Diet Free Zone. Copyright BRG Dietetics & Nutrition, P.C Bonnie R. Giller

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2 Copyright BRG Dietetics & Nutrition, P.C Bonnie R. Giller All rights reserved, No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner or form whatsoever. For further information, contact Bonnie R. Giller

3 TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page Number Introduction 3 Step 1: Reject the Diet Mentality 7 Step 2: Take Care of YOU 10 Step 3: Identify When You are Hungry 13 Step 4: Challenge the Diet Voices that Play in Your Head 15 Step 5: Put Nutrition and Exercise Guidelines into Perspective 17 Put All Three Pieces of the Puzzle Together 19 Next Steps 20 How Diet Free Zone Was Born 21 About Bonnie 22 2

4 INTRODUCTION Diet Free Zone Welcome to Diet Free Zone! First, let me congratulate you for taking the first step to learning how to banish diets forever! You will never have to go on another diet again! You will learn to reclaim what you were born with and that is to be able to eat when you are hungry and stop when you are satisfied. You are now ready to move past yo-yo dieting! I want you to know that you have been a victim of dieting. It s not your fault that the diets didn t work. The diets are what have failed. I will help you to see and understand this! I will help you to understand how your body works and how to reclaim the ability to trust your body again. The reality is that even though you may understand this intellectually, there s still an emotional component that goes along with the process of becoming an intuitive eater. After years of struggling with your weight and yo-yo dieting, you have lost trust not only in your body, but in yourself. I will help you tackle this both physically and emotionally in order for you to make the changes you need without having to struggle. From years of dieting, you have been taught what you should or shouldn t eat but this puts you right into the diet mindset. Most 3

5 people say that the key to losing weight is by dieting, by following certain food rules, by avoiding your favorite foods or by eliminating major food groups. But these approaches just don t work. No form of dieting is going to work for losing weight and keeping it off. You likely have figured that out if you are reading this e-book. So what DOES work? The real key to getting a healthy body you love is learning how to combine 3 essential ingredients: a healthy mindset, caring support and nutrition education! Think of it as a puzzle with 3 pieces! Most people teach you that you only need 1 piece of the puzzle. I teach you that you need all 3! Healthy Mindset Caring Support Nutrition education 4

6 I can help you complete this puzzle. With my years of experience as a registered dietitian nutritionist providing nutrition education, and my specialized training in intuitive eating, I will help you create a tailored solution that combines all 3 essential ingredients so you can achieve the weight loss you desire and the body you love WITHOUT DIETING! How? I use a 5 step system which I have outlined in this e-book so you can achieve a freedom to eat forever. It is important to go through each of the 5 steps in sequence, starting with step 1. Each step builds upon the next. Completion and application of all 5 steps will help you become an intuitive eater, where you eat based on your physiological need of hunger and satiety and not based on situations or emotions. We start with shifting your mindset to reject the diet mentality and work our way through the steps to the last step of nourishing your body. This is where we discuss nutrition. You might be wondering Bonnie, why don t you discuss nutrition in step 1? After all, isn t it about the foods I eat? Absolutely not! If we begin talking by about nutrition and what you should eat, we are back to setting food and diet rules. Even the most sound nutrition recommendations become diet rules that will eventually be 5

7 broken if you are listening with a dieter s mindset. So, the first step has to be shifting your mindset and eventually we discuss nutrition, but at that point you will be hearing it from a whole new perspective. I have outlined the 5 steps that you need to take to be on your way to becoming an intuitive eater. I have incorporated action questions after each step so you can implement the steps and achieve a body you love. It s best to print out this guide and write your answers in the spaces provided. Write what first comes to mind. Do not edit yourself. This is the beginning of a new way of living so open up and let your true thoughts and feelings come through. 6

8 STEP 1: Reject the Diet Mentality You weren t born with a set of rules on how to eat. Your beliefs and attitudes towards food and eating have evolved over time. They have turned into your Food Rules of which you have commanded yourself to follow if you want to lose weight. Now is the time to stop and acknowledge that these rules are partly responsible for why you have struggled with your weight and have gone on and off diets for years without succeeding. You were allowing an outside influence to determine what you should eat, when you should eat and how you should eat. Now, I am not going to disagree with you. Sure, it s easier to follow a set of rules or pre-planned menus and see immediate results than to address the habits that caused the weight gain in the first place. But what happened each and every time you did that? You regained the weight. Why? Because you didn t allow your internal signals to guide your eating. And each and every time you went off your diet, you felt like a failure and berated yourself. Then you promised you ll start again and this time you ll do it right. This is how a dieter thinks. 7

9 You were born with the ability to know when you are hungry and when you are satisfied. Really, you were! But over the years you lost it, most likely due to the multi-billion dollar diet business and celebrities pushing the latest diet and weight loss promise. So, the first step is to reject the diet mentality by cultivating a healthy mindset, specifically a non-diet mindset. This means that you don t have a list of rules that tell you what, when and how much to eat and a list of good and bad foods. You give yourself unconditional permission to eat when you are hungry and what food you desire. How do you go about rejecting the diet mentality and developing this healthy mindset? Start by making a list of all your diet rules that you created for yourself over the years. Only then, when you know what those rules are, can you begin to knock each off the list one by one and begin to really believe that diets just don t work. Once you do that, you will be open to the journey of reclaiming the intuitive eater from within. 8

10 Time to take Action: Diet Free Zone 1. What Food Rules have evolved over your years of dieting? List as many as you can think of now. You can always come back later and add to it. 2. What determines how much you eat? 3. Do you have a list of foods that you don t allow yourself to eat when you are on or being good? What are they? 4. Do you have a list of foods that you consider to be safe that you will only eat when you are being good? What are they? 5. What do you do when you have something that is not on your diet? 9

11 STEP 2: Take Care of YOU In order to be able to focus on reclaiming the intuitive eater that is buried within you, you will need to be able to identify and process thoughts, feelings and signals from your body. It is difficult to be able to do this if you aren t taking care of your basic needs, such as eating, sleeping and having fun! This is called Self-Care! Somehow, other people and things often take priority over your own needs. Then, by the time you are ready to ask yourself what do I need, you are too tired and will settle. I could tell you that is not what your loved ones want for you, and deep down it s not what you want either. Taking care of yourself will help you to have the healthy mindset that you need to get the healthy body and life that you want. So, the second step is to start taking care of YOU! Start to say no when you are repeatedly asked to do favors for others when you know that it will mean not doing something that you need to do for yourself. Or, you can simply say, I can t do that now, but I can help you out tomorrow. Having a strong support system can play a huge role in the process of rejecting the diet mentality and ultimately becoming an intuitive eater. 10

12 Speak to your family and friends and build a support network that you can tap into during your journey. If you re not getting the caring support that you need, stay strong and remember your goals and desires. And, don t forget I am here for you and will provide that caring support if you need it. Just send me an or call me and I will assist you. Time to take Action: 1. Think about your needs. What are you lacking? Sleep? Play time? Jot them down here and then pick two and make a commitment to yourself to focus on them NOW. 2. Document your thoughts and feelings as you focus on making yourself a priority. Let me know how this is going for you. Send me an at bonnie@brghealth.com with your progress. Use this page and the next to journal your progress. Self-Care Journal 11

13 Self-Care Journal 12

14 STEP 3: Identify When You Are Hungry As I mentioned earlier, you were born with the natural instinct to know when you are hungry and need to eat and when you are satisfied enough to stop eating. However, you have gotten so used to ignoring your hunger signals that you are no longer able to identify them. They slowly have faded away and you don t hear them anymore. The only time you likely hear your hunger is when you are ravenous. And what happens then? When you constantly deny your hunger until eventually you can t take it anymore, you end up overeating, or bingeing. Then you lose more trust in yourself because you failed yet again. Your body needs to be reconditioned or retrained to actually hear your hunger signals again. If you have been dieting for a long time, this can take a while, but it absolutely can happen! Having a healthy mindset means that you rely on your internal hunger and satiety cues to determine when and how much to eat. So, the third step is to start to listen for hunger. Hunger can manifest itself by way of a growling stomach, feeling lightheaded, or having difficulty concentrating. When you are about to start eating, ask yourself, Am I hungry? What am I feeling? If you are truly hungry, eat. If you are not, don t eat. 13

15 Time to take Action: Diet Free Zone 1. Can you identify when you are hungry and when you are full? 2. Do you clean your plate at every meal? 3. Do you trust yourself to know what to eat and when to stop eating? 4. Do you eat for reasons other than hunger, such as sadness, stress, anxiety, boredom? Specify what those reasons are. This is NOT an easy step, especially if you ve been dieting for a while and you eat based on when your diet tells you to rather than your own signals. If you are having difficulty recognizing your hunger, please reach out to me for support. I am here to help. 14

16 STEP 4: Challenge the Diet Voices that Play in Your Head Do you ever say any of the following statements to yourself: I was bad today, I shouldn t have had that chocolate cake. I started my day out good and then it went downhill. It s not time to eat yet, so don t have that snack. Should I or shouldn t I eat that? Should I or shouldn t I? Should I? He thinks I should lose weight, well I ll show him. These are destructive diet voices that play in your head that influence how you feel and how you act. They keep you on the diet roller coaster. At this point it s very important to start acknowledging these voices and to learn to replace them with friendly voices. Yes, there are friendly ally voices that help you to understand your thoughts, feelings and actions without judgment. And these ally voices help you defend yourself against people in your life that tell you what they think you should be doing to lose weight. This step is very important in solidifying steps 1-3 on your journey. This is the step that will ultimately help you give yourself unconditional permission to eat when you are hungry what foods you desire so you can 15

17 make peace with food. While you may be able to hear your inner signals and are learning to respond to them, if you don t work on turning the destructive voices into friendly voices, you will still have foods that you are afraid to eat or keep in the house and which lead to overeating or binge eating. Time to take Action: 1. What do the voices in your head say to you about food, dieting and/or your body? List them below. 2. How does this make your feel? 3. Try turning your negative self-talk around into positive self talk. Write the revisions below. 16

18 STEP 5: Put Nutrition and Exercise Guidelines into Perspective Now that you have acquired the first essential ingredient - a healthy mindset by rejecting the diet mentality, listening to your body and challenging the diet voices, AND you have the second essential ingredient - caring support by taking care of your needs and seeking out support, you are ready for the third essential ingredient nutrition education. You should start by making a list of all the nutrition and exercise guidelines that you want to know more about. Whether it s eating green, going organic or choosing whole foods, it s time to do your research. You need to decide what if any, of these guidelines you would like to incorporate into your tailored solution. There are a lot of myths and misconceptions surrounding food and nutrition. It is therefore important to seek this information from reputable sources. Your best bet is a registered dietitian nutritionist with the knowledge and expertise of food and nutrition science. 17

19 Time to take Action: Diet Free Zone 1. Nutrition Guideline I want to research: Information found: Source of information: 2. Nutrition Guideline I want to research: Information found: Source of information: 3. Exercise Guideline I want to research: Information found: Source of information: 4. Exercise Guideline I want to research: Information found: Source of information: 18

20 Put All Three Pieces of the Puzzle Together Congratulations! You have all 3 puzzle pieces in place. You have started the process of changing your mindset, built your support network and have learned about nutrition and exercise. Now, decide what you have learned from step 5 that you would like to incorporate into your world. Then seek out any additional support that you need to help you create a tailored solution that combines the three essential ingredients so you can have the healthy body that you love! Healthy Mindset Caring Support Nutrition education Time to take Action: I will integrate the following nutrition and exercise guidelines into my healthy mindset so I can be and feel my best! 19

21 Next Steps Diet Free Zone How did you do with answering the questions in this e-book? Did y0u find them challenging? Did you learn anything new about your thoughts, feelings and body? Changing your mindset and understanding nutrition can feel overwhelming at times. I know that implementing these 5 steps won t necessarily be easy. But I have confidence in you. I am here not only to provide you with valuable information. I am here to support you as well. If you would like further support on your journey to making peace with food so you can enjoy guilt-free eating, a life free of dieting and a body you love, I invite you to apply for a complementary Break Free of Dieting Strategy Session at You can also feel free to contact me at or bonnie@brghealth.com with any questions. I look forward to getting to know you and to supporting you on your journey. Warm wishes, Bonnie R. Giller, MS, RD, CDN, CDE 20

22 HOW DIET FREE ZONE WAS BORN For more than twenty-six years that I have been in private practice, I have told my clients that I don t do diets. Diet is a four letter word not to be used in my office. I create customized meal plans for people specific to their nutritional needs. I counsel on behavior modification techniques and strategies and stress the need to change poor eating habits so they can maintain their weight loss forever. However, while I have a high percentage of clients who have reached goal weight and have maintained it for many years, I noticed that many clients were in fact using the customized meal plan as just another diet, or another set of rules of when and how much to eat. I realized there must be another way to help those individuals who have been struggling with overweight/obesity all their lives, going on and off every diet that hits the market. What I discovered is a concept called Intuitive Eating. The 5 steps outlined in this e-book will start you on your path of intuitive eating so you can finally say no more diets. 21

23 ABOUT BONNIE Diet Free Zone Bonnie R. Giller is the founder of BRG Health Solutions (a division of Dietetics & Nutrition, P.C.) and Diet Free Zone. She helps chronic dieters and people with medical conditions like diabetes break free of the pain of dieting and take back control so they can get the healthy body and life they want. She does this by creating a tailored solution that combines three essential ingredients: a healthy mindset, caring support and nutrition education. Using her signature Freedom to Eat Forever system, Bonnie helps her clients support and honor their mind and body. The result is they lose weight, keep it off without dieting and live a healthy symptom free life of guilt-free eating. Bonnie is a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist, Certified Diabetes Educator and Certified Intuitive Eating Counselor and has her Master of Science in Clinical Nutrition. She has worked in medical nutrition therapy and counseling for over 26 years. Bonnie is very passionate about helping her clients regain the trust in themselves and their bodies so they can shift away from a diet mentality 22

24 and learn to listen to their inner hunger signals. She is known for providing caring support and motivation as her clients reacquaint themselves with their inner wisdom. Bonnie has written two cookbooks and is currently working on her third. This next cookbook will integrate the principles of intuitive eating in the first few chapters followed by several hundred recipes for you to enjoy! Stay connected with Bonnie on the following social media channels: Facebook Twitter YouTube Pinterest Instagram You can subscribe to Bonnie s two blogs to receive weekly posts automatically delivered to your inbox. The Nutrition Key with BRG Blog - for nutrition related posts Intuitive Eating Blog - for intuitive eating and mindful eating posts Visit Bonnie s website for program information, recipes and more. 23