Not Another Diet Book: A Guide to Learning to Listen to and Honor Your Body

By Heather Maio

How many years have you spent not liking your body? Believing that if you could shrink your thighs, flatten your belly, and reach your goal weight you would finally find happiness? Trusting that at the end of the diet gauntlet, you will magically be rewarded with self-love and self-respect and never again have to worry about saying no to a slice of cheesecake?

Diets are not helping you. They keep you stuck in an abusive relationship between you and your body. It’s time to break free. Not Another Diet Book is not another diet book. This book contains practical tools that will assist you as you change your relationship with food and your body, which will change your life.

Learn how to nourish yourself fully and trust yourself completely. Discover how to find and create beautiful moments in every day and elevate out of all the bullshit keeping you stuck below your potential.

You do not need another diet; it is time to embrace your magic and treat your body like the gift it is.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Jun 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9798765227596

Heather Maio

Heather is an advocate for self-acceptance, self-kindness, and complete awareness of all the bullshit that is keeping women stuck below their potential. She has spent the last decade assisting women while they achieve their health and wellness goals through her two gyms and a Self-Optimization Practice, Nourished. Currently, Heather resides in Upstate New York with her husband and three children. To learn more about Heather and her services: www.heathermaio.com

Book preview

IF SOMETHING IS GOING

TO CHANGE, SOMETHING

NEEDS TO CHANGE

What are we doing here? Do any of us have any ideas?

We are mothers, caregivers, teachers, nurses, bartenders, business owners, waitresses, lawyers, secretaries, retail workers, friends, sisters, aunts, lovers, partners, girlfriends, wives—we are defined by roles and purposes as if our personalities and traits are somehow formed by our daily to-do lists and the people we clean up after. Missing what could be the best days of our lives because we are consumed with the size of our jeans and the amount of carbs on our plates.

Waking up each morning and repeating the day before: our lives lived on autopilot. We breathe, eat, sleep, clean, and look at lots of people we don’t know online in between. Filling our days with tasks and responsibilities, some critical, most bullshit.

Accomplishing everything while somehow feeling like we haven’t accomplished enough. Feeling like everything is fine—but knowing deep down that fine is not acceptable.

Before we go further, you should know I despise the words fine, satisfactory, and OK.

I don’t want to die someday and have all my loved ones gather around me and say things like, She was fine. Heather lived an OK-enough life. Everything was acceptable, reasonable, and sufficiently sufficient.

Fine is a dirty word. I do not believe fine to be fine at all. Fine is fucked. Fine is barely getting by, doing the bare minimum. Being a zombie, going through the motions, going to bed, and doing it all over again.

I should know. Most of my life was spent being fine.

Like most, I had a few amazing days: the birth of my babies, my wedding. Days when everything seemed to be going right, surrounded by hope, joy, and smiles. These days were not average by any definition. Those days elevated my soul, but they were sparse. A few magical days surrounded by an abundance of mediocre. Of fine.

I am, by every definition, an ordinary woman, but I wanted extraordinary.

So I put on a pair of proverbial rose-colored glasses and got to work reading all the self-help books I could find. I learned how to manifest, set intentions, see the good, be the good, and stay in the present. I attempted to learn how to forget the past while creating the future.

I drank self-improvement from a fire hose.

And almost nothing changed.

It wasn’t all in vain. All the meditating, journaling, and introspection brought me to one truth: nothing was going to shift until I changed how I interacted with and treated my physical being.

I was actively looking to see magic, beauty, and grace all around me while simultaneously picking apart my physical flaws. Looking for magic in the mundane while being unwilling to see magic and beauty when I looked in the mirror.

And therein lies the problem. Seeing beauty, magic, and miracles around you is almost impossible when you refuse to see those qualities in yourself.

Making a life full of happiness, acceptance, and vibrating higher than any of the bullshit you are surrounded by starts with seeing and treating yourself as if you are the magic you are searching for.

Figuring out I was my biggest roadblock was not a fun pill to swallow.

I was on a quest for happiness while simultaneously being stuck in the low energy of my bullshit. Complaining about everything, annoyed with every dish in the sink and load of laundry. Frustrated by the slow drivers in front of me. I was provoked by the questions and interruptions while working at my gym, forgetting I was working in my dream job—the job I prayed for and manifested into existence. I should have been grateful for every one of those interruptions, but that was hardly the case. I was annoyed and permanently bothered. What a fun and excited way to move through life.

In addition to being somewhat of an asshole to everyone around me, I was a dick to myself. (At least I was consistent!) Fighting my body, torturing myself with the misplaced belief that if I lost five more pounds or got my ass a little bit tighter, I would somehow become better, be indestructible, no longer plagued by the shadows I spent my adult life running from. Truly believing my bullshit would not torment me if I could only tone up my arms and rid myself of the cellulite covering my ass. Completely stuck in the delusion that I would find peace and happiness once I got the body I always seemed to be chasing.

Lord, was I wrong.

Everything may have looked fine. But I wasn’t fine. I don’t remember the exact day or moment I realized I was the reason I didn’t have the life I wanted. It wasn’t all at once—rather, it was a slow progression of understanding. Somehow it all came together with one paramount realization: I needed to get out of my own way and allow myself joy.

Joy with no strings attached. Joy that was not connected to a goal weight or zipping up my skinny jeans. Joy that didn’t have a flag in front of it marking some far-off destination I had to make my way to before I could prove my worthiness to myself.

I finally started to understand that I could chase after happiness for the rest of my life, but I would never be truly happy until I appreciated the bliss already around me.

I know now that happiness isn’t a place you go. It is not a spot to be found or a prize you win after losing twenty pounds or remodeling your kitchen. True happiness is only found in the now. Being present and active in whatever moment we find ourselves in.

The difference between fine and fantastic is knowing you can’t wait around for magic to happen. You have to make it. Find it. Create it. But most of the time, simply be willing to see it.

See the extraordinary right here, in this ordinary moment.

And having the ability to do so starts with treating our physical beings with kindness. Caring for ourselves fully—nourishing our bodies and minds with foods, actions, and thoughts that are in alignment with the person we wish to be.

Understanding that we are not only our roles and our waist sizes. We are so much more than mothers, teachers, partners, waitresses. We are not our bodies, our bellies, our boobs, or our arms. We are the knowing underneath those things—hundreds of qualities that cannot be taken or stripped away.

We are our kindness, our laughter, our caring, our hope, our potential, and our light.

Figuring out I was not the asshole voice in my head and separating myself from its constant chatter did not come without work. I thought I was my thoughts and let myself run away with every dickhead thing I had to say about myself.

Some days I was too fat, others I was too lazy. I looked decent enough on a few. Some days I was failing as a mother and a wife, and others I was doing all right.

It was fine.

But I wasn’t fine.

Now, staring out the window, I am filled with gratitude for this moment, where I am at this point in my life. I can run through hundreds of things to be thankful for, list reasons to be overwhelmed with gratitude, and I do that before I rattle off all the things that may annoy me.

Happiness is my default.

Joy is my baseline.

Abundance is my birthright.

Miracles are always happening around me. I only need to look into my children’s eyes to confirm it. And if they are not around, I can find a mirror and look into my own. I now understand I am a blessing. What a blessing we all are. I am the savior I have been waiting for my entire life.

I have found life does not need to be uncommon, rare, or unique to be amazing. There is extraordinary to be found in the ordinary.

This is not a book written by a guru. I am a former fuckup in every sense. I wasted years of my life being the messiest little mess. But today, less than a week away from turning thirty-eight, I am doing fantastically. I am thriving.

Living my dream life, writing these words while I sit in my living room in a house that probably looks very much like yours.

Because I am just like you. I am normal. Very much average. And fucking fantastic.

This is a book for women who are like me. Who are doing OK but know OK isn’t what they came here to be. Women who struggle with basing their worth and happiness on the number on the scale and the image in the mirror. Women who know that, objectively, everything in life is fine, yet they can’t seem to get out of their own way.

This is a book for anyone who has been fighting a war against their body and knows that internal war is the main thing holding them back from happiness.

Self-education, self-exploration, and self-love are not reserved for certain people in certain bodies with fat bank accounts and good skin. These things are a birthright—yours to claim if you are willing to work for them.

But be aware—there will be work. Take it from someone who read all the self-help books in print: nothing changes unless you are willing to make changes. And some of those changes will make you uncomfortable. Know going into this that those are the changes you likely need the most.

All the knowledge about self-care and self-love in the world mean absolutely nothing if we do nothing with it. Sometimes the kindest thing you can do is look in the mirror and tell the person staring back at you to stop fucking up your life.

We tend to be our biggest roadblocks, which is a blessing because if we are the most significant thing standing in our way, we can call out our bullshit and move forward.

You know the saying—you have heard it many times, and I will repeat it because you must understand its truth: You are the savior you have been looking for. You are your own guru.

You deserve magic, miracles, unapologetic love, complete acceptance of your body, and joy. Sink-your-teeth-into-it-and-savor-every-second-of-it-type bliss.

You have everything you need to create an extraordinary life. You always have. It’s time to see it.

I BOW BEFORE MY HIGHEST SELF

We are always exactly where we need to be. It may not seem like it at the time, but God has a plan. Like the metaphysical New Age queen Byron Katie says, arguing with reality means we are losing 100 percent of the time. That being said, I am not someone who believes everything happens for a reason. Fucked-up shit happens every day that has no logical explanation. This book is not aiming to teach you how to bypass your traumas or accept the unacceptable. Instead, it aims to give you tools that allow you to accept yourself and treat yourself with kindness and grace regardless of what life has put you through.

Fifteen years ago, I was fighting with reality daily. Hating almost every part of my day. Everything felt pointless and inconsequential. It felt like I was along for a ride I had no control over. I was not in the driver’s seat of my destiny. I wasn’t even in the passenger seat. I was riding a bus with no air conditioning on a circular loop.

Taking small steps forward, I was back in school and hating every second of it. I felt dumb and out of place—a twenty-something in a sea of eighteen-year-olds. (Joke’s on me: this would not be my last time back, and I would be much older the second time around.) I was taking courses I knew I could pull decent grades in because I needed them desperately, and I had no plan around WTF I was doing; any potential ego boost was something I threw myself at willingly. Because of that, I ended up signing up for some weird shit: a one-credit course in meditation followed by a one-credit course in visualization.

But my God makes no mistakes. I had no idea how much I needed these courses and how they would alter the path of my life.

Being a low-energy, low-vibe person with walls built up high, I wasn’t there to learn; I was there for an easy A. Unfortunately for me, the professor gave us no choice but to join in, meditating and visualizing our way through fifty-five minutes three times a week.

At the time, I did nothing with the tools she provided us. Class was basically an invitation to take a nap.

Until near the end of the semester, when the professor said a Sanskrit phrase in passing that translates loosely to I bow with respect to my highest self.

So much beauty and power rolled up into a few words. Something shook my core when I heard that phrase. A piece of my subconscious lit up, screaming, Hold onto them!

So I did. I still do. Those eight words changed me.

I could write them over and over. Gaze at them all day.

I bow with respect to my highest self.

Until that moment, the idea that I was something holy had never crossed my mind. Someone suggesting that God was in me—and to respect that, I must also respect who I am—this completely confounded me.

Treating myself as something I respect and am thankful for never seemed like a valid option. I only knew how to restrict, binge, abuse, diet, and berate myself into submission.

This book is based on those six words: the idea that self-love and self-respect aren’t something you achieve. They are a birthright—something we are born with and lost along the way.

Magic, miracles, and good days aren’t reserved for fleeting moments or special occasions. They are available every day and at any time.

We are simply not seeing them because we miss the magic, miracles, and good in ourselves.

Life doesn’t have to be a monotonous continuation of work, cleaning, dieting, buying groceries, more cleaning, eating, overeating, drinking, bills, work, taking the kids to practice, work, thinking about going on a diet, cleaning, and sleep. There can be more.

There is magic in the everyday bullshit we have been pulling ourselves through.

Embodying your highest self is how you get out of your way and start seeing it.

YOU ARE YOUR NORTH STAR

When I bow before my highest self, I acknowledge the connection between God and self, recognizing that they are one and the same. This is not a religious book, and I don’t claim to be a religious person. I was raised Catholic, but some of the ideals and ideas of the church never connected with me. I rarely felt at home in the church, let alone awakened. But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a connection with God.

I feel God deeply, everywhere, and in everything. But that wasn’t always the case. Looking back, I see how that connection scared me and kept me shut off from the idea of prayer and reflection.

It can be terrifying to acknowledge the power of God is inside you. It means acknowledging that asking for help, asking for guidance, clarity, and wisdom is always an option. All of it is right at our fingers, already in our hearts—an incredible gift. And a huge burden when you refuse to acknowledge it.

At first, I didn’t use the phrase highest self as I use it now, but it never left me. I would hear it as I glanced quickly into a mirror, echoing back at me while I picked myself apart. Or after I made self-destructive, self-debasing decisions. In the morning, when I opened my eyes and felt the crushing weight of anxiety resulting from living a reactive, repetitious life.

From the moment I heard those words, I understood the divine presence I had always thought of as something separate from me was in me all along. It is in all of us. We couldn’t shed it if we tried. But lord, do we try.

41697.png

We all came from something; I believe that something to be God.¹ All of us are divine creations in her vision, made perfectly and without any flaws.

Bowing before that, respecting it—treating ourselves like we are gifts, things of wonder, and bodies deserving of love, respect, and adoration—is not selfish or egotistical.

It is the holiest and most sanctified thing we can do.

Caring for your body fully, nourishing yourself, ensuring you are getting proper nutrition, sleep, movement, play, and joy are all part of embodying your highest self.

Your highest self is never treating your body like shit.

I believe deeply that you are your true savior. You are your guru