Slim Within: 4 Rules of Eating 4 Permanent Weight Loss: Guide to Appetite-Controlled Eating

by Karen Jones Gowen

How to Eat Like a Normal Person and Still Lose Weight Getting into diet addiction at a young age, Karen Jones Gowen spent a lifetime trying to get over it. Losing weight wasn’t enough. She wanted to achieve and maintain a healthy size without diets, grueling workouts or strict weight control plans. In fact, to discover the secret to eating normally, instead of like someone who was either on or off a diet. In this self-help memoir, Gowen relates her own story with detailed authenticity. She shares the plan she developed over many years and with much trial and error. A plan that enabled her to lose 80 pounds and keep it the Slim Within program, with its simple 4 Rules of Eating. The final section of the book guides readers into understanding and implementing their own best way to lose weight by following this method of natural, appetite-centered eating. It itemizes the basic 4 Rules, along with six helpful tools, including a Weekly Accountability Sheet, the WAS. (A downloadable pdf. of the WAS is available upon request at the Slim Within Facebook page, Slim Within Workshops.) Utilizing Slim Within, it’s possible to overcome a lifetime of diet addiction, or obesity, or any type of eating disorder and at last find peace with food, weight and body image. To become slim permanently, not just on the outside where it shows but inside where it counts.

157 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 12, 2016

About the author

Born and raised in central Illinois, Karen attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb and the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. She transferred to Brigham Young University, where she met her husband Bruce, and there graduated with a degree in English and American Literature.

Karen and Bruce have lived in Utah, Illinois, California and Washington, currently residing in Panajachel, Guatemala. They are the parents of ten children. Not surprisingly, family relationships are a recurring theme in Karen's writing.

Reviews

[J.L. Delozier · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a physician, I like to keep abreast of the latest "diet" books my patients may be reading, so I was happy to receive an advance review copy of 1 of the newest to join the self-health library.

In Slim Within,the author reaches out to those fed up (ahem) with dieting and promises a simpler, saner way. Part memoir, part motivational guidebook, Slim Within practically pleads with its readers to stop the insanity (to borrow from a much older book in a similar vein) and to start paying attention not to the scale but to one's internal cues. The goal: to regain the ability to hear what one's body is craving both physically and emotionally and to satisfy it with "just enough."

The author outlines in simple and practical terms a 4 step approach. The end of each section includes helpful flow sheets, pages for journaling and probing questions meant to incite reflection on one's dietary triggers.

The tone is supportive without being preachy and emphasizes kindness to oneself. As such, the book will appeal most to those frustrated with and embarrassed by past failures; those who need a gentle nudge and a soft voice to encourage them to try again. Dieters who cling to the traditionally strict rules of weight loss may find this book too breezy. Ironically, they are the people who would probably benefit the most from the author's core message: stop dieting, nurture yourself and good things will happen.

My opinion as a physician: the plan isn't scientifically based but doesn't claim to be. However, the basic rules make good common sense, and there is no harmful medical advice, which puts it miles ahead of many other "diet" books on the market. I like the approach and could see myself recommending it particularly to my emotional eaters as a solid first step towards permanent weight loss.