ANIMAL, VEGETABLE, MIRACLE

What I love about Barbara Kingsolver's latest book - Animal, Vegetable, Miracle - is that it takes us all the way back to the roots of natural wellness. It's the true story about the Kingsolver family's year of eating what's 'in season' and only what was grown within an hour on where they live. It's the story of growing food the natural way, of getting hands dirty and doing a day's physical labour in a way that can't help but make bodies naturally fit.

This books gives some fascinating, and rather scary statistics about the difference between animals that grow up in feed lots compared to those that graze in the fields. After reading the differences between the quality of the meat - I'm actually not sure it's moral to even call them both beef. It's like taking two cheeses that look the same but if you had to compare the labels you'd see that one has double the amount of fat and cholestrol.

Talking of which...thanks to all of you who have taken my poll about what I should do about un-natural wellness weight loss ads on my site. And you can still go into our lucky draw for the end of September when you just click on the 'win' button.

So far: Out of 42 people who have taken our poll, 53% have said they were not bothered by the ads. Your opinion matters to me.

YOUR FREE GIFT TO PLAY FORWARDS

Go on give yourself and others - you're welcome to pass this free gift on to others - the gift of a fair chance of natural wellness by signing up for our FREE e.course on healthy weight loss .

Try out our brand new DIYbody fat calculator (all you need is a tape measure) I know that if the Kingsolver family used our body fat calculator, over the year, they would all have noticed that their % body fat went down - and they didn't go to the gym to achieve that! It was all just part of a natural wellness. (Thanks to my friend Rob for developing this for me)

I also know that the way the Kingsolver family tasted their food and honoured where it came from was pivotal to their year. Try our great NEW intuitive eating exercise. It'll make an enormous difference to the way you experience food. It's also a fabulous path to natural wellness.

SPECIAL ONE MONTH CHALLENGE

We underestimate the role that self-acceptance plays in helping us live in natural wellness.

When we grow our self-respect and self-love, then the need for willpower goes away. Why? Because we then are able to make self-loving choices that lead to natural wellness.

So I'm issueing you all with a 3-minute-a-day, 1-month-challenge, if you take up the challenge I know for absolutely sure that you will look at yourself with vastly more self-acceptance and self-love at the end of it. So what do you have to lose? Absolutely nothing and wow - do you ever have a LOT to gain. Just go to.... our special creative visualization exercise and see how you can change your life in just 3 minutes a day!

And hey, please let me know how you're finding it helps!

FEEDBACK on MIND OVER FATTER

I receive many wonderful e.mails from readers of the ditch diets website and my books. Recently I had one the especially touched me - it began: " I bought your book, I was sick to death of dieting and everything that went along with that, I spent all of Sunday reading and finished it half past two Monday morning, I was unable to put it down, finally a glimmer of hope in what seemed a really hopeless situation." You can read the whole letter here and also either add your comments or write your own