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.
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.
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 familiesour husbands and children who put up with us so patiently while we poured our guts into this project.
Ill take you out on a special day when this book is done.
Well go camping when this book is done.
Well 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 littlebut grew into a medium-size book took much longer than we expected.
Honeycan you go grocery shopping for me because theres 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!!!!
introduction
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 youll actually enjoy. There are no number goals to be met by a certain time. No self-scolding if weight doesnt come off according to someone elses patterns. No scale obsession. No strict portion sizes to adhere to. Good riddance to all of that! You dont need it.
The key to finding and maintaining your trim for life is not mustering up more self-control. Its 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 eatinga 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, thats when you know youve found the answeryouve got the recipe for lifelong success right there, baby!
Our motto: Treat yourself to goal, then keep on treating for life.
It wasnt our Creators 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 youll 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 dont 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.
THE CRAZY STORY
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 cant stop trying to force it onto your friends and family. Shamelessly, you dont 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, womens 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.
Were 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 advertisingspelling mistakes and all! (Spelling piza instead of pizza, among other errors, is a tad unprofessionalblush.)
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. Theres 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? Wheres the catch?
We can almost hear the laughter in their messages to us, Its 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 feelingwe 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.
Ahemscuze 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.