The secret to sustainable weight loss isn't counting calories or depriving yourself at the dinner table. Jean Fain tells us it's about cultivating awareness and self-acceptance wherever you are. With The Self-Compassion Diet, this Harvard Medical School-affiliated psychotherapist prescribes a practical program for transforming the way you think and feel about food and your whole self -- a shift that, paradoxically, inspires physical change. Combining loving-kindness, self-hypnosis, and other winning weight-loss strategies, she shares eleven guided meditations and trance sessions that have helped her clients change for good, including: 1) Satisfaction: a practice for appreciating the everyday activity of eating, and learning to trust your body's signals that it's nourished 2) Gradual change: a guided visualization for developing mindful eating habits 3) Wise: a meditation for getting to know the diet coach who knows you best -- your compassionate "inner advisor." "Most dieters try to `kill cravings' and break habits with self-discipline," teaches Fain. "Self-kindness can help quiet the shame that traditional diets instill, and establish a harmonious relationship with food." Here is a treasury of heart-opening mind-body practices for improving the way you live, breathe, and eat.