Trim Healthy Mama Plan: The Easy-Does-It Approach to Vibrant Health and a Slim Waistline

My newest PRIZE. Oh my goodness! I started Trim Healthy Mama, “way back when” – and have been following the principles laid out in the original book for 27 months. As a middle-aged (yes, I admit it) mama of four, with 3 decades spent overweight and then obese, having tried every “fad diet” out there; suffering hypothyroidism, chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and unable to even walk up a flight of stairs without wheezing… I was desperate, hopeless and utterly defeated. Skeptical, at very best, I purchased the original book and ‘devoured” all 640 pages! WHEW!I didn’t find it confusing, just followed the steps and… at 43 years old, I feel better than I did in my early 20’s. I easily lost 53 pounds, and have been able to maintain my newfound health with ease – while eating absolutely delicious meals and NEVER feeling deprived! I can hike, cross-country with a 40+ pound pack, and not only live to tell about it… I FEEL GOOD! I could go on and on, but you want to hear about THIS book!Over the last couple years, I have spent countless (and I do mean COUNTLESS) hours on the THM facebook forums. Membership has literally exploded to well over 100,000 people, just in one group alone! Of these members, most enjoyed the original book… but many found the 600+ pages overwhelming – even though the book included 200 pages of recipes! Some members even had their books divided – to keep the recipe section separate from the “plan” part of the book.The authors heard and responded to the plea for a more concise version, with an easier layout… as well as for a completely separate recipe book! While I feel a “loyalty” to my original, exceptionally PRIZED copy of Trim Healthy Mama, I did order both new books. I AM SOOOO GLAD I DID!Just. WOW! They have completely outdone themselves here. Truly.The “Trim Healthy Mama Plan – the easy-does-it approach to vibrant health & a slim waistline” is absolutely amazing. This isn’t just a “revision”, this spells out the plan, while complimenting the previous book! The information contained here is definitely more concise, the layout is (in my opinion) much better; I can see this will be an easier read for many folks, and while it is more concise, it also contains updated information – making it my newest prize!I will say that I thought I would be replacing my original with this one and the new recipe book… but I could never give up the book that brought me “here”. I have me a “collection”… Oh yeah!

Just started, and so far happy. I purchased this for my wife, so this is only my side of the story:We both need to lose wight. We are definitely heavier than we should be, but we aren’t rolling around in scooters and the king sized bed cannot fit our ample bodies, we are the standard overweight people who know we need to lose the weight. I am a short 5 foot 2 inches, (and YES, I am serious….a man that short….AND MARRIED!) so my weight quickly jumped me into the morbidly obese category despite only a small number of pounds being the culprit. My wife, who weighs more than I (and I wont say what she does, sorry I prefer to live, thank you!) is just overweight. We are both very mobile, but just ate too much…or in her case had 3 kids. Our shadows still have negligible weight, unlike some people who need to weigh their shadows before they can fly.Got the picture? Good.I tried the medifast meal plan…and found that I was spending a grand per month only to roller coaster up and down. I would lose weight and then it would come back, despite sticking to the strict routine. Even then the weight lost was no greater than 10 pounds. And the food tasted like garbage. In fact I still have a box of about $800 worth of goods (anyone interested?) that I will never use.My problem is that I like to snack at night, always feeling slightly hungry. This is not to say that I am starving or even feeling like I am, but it is a bad habit and it has stuck around since my military days…..where I would run it off every morning (oops….stopped running!). So I each chips, terrible for carbs and fat, or other snacks that caused weight gain, higher blood pressure, and more problems I wont get into. We all know what it all can be.So my wife asked for funds (I make the money, she takes care of the home. That does not mean she doesn’t work, it just is not income generating. So any funds she spends comes out of the budget which I earn, and she was asking for a one time increase….to give me time to adjust the budget to accommodate. All the feminists or over-reacting individuals can stop here and just deal with the fact that this setup works for us, and your opinions are NOT a factor in our respectfully asking each other about expenditures) to help start all of this. Just after hearing me complain about the medifast costs for just me. I was nearly irate, on such a tight budget where 1/3 of my paycheck was going to a diet that was failing….and she wanted to buy a diet book and begin a diet plan that would cost us more money? Well,I dropped the useless diet (much to medifasts complaint, and they made it difficult to cancel!). I did my research into this plan and basically found more happy customers. No plan is perfect and no plan works for everyone, but something must be right in order to attract so many devoted customers right? Better yet, I can stay on the plan without paying monthly fees or dollars per pound. So no weight watchers style costs, no special foods like medifast, and no desperate meals in an attempt to eat what you are missing? This has to be too good to be true.Well, it is. BUT it is not that far from true! THM sells products to help you cook in a healthier way, which is great! I say it is great because you are not stuck with their products, shop around and find an alternative. THM Pure Stevia Extract can be purchased elsewhere….and better yet, is not required! You can use any other sugar alternative so long as it is not sugar and has the sugar carbs in it. So I purchased two of everything on their menu, deciding to that we will run a FIFO set up and only buy another one when we need to replace it. Even then, we will shop around once we know what each ingredient is used best with and how it is expected to perform, so we can use a cheaper product if available. So yes, it is too good to be true in the fact that you do not need to buy their products because you still must have alternatives to regular ingredients, ones that have the same effect in a healthier for you way. But you are not required to stick with THM products, you can use any vendor.Another plus is that the recipes are easily available. Ok, so why buy the book? Well, this particular book tells you how the diet works and what small changes you should make that can have a big impact. Very important to know, and it is good to be able to look it up if you have questions.That and some of their books contain recipes that are copyrighted, so you must own the book to use the recipe.As for the recipes themselves, THM sells books that have recipes in them where you cannot get it free of charge. You can pay for the website subscription, and this helps you look up ingredients, recipes, build menu’s etc, but not all of them (much to my disappointment, I learned this AFTER paying). We played with it a bit but found that the best benefit for us was the ability to ask questions (IE: for us Stevia Extract is nasty, and although sweet the after taste ruins most food it is used in. So we asked others for alternatives, and got good answers fairly quickly). But all of this aside, the number of people who use this diet is outstanding, and although they are not paid for their help many contribute other recipes that we can use. The real success here is the large number of people who like this and add to it, making the plan more versatile and the support unrivaled. But is it effective?We are on only week 2. Yes, just yesterday we started week 2. Although we have noticed that the sudden uptick in fiber has led to…..uh….gastro-intestinal changes of a negative nature….we know that this will fade as we get used to the new foods. I have lost only three pounds, my wife lost six. As I said, I like to snack, and the first week was not entirely on plan. Oops. But the real fact here is that we are eating foods we like (and discovering a lot that we do not like) and for the most part we are not feeling hungry later. Got the desire to snack? Make a cake. Or even cookies. Heck, I just made a shake that makes the old school diner feel shame….and was very low calorie (I think there was ~85 calories, vs the equal quantity of a diner shake would have nearly 600 calories) and the only carbs I got out of it was from a single SMALL apple, split between two LARGE cups for my wife and I. I could have sworn I was drinking a shake from a restaurant! But to be fair, we made another drink a while back that made my kids look at the cup in horror, praying to the almighty that we would not make them drink it all. We didn’t, and learned to cut back a LOT on some ingredients. The person who like that particular drink had a real sweet tooth, and absolutely loved ginger…..neither of which my family has a large desire for.So is this going to help you? Certainly, if you are willing to commit to just changing how you prepare your food. Want a steak? there is a meal plan for it. Seafood? Got it. Chocolate cake must be out right? Nope. How about bread? Again, no. But each are not what you would normally eat. So how do you change the steak? Well, use different seasoning to prevent carbs, and of course moderation. Don’t eat it constantly and the occasional steak will fit in the plan easily enough. The chocolate cake will taste different, and so far my wife hasn’t found a recipe that works for her. But it is perfectly edible, and filling to boot. I find that I eat and snack less.We will see if this continues to be a good thing.I will update later.

game-changer in the world of healthy eating. The Trim Healthy Mama Plan is a game-changer in the world of healthy eating and weight management. As someone who has struggled with yo-yo dieting and fad trends in the past, I found this book to be a refreshing and practical approach to achieving vibrant health and a slim waistline.