When people learn that I’ve written a book called Happy Calories Don’t Count (neither does unhappy exercise), the first thing I get asked is “What’s a Happy Calorie?” I generally answer this with another question, “what’s an unhappy calorie?”
Interestingly, when I pose this question most people seem to “get it.” And then I bring their attention to the subtitle of the book – Neither Does Unhappy Exercise.
Happy Calories Don’t Count is a weight-loss paradigm that recognizes you are more than a balance sheet and that your body has an intelligence of its own. Happy Calories Don’t Count embraces the totality of you – your body, your thoughts, your feelings, your beliefs – and seeks to integrate them in a congruent manner.
By viewing your actions through a perspective of alignment and happiness, Happy Calories Don’t Count teaches you to eat when you’re hungry and to eat foods you enjoy. This satisfies both the physical needs of your body and the mental, emotional and spiritual needs of your mind and spirit.
You don’t need to worry about eating “too much” because your body will tell you when to stop. And you don’t need to worry about not eating the “right” food because if something wouldn’t be “right”, your body would not want to eat it in the first place.
Happy Calories Don’t Count teaches that exercise is not something you do to lose or maintain weight. It is not a price to pay for eating or for getting your body to look a certain way. Rather, the purpose of exercise is to connect with and tune your body.
In sum, Happy Calories Don’t Count is a model that takes the pain and struggle out of losing weight and creates effective, long-term results.