Program helps people achieve goals
Published in the Jan. 7 – 23, 2015 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By Staff Report
Photo by Marty Cheek
From left, Brad Jones, Tracee Gluhaich and Connie Medina and Corrina Billett, two ‘No Fricken Weigh’ program participants, at BookSmart.
Morgan Hill BookSmart co-owner Brad Jones peaked at a weight of about 400 pounds a year ago and realized that for his health and happiness sake, he needed to drop about 200 pounds. In the past 12 months, he shed 75 pounds, thanks to the help of Tracee Gluhaich, a Morgan Hill holistic health coach who claims that diets don’t work.
Gluhaich recently self-published a book titled “No Fricken Weigh” which takes people on a “journey” toward a healthier way of living through a 21-day program. Her book’s advice is to “ditch the diet, crowd out the crap, and love yourself to health.” At BookSmart starting Jan. 8, she will launch a program to help people achieve what Jones did in losing weight.
The book came about after Jones asked her for help in shedding the pounds, she said.
“At first we did this 12-week session and then I stopped because I thought I had given him all I had,” she recalls. “But he still had two more years on his journey, so I became committed to coming every week for the next two years until he got his goal.”
There are more than 100,000 diet books listed on Amazon.com, Gluhaich said, so the availability of information does not seem to be an issue or everyone would be thin and healthy. She sees a big part of the problem as a mind-set toward healthier eating habits.
“You know people are either on a diet or they’re off their diet. It’s like this whole deprivation — you can’t eat this, you can’t eat that,” she said. “What I found is that when people fall off that diet, then they just give it all in and go back to their own ways.”
The No Fricken Weigh system does not tell people to not eat certain foods, but gets them to fill up with healthy food first, she said.
“I want you to fill yourself with so much healthy food that there’s no room for the crap,” she said. “And that filling your life up involves so many good, happy things that you don’t need to use food as a crutch.”
Gluhaich said her system is not a diet but a lifestyle. With a diet, people can’t wait for it to be over, and so people give up before getting results, she said. She suggests starting off small, giving up one junk food at a time. Her system gets people to bring in 21 healthy foods into their eating habits over time. These foods include a big bowl of vegetable soup or healthy-cooked chicken.
“What is the crap (food)? It’s all the processed garbage that people fill their bodies with that create inflammation and cause disease,” she said. “So during the 21 days there’s 21 foods, but there’s also 21 nourishing self-care things that you’re encouraged to do. And a lot of it starts here with vision and your mind-set and loving yourself.”
Many people use eating carbohydrate-dense junk food to fill an emotional emptiness or combat stress. That’s one reason so many Americans are overweight.
“The big thing is eating clean, moving your body every day and making sure you get enough rest and hydration,” she said. “And our bodies are made up of such a huge amount of water that it’s really important to keep hydrated.”
Jones raves about how Gluhaich’s system worked for him when diets didn’t because it provies a holistic method of looking at health and fitness.
“A big thing that she really convinced me of, and I’ve seen it in action, is it’s kind of like replacement therapy,” he said. “Instead of saying you can’t have something, you say well you shouldn’t have that (junk food), but if you have it, have this (healthier food) first. And you have this replacement strategy where if I want to go for the chips first, my secret weapon is carrot sticks. I have carrot sticks before I eat something else. And the carrot sticks are good and I maybe have a lot more carrots than chips.”
