By the time I turned 20, I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and drinking one to two bottles of wine a night.

By the time I turned 20, I was smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and drinking one to two bottles of wine a night.

That's not a confession I make easily. But if you're here, you've probably tried more diets than you can count, and I want you to know I've been where you are.

For 15 years I yo-yo'd. Up 20, down 30, up 40. None of it stuck.

At 27 I went raw vegan. Three thousand calories a day of fruit and smoothies, convinced this was finally the answer.

It changed everything in the wrong direction. I gained 30 pounds. I was depressed, lethargic, broke out in acne, and hungry constantly. I thought plant-based eating was a cruel joke.

I found Dr. McDougall's Starch Solution almost by accident. A doctor telling me to eat more potatoes, more rice, more bread: the foods every diet I'd ever tried had banned.

I was skeptical, but I was out of options.

Six months later I'd lost 40 pounds. Without exercise. Eating until I was full. The first time in my life I'd lost weight without being hungry.

Long-term the number is 70 pounds. But the weight isn't the part I want to tell you about.

I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't count calories or stand on a scale every Sunday bracing for the number. I just eat. Abundantly, plant-based, the way I'll eat next year and ten years from now.

I started a YouTube channel to share what worked. 800,000 subscribers later, I'd heard the same story over and over: same desperation, same diets that don't stick.

So I wrote the books and meal plans I wished I'd had at 20. Thirty-six thousand women have used them. The Weight Loss Cheat Sheet, the seven principles behind all of it, is what I send first.