In Taking Up Space, I share how I achieved my own physical transformation, and how you can make your own transformation in a sane, healthy and balanced way.

Every year the marketers selling shame and punishment in the form of post-holiday ‘detoxes’ get louder and more insistent. And every year I publish a blog post about the importance of forming sustainable habits that support your activity and a healthy weight. And as a result of efforts like mine to slowly push back the paradigm of shame-based fitness, every year the message of balance has grown, our community of body positive athletes and fitness professionals has multiplied, and we make slow but steady inroads into the ‘fitness status quo’. 2015 saw the formal birth of the Fit 2.0 movement that I’m heading up with my partners Michele (from Body Positive Fitness Alliance), Courtney (from Black Feminist Fitness) and Jen Lam (the badass Canadian Arctic athlete and scientist).

This year, I’m stepping it up. I’m partnering with the three I mentioned above, and others, to create a viable alternative to Fitness-as-we-know-it. I’m using what I’ve learned over the last 5 years running this blog and my Facebook group to build a new kind of fitness industry. Exciting things are happening. We’ve got something big to unleash.

And the first step in Changing Everything' is to do something I’ve never done before. I’m giving away my ebook, Taking Up Space, for FREE (it’s normally $10). I’m doing this as a direct response to the flood of fad diet books that will be hitting the bookshelves and blogosphere over the next month. I’m doing it to counteract the 30-Day Challenges your friends are about to inundate you with. I’m doing it to stand up against the fear and shame the marketing industry is about to use to wage an all-out assault against your self-worth.

I’m not going to build a fancy sales page. I’m not going to do any marketing blitz (in fact, I’ve never really gotten into the whole marketing thing, I’ve honestly feels a little dirty when I’ve tried). Just a little blog post, and an invitation to read one little ebook and begin to see everything differently.

What’s in my ebook? I’ll tell you how I lost 80 pounds and have kept it off for 7 years. I’ll tell you how I reversed some nagging lifestyle-related health conditions. I’ll help you understand what a normal, healthy human body looks like (it’s not the dehydrated, professionally lit and photoshopped image we’re used to seeing in fitness marketing). I’ll help you make reasonable, achievable goals, and teach you how to eat to support a healthy weight (instead of the endless disordered cycle of binge and restrict the diet industry sells). I’ll help you learn to recognize bad arguments and manipulation in diet industry marketing. I’ll help you recognize disordered thinking, and give you resources to find help if you can’t get past it on your own. And finally, I’ll help you see that you’re not alone. You’re normal, and you have the power to make healthy changes. And there are rich and vibrant communities where you will be welcomed and not made to feel like there’s something wrong with you because the Diet Industry didn’t work for you (it doesn’t work for anyone; it’s designed to fail, to keep you coming back again and again).

Take my “30-Minute Challenge” (it shouldn’t take much longer than that). Read my eBook. Then tell your sister or brother to read it. And your daughter. And your mother. And everyone who loves one of those people. Read it. Share it. Come join my free Facebook group, Eating the Food. It is all free. And it is different than anything you’ve seen from the fitness and diet industry.

You are normal.

You don’t have to spend the rest of your life cycling between punishing yourself with restrictive diets and bingeing uncontrollably. It’s a self-perpetuating cycle, and I can help you break it.

Balance and reason are possible.

Thousands of us have already achieved it. My Facebook group Eating the Food has over ten thousand members, and you’re welcomed warmly!

To get your free download of Taking Up Space: a Guide to Escaping the Diet Maze, simply enter your name and email address below , and you’ll receive an email with a link to your free download.

Please help our message make a dent in the New Year’s onslaught of shame based diet industry marketing, by sharing this post on your social media (you can use the social media buttons at the end of the post) and with your friends and family. I hope as many people as possible get a chance to read this ebook, which is why I’m giving it away.

And I look forward to seeing you in my Facebook group, Eating the Food, after you’ve read it.