This is where I spent my Sunday afternoons

I got into The Real Housewives of New York when I first moved to Costa Rica. I’d heard it was good. I thought that I might like it. I watched a couple of episodes. I was hooked. It was the perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon during rainy season. Like many people, I fell for the delectable Bethenny Frankel. I followed her throughout the series and into her Bethenny Getting Married? and Bethenny Ever After spinoffs. Whilst in at Las Vegas airport a few months later, I spotted her ‘Naturally Thin’ advice book and had to snap it up. I have never been transformed by a book in such a short period of time. By the time I had landed, I had resolved to change my whole outlook on dieting and healthy living for good. And I haven’t really looked back. These are the rules that I love to live by:

Bethenny’s 10 SkinnyGirl Rules to ‘Unleash your SkinnyGirl and Free Yourself from a

Lifestyle of Dieting.’

1. Your diet is a bank account. Balance what you eat-types of foods and sizes of meals and snacks, good investments, and splurges-so that you never get too much of one thing. Eat what you want to eat. Just recognize what you are eating, and if you know it’s an “expensive” investment, enjoy every bite but have only a couple of bites. Or just recognize that it’s an expensive investment, and balance it later. If you hate to exercise, you eat a little less. If you love to exercise, you can eat a little more. Balance.

2. You can have it all, just not all at once. When it comes to splurges, pick the one you want the most.

3. Taste everything, eat nothing. When faced with a lot of decadent choices, just have a few bites of each. The sum total will equal a meal, but you won’t have overindulged.

4. Pay attention. Never eat while doing something else because you won’t get the satisfaction out of your food, and you’ll be more likely to overeat.

5. Downsize now. Enough with the huge portions. Just have a little of the good stuff, and fill up on high-volume vegetables, soup, and grains.

6. Cancel your membership in the clean plate club. Quit finishing everything on your plate. The fact that it’s there doesn’t mean you have to eat it. Instead, share your food, save it for another meal, or just leave it when it really isn’t very good.

7. Check yourself before you wreck yourself. In other words, stop yourself before you binge.

8. Know thyself. We all have our tendencies, strengths, weaknesses, and preferences. The more you know about yourself, the more successful you’ll be at staying on track.

9. Get real. Real food is always a better investment than processed food.

10. Good for you. Do what’s right for you, what’s healthy for you, what’s good for you. If you don’t take care of yourself, you can’t take care of anything else. Build a firm foundation of good health and self-care, and you can do anything.

(these rules were taken from Bethenny.com)

I thoroughly recommend the book. It’s such a brilliantly, written collection of advice. So simple, yet it needed someone to set it out for you in simple chunks. Buy it, devour it and never diet again. Seriously.