It's Not What You EatBut How
A novel about a dying mother, a hospice aide who refuses to soften anything, and the girl inside a fifty-eight-year-old woman who never stopped waiting to be seen. It isn't a diet book. It's an invitation into a different relationship with food, your body, and the people you love.
This Is Not Another Diet Book
Nearly every book about food focuses on food. This one focuses on consciousness, the stress, the subconscious programming, and the old wounds that decide what happens long before a fork is ever lifted. Weight and health become what naturally follow. They were never meant to be the whole point.
What Wore You Out
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Fighting your body into submission
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Shame as a motivator
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Controlling food through willpower
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Starting over every Monday
What This Offers Instead
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Working with your body, not against it
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Self-compassion as the foundation
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Trusting yourself around food again
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A relationship that finally holds
This Is a Movement, Not Just a Book
Reading this book together does three things at once โ and this is the heart of the whole project.
Every Book Funds The Body Positive
Part of the profit from every copy sold goes directly to The Body Positive โ an organization giving young people a healthier relationship with their bodies before decades of shame have the chance to take root.
Every Group Pays It Forward
Each reading group sponsors either a full youth participant, or a third of a trainer's certification ($450), into The Body Positive. The workbook is completely free โ nothing is sold to you here. This is you giving, not buying.
Every Circle Builds Real Friendship
The questions in this book take you deeper with the people in your group than most people ever go with their own family. Adults stop feeling alone. Kids stop feeling forgotten by the generations ahead of them.
The Story
Deb Brown is fifty-eight, and her mother is dying. The hospice aide assigned to their family, Hazel, is not the gentle kind โ she is direct, unhurried, and entirely unwilling to let Deb manage her mother's death from a safe distance. In the waiting rooms and long nights that follow, Deb meets someone else she had lost track of: little Debbie, the girl she stopped protecting decades ago.
Set in Manitou Springs, Colorado, in the tradition of contemplative fiction like The Alchemist and The Celestine Prophecy.
Deb Brown โ 58, caring for her dying mother while quietly unraveling her own story
Hazel โ the hospice aide who won't let anyone look away
Ann โ Deb's mother, nearing the end of her life
little Debbie โ the inner child Deb had long since stopped listening to
Rachel โ a spiritual guide who appears exactly when needed
Madison โ Deb's daughter, estranged and watching from a distance
"The only thing you could ever be is love. YOU ARE. I AM."
A Book Club, Held Like Something Sacred
Before anyone opens the workbook, every group reads through a short set of agreements together. They aren't formalities. They're what makes it safe to be honest.
Confidentiality
What's shared in the room stays in the room. You may take your own experience out the door. You may not take anyone else's.
No Fixing, No Advice,
No Rescuing
When someone is in pain, the job isn't to make it better. It's to witness them. Their feelings were never a problem to solve.
Hold Space for Silence
Silence isn't a failure โ it often means something important just landed. Letting it breathe is one of the room's greatest gifts.
Sixteen Weeks of Connection
Each chapter pairing carries its own theme: from showing up before you feel ready in Session One, through forgiveness and the body as beloved, to coming home to yourself in Session Sixteen. Here's how a group actually starts.
Gather Your Group
Four to eight people, willing to meet weekly for ninety minutes, in person or by video, for sixteen weeks.
Read Together
Give everyone the book and the Companion Workbook, and read the group agreements together at your first session.
Let the Guide Lead
The Facilitator's Guide walks you through it, session by session โ no training required, just a willingness to hold the room.
90 minutes a session ยท 4โ8 people per group ยท workbook & guide included, free
Mark J. Platten
Mark is an author, men's midlife facilitator and coach, and a former U.S. Air Force officer. He spent nearly seventeen years with Colorado State University Extension before building the body of work that led to this novel. He lives in Colorado Springs. During that same period, he led a parallel life of indigenous study, deep nature connection, and ceremony/ritual mastery. His gifts blend grounded and pragmatic science with the inner esoteric journey.ย ย
Get the Companion Workbook โ Free
Every adult in the group gets the workbook at no cost. There is nothing to buy here.
- The full Companion Workbook (digital)
- Weekly reflection pages
- Discussion prompts for each session
Send Me the Workbook
Completely free. No spam. Just this book, this work, and what comes next for it.
The Facilitator's Guide โ One Per Group
Only the person holding the room needs this. Register below with your group's name and location โ we'll confirm your group and your Body Positive sponsorship before sending your copy. This isn't an instant download; expect a short follow-up by email first.
Register as Facilitator
We'll follow up by email to confirm your group and sponsorship before sending your guide.
Want a Printed Copy of the Workbook?
The workbook runs long โ likely 60 to 80 pages. If you'd rather hold a printed copy than read on a screen, leave your info and we'll follow up with ordering details.
Request Ordering Info
We'll email you directly with next steps to order your printed copy.
Be the First to Hold It
It's Not What You Eat...But How hasn't launched. The waitlist is how you find out the moment it does โ before anyone else, with launch-week extras reserved for the people who got here first.
