Forget every tactic you’ve ever tried to lose weight and feel better. Put down your weapons once and for all, and step out of the field of battle. Despite how it may seem, your brain and body are not unsupportive beasts bent on undermining your fitness goals. They just want some chips and dip, that’s all. They aren’t the problem. The way you’re trying to manipulate them is. In Lightness of Body and Mind: A Radical Approach to Weight and Wellness, personal trainer Sarah Hays Coomer offers a different approach. She proposes that you will never be able to achieve a body you love by doing things that you hate, that deprivation and limitation will never set you free, and that punishing workouts and strict diets are dead end roads. The way to a body that works is by doing more of what you authentically love. Through memoir and intimate client stories, this book encourages you to dance with your demons, to choose and cherish the ones you have no intention of giving up, and to build a solid infrastructure, dedicated to good health, in which wellness and indulgence spring from the same source. You don’t need more control. You just need functional knowledge of how habits are formed; a reverent, dizzy appreciation for falling apart when necessary; and laser focus on what brings you to life.

"Coomer, a personal trainer and health coach, takes a novel approach to weight loss that rejects calorie counting, dieting, and strenuous workouts. In this inspiring and compassionate book, she shares her own struggles with weight and body image, as well as her realization that deprivation and treating the body as the enemy rarely work. Coomer asserts that the more effective approach is to replace poor eating habits with small, positive changes. Instead of restricting foods, she argues, one should supplement them with healthy choices; rather than working out in a gym, find a pastime that you love, and then stick to it relentlessly. Coomer shares illustrative stories from her clients, noting that those who emphasized enjoyment of life fared better than those who followed restrictive diet or exercise plans, which often were eventually abandoned. Slow, constant weight loss, she contends, is the more effective route; in a chapter called 'The Tortoise Totally Wins,' she demonstrates how 'slow and steady' wins the weight-loss race. Readers seeking quick fixes and recipes won’t find them here. Though Coomer does include some familiar, practical tips (e.g., pack a lunch rather than eating out; reduce portion sizes), she mostly digs deeper, focusing on transformation and long-term well-being." - Publishers Weekly

"Coomer, a certified personal trainer and nutrition and wellness consultant, uses both traditional and non-traditional methods for rethinking weight management while nourishing a healthy mind and spirit. The author incorporates personal accounts and an almost ‘best friend’ approach to consider weight management and behavior change, using gentle mindfulness and self-compassion. The productive ways that are offered to break the cycle of self-destructive thought and behavior give an insightful perspective to the long-standing and familiar battle between constructive reason and desired gratification. At the end of each chapter, a helpful ‘toolbox’ is presented; this offers useful suggestions and step-by-step ways to focus on a change of mind rather than efforts to change the body. This book reads like a friend’s life journey, offering relatable challenges with great advice. As opposed to the endless clinical self-help books on the market, the reviewer found this book an absolute pleasure to read. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates; general readers." - CHOICE

"With the just-released book, Lightness of Body and Mind: A Radical Approach to Weight and Wellness, personal trainer, nutrition consultant, and author Sarah Hays Coomer has leapt into the center lane and declared: Enough is enough! People are listening — perhaps because she’s not shouting. Instead, she’s inviting anyone who will listen into a new conversation, which she’ll initiate by seizing any opportunity to illustrate how pleasure and health merge in real yet profound ways. With Lightness, Coomer has crafted — from years of personal experience and clients’ stories, and with a refreshing cocktail of common sense, humor, and irreverent cool — a radical resource for personal wellness....  Coomer’s storytelling is imbued with empathy and compassion, no doubt due to her own self-described history of depression and food addiction. She combines a fearless memoir with unpredictable stories of real clients. In many ways, the book is a love song to those men and women and an expression of gratitude for all they’ve taught her." - The East Nashvillian

"Lightness of Body and Mind: A Radical Approach to Weight and Wellness comes from a personal trainer who maintains that real body sculpting and weight management can only come through doing activities that are loved, rather than through rigorous exercises that are followed by deprivation and limitations. The real path to lasting weight loss and wellness lies in identifying personal activities and eating habits that tie into what is desirable and enjoyable, and Coomer's blend of memoir and discussion of this process offers important keys to better lifestyle choices based not so much on a program as an attitude towards life. Chapters go beyond discussions of theory, providing specific tools readers can use to get a handle on their own unique perceptions and inclinations. This approach crafts a wide-ranging discussion with opportunities to reach all kinds of audiences. " - Donovan's Bookshelf