If you decided to reteach yourself your own loveliness today, what would you do? How would you speak to yourself? Can you allow yourself that much?

We're always looking for the Big Love, the Big High, the next Big Thing to happen. We miss what's in front of us.

When we give up dieting, we take back something we were often too young to know we had given away: our own voice. Our ability to make decisions about what to eat and when. Our belief in ourselves. Our right to decide what goes into our mouths. Unlike the diets that appear monthly in magazines or the thermal pants that sweat off pounds, unlike a lover or a friend or a car, your body is reliable. It doesn't go away, get lost, stolen. If you will listen, it will speak.

You can rescue yourself. No matter how you feel, no matter what you believe about your worth or your capacity to love and be loved, you can change.

Be fully present for five minutes every day.

For every diet there's an equal and opposite binge (bulimia which is binging and purging is another way of depriving yourself).

Ask yourself if you are in this for the long run-if it's only your weight you want to change or if you are willing to use your eating patterns as a portal to the inner universe. And if the answer is the latter, then there is no end to what you can learn, be, understand, become.