Goodreads asked Josh Hillis:

Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?

Josh Hillis So, for the last five years I've really been digging in on how to make weight loss more effective, kind, and professional. I wanted to know why diets didn't work for 90% of the people, and how to create a system that worked for eveyone.

I found some studies on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy and emotional eating, and it really clarified things. I started to see that, for folks who stress eat, emotionally eat, procrastination eat, or tired eat, normal tools won't work. That's when I started diving in on the ACT stuff. I got so deep into the research that I went back to school for psychology, so I could learn how to actually read research LOL. Research methods became one of my favorite classes, and I eventually TA'd it, and even won a department award for TA'ing it.

I'm really passionate about taking cutting edge tools from psychology and making them available to people who are working on their eating. That aws the original genesis of the book.

The system in the book itself opened up from repeatedly going back to my client notes and looking at which coaching pieces actually made a difference. I found that the hunger and fullness cues I'd been teaching were great, but that most people needed more structure and guidelines at first, to learn them.

The book came from that research work (and one particular review I did on ACT and snacking), from looking at goal achievement research, motivation science, and at what was working for real clients in a simplified and structured way.

flag