freedom from the shackles...

what a world!

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It’s Day 22 of the last 100 Days of 2025!!!

As we work towards our weight loss goals, whatever they may be.

The fire is lit….

I want you to join us if you haven’t.

But I don’t want to bug you either…. if I am bugging you, unsubscribe here:

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving as we head right into the Halloween season!

The holiday season is always a complicated one in the weight loss world, but the holidays of the future are far easier and more joyful if we work toward our long term wellness goals.

As it is, many of us struggle through the holidays, white-knuckling the season at best, and working in the new year to lose the weight we just regained. The cycle repeats over and over each year and it is PAINFUL. It’s that constant struggle with our weight and our health, played out over and over each year.

It is the ‘Red Dot World” I described last week.

I discuss the Red Dot World in more detail in the holiday e-book Feast Like a Bear. As a member of our email community, you can download and read the e-book right from this link: (see email)

(Save the ebook to your device. The link will turn into a pumpkin in a bit.)

Goal: Happiness and FREEDOM

For everyone here in the Eat Like a Bear community, including myself, it is my goal that we not just be TRIM but that we are happy, satisfied, and peaceful, living our most vibrant and healthy lives. 

To that end, I have lived through all of my holiday seasons since my 140 pound weight loss happy and satisfied. Those holidays have involved zero Christmas cookies, zero pumpkin spice cupcakes, and nearly zero pieces of Halloween candy. 

To many people, my life since that weight loss in 2017, with zero Christmas cookies, may seem overly strict, austere, sad, and plain un-holiday-like.

Sure, my life viewed from a different perspective looks overly-strict, from a perspective that puts a high value on Christmas cookies. 

However, a crazy thing happened to me along the way: I came to care far less about Christmas cookies than I ever have. 

My values simply changed over these years. 

I value every aspect of my life differently now than I did in 2016, and my life looks like the photo below. 

Here’s my main point:

Life on the other side of the Christmas cookies is tremendous

It’s worth fighting for. 

Before you get to the other side, it may seem very sad to “give up” Christmas cookies. 

I am here to say: 

Freedom is never sad. 

Freedom is freedom

Seek freedom this holiday season.

Read Feast Like a Bear: (see email)

Thank You For Your Support

You may know I have been going through my own rehab and working on my own 100-day goals. A couple of weeks ago, I sent out a number of haikus that I wrote for community members. (Haikus are Japanese poems with a very specific structure.)

I got a haiku back!!!!

Here’s the haiku Ellen wrote for me:

Let’s all keep walking the ancient trails and singing the ancestral songs!

Go be awesome!!!

P.S. Get strategic about your meals if you haven’t. The popular meal framework here at Eat Like a Bear will help with that. Grab the three-pack collection from the Bear Shop for more: https://thebearshop.life/products/three-pack-print-book-collection

P.S. #2 Get balanced, bullet-pointed news in one place. Check the news quickly and then get off your device and get out in the world. 🙂 (I write this for myself…) Newsletter sponsor 1440 Media will help you with that. Click around and check them out too.

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