INTRODUCTION-MEN HAVE MOODS, WOMEN HAVE PERIODS.

I'm not angry, damn it.

I'm passionate.

Passionate about getting this message to every woman on earth.

Passionate about stopping the insanity.

The insanity of starvation, deprivation, and destroying our self-esteem for the sake of skinniness.

The insanity that has affected, and all too often ruined, the lives of millions of women.

Who wouldn't be passionate about stopping the insanity for Betty, who lost the enamel on her teeth and was hospitalized with a hiatal hernia from vomiting so much?

Then there's Julie, born with a medical problem. Several abdominal surgeries and thirty years later, she walked into my studio weighing 250 pounds.

This was where she was after having tried every diet under the sun and failing.

And what about Teresa? She lost 126 pounds on a doctor-sponsored liquid fast program. But she lost the weight so fast, her skin was hanging from her body.

Her solution? Cosmetic surgery, leaving her with huge scars under both arms and inner thighs. When I met Teresa, she was desperately afraid. She was gaining the weight back—you know, the way 98 percent of us do on those liquid fast programs. Her doctor had forgotten to tell her that the odds were against her and that she could end up with huge stretch marks all over her body as the weight poured back on.

My passion (maybe there is a little anger) comes from having been through "it" myself. I was a 260-pound housewife, feeling desperately out of control, afraid, hurting physically and

emotionally, trying every diet out there and, like Julie, failing. Failure—not being able to regain the control I needed so desperately, the breakup of my marriage, single parenthood, and all the emotions that went along with watching my life take a nosedive toward the gutter.

Somebody told me during the middle of my descent that all bad experiences bring new life and growth. Well, to say I wasn't open to this metaphysical wisdom would be an understatement. I have a really hard time following anything that intangible. "I know I'll grow from this, BUT RIGHT NOW I'M IN A HELL OF A LOT OF PAIN, SO BRING ON THE NUMBING, WHETHER IT'S FOOD OR DEMEROL ... JUST BRING IT ON."

People come up to me everywhere I go—I am not exactly unrecognizable; it's not as if they look and say, "There's something about you that reminds me of that lady on the 'Home' show, give me a second, let me think" (with this hair either I am or I am not that woman)—and say, "Hey, you are that lady who talks to fat people." Not true—I speak to anybody who can't walk up a flight of stairs without sucking wind; it doesn't matter if you're as thin as a twig, you are unfit. Anybody who doesn't have the upper body, abdominal, or lower body strength to hold themselves up is unfit. Anybody with an unhealthy percentage of body fat—whether that's 10 percent over or 50 percent over—is unfit. Or anybody without decent flexibility. I don't speak to "fat" people. I speak to anyone who wants to look and feel better and improve the quality of their lives. Anybody.

I am not a physician, dietitian, nutritionist, or diet or fitness expert. I am a housewife who figured it out. Broke the system.

Busted them-The American Medical Association and the diet and fitness industries had fooled me for years, making me feel as if I needed a degree to figure it out—as if this whole thing were just too complicated for my simple little mind and I needed them to help me sort it out. . . making me believe I lacked the discipline, motivation, and control to stick to any diet for any length of time. Boys, boys, boys, you shouldn't have done that to me.

My life-style was killing me mentally and physically. I felt terrible. I had every ache and pain in the article. I weighed 260 pounds, I was suffering and being treated for depression, and I hated the way I looked and felt. I could no longer live feeling and looking the way I did. My motivation was desperation. Sitting around waiting for the heart attack, hypertension, osteoporosis, or whatever else would strike me down was one thing. Not being able to sit comfortably for more than a few minutes was the real problem. It was uncomfortable and it hurt. I could wait until it got worse or I could change my life-style. Scary thought when you are presented with the options given by the American Medical Association, the diet industry, and the fitness industry. Bland, boring, complicated foods; no more fun stuff. Low-calorie,

got-to-get-that-weight-off shakes, pills, and powders. They are fun enough, but you are told to add those beat-the-hell-out-of-yourself exercise classes that leave you with lockjaw of the calf and feeling like a fat, uncoordinated slob.

Based on the options we are given, I can understand statements like these:

"Give up my sirloin? Life just ain't worth living if I gotta do that." (Notice the southern touch there.)

"I'm not spending the rest of my life eating this rabbit food."

"What do you want me to do, turn into one of those health nuts?"

"I don't have time for this stuff."

When what you're offered in return is that instant, frozen, powdered blah stuff that's called diet or "good for you" food, it's no wonder you are frightened, cautious, and unwilling to change.

Each diet I tried led to failure, and each failure led to the next. When one diet didn't work, I'd go right on to another—liquid starvation, pills, shakes, diet bars, or whatever was being blasted at me as the answer. Why I thought one diet was any different from another is exactly why all of us who are trying to lose weight spend years going from one starvation plan to the next: desperation.

I would have done anything (and I mean anything) to look and feel better. To be skinny. If someone had told me that cutting off my right arm would have made me skinny forever, I would have severed the limb without anesthesia. If there was a diet on earth that worked, I would have found it, you would have found it—we've all done the same things. Eventually we would have bumped into the answer, the one that worked, the solution to the problem, and there wouldn't be a fat person on this planet. According to the Centers for Disease Control, over 34 million people in the United States are fat. You are not alone, this is a national epidemic. Collectively we spend $5 billion (I guess we've all got some cash to burn) trying—the operative word here is

"trying"—over and over and over again to lose weight. But 98 percent of us gain back any weight we lose. The odds are not good, folks; this is not a good investment.

You give us your money and we'll give you some freeze-dried, instant, kaka-fiavored substitute for food. You will be edgy, unhappy, and have no energy. It will work, you will lose some weight for a very short period of time, and like the other 98 percent of the people who have tried this program, you will gain the weight back and need us again in a few months.

You don't have to be a physician, dietitian, or nutritionist to figure it out. This is not a good deal.

But don't be discouraged—you've got the answer in your hands, so read on.

The aerobics industry humiliated me, the diet industry starved me, and the medical industry tranquilized me! I decided enough already—there has to be a better way!

Stop the Insanity! Is about how I broke the system. How I figured it out and started talking. I have a story to tell. So do thousands of women like me. They are changing the way they look and feel. At times it's very funny and too often it's very sad. But as we share our stories, we come to understand that the effort required to do it right, to stop the insanity in our lives, will never be as great as the money, time, and self-esteem wasted on the endless diets, programs, pills, shakes, instant cures, and quick fixes.

*3\279\2*