The idea of “food freedom” means different things to different people. Maybe it’s eating whatever you want without negative consequences to your health or waistline. (Good luck with that.) Maybe it’s giving up your obsession with calorie counting, food restriction, and the scale. (Now we’re getting somewhere.) If you ask me, I’d say it means finally feeling in control of food, instead of food controlling you. It means indulging when you decide it’s worth it, savoring the experience without guilt or shame, and then returning to your regularly scheduled healthy habits.

That’s real food freedom.

But getting there is hard. Holding on to it is even harder. And creating the kind of balance, sustainability, and control that sticks with you for the rest of your life has always been the diet industry’s unicorn—amazing to believe in, but impossible to obtain.

Until now.

I’m going to show you exactly how to discover food freedom for yourself, no matter how out of control you feel right now. I’ll point you down a self-directed path that keeps you in control, satisfied, and looking and feeling your best, without requiring that you obsess about food, count calories, or starve yourself. I’ll teach you how to cultivate a healthy relationship with food for the rest of your life. And at no point will you have to be a perfect eater, because being held to a standard of perfection goes against the very definition of “food freedom.”

The plan is outlined in three simple steps: engaging your reset, finding your balance, and recovering from slips. It’s designed to run in a cycle, one step feeding the next, empowering you to create the perfect eating plan for you—one that feels satisfying and sustainable while still delivering the health benefits you want. Here is the plan:

The Food Freedom 3-Step Plan

Step 1:Reset your health, habits, and relationship with food.

Step 2:Enjoy your food freedom.

Step 3:Acknowledge when you’re starting to slip.

Repeat as needed.

Um, yep. That’s it. (Told you it was simple.) It’s an ever-improving cycle; get in control ➞ strengthen your new healthy habits and find your balance ➞ lose control ➞ get back in control.

Yes, I did say “lose control.”

One of the reasons most other diet programs don’t actually work in the long term is their promise that once you complete the program—poof!—you’ll be changed forever. No more cravings, no more unhealthy habits, no more dieting. Ever.

That is incredibly unrealistic.

No short-term dietary intervention—not even the Whole30—has the power to completely and permanently overwrite decades of less-than-stellar health habits and a dysfunctional relationship with food. And even if it did, when stress enters the picture, those cravings, bad habits, and dependence on comfort foods inevitably return with a vengeance.

So yes, part of the Food Freedom plan includes you falling off the wagon, because you will, and I want to prepare you for that. What you are embarking upon is a constant cycle of progression, but it’s not linear. You’ll do well, then stumble. You’ll be in control, then fall back into old habits. You’ll have weeks of effortless balance, followed by (surprise!) a week of Carb-a-Palooza.

This is all totally okay.

Because unlike all those times you dieted and failed, this time it’s not failure; it’s just part of the process. This time, you’ll see slips as a valuable learning experience. This time, you will have a plan to recover. And because of that, you won’t beat yourself up about it—you’ll simply acknowledge where you are, reactivate your reset, and regain control.

The best part about this plan is that each time you run through the cycle (reset, achieve food freedom, start to slip, reset again), your time spent off the rails will be shorter, and the time you’re able to stay in control, enjoying the benefits of food freedom, will extend. Until eventually, ideally, you won’t need a reset at all; you’ll just be living each day according to your definition of food freedom.

I’ve been successfully following this food freedom strategy, fueled by periodic Whole30 resets, for more than seven years. If a holiday, vacation, or stressful event throws me off my healthy eating game for too long, I simply acknowledge that my habits have slipped, and come back to the Whole30 as my chosen method of reset. I no longer experience guilt when eating less-healthy food, and I no longer beat myself up for my “transgressions.” Even when I do slip or purposefully go off-plan, I never stray too far, my out-of-balance times are short, and the amount of time I need to reset is just a few days. The rest of the year, I’m totally in balance, indulging when it’s worth it and savoring every bite, but still feeling confident, healthy, and in control.

Yes, I still eat French fries. And my mom’s chocolate chip walnut cake. And yes, even those decidedly un-food-like chocolate crème eggs, because they remind me of home, and eating one makes me really happy. These foods are all part of my own self-created Food Freedom plan, and I’ve figured out how to work them into my life in a way that feels healthy and satisfying, but still lets me meet every single one of my health and fitness goals. The takeaway:

Food freedom doesn’t demand that you always eat perfectly.

In fact, just the opposite. Food freedom understands that you won’t eat perfectly all the time; that you’ll make poor choices in the excitement of a party, overindulge while on vacation in Italy, and fall off your healthy eating wagon at Thanksgiving. In fact, possibly for the first time in the history of a “diet,” those expectations are built right in. Which means you’re committing to a plan that actually makes sense, because I’m not afraid to acknowledge what you already know:

You will not always make good choices. Your healthy habits will eventually slip. You will, at some point, once again find yourself not entirely in control of your food. So let’s just work with that idea instead of against it.

Doesn’t that feel better?

Your Food Freedom Journey

Here’s a more detailed preview of how the Food Freedom plan works:

I’ll give you various options for your reset—the short-term eating plan that will catalyze and support new, healthy habits. Your reset will show you exactly how food affects your unique body and mind, change your relationship with food, and allow you to settle into an effortless new normal. For some people, this reset will be the Whole30; for others, it will be a customized program, tailored to your specific goals, health conditions, or dietary needs.

I’ll offer strategies for dealing with temptation, creating awareness around your habits, and spotting your specific “I ate the whole bag of chips” triggers before they’re pulled. You’ll learn a new language around food, banishing guilt and shame from your food vocabulary and taking the morality (“This food is good, but I’m bad when I eat this”) out of your choices. I’ll also outline the five reasons you’re likely to fall off the rails and back into old unhealthy habits, and give you a plan for managing special occasions, social pressures, and stress.

Most important, I’ll tell you how to gracefully recover from slips and reactivate your reset, keeping you on track with your health goals and feeling in control.

There’s also an entire section devoted to communicating with friends and family about your new, healthy lifestyle, because changing the food you put on your plate often changes your relationships (and not always for the better).

Your New Way of Eating

I’ll hammer this home again and again: The Food Freedom plan is not a diet, it’s a re-education. You’ll be conducting your own research, applying what you’ve learned, and holding yourself accountable every single day. Unlike other dietary crash courses, you’ll actually learn this material, and you (and your body) will retain it for the rest of your life. If food freedom had a Twitter account, its bio would read: “@FoodFreedomForever: Teaching you to be in control of the food you eat. No: Calorie counting; deprivation; ice-cream-as-therapist. Yes: Health, satisfaction, sustainability. And still sometimes ice cream.” However, you’ll notice that I sometimes refer to the Food Freedom plan as a “diet.” When that happens, I’m simply using it as a synonym for “your new way of eating.” In fact, once you adopt the food freedom plan, “diet” will take on a whole new meaning—one that doesn’t make you anxious, irritable, or hungry.

By the last page of this book, you’ll have a detailed map for creating a short-term protocol that’s maximally effective, helping you to discover the perfect diet for you, find your own form of balance, and maintain control in a world full of stress and temptation. Sound too good to be true? I promise it’s not. But that’s where this book differs from all the other diet books you’ve read. You know, the ones that toss around words like “effortless” and “fast” and swear that all your undesirable stuff (sugar cravings, extra weight, bad habits) will simply “melt away”? They promise that if we only buy the right book/try the right program/find the right expert, we won’t have to work that hard at all.

You and I both know that’s not true.

Here’s a not-so-secret secret: There are no shortcuts. Quick fixes don’t exist. There is no 7-Day Get Skinnier Than Your Friends Diet that will magically translate into truly good-for-you habits that last a lifetime. Which brings us to the first piece of tough love you’ll encounter in this book.

This will be hard.

While you go through the process, you’ll feel like your decisions around food are taking up too much of your time, your energy, your emotional capacity.

They are. It’s temporary.

You’ll wonder if you’re going to have to pay this much attention to what you eat for the rest of your life.

You won’t. It gets easier.

You’ll fear that you won’t be able to retain the amazing results of your reset once you’re back in the real world.

You can. You’ll find your balance.

You’ll be nervous that family and friends won’t understand that your relationship with food is truly different now.

They may not. I’ll help you here.

So yes, it requires some effort, as all good things do. And it will take time, as all good things do. Which bring us to Tough Love #2:

It’s not going to happen overnight.

Or in a month. Or maybe even a year. Discovering food freedom is a lifelong journey of purposeful evaluation, increased self-awareness, and commitment to the process. You can’t completely erase decades of bad habits and emotional relationships with food with one 30-day reset. You will spend many months on this path taking three steps forward and two steps back. The important thing is recognizing you’re always a step ahead of where you were, and acknowledging that even one step is progress.

The Food Freedom Cycle

Here’s a real-life example of the cycle in action: Your goal is to tame your Sugar Dragon (the one who breathes fire in the form of uncontrollable cravings), so you take on the Craving-Buster Reset. You spend 30 days resetting your health, habits, and relationship with food, and end the reintroduction period feeling confident and in control, your Sugar Dragon lulled to sleep in his cave. Then you go on vacation. By the end of your trip, your energy is nonexistent, your belly is puffy, and your Sugar Dragon has awoken with a vengeance. When you get home, you admit that your healthy habits are in serious jeopardy, so you return to your reset until you regain your energy, lose the bloat, and feel back in control. You mentally log what you’ve learned from the experience (“Wine + sugar = a vicious combination”; “I should still be making conscientious food decisions even if I am on vacation”; “I feel much better without bread in my life, even in the Bahamas”) and go on with your food freedom self. I see no failure here, do you?

But as I’ll continue to remind you, this plan is different from every diet you’ve tried. You don’t run through this program once and “graduate” with no idea of what happens next. There isn’t a “start” and a “stop.” This three-step plan runs on an ever-evolving cycle. You’ll reset, find your balance, experience what it feels like to go off-balance, and reset again . . . but even though you’ll keep returning to the reset whenever you need it, the difference here is that going back to the start is not indicative of failure—it’s just part of the process (and progress).

Each repeat of this cycle brings you even more awareness, even more ease in making conscious decisions; an even better plan for managing stressful situations and identifying your triggers before they’re pulled. You’ll spend more time experiencing food freedom, and return to your reset less and less frequently—spending the majority of your days just living, fully in control of the foods you are eating. It’s a cycle of continuous improvement that brings you legitimate food freedom every day you follow the plan.

It works if you work it. Here’s how I know.