We'll be the first to admit there are lots of diets that will whip weight off you in a much speedier fashion than with the Trim Healthy Mama approach. If speed is all you are looking for, you are reading the wrong book. The first two words of this book are “Food Freedom.” Keep them in mind. You can boot-camp your way to drop quick pounds; but if it is just more misery, then how is that going to work out for your future? It's not. Nuff said.

Deep down we all know diets tied to promises and guarantees like these are not sustainable. They ask things of you that are too difficult to keep up when life hits hard—and life always does. Your instincts whisper a sane caution. Why go back down those rabbit holes?
You're maxed out already. How to find the time? How to make it work with the family? How to afford it? Most of us with families cannot wave a magic wand that transforms our budget to cover “organic only.” Don't they get it? There is no way you can slip a full hour or two of exercise into your day, or spend precious time juicing several pounds of carrots, or give up meat or dairy or coffee or the occasional glass of wine. Might as well just stay here in Doneville, thanks. It's starting to feel real comfortable.

But the danger of being “done” is that it is stagnant. It's like a vehicle stopped on the side of the highway. That vehicle will only rust and deteriorate if it doesn't get back on the road. The previous direction may have been the wrong way, but skidding to a halt and remaining in one precarious place is not going to fix anything. Stopping has to be the initiation of a new direction, the beginning of a turnaround.

Mustering enough faith to try again, to “do better,” can be scary. We get that. It is especially scary when you have your suspicions that nobody actually knows what “better” is supposed to be. There are so many conflicting “betters.” Sure, fewer potato chips, drive-thru burgers, or sodas is a good start, but what do you replace those with?

Rabbit food? Meal replacement shakes? Little boxes of microwaved “mini me” diet food? Shudder!

Should you go paleo and eat like a caveman?

Should you cut out meat altogether or eat mostly meat?

Should you shun carbs or load up on them? Shun fats or load up on them?

How about just eating healthy? Sounds sensible enough. Hmm, but what does that really mean? To make sure not one GMO food ever touches your lips? To shop only at your organic food market? Sure, let's avoid genetically modified foods when we can; but is it really possible to live in that kind of bubble and stay sane? Ever heard of anyone sick with anxiety over food purity? Yup, it happened to us!

Truth be told, many people eat a whole lot better than a sodas-and-fries diet yet still have major issues with weight and health. They steer away from toxins and chemicals, not a whole lot of junk food for them. What gives? Why does consuming healthy, homemade food make some of us as overweight as when we eat fast food, and why do health problems remain?

If you cut to the chase, which diet is really the right way to eat? “Do” versus “done” can be a real dilemma. We'd spent our lives searching for the optimum diet and only harmed our health in the process following fad after fad. We were desperate and determined to find a solid footing in the churning sea of dietary confusion. But we had to sift through all the nonsense before we finally found the truths.