Like any good diet (jk, all diets are terrible), Six Months to Sanity comes in two phases. Are you ready? Let’s get started…

PHASE 1: Just Eat It.

This is the “six” part of the 6M2S plan. For six delightful months, you’ll give yourself full, reckless permission to freefall into all the food in all the world.

Nothing is off limits here, and there are no “bad” foods anymore. Food without judgment or restriction is absolutely key here, and you’ll be well on your way to sweet, sweet sanity.

Here’s how it works:

Whenever a craving hits, eat it right then. Anything and everything, in whatever quantity you like. Joyfully embrace your trigger foods, and forget they ever ruled your life.

Whip up a box of mac and cheese, which has never been four servings anyway so who are we kidding with that, and polish the whole thing off.

Rekindle your romance with bread. Take a steamy stroll through every bakery that strikes your fancy. Eat a whole baguette and slather it with real butter. If you can’t taste the butter, put more butter on.

Drink real Coke, eat full-fat ice cream, grate a whole block of cheese over a whole bag of tortilla chips and put in the microwave for insta-nachos. Let your body feel fullness, and richness, and stomachaches, and the indescribable luxury of food security.

Here’s what’s happening behind the scenes:

Somewhere along the way, the primal, survival parts of your brain got hungry. Like hangry hungry. Your brain doesn’t care which diet you were on or why you were cleansing or how close your beach trip was. It simply got the message that food sources are scarce where you are and realigned its primary purpose to finding and consuming food.

Food is, obviously, one of the most basic life needs. But most of us are fortunate enough to live in a time and place in which food is NOT scarce, and your life does NOT need to be driven by a search for life-sustaining nutrients.

The bottom line here is that your food issues have nothing to do with willpower. This has been about brain chemistry all along. (For a fascinating real-life example of this, read up on the Minnesota Starvation Experiment here.)

I bet you’re thinking ha ha har har that’s lovely in theory, but I’ll gain a thousand pounds and then I’ll be worse off than when I started. And yes, you might gain a pound or two or even ten. But a.) please stop weighing yourself, and b.) you’ll be surprised at how tired you’ll get of eating. Really! This is what it feels like to be sated and full — emotionally, mentally, physiologically, and chemically — and you are going to love it.

You may also be surprised to discover your body’s natural size, or set point. You may love it, or you may need to learn to love it. But that’s the gift of food sanity: it’s a rock-solid foundation that you can build upon. Can’t stress this enough, y’all.

No more counting or binge eating or seeing the world like a minefield of trigger foods. Just peace of mind and a really clear head to think about the things in life that actually matter. You, yes YOU, can do this!

Next up: PHASE 2!