Sherry had the answer all along

My friend Sherry is beautiful. Graceful, elegant, classy. And thin, of course. That goes without saying.


Sherry eats whatever she wants to eat, but never much of it at a time. I’ve been with her when she’s unwrapped a candy bar, taken a dainty bite or two, and then wrapped it back up and put it in her purse. I’ve seen her open a bag of potato chips and nibble on a few, then roll up the top and leave it sitting there in plain sight on the counter.


“How can she do that?” I used to wonder, resentfully.“I could never take a bite or two of something I love and leave the rest alone!”


Well, it turns out I can.


Ever since I watched Paul McKenna’s “I Can Make You Thin” series on TLC in mid-March, I’ve been doing just that kind of thing. Without struggle. That opened bag of chips doesn’t even call my name anymore. That half-eaten candy bar in my purse doesn’t beg me to eat it.


I am as amazed as you are. I am the woman who had to eat everything on her plate, the one who couldn’t leave a can of nuts alone until she was running her finger along the bottom to collect the left-over salt.


And now, suddenly – miraculously, even – I don’t have to eat it all anymore.
So what happened? What took me from being the Great Devourer to being a woman who can have food – and not just food but JUNK food – sitting in her pantry for weeks on end without having to eat it all in a single sitting?


I’m not really sure myself what happened. I saw the promos for McKenna’s show, and thought, “Yeah, Buddy, I just bet you can make me thin. And you say I won’t have to diet? That’s just another wild claim from a guy who’s trying to sell me something, but I’ll give it a look.”


So I found myself sitting in front of the TV and this bald but strangely attractive British guy was giving me four simple Golden Rules and telling me he could help me lose weight “through the television”.


And next thing after that, I was losing weight and actually ignoring foods that used to torment me with their very existence.


First let me say that Paul McKenna has not, nor will he ever, pay me a cent for saying any of this. And I might also add that what he says is not new, nor is it original to him. Since his show, I have learned there are lots of people who have been preaching intuitive eating (that’s what it’s called, even though McKenna never uses that phrase) for years. Many, including a woman named Geneen Roth, have written books about it, espousing the same general ideas that McKenna brought to TLC.


But just because someone else is already preaching this way of living, doesn’t take a thing away from McKenna.


When you think about it, my friend Sherry has been showing me the way for years, but I didn’t believe I could do it. What McKenna did was give it to me in such a simple form, even I could understand it. And then he convinced me, somehow, that I could do it. I have laughingly said it was his British accent that made the difference. You know how much more authoritative a British accent can seem to us US yokels.


That first night I watched him, I had all the tools I needed to get started, and the next morning I did just that. I've never looked back.


His first rule:

Eat when you are hungry

was easy enough. Wasn’t I already doing that?

Likewise his second rule:

Eat what you want, not what you think you should

Was a piece of cake, literally.

The third rule:

Eat slowly and consciously without distractions

Actually involved a major lifestyle change, but still I could see it was doable.

And the fourth rule:

Stop eating when you begin to think you are getting full

Was something I’d never done before, but surely I could learn.

And suddenly losing weight did not seem like some big, complicated, mountainous undertaking anymore. I really wouldn’t have to count anything – not calories nor carbs nor grams. The food scale could be tossed away. When McKenna told those simple rules in his pretty accent, I knew that I could do it.


Four months later, and I’m still doing it. I know you want to know how much weight I’ve lost, and I’d tell you if I could, but I’ve freed myself from the other kind of scales, too. Six weeks into this lifestyle, I had shed 20 pounds, and I know I’ve lost more since then, but the weight-loss is just a fraction of the benefits of learning to eat like a thin person. I have developed normal – not obsessive – feelings about food. In the process, I've gained an abundance of confidence and contentment. I'm not even sure how all this happened, but it did, and I'm a happy woman.



Paul McKenna claims he can make you thin. Going by my experiences during the last four months, I believe him.