Jena la Flamme - Pleasurable Weight Loss: The Secrets to Feeling Great, Losing Weight, and Loving Your Life Today

FOR MICHAEL ELLSBERG

This book will always be our baby

RECEIVE FREE ARTICLES, VIDEOS, INVITATIONS

to Complimentary Classes, and Bonus Content Exclusive to this BookJoin My Email List

As a thank you for buying this book, I would like to email you two companion bonuses, The Secrets of Pleasurable Style Guide and Guided Meditations. To access them for free, go to PleasurableWeightLoss.com/secretbonus and enter your email address. When you join my list youll also receive articles, video content, and invitations to my webinars and free online classes.

The Secrets of Pleasurable Style Guide will show you how to have more pleasure in your life immediately by learning how to dress for your shape. Simply dressing in a way that flatters your body can make you look ten pounds lighter in an instant. Discover your personal style, the wardrobe essentials every woman needs to feel great in her body, and many other secrets of pleasurable style.

Guided Meditations will help you integrate the teachings in this book with your daily life. They have been developed to help you shift your relationships with your female body, eating, and pleasure. This exclusive audio content can be downloaded so that you can take the meditations with you wherever you go.

I send only quality content to my email listno spamand I will never give your information to anyone else. You can remove yourself at any time with one click. Enjoy these gifts with my gratitude.

Contents

foreword

By Mama Gena

THERE ARE MOMENTS of unasked for, unexpected grace that can occasionally happen in the lifetime of an educator. One of those moments is encountering a student who is so filled with passion, joy, and enthusiasm for the work that she gives even more than she receives from the class she is taking. The other moment is when a student takes the material and carves her own magnificent trail in the world, taking herself and everyone in her pathway higher because of her voice and her deepest souls calling. Jena la Flamme has given me both gifts, and more. With this extraordinary book, I have had the remarkable experience of witnessing my dear friend Jena step into her voice as a leader in the Pleasure Revolution and as a leader for women in the world. And I had the privilege of learning so much, personally, from her incredible research and creativity in the world of women, pleasure, and weight loss.

Whether we are fat or thin, young or old, every woman I have ever encountered struggles, not only with weight, but as Jena so brilliantly points out, with every aspect of her relationship with her body. We dont trust our own intuition, we dont treat ourselves with reverence, we ignore our deepest truths and deepest longings, and we devalue the importance of pleasure. Looking for whats wrong with ourselves is so deeply ingrained; we cant even sense whats right. It has taken thousands of years of a patriarchal culture to teach women to hate themselves, doubt themselves, and mistrust themselves to the degree that we do. In this incredibly powerful book, Jena gracefully and gently leads us to a whole new world of love and partnership with the most important people in our livesourselves. Essentially, she undoes a millennium of negativity in a single well-crafted volume.

I have been teaching women about pleasure for over twenty years, and Jena opened my heart, mind, and body to a whole new paradigm. When she described her revelation, in the very first chapter, that her body was a perfect female animal who knew everything it needed to know, who knew every way it needed to move, who she could trust to know everything it needed to eat and every pleasure it required to fill its soul, I was stopped in my tracks. I had never ever thought of my body in that way, and I could hear my female animal not just sigh with relief, but enthusiastically take me by the hand as if to show me, teach me, and tell me everything she had wanted me to know and hear and benefit from. For years, my own female animal had been longing to collaborate with me and guide me, but I had not ever trusted her enough to pay attention. It was the greatest gift to finally reconnect with myself in a way I had never even dreamed possible. To find out that I was my own best ally has been such a game changer for me. Not only have I lost weight, but I am actually enjoying the fun of collaborating with myself. Each day, each meal has turned from a struggle of disapproval, restriction, and guilt to an interesting dialogue of desire and enjoyment. In fact, now that I have turned over the controls to my beautiful female body, my desire to binge on carbs or indulge in way too much chocolate has disappeared. I can feel myself, and I can feel how the food impacts my well-being. Instead of making a decision to overeat because I am emotionally wrought or feeling deprived, my new deal with my body is that she can have anything she wants, anything that will bring her pleasure, anything that she desires. Therefore, I actually find I want to choose things that will make me feel great, and I no longer operate from a sense of deprivation. Wow. This is a whole new world of experience for me, where every day becomes an adventure in pleasure rather than an adventure in restriction and distortion.

Jena not only brilliantly navigates a womans relationship with food, but also applies her genius to movement and exercise. What woman wouldnt want to learn to move in a way that is natively woman? Jena opens her readers imaginations to try forms of exercise and movement that are innately feminine, enabling us to connect even more deeply to our beautiful female animals. After reading about Jenas adventures with salsa, I cannot wait to try it myself.

I am so excited for every woman to experience Jenas work. When women are free from shame, free from doubt, free from self-hatred, we become bold and powerful. When we stand in rapport with our bodies, we are unafraid to speak our truths, stand for our deepest beliefs, and risk the joy and vulnerability of true sisterhood.

This book is not just about pleasurable weight lossit is a book about deepening our connection with the fun and privilege of being a woman. Its a book about connecting with our bodies in a way we have always longed for. Its a book about learning how to reconnect with our deepest intuitions and live from that sacred spot. Jena reminds all of us to be on a first-name basis with the ecstatic joy and pleasure that is possible in each and every moment. And for that, I am deeply grateful.

Regena Thomashauer (a.k.a. Mama Gena)

New York City

January 2015

introduction

The Feminine Power of Pleasure

WELCOME, WOMAN. Youre embarking on a journey that will unite you with a feminine force that will transform your body and your lifepleasure. When a woman finds her pleasure, she glows. She radiates confidence. She becomes wildly attractive. And best of all, she feels absolutely fabulous in her skinfully relaxed yet ready to take on any challenge, including weight loss.

Over the past twelve years, Ive found that the secret to losing weight is not about enjoying less but about enjoying more. Ive discovered that the path to losing weight is much more than a 30-day plan: its a whole new way of living and relating to food and your body. My techniques affect women on a deep and meaningful level, and, dare I say, with these feminine strategies, you will actually enjoy the process of losing weight.

While this is not per se a diet book, by following my program, youll see weight loss results, just like the thousands of women whove worked with me. But to get the most out of the experience, youll need to adopt a whole new perspective on weight loss. My approach is effective only when you learn to trust your female body and pleasure. The tools I share will put you on the path to profound self-love. The journey may challenge you, but I guarantee that the pursuit of feeling good in your skin is worth the effort. And when youre on the other side, youll feel better than ever about yourself and your appearance. Surprisingly, you can accomplish all this without denying yourself the foods, or any form of pleasure, you love.